Santorio Residential Fellowship 

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new international research grant jointly sponsored by ZRS Koper and the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR).

Starting in 2026, the Santorio Residential Fellowship offers scholars the opportunity to reside for up to one month at the historic Palazzo Tiepolo-Gravisi (15th century) to conduct research on Mediterranean history (especially intellectual history, and the history of philosophy, science, and medicine), or to organise an event at the ZRS. 

Research may be carried out using local archives and resources in Koper-Capostria as well as at nearby centres such as Trieste, Gorizia, Piran, Ljubljana, and Pula.

Galen and the Question of Metabolism

Body and Environment in Ancient Medicine

Chiara Thumiger

Webinar: 27 May 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) 

Ancient medicine understood metabolism as the transformation of food and drink into bodily substance, even without a cellular framework. Focusing on Galen, the discussion explores metabolism both as a biological process and as a metaphor for regulating the relationship between self and non-self, and between human and environment—touching on diet, trade, and analogy. These themes are central to Hellenic medicine and reflected in Galen’s vivid environmental imagery.

Medical Practitioners in Early Modern England

What Can We Learn from Mass Biographies?

Jonathan Barry and Peter Elmer

Webinar: 10 June 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) 

This lecture presents the Early Modern Practitioners project, an online initiative expanding on work by Peter Elmer and Jonathan Barry under the Wellcome Trust. It addresses challenges in identifying medical practitioners and explains the choice to organise the data as county-based biographical registers. The talk explores how these registers can illuminate shifts in medical practice and uncover the political, religious, and intellectual networks that shaped early modern medicine.

Twins and Nobility in the Middle Ages

Dante and Cecco D'Ascoli on Embryology, Astrology, and Offspring

Gabriella Zuccolin

Webinar: 24 June  2025 - 5 pm (CEST) 

In their reflections on nobility and individuality, Dante and Cecco d’Ascoli use the example of twins to argue that one may be noble while the other is not, though they ground this in sharply different theories. Dante, following Aristotle, offers a philosophical account of generation, while Cecco draws on medical and astrological ideas. Their contrasting views highlight deeper tensions between philosophy, medicine, and astrology, with twins serving as a striking epistemological test case.

Mercantile Cultures of Health

Hygiene and Commerce in the Late-Medieval «Zibaldoni»

Massimo Sbarbaro

Webinar: 22 July  2025 - 5 pm (CEST) 

In the late Middle Ages, merchants were not just traders of goods and money but also active transmitters of medical knowledge. Drawing on trade manuals, memoirs, and zibaldoni, this analysis shows how merchants managed health alongside commerce, dealing in medicinal spices like theriac and aloe and preserving remedies across their networks. Their notebooks reveal a practical medical culture that blended learned and vernacular knowledge, making health management central to their professional identity.

Cutting and Curing

Anatomy and Surgery in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)

Michael Stolberg

Pisa 8-10 July 2025

The summer school examines Renaissance anatomy and surgery, focusing on empirical approaches, anatomical debates, and surgical practices. It covers historiographical debates and key sources through lectures and workshops. Open to all career stages, it offers hybrid participation, with a limited in-person cohort in Pisa and online attendance available.

Diagnosis, Prognosis, & Health

Medicine and Society in the Middle Ages (1200-1400)

Amalia Cerrito, Paola Bernini, Stefano Perfetti

Polo Benedettine - Pisa 16-17 July 2025

This VivaMente Conference explores how medicine in the Late Middle Ages functioned not only as a scientific practice but as a cultural system embedded in philosophy, theology, and politics. Bringing together scholars of Medieval, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Modern thought, it investigates the rationalisation of disease, metaphors of health and governance, and medicine’s role in shaping ethical and intellectual life across traditions. 

Medical Education in Europe (1350-1750)

Texts, Institutions, Practices

Elizabethanne Boran, Vivian Nutton, Fabrizio Bigotti

Pisa 21-22 October 2025

From Bologna, Montpellier, and Paris to Padua, Ferrara, and, later, Leiden, medical education in Europe evolved within a complex landscape of texts, institutions, and practices. Co-funded by the Edward Worth Library - Dublin, this conference examines the long-term development of medical education, focusing on the ways in which knowledge was created, transmitted, and adapted across formal and informal networks.

Studiolo Digital Humanities Lab

Fabrizio Bigotti

Francesco Cicala

Pisa 26-28 November 2025

This Hybrid Winter School will span three days, from 10.00am to 5.30pm (CET) daily. Each day will be divided into two sessions, the morning session (10am-1pm) and the afternoon session (2-5.30pm). The two sessions will alternately focus on developing coding skills and discussing current digital projects from a variety of disciplines. Group exercises in breakout sessions are also envisaged to implement the coding skills learned during the Winter School.

Santorio Global Fellowship

The scheme offers the opportunity to study at a CSMBR-funded institution for a period of between two and four months. It is currently open only to students from CSMBR-funded institutions.

Research Development Grant

This grant supports exceptional projects in the history of medicine, science, technology, and ideas, including philology. Under this scheme, €1,500 plus the free usage of the Domus Comeliana (worth an additional €2,500 per day) will be awarded to the best proposals for a max-2-day event to be held in Pisa. 

Comèl  Grant

The Comèl Grant offers financial support to young scholars (Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD candidates pre-defense) participating in CSMBR events, including both online and in-person opportunities.

Is it possible to discern what is concealed within the human soul through the face? This question has been a subject of inquiry across logical and medical traditions from antiquity to modern times. This lecture explores the reasoning of sign-based inferences in Avicenna and the Medieval Arabic tradition.

The pharmacopoeia of ancient Egypt was preserved and practised by the Copts, who inherited and adapted a rich medical tradition that dates back to the time of the pharaohs. By understanding the pharmacopoeia of Coptic medicine, we gain insights into the cultural and scientific heritage of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

This talk by David Gentilcore investigates the role of Venice’s Health Office in monitoring and managing the city’s freshwater supply during the 17th and 18th centuries, demonstrating that pre-modern societies did not take water quality for granted and did indeed have methods for evaluating and managing it.

Highlighting the interconnected issues of potency, efficacy, and vitality, this talk unveils a system of beliefs regarding the ways in which the emotional and embodied experiences of living creatures were understood to deeply and directly impact the power of medicines.

Jil Muller

Forthcoming

20% off with membership

Michael Stolberg

Forthcoming

20% off with membership

Tommaso Ghezzani

20% off with membership

Health, Spices, and Commerce in the Late Middle Ages

Through an analysis of trade manuals, personal notebooks (zibaldoni), and family records, this article illustrates how merchants were also active in the acquisition, adaptation, and dissemination of medical knowledge. 

Alchemical Terminology in Seventeenth-Century Naples

What did elixir and alkahest mean to early modern alchemists? In this article, Elena Morgana traces how Neapolitan physicians redefined these terms between 1620 and 1670, revealing a shift in the language of alchemical medicine.

 © Arbor: Knowledge That Grows

CSMBR Newsletter

Cover image:

Kufic Script from a Calligraphic Frieze Panel

possibly from Qur’an 61:13: "Help from Allah and a near victory"

Eastern Iran, 12th century CE

Accession no: MXD 250

Khalili Collections, London.

Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR)
Domvs Comeliana, Via Pietro Maffi 48

56126  Pisa, Italy

info@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org

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