Practicing between Earth and Heaven: Women Healers in Seventeenth-Century Bologna Pomata, Gianna In the highly stratified medical system of seventeenth-century Bologna, women healers occupied a low-rank position. Officially women could practice medicine only as midwives or as holders of permits for the sale of patent medicines. Women were a relatively marginal group even within unauthorized medical practice. Of the criminal proceedings against unlicensed healers only 12% were directed against women. In contrast, women were prominent in religious healing-as shown by the record of healing miracles attributed to female saints, and the importance of female convents as centers of supernatural healing. The different status of women in each case might be related to the different role of the body in lay and religious medical practices. While contact with the ~holyb odiesn of the saints was absolutely central in religious healing, chealing with the body. was considered a mark of inferiority in lay medical practice. 2022-12-19T08:55:07Z 2022-12-19T08:55:07Z 1999 journal article Pomata, Gianna. «Practicing between earth and heaven : women healers in seventeenth-century Bologna». Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam, 1999, Vol. 19, p. 119-143, https://raco.cat/index.php/Dynamis/article/view/106145. 0211-9536 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/78558 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Universidad de Granada