Medieval History
Studying dead women?s cut-up bodies was not what Katharine Park originally set out to do. ?I was writing a social history of medicine in Florence, a topic I chose basically just because I got to go? to that fabled Italian city, she joked.
But while working in those ancient halls amid so much beauty, Park said, ?I kept finding stories about women?s bodies being cut up. I remember I came across one entry in a diary, where the husband says his wife died, and he requested her to be autopsied. I was like, huh? Autopsy??
Most scholars assume that autopsy and dissection were taboo in medieval Europe; if they were conducted, they were illicit and done only on the bodies of criminals by intrepid scientists and doctors, flying in the face of clerical authority in the name of pursuing knowledge.
But Park, the Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science, discovered quite another story in the Florentine libraries. ?This was a very wealthy, patrician woman. The story didn?t compute. And I kept finding little tiny bits and pieces about female bodies being opened over the years. By the late ?90s, I had a critical mass of the stuff, and it all felt so counterintuitive. It was time to see what it was all about.?
Click here to read this article from the Harvard Gazette
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Medieval History
Debunking a myth: In medieval Christianity, dissection was often practiced
Studying dead women?s cut-up bodies was not what Katharine Park originally set out to do. ?I was writing a social history of medicine in Florence, a topic I chose basically just because I got to go? to that fabled Italian city, she joked.
But while working in those ancient halls amid so much beauty, Park said, ?I kept finding stories about women?s bodies being cut up. I remember I came across one entry in a diary, where the husband says his wife died, and he requested her to be autopsied. I was like, huh? Autopsy??
Most scholars assume that autopsy and dissection were taboo in medieval Europe; if they were conducted, they were illicit and done only on the bodies of criminals by intrepid scientists and doctors, flying in the face of clerical authority in the name of pursuing knowledge.
But Park, the Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science, discovered quite another story in the Florentine libraries. ?This was a very wealthy, patrician woman. The story didn?t compute. And I kept finding little tiny bits and pieces about female bodies being opened over the years. By the late ?90s, I had a critical mass of the stuff, and it all felt so counterintuitive. It was time to see what it was all about.?
Click here to read this article from the Harvard Gazette
- Mysterious Mass Sacrifice Found Near Ancient Peru Pyramid
An apparent ritual mass sacrifice?including decapitations and a royal beer bash?is coming to light near a pre-Inca pyramid in northern Peru, archaeologists say. Excavations next to the ancient Huaca Las Ventanas pyramid first uncovered bodies in August,...
- Hunting For A Mass Killer In Medieval Graveyards
Beneath the Royal Mint Court, diagonally across the street from the Tower of London, lie 1,800 mute witnesses to the foresight of the city fathers in the year 1348. Recognizing that the Black Death then scourging Europe would inevitably reach London,...
- 'mona Lisa Crypt' Unearthed In Italy
Italian historians say they may have found a crypt containing the remains of the 16th-century woman who modeled for Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, local media said on Friday. Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a rich Florentine silk merchant, is widely...
- Call For Papers (sema)
CALL FOR PAPERS (SEMA) The Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association at the University of Southern Mississippi to be held October 18-20, 2012 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Session title: Re-Membering the Monstrous Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA Organizer:...
- Cfp: Contaminating Bodies, Infectious Spectacles, Troubling Histories: Women On Performative Display (5/31/12; Nashville, 11/1-4/12)
Contaminating Bodies, Infectious Spectacles, Troubling Histories:Women on Performative Display Working Session for the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) ConferenceNashville, 1-4 November 2012 How do female bodies in performance trouble...