Mourning under Medical Care: A Study of a consilium by Bartolomeo Montagnana

A medical consilium written by the physician Bartolomeo Montagnana (1380–1452) documents the medical advice offered to his patient, Johannes of Milano. Montagnana diagnosed Johannes’s ill health as the result of intense sorrow over his daughter’s death. This case constitutes an exceptional source for the investigation of grief, mourning, health, and normativity in fifteenth-century Italy. This article traces some sources of influence and parallels to this case among contemporary medical, literary, and religious writings that address the notions of unhealthy and sinful grief. Together with Bartolomeo Montagnana’s consilium, they demonstrate the role medicine and physicians assumed within the social and cultural construction of grief during this period.