Below is a woodcut showing the anatomical theatre at the Dutch University of Leiden. The University's medical school was closely connected with the city's English-Scottish community. Many of them, including the Pilgrims, had fled to Holland to escape persecution. The roots of the English
Reformed Church at Leiden reach back to 1607, when the growing English-Scottish
community petitioned the city government for a place of worship, meeting first
in St Catherine Gasthuis and then in the Jerusalem Kirk. With the arrival of a
new wave of exiles fleeing the Laudian persecutions and the war-torn British
Isles in the 1640s, the congregation moved into the larger and more centrally
located Begijnhof church, a former Catholic chapel, which, after the
Reformation, had been converted into a multifunctional facility. It housed the
medical school’s anatomical theatre (in the chancel), the university library
(on the upper floor), and, after 1644, the English church (in the nave). ‘These
three places make together a handsome building’, observed a passing
seventeenth-century traveller.
Cory I found this post to be really cool. I have never been to the Dutch city of Leiden but from this picture, and what you have told me the city is architecturally and historically something to behold. This primary source you have pictured offers some valuable insight into the advances in science and anatomy going on at the time. Science lecturers of this time often incorporated the public dissection of a human body by a doctor or professor. This allowed students and scholars to develop a deeper understanding of the human body. I would love to incorporate primary sources into my history class, for I feel they are valuable in helping students better understand history. Thanks for sharing man.
ReplyDeleteCory, thanks for the post! This woodcut would be a great complement to a lesson, or part of one, that examined how artwork reflected life, particularly transitions in Europe, including an examination of the Renaissance. Not just art, but technology that is associated with art. It is interesting how a post such as yours makes me think about technology in the context of a study of the past while considering technology in the context of its use in the classroom, as well. Extending on what Andrew was saying in his comment about human dissection during the Renaissance, whether during the earlier Italian Renaissance or the later Northern Renaissance, I would recommend Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to accompany the woodcut you presented. And to add something more apropros technology as it affected literacy, learning, and education, I would recommend Jan Van Der Straet's work Impressio Librorum, which shows workers using the printing press: http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/357632.
ReplyDelete