above has another tendency. The entire case is hidden in obscurity (_Hefele_, Conc. Gesch., 2d ed., III, 557 _seq._). Furthermore, it has been said that at the time when the universities were in close union with the Church, medical science could not advance because the Church had prohibited human _anatomy_ (Prof. _J. H. van’t Hoff_, Neue Freie Presse, December 29, 1907). In amplification it was said: “_Boniface VIII._ had forbidden every anatomical dissection of a body” (_O. Zoeckler_, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, 1877, I, 342). What is true of this assertion? In the first place, _Boniface VIII._ did not forbid anatomy. He merely prohibited in 1299 and 1300 the hideous custom then prevailing regarding the bodies of noblemen who had died away from home: they were disembowelled, dissected, and boiled, for the purpose of removing the flesh from the bones so that the latter could be transported the more easily. This process had nothing to do with anatomy. The wish to possess the bones of the dead did not seem to the Pope a sufficient reason for treating the human body in such a way (Cfr. _Michael_, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes III, 1903, 433). Nor does history know of any other prohibition of anatomy by the Church. It tells us, however, that _Frederick II._ in his excellent rules for the benefit of his Sicilian kingdom in the regulation of medical science among other things emphasizes the study of surgery: he ordered that no one be allowed to practise surgery who could not show by attestation of his professors that he had studied surgery for at least one year, especially that he had learned at school how to dissect bodies; a physician must be perfect in anatomy, else he may not undertake operations (_Michael_, l. c. 430). This was done and practised under the eyes of the Church. The accusers also seem ignorant of the fact that bodies of those executed were given to universities for dissection. In the year 1336 the medical students of Montpellier, the famous medical school under the immediate direction of the Church (see above, page 154) were granted the privilege of obtaining once a year an executed criminal’s body for dissection. The same privilege was extended to the medical students of Lerida by King _Juan I._ on June 3, 1391, who decreed that the delinquent should be drowned _pro speriencia seu anatomia fienda_ (_Denifle_, Die Universitaeten des Mittelalters, I, 1885, 507).