Perfumed and decorated with gold, fetishized, or tortured, powerful even beyond death, these medieval bodies are not passive and buried away they can still teach us what it means to be human. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time.īringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy, religion, and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. In this witty and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored, and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. 2018 by Jack Hartnell (Author) 240 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle Edition £5.22 Read with Our Free App Audiobook £0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover £12.32 Other used from £12.11 Paperback £11. A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARDripping with blood and gold, fetishized and tortured, gateway to earthly delights and point of contact with the divine, forcibly divided and powerful even.

And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different from our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or where the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages (Wellcome Collection) Hardcover 29 Mar. Publisher: Profile Books Ltd ISBN: 9781781256800 Number of pages: 352 Weight: 419 g Dimensions: 194 x 124 x 28 mm Edition: Main MEDIA REVIEWS A brilliant book. Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love, and had children. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

Medieval Bodies by Jack Hartnell