In the early 1400s, the University of Padua opened its doors to Jewish medical students—the first European institution of higher learning to do so as a matter of course. The school quickly attracted a sizeable number of aspiring Jewish physicians, while positioning itself as a trendsetter in the study of medicine. Edward Reichman recounts a disturbing episode from this era, discovered in a long-forgotten 17th-century Hebrew text:
On the 17th of Shevat 5440 [January 18, 1680], a young man by the name of Ḥananel (a/k/a Graziadio) Levi died in the [Padua] ghetto. His body was prepared for burial, but in the interim, a band of raucous students from the University of Padua stormed the ghetto, kidnapped the body, and whisked it away to the anatomy room in preparation for dissection and medical-student instruction. The Jewish community was in an uproar, riots ensued, and all political channels were pursued to secure the return of the body.
When initial efforts failed, some members of the Jewish community on their own initiative attempted unsuccessfully to enter the anatomy lecture hall under cover of night to procure the body. Ultimately, after one week, negotiations succeeded, and the Jews were promised by the university that they needn’t worry about similar infractions in the future, and that the bodies of the Jewish community would no longer be forcefully taken for anatomical dissection.
Behind this incident was the university’s demand that ethnoreligious communities from which students hailed, rather than individuals, provide the cadavers. Reichman explains:
Simultaneous with the expansion of the Jewish community in Padua, a young professor on campus was quietly revolutionizing the study of anatomy. Andreas Vesalius, who arrived in Padua in 1537, began to hold frequent public and private anatomical displays and approached the study of human anatomical dissection in a systematic fashion not previously attempted. Grave robbing became commonplace in order to supplement the source of bodies.
As elated as Jews were to walk the halls of a premier university for the first time in history, this privilege would not compel the abrogation of ancient Torah principles. Jewish law forbids the dissection of the human body after death absent mitigating circumstances yielding direct and immediate life-saving benefit from the procedure. The prohibitions of desecrating and deriving benefit from the corpse, as well as the obligation to bury the body, preclude routine dissection or autopsy.
Read more on Seforim: https://seforimblog.com/2023/06/the-anatomy-of-an-auction-a-previously-undissected-body-of-literature-on-the-history-of-the-jews-and-postmortem-dissection/