Roman Inquisition

[yinekka]

Someone on another board posted that the Roman Inquisition hunted down students of anatomy. Is this correct? I googled the question but couldn’t find an answer which referred to a primary source or a reputable secondary source. Can you help?

 

[mosher]

Someone on another board posted that the Roman Inquisition hunted down students of anatomy. Is this correct? I googled the question but couldn’t find an answer which referred to a primary source or a reputable secondary source. Can you help?

I don’t have a primary source to send you to but I do know that around the time of Trent it was a violation of Church Law to mutilate a dead body under pain of excommunication. This included any autopsy type procedure. This is a topic spoken of in the Historical Fiction about the life of Michaelangelo “The Agony and the Ecstasy” by Irving Stone. While not a purely historical work it does draw from a very large amount of historical sources. You may want to consult its extensive bibliography for a primary source.

My only solution is to find the Church Law on the issue from the time of the Roman Inquisition - but I don’t know of any internet sources that would have that information.

 

[Fidelis]

Someone on another board posted that the Roman Inquisition hunted down students of anatomy. Is this correct? I googled the question but couldn’t find an answer which referred to a primary source or a reputable secondary source. Can you help?

In actual fact, the Roman Inquisition never “hunted down” anyone. It was primarily a religious tribunal. People that were accused of violating civil/religious law (the distinction was somewhat blurred at certain times in history) were brought before them and they would rule on the merits of the case from an ecclesial standpoint. Other than religious censures, they did not have the power to punish, but often handed those found guilty over to civil authorities if there was some overlap in the law.

Unless your interlocutor can provide you some corroborating evidence, I would consider the source and place the burden of proof on him or her. Much of what people think they “know” about the various Inquisitions is a product of Catholic/Protestant post-Reformation polemics, which was short on facts, and often relied on making the other side look as evil as possible. It is only in the last several years that scholars of all kinds have looked at the actual records of those times and are able to piece together a more factual, less sensationalistic, accounting of events

In the meantime, you can educate yourself on what the Inquistion was and was not. Here is a link you may find helpful:

catholiceducation.org/links/search.cgi?query=inquisition

Hope that helps.

 

[Axion]

Someone on another board posted that the Roman Inquisition hunted down students of anatomy. Is this correct? I googled the question but couldn’t find an answer which referred to a primary source or a reputable secondary source. Can you help?

Sounds like this person is trying to twist history to make the church seem anti-science.

The dissection of human bodies by anatomists or anyone else was (for obvious reasons) a crime in all Christian (and most non-christian) societies until fairly recently. Ever heard of the Burke and Hare Case in protestant Edinburgh?