Translation and Critical Edition of Francesco Emanuele Cangiamila's Embriología Sacra

FAIN: RQ-271184-20

Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD 21218-2608)
Elizabeth O'Brien (Project Director: December 2019 to present)
Altina Hoti (Co Project Director: December 2019 to present)

Preparation for publication of a translation and critical edition of Francesco Emanuele Cangiamila’s Embriología Sacra (1751). (24 months)

A group of six scholars proposes to produce the first English-language translation and critical edition of Embriologia Sacra (1751), authored by Jesuit priest and Inquisitor Francesco Emanuele Cangiamila. Sacred Embryology is one of the most important Enlightenment-era texts on fetal personhood in the Catholic world. It inspired more than a century of similar works, abridgements, and translations. These works were widely distributed, especially throughout Latin America. It also directly influenced the Catholic Church’s position on fetal ensoulment, as articulated in Pius IX’s 1869 Apostolicae Sedis. With this text, Cangiamila became one of the first theologians—and certainly the most vocal of his time—to insist that fetal ensoulment might occur as early as conception. We expect that the volume will attract readers and researchers from numerous fields, given the work’s significance to Roman Catholic theology, gendered scientific practice, and social and legal debates about unborn life.

Media Coverage

Luskin Center's "Then and Now" Podcast (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Elizabeth O'Brien, Roselyn Campbell
Publication: Luskin Center's "Then and Now" Podcast
Date: 6/6/2023
Abstract: In this episode of Then & Now, medical historian Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien offers a deep history of how colonial and religious powers shaped women's reproductive choices in Mexico from the 18th to 20th centuries, and explores how historical attitudes towards women’s bodies and gender roles are relevant to understanding reproductive rights in the 21st century United States.
URL: http://https://luskincenter.history.ucla.edu/then-now-podcast/

Associated Products

“As Small as a Grain of Barley: The Bourbon State and the Caesarean Operation in New Spain, 1771-1810s,” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “As Small as a Grain of Barley: The Bourbon State and the Caesarean Operation in New Spain, 1771-1810s,”
Abstract: This talk focuses on the cesarean operation during the Enlightenment, when Catholic priests began to theorize that fetal ensoulment might occur as early as conception. Clergy attempted to prove this theory by removing embryos via caesarean surgery. Because historians of medicine have tended to omit religious sources, they have long overlooked these—surgical—origins of Catholic claims on the unborn. The first chapter offers an first in-depth English-language examination of Joaquín Castellot’s translation of Francesco Cangiamila's Embriologia Sacra—a foundational work in embryological (embryo) science, and argues that it has been overlooked in that field due to its religious underpinnings. Sacred Embryology was the first to insist that Catholic priests should be required to perform cesarean operations on dead and dying women, in order to baptize the infants in their wombs. While others have analyzed the masculinization, medicalization, and racialization of reproductive medicine, this talk suggests that we can also consider Cangiamila’s tome figures as a foundational work in the "spiritualization" of obstetrics—that is, the reinterpretation of the caesarean operation in the service of Catholic doctrine.
Author: Altina Hoti
Author: Elizabeth O'Brien
Date: 02/04/2021
Location: Generation to Reproduction seminar series in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University
Primary URL: https://hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/2021/02/24/dr-elizabeth-obrien-at-hps-cambridges-generation-to-reproduction-seminar/

“Empire, Colonization, and Reproductive Violence: Centering Narratives from Mexico and the Global South,” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “Empire, Colonization, and Reproductive Violence: Centering Narratives from Mexico and the Global South,”
Abstract: During the eighteenth century, Catholic authorities became increasingly preoccupied with unborn life. Cesarean surgery was a key part of this effort. Medical humanities scholars Elizabeth O’Brien and Altina Hoti will discuss their NEH- sponsored translation project on obstetric writings, placing Indigenous and multi-ethnic Mexico at the heart of global histories of fetal personhood, addressing why this history of forced surgeries continues to affect Church and State approaches to reproductive politics today.
Author: Elizabeth O'Brien
Author: Altina Hoti
Date: 04/15/2021
Location: Center for the Study of the Southwest
Primary URL: http://https://www.txstate.edu/cssw/news-events/events/surgery-colonialims-personhood.html
Primary URL Description: https://www.txstate.edu/cssw/news-events/events/surgery-colonialims-personhood.html

---