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  • Medieval Bodies

  • Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages
  • By: Jack Hartnell
  • Narrated by: Jack Hartnell
  • Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (56 ratings)
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Medieval Bodies

By: Jack Hartnell
Narrated by: Jack Hartnell
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Summary

Dripping with blood and gold, fetishised and tortured, gateway to earthly delights and point of contact with the divine, forcibly divided and powerful even beyond death, there was no territory more contested than the body in the medieval world. 

In Medieval Bodies, art historian Jack Hartnell uncovers the complex and fascinating ways in which the people of the Middle Ages thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves. In paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the sometimes bizarre martyrdoms of saints, the sacred dimension of the physical left its mark on their environment. In literature and politics, hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that shaped governance and society in ways that are still visible today. And doctors and natural philosophers were at the centre of a collision between centuries of sophisticated medical knowledge and an ignorance of physiology as profound as its results were gruesome. 

Like a medieval pageant, this striking and unusual history brings together medicine, art, poetry, music, politics, cultural and social history and philosophy to reveal what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. 

Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection. 

Author photograph: Robin Savage 

Design: Peter Dyer 

Imagery: British Library, London; Wellcome Library; Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek

©2018 Jack Hartnell (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

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Unquestioningly pro-christian

I would have expected a clarification to make readers aware that medieval people lived their lives in an echo chamber of religious superstitions rather than presenting aspects of belief like the ‘virgin birth’ as some sort of medical fact. Surely university lecturers are required to maintain professional distance, whatever their personal beliefs may be. The presentation is good overall, but a less privileged reader would have been better.

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Enjoyable history

I did have to get busy googling some of the artifacts described in this book, but it was well worth the effort.

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