iscovery that the relics of St. Rosaria at Palermo are
simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon, Life of Buckland, pp. 94-96.
For an account of the Agnes Dei, see Rydberg, pp. 62, 63; and for
"Conception Billets," pp. 64 and 65. For Leo X's tickets, see Hausser
(professor at Heidelberg), Period of Reformation, English translation,
p. 17.

V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.

Yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings of modern
medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness of
meddling with the bodies of the dead. This theory, like so many others
which the Church cherished as peculiarly its own, had really been
inherited from the old pagan civilizations. So strong was it in Egypt
that the embalmer was regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in
Greco-Roman life, and hence it came into the early Church, where it was
greatly strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic
ideas--the recognition of the human body as the temple of the Holy
Spirit. Hence Tertullian denounced the anatomist Herophilus as a
butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in similar
terms.

But this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval superstition even
more effective, when the formula known as the Apostles' Creed had, in
its teachings regarding the resurrection of the body, supplanted the
doctrine laid down by St. Paul. Thence came a dread of mutilating
the body in such a way that some injury might result to its final
resurrection at the Last Day, and additional reasons for hindering
dissections in the study of anatomy.

To these arguments against dissection was now added another--one which
may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the foremost of
recent English philosophical historians, that of all organizations in
human history the Church of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of
innocent blood. No one conversant with history, even though he admit all
possible extenuating circumstances, and honour the older Church for the
great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this
statement. Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections
developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim
that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood."

On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery
to monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the
thirteenth century came the mo