The Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) is an international institute of advanced studies belonging to the Institutio Santoriana – Fondazione Comel and based at the Domus Comeliana in Pisa.

Its mission is to further the values of Renaissance humanism and the advancement of scientific knowledge as inspired by the intellectual, cultural and social development of the European Medical Renaissance (1300-1700).

History and Organisation

The CSMBR was first established in January 2018 to carry on the scientific legacy of the Italian physician, philosopher, scientist, and inventor Santorio Santori (1561-1636), and it is currently the major Italian institution devoted to the study of medical humanities. The centre is run by an international committee, whose members seat as representatives of three major partner institutions, formally affiliated to the centre: 

Fundamental Principles

Our fundamental principles are rooted in the philosophy of Renaissance Humanism, meant as the commitment to acknowledging, respecting, and developing the human potential proper to each individual.

In accordance with these principles, the aim of our scholarly work is to allow each individual to form their own opinion, as freely and independently as possible, not to provide the opinion itself. The CSMBR is thus constituted as an independent research institute that is open to scholars of any nationality, without discrimination of ethnicity, gender, age, political, religious, or sexual orientation.

The centre neither seeks nor promotes any political goal: advocacy research, as well as activities or fields of study directly related to political purposes of any nature (religious, social, economic, sexual, etc.), are irreconcilable with the CSMBR mission.