"Ad salutarem pluviam": Processions against Droughts in Late Medieval Marseille as Healing Process Rituals of the Sick City - Shiri Birenboim

 In March 1336 three members of Marseille's city council approached the local bishop, requesting that he conduct a procession in honor of God and the Virgin.[1]  The aim of this communal outdoor gathering and prayer, carried out under the authority of the church, was to seek God's and Mary's mercy and compassion, and receive their aid so that they shower a salutary rain on the city, providing a sufficient freshwater supply. It was the fifth drought period within the last decade and a half in Provence, and the authorities needed to take some actions to ensure a reasonable supply of freshwater to irrigate the fields and replenish the streams that ran through the city and its surroundings. Since the request came close to winter's end, I assume the amount of precipitous already showered was not enough, or rather; it was a means of precaution before the dry summer arrived. 

Once the city council defined the rain as "salutary", it stated that Marseille's well-being was endangered, or implied that the town was somehow ill and needed a healing process to overcome this condition. Urban well-being was dependent, among other factors, on a steady supply of fresh water for drinking water fountains, irrigation of fields, bathing, and all other uses a living city required. 

This statement raises a fundamental question: whose well-being was endangered, or who was the patient? Was it Marseille itself, with its urban surroundings physically built, its freshwater canals, its drinking fountains, its fields and gardens, that required a remedy? Were those the individual inhabitants who lived in Marseille and suffered from the water shortage, which could eventually lead to hunger and compromise their health? Or whether the council viewed the urban physically built surroundings and the citizens as one entity, which can be referred to as the "civic body." The source does not reveal who was the actual patient within this figurative manner of speech in the protocol. However, based on evidence from other Marseille council meetings, when it came to matters of environment and well-being of the citizens, the council occasionally used the term "res publicae" which suggests that it referred to the whole civic body, physically and personally, as one entity who needed treatment or remedy. 

A crucial point to note is that if, by conducting a procession, the city council attempted to prevent a wheat shortage or avoid hunger, it could just as well import crops and alleviate the threat of hunger, as had been done many times in earlier years of drought. In this case, why did Marseille's council decide upon a religious healing ritual using medicinal terminology? Was it just a common mechanism used by the city whenever its well-being was threatened? Or did this choice imply how medieval people understood the way mass rituals and mass prayers worked? To answer those questions, let me briefly examine the phenomenon of processions, which will enable us to gain a glimpse of medieval popular religion as it really was, aimed at honoring and/or celebrating the deity. 

Usually, these processions emerged out of the main cathedral or church in town. They circled the most prominent areas of the city, emphasizing the Christian presence and authority, as well as God's providence over the urban space. Though led by the clergy, processions needed the active presence of the audience to exist. Ordinary Christians were encouraged to express their religious feelings and actively participate in religious ceremonies. Not only were religious festivities honored in processions, but civic events, such as visits by royalty or triumphal parades, were celebrated in processions led by the local bishop, thereby acquiring a religious significance. Additionally, processions were held in times of natural disasters as early as the fourth century. One of the most famous early processions was organized by Pope Pelagius II in the late 6th century, in response to a flood from the Tiber that washed Rome, thereby causing an outbreak of the Plague. Another series of processions took place immediately afterward to combat the Plague, led by Pope Gregory the Great. From the ninth century on, processions with special prayers against drought, floods, and other natural disasters were so common that it was customary to add special antiphons for such occasions.[2]  

Whenever a catastrophe beyond human control hits the city, asking for divine intervention by conducting a procession was the most common, acceptable, and intuitive option to restore order. We do not have much evidence regarding the route of this specific procession in Marseille or other processions aimed at stopping droughts, floods, or plague waves the city conducted. Still, we do know that during the time of the rogation, the processions emerged from Marseille's "La Mayor" cathedral along a fixed route that went through the city's churches that were located within the city's perimeter, near its walls.[3]  It is as if the procession route and the dispersal of churches in the urban space aimed to create a spiritual shield over the city, encompassing the entire city physically. In addition, the clergy employed various sensory means to intensify the ritual and apply a more profound meaning and psychological effect on the marching crowd. Usually, the bishop carried portable scent vessels; their sweet smell filled the air, and their smoke rose directly toward God. The therapeutic qualities of incense spread through the air and over the town, also suggesting that the procession was meant to physically and metaphorically heal the surroundings.[4]  The sounds of bells, the lamenting crowd, and the sight of ribbons bearing the Cross also aimed to create a meaningful and comprehensive setting for the ritual. The physical place where the ritual took place was the urban sphere itself, the very space that needed healing. The crowd marched through the streets, metaphorically through the blood vessels of the sick body, spreading the remedy throughout them to the urban entity and inhabitants alike. 

Reading between the lines, processions were not only a well-known, familiar, and accepted ritual rooted in the history of Christianity. Instead, we cannot ignore the psychological impact of this mass event on the participants, who were an integral part of the ritual. By their parading and praying, by their longing and passion, they believed they advanced the coming of rain. In other words, processions were a mass-ritualized healing performance, a sort of large-scale mental therapy for the civic body, aimed at psychologically imbuing hope in the hearts of believers that a blessed and bountiful rain would soon irrigate the dry city. Within this setting, the clergy and civic body were mentally engaged in the healing process, thus conceiving a "Doctor-Patient" relationship between God and the church on the one hand and the mass of people on the other. The clergy was the spiritual authority, the apostles of "God the doctor," thus applying the ritual divine healing qualities. All the sensory effects the clergy used served as tools to intensify the ritual, lend it a more profound and trustworthy role and enlarge the trust and hope of the civic body in God the Doctor. In this sense, the procession satisfied the expectations of the civic body for relief and acted as a form of treatment. 

In a way, this activity might fit the modern placebo effect phenomenon definition as an inert treatment that brings relief and cures without using any active therapeutic substance, only through the psychological effect of being treated.[5]  We know that no religious rituals would rush the rain, no matter how much intention and devotion were in the believers' prayers. However, whenever rain came, and it eventually did, we might say the procession achieved its goals, not only in soothing the civic body of believers but also in the actual healing of the sick city. 

To conclude, processions offer further insight into how medieval people understood the mechanism of their prayers and how their beliefs functioned, particularly in times of disaster and need. Applying notions of faith and hope to a large-scale event might shed new insights into how we can address medieval beliefs, notions, and concepts in modern tools. 

Footnotes:

[1] Archives municipales de la ville de Marseille, File BB 18, fol. 19r. 

[2] Jussi Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, Religious Responses to natural Disasters in the Middle Ages, (Helsinki: Finish Literature Society), 2002, pp. 48-65. 

[3] Noël Coulet, "Processions, espace urbain, communauté civique". Liturgie et musique IXe-XIVe s., (Toulouse : Éditions Privat), 1982. pp. 381-397. 

[4] For example: Claire Burridge, "Incense in Medicine: An Early Medieval Perspective", Early Medieval Europe, 28(2), 2020; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scanting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, (University of California Press, 2006). 

[5] For example: Fabritzio Benedetti, Placebo Effect, (Oxford University Press), 2014; Daniel E. Moermon and Wayne B. Jonas, "Deconstructing the Placebo Effect and Finding the Meaning Response", Annals of International Medicine 22, 136, pp. 471-6.