Cynthia Klestinec (Miami University) - Ben morire in Venice in the 1590s

How did physicians rather than priests manage the end of their patients' lives? In Venice, physicians were told that they had to advise their patients to call for the priest, who would administer the sacraments. But physicians did not agree. This paper considers the physician's medicina mentis (medicine of the mind) as a form of palliative care, offered to the dying patient.

The focus will be on the physician Fabio Glissenti and his Discorsi morali contra il dispiacer del morire (1596), which is a long text in the tradition of ars moriendi. Glissenti’s work, so much a part of the conservative culture of the Counter Reformation, offers constructions of “the good death” in which the physician, not only the priest, plays a central role.