Incense and the Sense of Smell

Incense is a common ingredient in religious ceremonies across cultures. Some incense is also used for medicinal purposes. It is made by blending raw materials such as herbs, resins, and spices, and is burned either direct- or indirectly. Indirect-burning incenses require a separate heat source, while direct-burning incenses are lit directly with a flame and then fanned or blown out, leaving an ember to smoulder and release a smoky fragrance.

Throughout the medieval period, aromatic plant-based substances were widely used in medical contexts. In particular, they were employed in ‘demonifuges’: treatments which were designed to’smoke out the demon causing a patient’s illness’. These treatment recipes, found in many of the selected manuscripts analysed here, have been shown to feature ingredients including myrrh and frankincense as well as other exotic aromatics.

Although the use of incenses as therapeutic agents has been the subject of much attention in recent decades, it is only relatively recently that scholarship on the sense of smell has begun to take a closer look at its role in non-medical contexts. This has been largely due to the emergence of research on the development and evolution of the sense of smell in premodern cultures, as well as the rise in interest in the history of sensory studies.

This is particularly true in the study of early medieval incense, which has been largely focused on its adoption in world religions and the evolution of practices and rituals associated with it. This approach, however, is beginning to change as researchers increasingly focus on the’scenting Salvation’ of early Christianity and its relationship to the sense of smell.

A number of early modern studies have examined the connection between incense and Christianity, arguing for its Christian influence on the sacrificial ritual of burning it. These include Susan Ashbrook Harvey’s 2006 Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination and Thurlkill’s Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam (2016).

The palaeographic evidence relating to the selection of incense recipes reveals an interesting pattern in some manuscripts: two incense recipe entries, the Conpositio thymamatis and Tymiama simplex, appear within a medical text collection in csg. 759, a ninth-century manuscript containing a variety of medical texts (Figs 1 and 2). 27 Each of these incense recipes is grouped under the title ‘Conpositio thymamatis’ or ‘Tymiama simplex’ and is followed by a recipe involving the preparation of oxymel or a remedy aimed at treating rabid dogs, as well as other recipes that have nothing to do with incense.

These incense recipes were placed on a single page within the collection and represent the last entry, which was likely the work of a single hand. This consistency suggests that the recipe was added to the text with a clear purpose in mind.

The selection of incense ingredients and the way they were used in these recipes, especially those that combine them, are particularly significant here. The presence of several recipes that list a combination of myrrh and frankincense, for example, indicates the widespread usage of these ingredients in healing practices across the medieval period. Moreover, the inclusion of ungiculas/ungellas in this recipe collection – an ingredient entirely unattested in any other incense recipe – suggests that this particular recipe may have been a particularly important element of a medical treatment in the Carolingian period.