Network


Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.

Hotspot


Dive into the research topics where Catharina Santing is active.

Publication


Featured researches published by Catharina Santing.


Medical History | 2012

Review of: Cathy McClive and Nicole Pellegrin (Eds), Femmes en fleurs, femmes en corps: sang, santé, sexualité âge aux lumières (SaintEtienne: Université de SaintÉtienne, 2010)

Catharina Santing

While reading the collection of articles Femmes en fleurs, Femmes en corps, the mediaeval Roman de la Rose almost inevitably comes to mind. This allegorical poem describes a lover’s quest for the Rose, which not only symbolises the love of a lady but also the lady embodied – ‘en corps’ to quote the title of this book – who is the living object of his desire. In Jean de Meun’s continuation of the poem, the quest for sexual satisfaction is unmistakable. At the very end, Amor conquers the tower that houses the beautiful red Rose, Shame and Dread flee and the flower is plucked. None of the authors in Femmes en fleurs mention the poem, which was tremendously popular far into the Early Modern Period, but all its possible pre-modern connotations come up for discussion in this beautifully edited book. The editors must have asked the individual authors to read each other’s work over and again in order to incorporate each other’s conclusions into their own argumentation. As a result, the general picture of an ongoing curtailment of the female body and its freedom of movement from the fifteenth century onwards could be refined and justifiably readjusted. It is of equal importance that Anglo-Saxon and French scholarship met in the joint project that produced this book – half of the authors are English/American and half are French. This resulted in fruitful new insights and pointed to new types of sources for research that may also be available for countries other than pre-modern France. Those who want to use this book should be proficient in French. It took me a while to realise that ‘l’histoiregenree’ meant gender history, to mention one of the less difficult language intricacies. An English translation would therefore appear worthwhile, particularly because although all of the articles discuss female body issues, not to say women’s complaints, figuring within the present French borders, its conclusions bear a far wider purport. The agents of this book are the various connotations of ‘Fleur’, such as menstruation (blood), virginity, rape, female bloom and beauty, the sexual act, conception, pregnancy, giving birth, barrenness and menopause, and each phase or event, including the physical details, is discussed together with its consequences and implications. This poses the question of whether the metaphorical reminiscences of ‘fleurs’ did not determine the content of the book too much. The answer would seem to be negative: I carried out a quick investigation and it turned out that in my own mother tongue, Dutch, the same implications of rose, bloom, flower etc were current. Twelve case studies are presented under the headings of, I. ‘Preserver sa fleur’ (keeping her bloom), II. ‘Fleurir’ (flowering) and III. ‘Perdresa fleur’ (losing her bloom), which combine a thorough study of many original sources with a sophisticated handling of gender concepts and an in-depth knowledge of past political, scientific and literary developments; for example, Laurence Moulinier-Brogi shows that uroscopy availed itself of detailed gender differences. Nicole Pellegrin surprisingly deals with the bleeding of nuns as a variation on stigmata. Helen King shows the ideas the learned physician Jacques Dubois and royal mistress Diane de Poitiers shared on getting pregnant, whereas Eugenie Pascal has combed through the letters of princesses and found out that they dreaded giving birth. To which conclusions does reading this anthology lead? First, that things are less simple, more varied and even more ambivalent than historical authors during the second wave of the Feminist Movement and its aftermath advocated. If one listens carefully, the woman’s voice is more clearly audible, and independent agency is revealed, also in cases of unwanted childlessness and even in court cases on violation and paternity claims. Second, in the awareness that their topic goes to the heart of the physical matter in cases of involuntary penetration, menstruation and giving birth, the authors keep a careful distance from the predominant cultural constructivism. Third, the opinion of an American male author darts through the pages, although he is not that often explicitly mentioned: he is, of course, Thomas Laqueur. Femmes en fleurs furnishes several convincing emasculations of the Two-Sex Model, even though most articles in this book seem to have been written before the publication of Katherine Park’s corrective Secrets of Women.


Fragmenta. Journal of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome | 2010

Adrian of Utrecht. The formation of the historiographical image of the Dutch Pope

Catharina Santing

This paper looks at the image of Pope Adrian VI as it developed in historiography. Starting with the contemporary accounts on the Pope and his pontificate, and ending in the twentieth century, it tries to reconstruct the way in which these diverging opinions influenced each other. Chronologically passing through, among others, Paolo Giovio and other contemporary and later authors such as Erasmus, Cornelius Aurelius and Gerard Morinck, positive and negative judgments have been alternately found. The chapters on Adrian in his history of the popes by the Catholic German historian Ludwig von Pastor (1907) are pivotal as the last comprehensive treatment based on archival sources. Later Catholic writings sometimes verge on hagiography. Since then, however, several detailed studies have been added to fill in gaps in Adrian’s biography. Over five centuries, there seems to be a remarkable continuity in describing Adrian as the embodiment of archetypal ‘Dutchness’, both in a positive and a negative sense: simple, sincere, frugal, and pious, as well as blunt, stingy, and lacking in civility and culture.


Bmgn-The low countries historical review | 2007

Spreken vanuit het graf. De stoffelijke resten van Willem van Oranje in hun politiek-culturele betekenis

Catharina Santing


Gewina / TGGNWT | 2000

De biografie als genre in de wetenschapsgeschiedenis

Catharina Santing


Groniek | 1986

Het Toetje door de eeuwen heen

Catharina Santing


Bmgn-The low countries historical review | 2014

Introduction: Batavian Phlegm? The Dutch and their Emotions in Pre-Modern Times

Herman Roodenburg; Catharina Santing


Uitgeverij Valkhof Pers | 2013

De last der geschiedenis

Catharina Santing


One Leg in the Grave Revisited. The miracle of the transplantation of the black leg by the saints Cosmas and Damian | 2013

Cosmas and Damian as representatives of a diverse medical profession and its functions

Catharina Santing


Die Devotio Moderna | 2013

Learning and the Modern Devotion

Catharina Santing; Iris Kwiatkowski; Dick Boer


De last der geschiedenis | 2013

De Vierge Ouvrante als open deur naar een relevante Middeleeuwen beoefening

Catharina Santing; Bert Roest

Collaboration


Dive into the Catharina Santing's collaboration.

Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Bert Roest

Radboud University Nijmegen

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Researchain Logo
Decentralizing Knowledge