Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood." On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery to monks.

Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all; for then it was that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of that foresight of consequences which might well have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into use during the Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to their own country.
The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all probability that which had inspired Tertullian to make his bitter utterance against Herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon came to be considered as extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were crippled for more than two centuries; it was the worst blow they ever received, for it impressed upon the mind of the Church the belief that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical mandates withdrawing from the healing art the most thoughtful and cultivated men of the Middle Ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans.
So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal Church that for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable: the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning was made, when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should no longer attach to the surgical profession.( 302) (302) As to religious scruples against dissection, and abhorrence of the Paraschites, or embalmer, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, p.216.For denunciation of surgery by the Church authorities, see Sprengel, vol.ii, pp.

432-435; also Fort, pp.

452 et seq.; and for the reasoning which led the Church to forbid surgery to priests, see especially Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, p.200.

As to the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade all dissections.