Holy Body Research Articles

Malpighi and the holy body: medical experts and miraculous evidence in seventeenth‐century Italy

In this article I use the records of the canonization proceedings of Caterina Vigri (Saint Catherine of Bologna) to examine the role of physicians in assessing miraculous evidence, and more broadly the relationship between religious and secular views of the body in early modern Italy. Medical men – including the prominent anatomist Marcello Malpighi – were important expert witnesses in the final denouement of Caterina Vigri's canonization process, in the 1660s and 70s. Their opinion was crucial in the evaluation of the Beata's healing miracles, as well as in the assessment of her body's ‘incorruption’. I examine how the doctors involved in the canonization proceedings viewed Caterina's healing miracles and I compare it with their attitude to her allegedly undecayed body. The way these doctors handled the touchy issue of Caterina's ‘holy body’ is particularly interesting, as it betrays a strong note of scepticism, which is absent, in contrast, in their reaction to her healing miracles. The doctors’ sceptical view of the ‘holy body’ played a major role in the Roman stage of the canonization proceedings, leading the Congregation of Rites to exclude the miracle of the ‘incorrupt’ body from the two miracles necessary for canonization. This episode indicates a new significance of medical testimony in the evaluation of miraculous evidence, and the emerging of a tension between the medical and the religious views of the body, which was destined to become a serious problem for modern Catholicism. (pp. 568–586)

Spaces, objects and identities in early modern Italian medicine

Introduction (Sandra Cavallo, Royal Holloway, University of London and David Gentilcore, University of Leicester). 1. Miscarriages of Apothecary Justice: Un-separate Spaces of Work and Family in Early Modern Rome (Elizabeth S. Cohen, York University). 2. Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice (Filippo de Vivo, Birkbeck, University of London). 3. Women, Wax and Anatomy in the 'Century of Things' (Lucia Dacome, Centre Alexandre Koyre (CNRS) and University of Toronto). 4. Medical Competence, Anatomy and the Polity in Seventeenth-Century Rome (Silvia De Renzi, The Open University). 5. Malpighi and the Holy Body: Medical Experts and Miraculous Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Gianna Pomata, University of Bologna). Index.

Visceral Seeing: The Holy Body in Late Ancient Christianity

Attending to the material orientation of the spiritualizing and ascetic culture of late ancient Christianity, this essay explores the phenomenon of the "ambiguous corporeality" of saintly bodies as they were represented in hagiography and in the cult of relics. Central to the religious sensibility that was both promoted and elicited by these representations were convictions that everyday human life was saturated with divine presence, and that the human body could be a locus of sanctity. Hagiographic texts employed sensory realism, especially in terms of sight and touch, in order to articulate how the holy could be present in the world in a nonidolatrous way. Both ephemeral and tangible at once, saintly bodies provided a site for the negotiation of central theological concerns, with the implications of the doctrine of the incarnation being among the most significant.

A história como sacrifício em Blaise Pascal

Este trabalho desenvolve o tema da História em Pascal, buscando constituí-lo por meio da noção teológica de sacrifício. No contexto pascaliano, a História só é relevante enquanto História Espiritual, a história da salvação dos homens escolhidos entre os condenados pela queda adâmica. Como tal, a História não pode ser regida pela temporalidade vivida ordinariamente, mas pela temporalidade da graça, que direciona todos os instantes para o ponto central, o sacrifício de Jesus Cristo. Por isso, os homens só têm esperança de salvação na medida em que se integram ao Corpo Crístico, que prossegue em sacrifício desde o início até o fim dos tempos.

Between Christianity and Buddhism: Towards a Phenomenology of the Body–Mind

This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the East - a particular strand of Tibetan Buddhism - the other to the West - the Orthodox tradition of the heart prayer - in order to try to show the similarities and differences in their approach to the body and attempt to compare them in the light of their respective ‘phenomenology’. In this sense phenomenology, as a western philosophical discipline, plays a pivotal role in this comparison and hopefully helps to bring new light to bear on this investigation. The early Eastern church evokes the concrete experience of the body as a holy body and sees it as an exemplary route to deification via the mystical practice of the ‘heart prayer’ (hesychasm). As regards Tibetan Buddhism, it advocates the gradual experience of the body as a rainbow body, defined as a path towards illumination, by means of ‘sitting meditation’ which brings liberation in bardo. In order to carry out this analysis, I shall refer to two recent books that are authorities in both these fields, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps by O. Clément and Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion by Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché.