Beyond the Universities

Anatomical dissections performed at the Hospital del Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe maintained an autonomous character outside any nearby university context throughout the late 1500s. A few references from the Hospital de la Santa Cruz in Toledo and the Hospital del Cardenal in Seville indicate that similar activities took place in other Castilian hospitals. However, the Monastery Hospital of Guadalupe represents the only well-documented case within Spain where anatomists had routine experience with human dissection outside a university. Its tradition in this field is even said to pre-date the public anatomies introduced at universities in mid-sixteenth-century Castile. This notion remains speculative and rather dubious, but has nonetheless appeared in several historical accounts of the monastery. The modern-day visitor to the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is also reminded of the institution’s pioneering status by a modern plaque placed at the entrance of the late medieval hospital buildings, which survive to this day: ‘This building was erected by the protoprior of The Hieroninites Yañes de Figueroa in 1402 as a hospital of Saint John the Baptist and in this hospital the earliest dissections in the Spanish Kingdoms were carried out with papal privilege.’ ¹