Bear Doctors: Tracing the History of Bears as Healers and How They became Christian Saints

In the pages that follow an aspect of European belief, ritual practice and performance will be brought into view that until now has been relegated to the margins or ignored entirely. To do so, we need to weave together the disparate threads that once constituted a closely-knit matrix of belief, supported by an animist relational ontology at the center of which was the belief that humans descended from bears. Over time, the interpretive framework through which these once deeply ingrained social practices were understood, would gradually change and this, in turn, would affect the way that modern day investigators would view the fragmented evidence left behind. To reattach the threads and recuperate the earlier cosmovision, the first step is to bring to the fore the conceptual frames of understanding that were originally integral to the belief system itself and the earlier interpretative lens. Initially, we examine the evidence that points to the earlier pan-European belief that humans descended from bears and the associated conceptualizations that informed that worldview. From there we move on to explore evidence pointing to the belief in the curative powers of bears, including related ritual practices that survived into the 20th century, like “bear riding”. Next, we move back in time to review the many foundational narratives featuring bears that were used to explain why a Christian site was established where it was. That topic will take us back to the ninth century and the figure of Richardis, the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. She founded the Abbey of Andlau in 880, where bears were kept permanently on the premises while itinerate bears and their trainers were regularly housed and feed there, a practice that continued, under the radar of historians for a thousand years. Evidence at Christian sites for bears, both flesh and blood ones and later stone and wooden replicas, point to the persistence of the belief in the preternatural curative powers of that animal. Other evidence of the transfer of the healing attributes of the bear to anthropomorphic figures is found in the myriad of saints as well as bishops whose names are blatantly ursine in nature, e.g., the many Saint Ours (Saint Bear) in France or bishops such as Ursinen whose name is based on the Latin word for bear Urs. In the last section of the study, the awareness that ecclesiastics had of the prophylactic power assigned to bears is traced out in the form of the prohibitions against the bears and their keepers dating back to the sixth and seventh centuries. But despite the steps that the Church took in the past to stem the popularity of these ritual healing practices in which the bears and their trainers played a key role, they were unsuccessful given that in many parts of Europe the curative rituals continued to be popular well into the 20th century.