Beloved Son Felix – Felix Platter

He exhorted the other two, who were about to apostatize, so touchingly that the sweat stood out in great drops, as big as peas, on the forehead of the man in the shirt. When the monks, formed in a curve around him and mounted on horseback, told him that it was time to make an end, he leapt joyously on to the pyre and sat down at the foot of the stake that rose in the centre of it.

This stake was pierced by a hole, through which ran a cord with a running noose. The executioner put the cord round Dalençon’s neck, tied his hands across his breast, and placed near him the religious books he had brought from Geneva. Then he set fire to the pyre. The martyr remained seated, calm and resigned, with his eyes raised towards heaven. When the fire reached the books the executioner pulled on the cord and strangled him; his head dropped to his breast and he made no further movement.

Little by little the body was reduced to cinders. His two companions stood at the foot of the fire, where they were made to watch his sufferings, and could feel the heat of the flame. After the execution they were both taken to the Hôtel de Ville. Near there, in front of the church of Notre-Dame, a platform had been set up, with a statue of the Virgin on it, before which they would have to recant.

The crowd had to wait for them for a long time. At last only one of the two men was brought out. The cloth shearer had refused to abjure and demanded that he should be executed without mercy for having failed his beliefs. He was therefore taken back to prison. The other man, who seemed to be a man of substance, was placed on his knees before the statue of the Virgin, with a lighted candle in his hand. A clerk read out various charges, to which he had to reply.

In this way he saved his life, but he was sent to the galleys and there put in chains. 10. An anatomy theatre in the sixteenth century. A live model clings to a pillar on the left, a skeleton is in the centre, and a corpse on the table (from the title page of the works of Vesalius, printed in Basel) On the following Tuesday, the 9th of January, it was the turn of the cloth shearer again.

He was strangled and burnt as the priest had been. He showed great courage, and no less repentance for having come so near to denying his faith. It had rained on that day, and the fire would not burn. The victim, who was not completely strangled, endured great suffering.

New York, NY 10012 This edition © 2026 by McNally Editions Translation and Introduction Copyright © 1961 by Seán Jennett Foreword © 2026 by Stephen Greenblatt All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Originally published in 1961 by Frederick Muller, Ltd., London. First McNally Editions paperback, 2026 ISBN: 978-1-961341-68-5 E-book: 978-1-961341-69-2 Design by Jonathan Lippincott 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Foreword Introduction The Journal 1.

The Journey from Basel to Montpellier 2. A Student in Montpellier 3. Return Home to Basel Notes Bibliography Acknowledgements 1kitap1.com/en FOREWORD THE MAGICAL CHARM OF BELOVED SON FELIX In the early 1950s the Dutch historian Jacques Presser came up with the term “ego-documents” to describe the traces that people leave of themselves, whether in letters, diaries, memoirs, and the like, or in the many less formal ways in which the self makes itself known in the world.

Though from the Early Modern period there are vast numbers of these traces, ranging from signatures on wills to love sonnets to obscene graffiti that people scratched on outhouse walls, there are very few ego-documents remotely comparable to the personal journal left by the physician Felix Platter. Keeping diaries and writing autobiographies did not become a widespread practice until the mid-seventeenth century. But it is not merely the relative paucity of such documents from earlier periods that makes Platter’s journal so unusual.

It is its vividness, intimacy, candor, and charm that confer upon it an altogether rare and revealing character. When he set out to record for posterity some key moments in his life, Felix Platter (1536–1624) was already well advanced in a long, distinguished career in medicine. He was much sought after as a clinician, venerated as a teacher, and celebrated as a scientist, having made significant advances in a wide range of areas, including anatomy, the function of the lens and retina, and the nature of psychiatric diseases.

But in recalling the scenes of his youth, he did something extraordinary: he set aside his years of experience and knowledge of the world, and recovered what it felt like to be a naïve, untested teenager venturing out into unfamiliar and often dangerous territory. He relied on careful notes and revised the diary that he had kept at the time, drawing as well upon his prodigious memory.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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