In Christian tradition, the cult of relics implied exhumation of saints’ bodies, dissection of corpses and their public exhibition. As opposed to other religious traditions, these practices justified post-mortem manipulation of bodies. A sharp debate emerged in the fourth century AD about this problem. To what extent has the medieval cult of relics influenced the dissection of bodies in modern societies? To what extent have they impacted on modern donations of organs?
Marianne Sághy: From Corpse to Relic: The Cult of the Saints and Its Critics in Late Antiquity
Marianne Sághy teaches political, social and religious history of late antique Rome and late medieval Europe at the Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies. She earned her PhD at Princeton University in 1998. Her most important publications are: Versek és vértanúk. A római mártírkultusz Damasus pápa korában, 366-384 [Poems and martyrs. The Roman cult of martyrs during the time of Pope Damascus, AD 366-384] (Budapest: Kairosz, 2003); "Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome” in Early Medieval Europe, 9 (2000): 273-287.
Enikő Demény: Dissecting the Dead for Medical Purposes:Attitudes towards Organ Donations from the Deceased
Enikő Demény is Junior Researcher at the Central European University, Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB). She has a PhD in Philosophy (2006). Between 1998 and 2009 she was a Visiting Lecturer at the Babeş-Bolyai University. Among her most relevant publications: “Universal values, contextualization and bioethics: knowledge production in the age of genetics” in JAHR, 1/1 (2010): 19-37; “Bioethics, social sciences and biotechnology: the challenges of interdisciplinarity in the policy context” in Bioethics in Central Europe, ed. Gluchman (Prešov: Filosofica fakulta PU v Prešove, 2009): 151-160.