The papacy, inquisition and Saint Guinefort the Holy Greyhound

Just before 1261 the Dominican inquisitor Stephen of Bourbon visited an area of south-eastern France known as the Dombes, in the diocese of Lyons and there found that women were venerating a certain St Guinefort as a healer of children. The Church's censure was not just a ban on a non-orthodox cult, or a theological statement that animals could not be saints, or a crackdown on magical and heretical practices - although it was all these things. It was also the condemnation of a healing cult that had got badly out of hand. The legend of St Guinefort the Holy Greyhound reveals the medieval Church engaged in a familiar struggle: to balance popular piety with orthodox teaching

Papal power and protection in the Shebet Yehudah

The sixteenth-century Shebet Yehudah is an account of the persecutions of Jews in various countries and epochs, including their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century. It is not a medieval text and was written long after many of the events it describes. Yet although it cannot give us a contemporary medieval standpoint, it provides important insights into how later Jewish writers perceived Jewish–papal relations in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Although the extent to which Jewish communities came into contact either with the papacy as an institution or the actions of individual popes varied immensely, it is through analysis of Hebrew works such as the Shebet Yehudah that we are able to piece together a certain understanding of Jewish ideas about the medieval papacy as an institution and the policies of individual popes. This article argues that Jews knew only too well that papal protection was not unlimited, but always carefully circumscribed in accordance with Christian theology. It is hoped that it will be a scholarly contribution to our growing understanding of Jewish ideas about the papacy's spiritual and temporal power and authority in the Later Middle Ages and how this impacted on Jewish communities throughout medieval Europe

Green urine from propofol

"A 65-year-old female, with past medical history of hypertension and chronic hypoxemic respiratory failure due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was admitted after endoscopic resection of colonic polyps and a large rectal mass. For this procedure, general anesthesia with intravenous Propofol was utilized. Due to technical difficulty of the procedure, the total anesthesia time was 7 hours and 48 minutes with a total use of 2,951.06 mg of Propofol. On post-procedure day #1, the patient's urine was noted to be green (Figure 1). The patient denied dysuria, frequency, urgency, and foul smell. Additionally, liver function tests, renal function tests, complete blood count, and urinalysis were all within normal limits."Cole T. Bredehoeft (1), Rebecca T. Rist (2), Christian A. Rojas-Moreno (2,3); 1. School of Medicine, University of Missouri. 2. Department of Medicine, University of Missouri. 3. Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Missouri.Includes bibliographical reference

Jewish memory and the Crusades: the Hebrew Crusade chronicles and protection from Christian violence

From the eleventh century popes called for crusading against Muslims in the Near East and pagans in the Baltic, and, from the thirteenth century, against heretics and political enemies of the Church. The new religious spirit of the eleventh century which ushered in the crusades, combined with new social and economic factors, brought about a considerable deterioration in Christian attitudes to Jews. Although popes never authorised crusades against them, Jewish communities often suffered indirectly from papal calls for crusading. Yet in response to the onset of the crusades and resulting mob violence Jews increasingly looked to the papacy for protection. Following the call by Urban II (1088-1099) for the First Crusade in 1095, attention to specifically papal influence on the well-being of Jewish communities in Western Europe resurfaces in the Hebrew crusade chronicles. From the eleventh century onwards Jewish writers deliberately tried to unite sacred and non-sacred history into a collective, unified vision of a divine design – into a schema of Jewish historical consciousness. The Hebrew crusade chronicles subordinate the description of specific historical events to the elaboration of a grand historical drama in which the Jewish people play a unique role. This paper explores how such chronicles, composed and re-composed by different individuals with a variety of agendas and perspectives, were united by the common goal of attempting to ensure the defence of Jewish communities and Judaism. In particular the issue of papal authority and the Church’s ability to give adequate protection to communities reappears in these chronicles at times of conflict and crisis

Crusades against Cathars, c.1207-1229

In the thirteenth century, the papacy authorised military action against a new target in western Europe. Popes called for crusades not only against Muslims in the Holy Land or Spain, and against pagans in the Baltic, but against people in the south of France whom they believed were heretics