Klappentext
This collection of seventeen essays explores the dramatic changes in Western conceptions of the body, encompassing the cultural shifts that occurred across Empire, religion and science, from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

Inhalt
The body of Rome: Introduction (Maria Wyke and Andrew Hopkins); Empire: Care, Modification and Abuse Archetypally Roman? Representing Seneca's ageing body (Catharine Edwards); Circumcision, de-circumcision and self-image: Celsus's 'Operations on the penis' (Ralph Jackson); A Roman perspective on circumcision (Pierre Cordier); 'In the foreskin of your flesh': The pure male body in late antiquity (Gillian Clark); Headhunters of the Roman army (Nic Fields); Execution in effigy: Severed heads and decapitated statues in imperial Rome (Eric R Varner) Church: Disablement, Transformation and Veneration Disabled bodies: The (mis)representation of the lame in antiquity and their reappearance in early Christian and medieval art (Livio Pestilli); Truth, perception and the pagan body in the Roman martyr narrarives (Kristina Sessa); The paradoxical body of Saint Agnes (Lucy Grig); The relic translations of Paschal I: Transforming city and cult (Caroline Goodson); Majesty and mortality: Attitudes towards the corpse in Papal funeral ceremonies (Minou Schraven) Religion and Science: Dissection, Torture and Fragmentation A theatre of cruelty and forgiveness: Dissection, institutions and the moral discourse of anatomy in sixteenth-century Rome (Andrea Carlino); Not torments, but delights: Antonio Gallonio's Trattato de gli Instrumenti de Martirio of 1591 and its illustrations (Opher Mansour); Ancient bodies and contested identities in the English college martyrdom cycle, Rome (Richard L Williams); Secrets of the heart: The role of saintly bodies in the medical discourse of counter-reformation Rome (Catrien Santing); Contesting the sacred heart of Jesus in late eighteenth-century Rome (Jon L Seydl).