The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own TimeWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Religion
The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Popes; Religion and science -- History; Science -- History
"An instructive and interesting side-light on the conditions
attending the study of practical anatomy in the days of Mondino may
be found in a record, still extant, of a legal procedure which
occurred in Bologna in the year 1319, four years after Mondino had
begun his public demonstrations and at a time when Otto and
Alessandra were doubtless enthusiastically working with him.
According to the record, four students, three from Milan and one
from Piacenza, were accused of having gone at night time to the
cemetery of the church of San Barnada, outside the San Felice gate,
and to have sacrilegiously violated the grave in which was buried
the body of a certain Pasino who had been hung on the gallows near
the Ponte di Reno. It was charged that the students had taken up the
body and carried it to the school of the parish of San Salvatore,
near the pharmacy of {49} Giacomo de Guido, where Master Alberto
(Zancari) was teaching. There were witnesses who affirmed that they
had seen the body of Pasino in the school and the students and
others intent upon dissecting it. It was the sixth of December when
the arrests were made, but the final outcome of the trial is not
stated."
Surely all this must be considered sufficient evidence to show that
Pope Boniface's bull neither forbade dissection, nor was
misinterpreted as prohibiting any practice in connection with
anatomical investigation. It is not enough for President White,
however, for after the publication of my original article in the
Medical Library and Historical Journal on The Popes and Anatomy, and
another article on Pope John XXII. and the Supposed Bull against
Chemistry, President White wrote thus in reply: "Dr. Walsh takes up
the decretal of Boniface VIII., in 1300, and endeavors to show that,
so far from forbidding dissection, it had quite a different tenor, and
that at sundry universities in Italy and at the University at
Montpelier, in France, dissection was permitted and most openly
practiced. This seems to me very disingenuous. The decretal of
Boniface was construed universally as prohibiting dissections for any
purpose whatever."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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