Brepols Joins as a Research Partner

Galen's Remedies Beyond the Renaissance

Early Modern Traditions and Theories of Materia Medica

Fabrizio Bigotti and John Wilkins

21 July 2026 - 5 pm (CEST) 

Galen’s pharmacopoeia remained a cornerstone of medical practice long after the Renaissance, despite profound changes in anatomy, natural philosophy, and the discovery of new medicinal substances. In this lecture, Fabrizio Bigotti and John Wilkins explore how Galen’s theories of simple and compound remedies were reinterpreted between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, as physicians sought to reconcile classical medicine with new drugs, global commerce, and emerging scientific approaches. The lecture reveals how Galenicals continued to shape medical theory and practice for centuries after the medieval world had come to an end.

Beyond Contagion

Rethinking the History of Leprosy in the Medieval Mediterranean

Anna Gili

22 September 2026 - 5 pm (CEST) 

How did medieval physicians make sense of one of the most elusive diseases of the premodern world? This lecture revisits the medical history of leprosy through Arabic, Latin, and Greek texts that sought to explain its causes and symptoms. Drawing on her most recent book on leprosy, it traces the transmission of medical ideas across linguistic and cultural boundaries, with particular attention to al-Majūsī's Kitāb al-Malakī and its later translations. The lecture argues that medieval understandings of leprosy emerged from a dynamic exchange of medical knowledge rather than from a single tradition.

The Cold Female Body in Oliva Sabuco

Motherood, Semen, and Milk

Jil Muller

14 October 2026 - 5 pm (CEST) 

Did an early modern woman rethink the female body? Jil Müller shows how Oliva Sabuco (1562-1646) reinterpreted women's role in generation and breastfeeding by reworking the inherited traditions of Galenic, Hippocratic, and Avicennian medicine. In this lecture, she argues that Sabuco transformed the notion of the "cold" female body from a sign of weakness into a necessary condition of fertility and maternal nurture, while remaining firmly within the framework of early modern natural philosophy.

Deafness in the Premodern Mediterranean

Davide Astori and Nicola Reggiani

17-18 November 2026

This VivaMente Conference examines how deafness and the deaf person were defined, classified, and experienced across the premodern Mediterranean. Drawing on Greek, Latin, and Arabic sources, it reconstructs the conceptual vocabulary through which hearing, speech, and their loss were analysed, and situates deafness within broader accounts of perception, soul, and bodily function.

Particular attention is given to the relation between hearing and speech, to the place of sensory impairment in theories of the soul, and to the criteria by which loss, privation, and incapacity were distinguished. This academic initiative aligns with a broader scholarly trend aimed at enhancing the historical, cultural, and communicative aspects of Deaf communities. 

CSMBR-Brepols Residential Fellowship in Digital Humanities

Centre "Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium" (CTLO)

Begijnhof — Turnhout, Belgium

Established through the research partnership between the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) and Brepols Publishers, the scheme offers researchers the opportunity to undertake a residential placement of up to six months at Brepols' facilities located in the medieval beguinage of Turnhout, Belgium.

The fellowship supports work in philology, textual scholarship, digital humanities, and related disciplines, with particular relevance to historical medical sources. Fellows will contribute to Brepols' internationally recognised digital text and dictionary databases, preparing new Latin texts and dictionaries, along with metadata and linguistic analyses, under expert supervision.

Accommodation is provided for the duration of the fellowship, together with training and professional support.

Applications are primarily intended for MA and PhD (and, exceptionally, BA) students,  although suitably qualified researchers at other career stages may also be considered. A university-level command of Latin is required. 

Science and Research Centre (ZRS)

Palazzo Tiepolo-Gravisi — Koper / Capodistria, Slovenia

A joint initiative of the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) – Pisa and the Science and Research Centre (ZRS) – Koper, this scheme offers a fully funded one-month residency in Koper for scholars working on any aspect of the pre- and early modern history of science, medicine, and technology across the Mediterranean. 

The scheme is open to mid-career (6 years after the PhD) and senior researchers whose work would benefit from access to archival resources in the Veneto, Istrian, or Balkan regions, or who wish to organise a scientific event in collaboration with the Science and Research Centre (ZRS Koper). 

Eligible events include conferences, workshops, symposia, and exhibitions.  

Fellows will be hosted at ZRS facilities in Palazzo Tiepolo-Gravisi and provided with a private apartment, access to research facilities, and a €500 allowance to cover travel or sustenance.

Comèl Grant

VivaMente Grant

Sexual Transformation and Vernacular Galenism in Early Modern Spain

Examining early modern Spain, this article considers how vernacular Galenic medicine interpreted sexual transformation within a framework of physiological change. Through non-academic texts, Mónica M. Vázquez shows how medical ideas shaped debates on sex and the body. 

Pere d’Olesa through Three Spanish 'Peregrini'

Professional advancement has often depended on movement across cities and universities. Through the case of the Catalan physician Pere d’Olesa (c. 1460-1531) and other Iberian practitioners, this article shows how geographical mobility enabled physicians to build careers and circulate learning within European institutional networks. 

This lecture explores cosmetic recipes from the sixth-century medical encyclopaedia of Aetius of Amida. By tracing their transmission from earlier medical traditions, Maciej Kokoszko and Zofia Rzeźnicka show how Byzantine texts illuminate not only everyday life, but also social status, and the circulation of luxury.

What meaning did the colours of dreams reveal to premodern physicians? Follow Marco Signori as he traces the transmission of medical notions associated with the colour and the physiology of oneiric experience from Greek-Arabic medicine to 13th-century Latin philosophy. 

Jewish medicine developed at the intersection of religious belief and practical healing. As rabbinic and medical writings show, illness was understood as both a bodily and a moral condition. Dr Daniella Zaidman-Mauer examines this tradition, revealing how faith and medicine worked together in the care of the sick.

A fourteenth-century Persian medical manual on the Medicine of Cathay (Northern China), the Tānksūqnāmah describes blood as “making rounds” within the body. In this lecture, Dr Ben Kavoussi explores the medical and cosmological context of this remarkable work and its place in the history of medicine.

ARS LONGA

Texts and Traditions of Medicine from Antiquity to 1800

Brepols

This new series is devoted to the publication of primary medical and medically related sources, including texts, commented editions, translations, and studies. It welcomes critical editions of texts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, as well as European vernaculars. The series offers both immediate (Gold) Open Access and delayed Open Access publication options.

CSMBR members receive a 25% discount on any titles in the series.

Monica Catherine O'Brien

Forthcoming

Gabriel A. F. Silva, 

Paolo Garofalo, 

Giorgio Ferri

Forthcoming

Fabrizio Bigotti

John Wilkins

20% Off with Membership

 © Arbor: Knowledge That Grows

CSMBR Newsletter

Cover image: 

Landscape with a Town on a River, ca. 1620

Pietra dura composition by Cosimo di Giovanni Castrucci 

Inventory number: SK 1463

Liechtenstein: The Princely Collection,

 Garden Palace, Vienna.

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

56126 Pisa, Italy

info@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org

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