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Civility, Comportment, and the Anatomy Theater: GirolamoFabrici and His Medical Students in Renaissance Padua*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Cynthia Klestinec
Cynthia Klestinec*
Affiliation:
Miami University
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Abstract

Public anatomies have been characterized as carnivalesque events: like the Carnival, they took place in January and February and celebrated bodily existence. However, in late sixteenth-century Padua and in its famous anatomy theater, the annual, public anatomy was a formal, ceremonial event. Girolamo Fabrici, the leading anatomist, gave a philosophical presentation of his research, a presentation organized by topic rather than by the gradual dissection of corpses. For medical students, the annual anatomy and the theater itself encouraged silence, obedience, and docility, reinforcing the virtues of civility that permeated the late humanist environment of Renaissance Padua.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , Summer 2007 , pp. 434 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This essay is an extension of a paper presented at the USC-Huntington symposium on early modern anatomies, November 2006. In addition to the anonymous reviewers, I wish to thank the symposium participants, Mary Fissell, Anita Guerrini, Deborah Harkness, and Katharine Park. The research for this study was funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. All translations are my own except where noted.

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