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THE BODY AS RELIC AUTOPSIES AND DISSECTION were part of medical training in Bologna as early as 1280. The medieval physicians and their students who studied there were not the only ones with an interest in anatomy, however. Caroline Walker Bynum, who has written extensively on religious beliefs associated with the body in the history of Christianity, notes that “The same period saw increased enthusiasm for boiling and dividing holy bodies in order to produce relics for quick distribution” (1995: 322). Thomas Aquinas’s body may have been boiled in 1303, and “An (unboiled) hand given to his sister was, significantly, later found to be ‘incorrupt.’ Holy bodies were also embalmed because, as witnesses testified at one canonization proceeding, ‘God took pleasure in’ their bodies and their hearts.” Secular bodies were disassembled and distributed as well, “the custom of eviscerating and boiling the corpses of royalty and aristocrats and burying the resulting body parts in various localities ” (323) being a common one in parts of Europe. The fragmentation of bodies and display of their parts were thought to be holy acts for lay and clerical figures alike. They still are. The remains of St. Frances Xavier, Jesuit missionary to India and other parts of eastern Asia, are an example. He died in 1552 and, in recognition of many miracles and healings performed during his life, was named a saint in 1622. Buried in a church in Goa, India, he did not disintegrate; like Aquinas, he was “incorrupt.” Perhaps to move the canonization process along, an arm was cut off in 1614 and sent to Rome as evidence. The rest of him was exhibited in January, 1975, brought out of the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa for a processional through the streets. A compiler of such appearances says “The 62 3 right arm, several toes, and other parts of the body are missing, having been removed for relics,” and adds that the rest of the saint “is dry and shrunken in size, but there is no corruption and some hairs of the beard are still seen on the dried cheek flesh” (Cruz 1977: 176, 177). His preservation can be attested by the fifty thousand people along the parade route who saw him in his glass coffin. Remains such as his possess power, potentially available to believers for curing disease, increasing crops, and general blessing and merit. They are charismatic, and it does not take much of them to deliver a miracle. A part is as good as the whole, a finger tip the equal of a hand, arm, or complete body. And the many North Americans who know or care nothing of such traditions are not immune to conceiving of the body in roughly the same way. They do so regularly in some of their own body disposal practices. DEFINING DEATH To become a relic, a body must first be unambiguously dead. For medievals, boiling assured that. The Schiavo and Cruzan tragedies, however, as well as recent medical history, show how elusive a clear definition of death can be. And not for lack of trying. In the late nineteenth century, it was widely assumed in the medical establishment as well as in popular understanding that the loss of heartbeat and respiration were appropriate and sufficient indicators of the end of life. A physician’s pronouncement of death, noting the date, hour, and cause on a certificate, settled it. But the mechanical ventilator, the workhorse of the modern ICU, complicated the natural course of things. Patients not breathing on their own could be kept alive, making respiration and heartbeat no longer useful as diagnostics. So attention shifted to the brain. Might evidence be found there for the presence of life, even in apparently “brain dead” people whose lower brain or brain stem continued to function, maintaining the heart, breathing, and body temperature? Were they dead, partially dead, partially alive? How much brain had to be dead before they could be declared physically, legally, and morally dead? Who should decide that, and on what evidence? In short, what is death and how do we know it when we see it? Several notable medical commissions attempted to resolve this quandary, dutifully issuing guidelines for physicians and patients alike. Initially, in 1957, Pope Pius XII was approached. When, he was asked, is it acceptable to turn off the machines that keep people alive? His answer was not really helpful. There is no basis in morality for rendering a judgment, he...

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