"Ritchey’s stimulating book offers a rather different account of the power, vitality, and importance of matter and of matter’s relation to spirit than scholars have often assumed. In the end, one could say that this book participates in the same process that it so persuasively and elegantly outlines: training its own readers’ imaginations to see both medieval religious writing and the created world with new eyes and raising fresh questions about what we can apprehend in nature and in the texts that represent it." -- Shannon Gayk, Indiana University, Bloomington
"Ritchey's attention to the spiritual theme of God’s infusion into, and hence redemption of, creation will be an important counter both to those who see the period as characterized by concentration on suffering and sacrifice and to those who emphasize discipline, even abuse, of the physical human body in its ascetic practice." Caroline Bynum, Common Knowledge |
"This excellent volume is very well written and clearly argued. It presents, for the first time at book length, and elaborates in an original way a view of what counted as medieval medicine and how it related to religion and charity." --Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway, University of London
"Her fresh and nuanced reading of sources like hagiographies and psalters is a tremendous methodological contribution that will be influential for scholars working on topics beyond the scope of Ritchey's subject matter. For all these reasons, Ritchey's book deserves a wide readership among those interested in the history of medicine, religious women and gender." -- Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Social History of Medicine "I hope to have suggested how resourceful and persuasive [Acts of Care is] in joining fragments to make a whole, in recovering lost worlds of women's caregiving. [This book demonstrates] that in medieval Europe, women's agency was much more considerable than has long been assumed or asserted." --Bruce Venarde, Journal of the American Academy of Religion |