The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe KATHARINE PARK N 1216 King John of England died in Newark, near Nottingham, and his corpse was dismembered by the abbot of Crokestone, his confessor. In the words of the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, "After the said ab- bot had made an anatomy [anathomia] of [the king's] physical body, his entrails were reserved, sprinkled with salt, and taken to Crokestone at the order of the abbot, where they were buried. His body, dressed in royal fashion, was carried to Worcester, and he was reverently buried in the cathedral by the bishop." 1 Despite the use of the word "anatomy," Ralph's entry clearly referred not to a dissection, but to a practice sometimes called the "division of the corpse," which was widely employed by northern European royalty and aristocracy in the high and later Middle Ages. 2 As in the case of King John, division seems to have developed from and been related to em- balming, which typically involved evisceration and was used to preserve 1. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chrontcum anglkanum, quoted in Dietrich Schlfer, "Mittelaltcrhcher Brauch bei der Oberfilhrung von Leichen," Sttzungsberidtte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschafien (Berlin), 1920, 26, 478-98, p. 496. 2. Elizabeth A. R. Brown, "Deadi and die human body in die later Middle Ages: The legislation of Boniface VIII on the division of die corpse," Viator, 1981, 12, 226-41; Ralph Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva: E. Droz, i960), esp. ch. 2; Pierre Duparc, "Diiaceratio corporis," Bulletin de la soattt nalionale des antiquaires de France, 1981, 360-72; Schlfer, (n. 1). A preliminary version of this paper was given at a symposium, "Imaging die Self in Renaissance Italy," at die Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, in February 1993 and was published widi die Museum's annual report for 1991; see Katharine Park, "The Sensitive Corpse: Body and Self in Renaissance Medicine," Fenway Court 1990-1991 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1992), pp. 77—87. I am grateful to Alice T. Friedman, Margaret CarroD, and Nancy G. Siraisi for dieir suggestions and comments on that earlier draft © I995 BY THE JOUBNAL OP THE HISTOBY OF MEDICINE AND ALLIED SCIENCES, INC. ISSN OO22-5O45 VOLUME 5 0 PACES I I I TO I 3 2 at Harvard Library on July 26, 2014 http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from