Medicinae Alumni Vitebergenses (MAV). A prosopographical study of the medical alumni of Leucorea and their significance for the development and dissemination of a medicine influenced by the Wittenberg Reformers (1502-1648)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Stolberg
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 454652552

This project combines two goals, namely 1) a systematic and comprehensive prosopographic analysis of all later physicians who studied medicine and/or philosophy at the University of Wittenberg from its foundation in 1502 until 1648, and 2) the investigation of the importance of the Wittenberg medical alumni for the development and dissemination of a medicine that was significantly influenced by the Wittenberg reformers and their theology and anthropology. The project was conceived in close cooperation with the projects Corpus Inscriptorum Vitebergense (CIV) and Theologiae Alumni Vitebergenses (TAV), both of which are already funded by the DFG, and with a project on Jurisprudentiae Alumni Vitebergenses (JAV), which will be (re)submitted soon. The prosopographical analysis will deal with the social and geographical background, typical career patterns and financial circumstances, as well as with biographical aspects that may suggest a specific influence of the time spent in Wittenberg on later life, such as the choice of other universities and the place of later professional activity, positions as city or personal physicians or even as professors or school men and networks and personal relationships with other doctors and scholars as well as with princes and patrons and works. In addition, for each alumnus a list of his publications will be compiled. All data will be freely accessible through the CIV database via internet. Based on the prosopographic analysis, the importance of the Wittenberg medical alumni for the development and dissemination of a specifically Wittenbergian medicine will be investigated. First, their preferences for certain topics will be examined as a whole, looking for a special interest in topics that had particularly close connections to the theology and anthropology of the Reformers. These include in topics such as the animation of the fetus (traducianism vs. successive animation days or weeks after conception), phenomena on the borderline of demonology such as "ecstasy", i.e. the temporary removal of the soul from the living body, hallucinations and lycanthropy, the affects as the physical basis of religious belief as feeling, and anatomy as proof of the magnificence of divine creation. A small selection of texts which, based on the preceding exploratory studies, promise to be particularly revealing for the question of a specifically Wittenbergian medicine, will be analyzed in detail and compared with the writings of other authors on the same topic.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants