An issue of blood: the healing of the woman with the haemorrhage (Mark 5.24B-34; Luke 8.42B-48; Matthew 9.19-22) in early medieval visual culture.

The textual and visual tradition of the story of the woman with the haemorrhage (Mark 5.24b-34parr), the so-called Haemorrhoissa, is related in a specific way to Christ's healing miracles but also to conceptions of female menstrual blood. We notice that with regard to the specific 'issue of blood' of the Haemorrhoissa, there is a visual lacuna in the specific iconography that developed around the story from early Christian times: in the transposition from text to image, there is no immediate depiction of her bleeding. However, the early medieval reception of the story also became an important catalyst for uterine taboos, menstruation and tits relation to magical healing, understood as a system of health practices. In this context, the dissemination of the motif in everyday material culture clearly points to a deep-rooted connection to uterine and menstrual issues. The paper considers both expressions and their-anthropologically framed-relation to this female 'issue of blood', which the Haemorrhoissa came to embody and epitomise literally, as well as figuratively.