Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Pious Postmortems : Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Europe / Bradford A. Bouley.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812294446
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 235/.24094 23
LOC classification:
  • BX2330 .B68 2017eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Expertise and Early Modern Sanctity -- 2. A New Criterion for Sanctity -- 3. Negotiating Incorruption -- 4. Medicine and Authority -- 5. Engendering Sanctity -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Postmortems on Prospective Saints -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: As part of the process of consideration for sainthood, the body of Filippo Neri, "the apostle of Rome," was dissected shortly after he died in 1595. The finest doctors of the papal court were brought in to ensure that the procedure was completed with the utmost care. These physicians found that Neri exhibited a most unusual anatomy. His fourth and fifth ribs had somehow been broken to make room for his strangely enormous and extraordinarily muscular heart. The physicians used this evidence to conclude that Neri had been touched by God, his enlarged heart a mark of his sanctity.In Pious Postmortems, Bradford A. Bouley considers the dozens of examinations performed on reputedly holy corpses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the request of the Catholic Church. Contemporary theologians, physicians, and laymen believed that normal human bodies were anatomically different from those of both very holy and very sinful individuals. Attempting to demonstrate the reality of miracles in the bodies of its saints, the Church introduced expert testimony from medical practitioners and increased the role granted to university-trained physicians in the search for signs of sanctity such as incorruption. The practitioners and physicians engaged in these postmortem examinations to further their study of human anatomy and irregularity in nature, even if their judgments regarding the viability of the miraculous may have been compromised by political expediency. Tracing the complicated relationship between the Catholic Church and medicine, Bouley concludes that neither religious nor scientific truths were self-evident but rather negotiated through a complex array of local and broader interests.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812294446

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Expertise and Early Modern Sanctity -- 2. A New Criterion for Sanctity -- 3. Negotiating Incorruption -- 4. Medicine and Authority -- 5. Engendering Sanctity -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Postmortems on Prospective Saints -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

As part of the process of consideration for sainthood, the body of Filippo Neri, "the apostle of Rome," was dissected shortly after he died in 1595. The finest doctors of the papal court were brought in to ensure that the procedure was completed with the utmost care. These physicians found that Neri exhibited a most unusual anatomy. His fourth and fifth ribs had somehow been broken to make room for his strangely enormous and extraordinarily muscular heart. The physicians used this evidence to conclude that Neri had been touched by God, his enlarged heart a mark of his sanctity.In Pious Postmortems, Bradford A. Bouley considers the dozens of examinations performed on reputedly holy corpses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the request of the Catholic Church. Contemporary theologians, physicians, and laymen believed that normal human bodies were anatomically different from those of both very holy and very sinful individuals. Attempting to demonstrate the reality of miracles in the bodies of its saints, the Church introduced expert testimony from medical practitioners and increased the role granted to university-trained physicians in the search for signs of sanctity such as incorruption. The practitioners and physicians engaged in these postmortem examinations to further their study of human anatomy and irregularity in nature, even if their judgments regarding the viability of the miraculous may have been compromised by political expediency. Tracing the complicated relationship between the Catholic Church and medicine, Bouley concludes that neither religious nor scientific truths were self-evident but rather negotiated through a complex array of local and broader interests.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)