| 3529 |
abstract |
Studying early modern medico-legal testimonies can enrich our understanding of witnessing,
the focus of much research in the history of science. Expert testimonies were well
established in the Roman Canon law, but the sphere of compentence of expert witnesses
--one of the ground on which seventeenth-century physicians claimed social and intellectual
authority -- troubled contemporary jurists. By reconstructing these debates in Counter
Reformation Rome, and by placing in them the testimonies given by Paolo Zacchia, this
article discusses the epistemological and social issues surronding the definition
of expertise about the body in court. It shows how a high-ranking expert witness would
define his competence versus the legal authority on the one hand and versus lay and
lower status expert witnesses on the other. But it also explores the interactions
between specific legal constraints, for example about eye witnessing, and the way
in which different kinds of witnesses would use the body as a source of evidence for
testimony. While engaging with medico-legal issues including the ambiguous signs of
childbirth and the (in)visibility of pain, the article examines their meanings within
Counter Reformation social controversies, including control over sexuality, imposition
of discipline and the social status of physicians. |