Research Catalog

Pious postmortems : anatomy, sanctity, and the Catholic Church in early modern Europe

Title
Pious postmortems : anatomy, sanctity, and the Catholic Church in early modern Europe / Bradford A. Bouley.
Author
Bouley, Bradford
Publication
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

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Book/TextUse in library JFE 17-9566Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
214 pages; 24 cm
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. 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.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Call Number
JFE 17-9566
ISBN
  • 9780812249576
  • 0812249577
LCCN
2017012494
OCLC
980435414
Author
Bouley, Bradford, author.
Title
Pious postmortems : anatomy, sanctity, and the Catholic Church in early modern Europe / Bradford A. Bouley.
Publisher
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Research Call Number
JFE 17-9566
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