Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"
Pious Postmortems provides a wealth of detail about the examination of bodies in the context of canonization, a subject that has hitherto been largely ignored in the history of sixteenth and seventeenth-century anatomy despite its connections to key players in that history like Colombo. In Bouley's hands, the subject proves to cross through more than one key domain in the history of medicine-the role of learned medicine, questions of gender, the process by which medical figures began to establish standards for knowledge based on practical experience, and the role of medicine in the Church." *
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences *
"Elegantly written, provocative, and original, the book makes for delightful reading. Supported by numerous archival sources, from formal and informal autopsies to hagiographies and canonization documents, Pious Postmortems is a most valuable contribution to the history of medicine, as well as to the history of the relations between science and religion in early modern Europe." *
Isis *
"This book should be required reading for scholars of religion and medicine, especially those interested in Christianity's attitudes toward the body or forms of knowledge making . . . Bouley has unearthed a host of novel compelling sources, from postmortem records to canonization testimonies by esteemed anatomists, vital to understanding early modern Christianity." *
The Journal of Religion *
"
Pious Postmortems is an original and carefully researched survey of the role of medical testimony in the canonization processes of the early modern period. Bradford A. Bouley's exposition both of physical examinations and of instances of actual autopsy of putatively saintly bodies provides an illuminating context for the search for signs of sanctity." * Nancy Siraisi, author of
Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance *
