Forms and Models of Contagion According to Albert the Great: Pestilence, Leprosy, the Basilisk, the Menstruating Woman, and Fascination

It has been argued that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a crucial period in the medieval development of the idea of contagion. Theologians and physicians cooperated in devising a conceptual model based on medical literature (Hippocratico-Ga- lenic and Avicennian) and formulated primarily to explain the origin, transmission, and development of contagious diseases, but that was flexible enough to be applied to a number of other different phenomena (the communication of sin and vices, love sickness, fasci- nation, etc.). This article explores the ways in which Albert the Great contributed to the formation of this broad and highly articulated notion of contagion. First, he provided a systematic analysis of the mechanisms of pathogenesis and transmission of contagious diseases (in particular, pestilences and leprosy). Moreover, his interests encompassed several different forms of contagion, including the powers of stones (e.g., the attractive virtue of the magnet) and animals, the influences of the woman’s body and mind (mulier menstruata and vetula), fascination. Albert also provided different models for the explanation of the “contagious influence” (mechanical explanation based on physical contact, the Avicennian theory of phsychosomatic transformations, the Avicennian doctrine of the power of the soul over external bodies, spiritual transmission of sins). As a result of his investigation into the mechanisms of disease transmission, air contamination, noxious influences, and fascina- tion, Albert came to problematize the usual idea of natural causality based on the principle of contact between substances, and to test the potentials and limits of action at-a-distance. In particular, the present paper will examine Albert’s views on some of the phenomena explained through the concept of contagion: pestilences, leprosy, the basilisk, the men- struating woman, and fascination.