besides, the body that has been thus barbarously treated shall be
left without Christian burial. Let no one, therefore, etc. (Here
follows the usual formula of condemnation for the violation of the
prescriptions of a decree.) Given at the Lateran Palace, on the
twelfth of the calends of March, in the sixth year of our
pontificate."

The reason for the bull is very well known. During the crusades,
numbers of the nobility who died at a distance from their homes in
infidel countries were prepared for transportation and burial in their
own lands by dismemberment and boiling. The remains of {34} Louis IX.,
of France, and a number of his relatives who perished on the ill-fated
crusade in Egypt in 1270, are said to have been brought back to France
in this fashion. The body of the famous German Emperor, Frederick
Barbarossa, who was drowned in the river Saleph near Jerusalem, was
also treated thus in order that the remains might be transported to
Germany without serious decomposition being allowed to disturb the
ceremonials of subsequent obsequies. Such examples were very likely to
be imitated by many. The custom, as can be appreciated from these
instances from different nations, was becoming so widespread as to
constitute a serious source of danger to health, and might easily have
furnished occasion for the conveyance of disease. It is almost
needless to say to our generation that it was eminently unhygienic.
Any modern authority in sanitation would at once declare against it,
and the custom would be put an end to without more ado. There can be
no doubt at all then that Pope Boniface VIII. accomplished good, not
evil, by the publication of this bull. So anyone with modern views as
to the danger of disease from the foolish custom which it abolished
would at once have declared, and yet, by a perversion of its
signification, it came to be connected with a supposed prohibition of
dissection. For this misunderstanding Pope Boniface VIII. has had to
suffer all sorts of reproaches and the Church has been branded as
opposed to anatomy by historians(!)

Is it possible, however, that this bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, or at least certain forms of anatomical preparation
which were useful for the study and teaching of anatomy? That is what
Dr. White asserts. He shows, moreover, in his History of {35} the
Warfare of Science with Theology, that he knew that the document in
question was perfectly inoffensiv