[HN Gopher] Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause o...
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       Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death
        
       Author : new_vienna
       Score  : 203 points
       Date   : 2025-02-10 03:38 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ncregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ncregister.com)
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | Hypothesised cranial haematoma after accident with tree, died
       | aged 48. Reconstruction aligns with paintings, but it wasn't
       | clear if the reconstruction model was informed by the paintings
       | so somewhat meaningless they agree.
       | 
       | Also the diagnosis isn't informed by the craniometry from what I
       | can read: it's a reconstruction and an unconnected diagnosis from
       | reports of his death.
       | 
       | Amusingly a website which had (nc)register.com but not
       | theregister.com..
        
         | WorkerBee28474 wrote:
         | From my understanding facial reconstruction from skulls is a
         | well-defined process in forensics, so it's likely that they
         | used standard methods. They mentioned getting colors (i.e.
         | skin/hair tone) from painting.
        
           | ggm wrote:
           | I'd love them to have made more of that if the cranial
           | reconstruction got close to the painting un-hinted.
        
           | biohcacker84 wrote:
           | I'd love to see facial reconstruction of people of whom we
           | have pictures and video. Since what I've heard of facial
           | reconstruction is that there is a lot "art" in it.
        
             | thaumasiotes wrote:
             | It would also be nice to see police sketch artist
             | renderings compared with the people they depict.
             | 
             | I've noticed that people rarely seem to see much value in
             | testing procedures against questions with known answers.
        
             | jaggederest wrote:
             | I can tell you that, having seen some before, injured, and
             | transplanted photos of facial transplant patients, their
             | faces rapidly look much like they used to, regardless of
             | the original person their face was transplanted from.
             | 
             | Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson, the
             | major determinant of how people look. I found it quite
             | surprising as I thought it would be the other way around.
             | 
             | The only obvious change was hair and skin color,
             | essentially.
        
               | FartyMcFarter wrote:
               | > Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson,
               | the major determinant of how people look. I found it
               | quite surprising as I thought it would be the other way
               | around.
               | 
               | How would it work the other way around? You don't have a
               | "look" before your bone structure exists right?
        
               | jaggederest wrote:
               | Right, but naively I would think that your bones are the
               | foundation and your skin and muscles are the house on
               | top. But really, the skin and muscles are more of the
               | paint and trim, and the bones are the foundation, walls,
               | and even part of the roof. Even your nose is largely
               | determined by the angle and width of your facial bones,
               | which is quite surprising to me, given that obviously
               | there's no bone in it past the bridge.
        
           | dkga wrote:
           | And probably the hair pattern as well.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | > From my understanding facial reconstruction from skulls is
           | a well-defined process in forensics
           | 
           | It's commonly used, but is it:
           | 
           | * Consistent from practitioner to practitioner?
           | 
           | * Able to consistently pass a double-blind test?
           | 
           | My understanding of forensic 'science' is that it has a bad
           | reputation for having more in common with shamanism, or the
           | rituals of a witchdoctor, than it does with science.
        
           | shakna wrote:
           | I can't really sum it up better than the Wikipedia page's
           | author:
           | 
           | > It is easily the most subjective--as well as one of the
           | most controversial--techniques in the field of forensic
           | anthropology.
        
         | pbh101 wrote:
         | What's amusing about two different sites being named
         | 'Register'? It is a relatively common newspaper name suffix
         | like 'Times' or 'Post.' Or is there something else I'm missing?
        
           | ggm wrote:
           | The one cited here most often would not be the national
           | catholic register. I assumed it was thereg from a cursory
           | look before clicking.
        
           | mdp2021 wrote:
           | > _being named 'Register'? It is a relatively common
           | newspaper name_
           | 
           | Incidentally: The Times (The "Times of London", first with
           | that name form), debuted on 1 January 1785, with the name
           | _The Daily Universal Register_.
           | 
           | Even "interchangable", you may (rhetorically) say.
        
       | caminanteblanco wrote:
       | I wonder what the licensing related to the image reconstruction
       | is. Like, am I able to use it for the cover of a biography of his
       | I publish?
        
         | robin_reala wrote:
         | It's a creative work, so in most jurisdictions it'd be subject
         | to copyright and unusable without licensing or the creator
         | explicitly using a license like CC0 that allows free onward
         | reproduction and reworking.
        
           | kbelder wrote:
           | Is it creative? If it's derived algorithmically from a
           | collection of facts, it wouldn't be covered.
           | 
           | I think this stuff is art with a little bit of informing from
           | science, so it probably is creative, but I wonder what the
           | authors would claim.
        
             | robin_reala wrote:
             | The skin tone and hair style are guessable, but not derived
             | from the science, so definitely qualify as a creative act.
        
       | Mistletoe wrote:
       | How accurate are facial reconstructions from skulls now?
       | 
       | They don't seem that accurate in the past.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_facial_reconstruction...
        
       | darkwater wrote:
       | So, they discarded the form of the face coming from iconography
       | BUT used the colors like hair and skin.
       | 
       | This is SO catholic (well, or religious in general).
        
         | jjmarr wrote:
         | Aquinas was born in central Italy during the High Middle Ages.
         | What hair and skin colour do you think he had?
        
           | madaxe_again wrote:
           | Italy had and still has a pretty diverse makeup - Germanic
           | peoples from the north, North Africans from the south, and
           | Mediterranean peoples who are the crossroads of the two.
           | 
           | Where I live in the torturous mountains of the north of
           | Portugal, people from villages all of five kilometres apart
           | can look radically different. Our nearest village is your
           | fairly standard Iberian phenotype - dark brown to black hair,
           | and tanned looking. Across the valley is a village that took
           | in Jews fleeing the inquisition - and they look Sephardic to
           | this day. Ten kilometers north is a village still named in
           | local dialect "Moorish village", and lo and behold, the
           | people there look Arabic.
           | 
           | So what was his phenotype? Only going to find that out by
           | sequencing him. He _probably_ had dark skin and hair, but he
           | could have been blonde and pale.
        
           | defrost wrote:
           | Was his family from the Northern or Southern Italian lines?
           | 
           | Did his family include any of the many far off bloodlines
           | bought into Italy via the Roman Empire creating far flung
           | citizens?
           | 
           | As the peer comment states, there's a wealth of pigments in
           | Italy, and that goes back before the High Middle Ages.
           | 
           |  _The earliest evidence of Italians ' extraordinary genetic
           | diversity dates back to the end of the last glacial period_
           | 
           | https://www.unibo.it/en/news-and-events/notice-board/the-
           | ear...
        
           | paganel wrote:
           | Who knows? He might have been blonde-haired for all we know,
           | after all the Duchy of Spoleto set up by the Lombards was
           | also located in Central Italy. You can get an idea of that
           | past Lombard presence from this map [1]: " Percentage of
           | Blond Hair in the Italian regions" (notice the green blob
           | East of Naples), which, granted, it may not be 100%
           | scientific but I reckon that it is at least based on some
           | real data.
           | 
           | Later edit: Apparently that map is based on this mid-19th
           | century data sample: Percentages of blond hair in the Italian
           | regions (including Corsica). Data collected by Ridolfo Livi
           | on 1859-1863 lever classes ( "Renato Biasutti - Races and
           | peoples of the Earth - UTET, 1941")
           | 
           | [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/62yyuz/percenta
           | ge_...
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | My own grandmother was born on the shores of the Aegean
             | Sea, in the region that now forms the border between Greece
             | and Turkey.
             | 
             | She was Slavic herself, and blonde.
             | 
             | The Mediterranean is a lot more complicated that people
             | from afar tend to think.
        
           | darkwater wrote:
           | It was an metaphor for the typical cherry picking that
           | religions do.
           | 
           | Edit: no, it wasn't a hyperbole , it was a metaphor
        
             | heyjamesknight wrote:
             | I think you mean the typical cherry picking that
             | institutions and organizations do, both religious and
             | secular.
        
           | boomboomsubban wrote:
           | He was born nearish to Naples in the Kingdom of Sicily, a
           | kingdom created by the Normans. Really hard to guess.
        
           | inglor_cz wrote:
           | There are many plausible "skins" for Aquinas. He didn't come
           | from relatively homogeneous place like Japan on Iceland, he
           | was Italian. And medieval Central Italy was a massive genetic
           | melting pot of Etruscans, Latins, Greeks, Celts, Germanic
           | people and North Africans. It used to be crossroads of a
           | massive empire once, and was overrun by several invasions of
           | other peoples afterwards.
        
         | clarionbell wrote:
         | Ok, so how would you do it? Pick it random maybe, just ignoring
         | all the sources?
        
         | TheFreim wrote:
         | > form of the face coming from iconography
         | 
         | You imply that there is only one "form" of his face depicted in
         | iconography, but this is not the case. There is wide variation
         | in how he has been depicted going back to the 14th century.
         | Here is a selection of images from the 14th and 15th centuries
         | which are closer to the reconstruction than they are different:
         | 
         | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Lippo_Me...
         | 
         | https://www.kressfoundation.org/kress-collection/artwork/498...
         | 
         | https://catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/saint-thomas-aq...
         | 
         | https://catholicclassicalict.wordpress.com/wp-content/upload...
         | 
         | https://www.wikiart.org/en/fra-angelico/st-thomas-aquinas-14...
        
       | michaelsbradley wrote:
       | A weekly Summa Theologica reading group, attended by Catholics
       | and non-Catholics alike, led by a professor with credentials in
       | philosophy and theology, was one of the best experiences of my
       | life:
       | 
       | https://sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/
        
         | f1shy wrote:
         | No matter what your beliefs are, if you seriously want to study
         | philosophy, you have to go through it.
         | 
         | Did something similar. It is great.
        
         | TheFreim wrote:
         | There is also aquinas.cc which has the Summa Theologica as well
         | as a variety of other works by St. Thomas Aquinas, with the
         | Latin text on the left and English on the right.
         | 
         | https://aquinas.cc/
        
           | michaelsbradley wrote:
           | Very nice, thank you, I really like it and had not seen it
           | previously!
        
       | dr_dshiv wrote:
       | The first use of the word "android" comes from the discussion of
       | a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus.
       | Thomas Aquinas couldn't bear its babble and so he smashed it to
       | bits. So, maybe he's a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd?
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/b30337161
        
         | gjm11 wrote:
         | That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the
         | relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after
         | provide interesting context.
         | 
         | "The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of _Albertus Magnus_
         | ; who, as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same
         | metal[1], and had spent 30 years without any interruption in
         | forming him under several Aspects and Constellations. [...] and
         | being put and fastened together in the form of a Man, had the
         | faculty to reveal to the said Albertus the solutions of all his
         | principal difficulties. To which they add (that nothing be lost
         | of the story of the Statue) that it was battered to pieces by
         | St Thomas, merely because he could not bear its excess of
         | prating. But to give a more rational account of this
         | _Androides_ of _Albertus_ , as also of the miraculous heads,
         | [...]"
         | 
         | [1] i.e., brass ("brazen heads" are mentioned earlier in the
         | paragraph).
         | 
         | (I've modernized the spellings.)
         | 
         | So I think the Androides (I think this is intended as a Greek-
         | looking singular title, not as an English plural; it's a
         | translation of French "Androide") is meant to be a whole
         | person, not just a talking head, although the book talks about
         | it in the context of other things that _were_ just talking
         | heads.
         | 
         | The author declines to believe that Albertus actually made a
         | statue that was able to talk rationally. The specific reasons
         | he gives aren't super-convincing to a modern reader, but I
         | suspect they're mostly rationalizations and his real reason for
         | being unconvinced is just that the story doesn't sound
         | plausible. (Plus, he wants to acquit Albertus of the charge of
         | doing magic in the treating-with-the-powers-of-evil sense.)
         | 
         | He does say that statues able to make vaguely speech-like
         | noises are surely possible "by the help of that part of
         | _Natural Magick_ which depends on the _Mathematicks_ " :-).
        
           | dr_dshiv wrote:
           | Thanks for pulling that out! And apologies for my quick post.
           | 
           | Another book you might like is "Mathematical Magick" by John
           | Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society [1]. In
           | those days, quite a bit of scientific inspiration came from
           | previous works on "natural magick." There are many books like
           | this at the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam! [2]
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Magick
           | 
           | [2] https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en
        
           | jhedwards wrote:
           | This reminds me of an ancient Chinese story from the Liezi,
           | where a craftsman presents a robot to King Mu that can sing
           | and dance. After the robot beckons to the kind's concubines,
           | he orders the craftsman to be killed. The craftsman is
           | terrified and deconstructs the robot, demonstrating to the
           | king that it is simply a collection of inanimate items. The
           | king is impressed and says "can it be that the skill of a man
           | can be equal to that of the creator?" It's a great story that
           | I discovered because it's an early instance comparing
           | creativity and invention to divine power. Not sure if it has
           | been translated but the text is here:
           | https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=37480
        
           | deadbabe wrote:
           | It may be possible to come up with something like an analog
           | version of Markov chains. As you turn a crank words keep
           | sounding out based on probability.
        
             | gjm11 wrote:
             | For an earlyish (but fictional, rather simplistic, and
             | satirically intended) version of this, see
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine .
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Link to the actual page:
         | https://archive.org/details/b30337161/page/249/mode/1up
        
       | lqet wrote:
       | > "Now, it could be that on the whole we're a lot larger now than
       | even overweight medievals were, or that St. Thomas was never the
       | portly friar described by his legend," Father Aquinas quipped,
       | adding, "Regardless, the stories of St. Thomas' size are probably
       | exaggerated."
       | 
       | According to Martin Luther (who may have had an interest in
       | discrediting him), Thomas Aquinas was able to devour an entire
       | goose, and a piece of his dining table had to be cut out to
       | accommodate his immense body [0]
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://books.google.de/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=de&...
        
         | red_trumpet wrote:
         | Also, Luther was born ~250 years after Thomas Aquinas, so this
         | could have already become legend.
        
           | karaterobot wrote:
           | Perhaps the most salient reason not to trust his description
           | of the man: he never met Aquinas, nor met anyone who met
           | anyone who met him.
        
         | clarionbell wrote:
         | Yep, definitely not a slander there. I mean, why would Luther
         | of all people have a problem with one of most important figures
         | of Catholic scholasticism.
        
         | mvieira38 wrote:
         | I wonder if Martin Luther would have a reason to slander the
         | head figure of catholicism and creator of the doctrine used by
         | Cajetan to argue against his own doctrine... The same Luther
         | who was proven by his own disciples to have exaggerated many
         | stories about catholics in his biography.
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | You don't get all the way to 95 Theses by keeping the boat on
           | an even keel.
        
         | Boogie_Man wrote:
         | With all respect to Martin Luther, he was also enormously
         | rotund. Gluttony seems to have been the main vice of several
         | important theologians.
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | Pre-typewriter, writing was extremely time-consuming and
           | inactive. It was also an occupation afforded to very few. It
           | is not a stretch to assume as a rule anyone engaging in
           | writing was going to be heavier.
        
         | AStonesThrow wrote:
         | Monasteries and religious houses could be well-supported,
         | wealthy, with comfortable lifestyles for the intellectual, and
         | there were a lot of them.
         | 
         | (In those days there was plenty of support and regulation for
         | two, or more men, to get together and live as a family; women
         | as well)
         | 
         | So now we can study figures such as St. Teresa of Avila, St.
         | John of the Cross, Henry VIII, calling them all to repentance,
         | and consider how their lives ended.
         | 
         | Does anyone know some good Amish furniture for sale online?
        
       | beardyw wrote:
       | People's faces are very rarely that symmetrical which raises
       | doubt in my mind.
        
       | masswerk wrote:
       | Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was
       | reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence.
       | 
       | I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but
       | here are two quotes I found on the website of a nun[1] (no less,
       | so probably written in good faith):
       | 
       | > St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and
       | quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even
       | apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart
       | from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance
       | or ecstasy. (G.K. Chesterton)
       | 
       | > St. Thomas Aquinas was a compulsive over-eater who was not just
       | fat but morbidly obese and physically grotesque. (Myron Shibley)
       | 
       | [1] http://asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-fat-
       | was-...
       | 
       | (Fun fact, there's a reference to this in Umberto Eco's The Name
       | of the Rose, alluding to difficulties with the transport of the
       | body over a staircase, which coincides with circumstances of G.K.
       | Chesterton's passing, as described on that page.)
        
         | ryukoposting wrote:
         | The article discusses this. The researchers admit they can't
         | know for sure if they got that part right. On the other hand,
         | standards for body size were very different 750 years ago than
         | today, so that's certainly part of it. Legends tend to get more
         | exaggerated over time, and the legend of Thomas Aquinas has had
         | _plenty_ of time for exaggeration to build up.
        
           | masswerk wrote:
           | I'm aware of this. But the article gives no reason for this
           | choice. It's rather a "well, couldn't it be" hypothetical,
           | provided as a quote:
           | 
           | > "Now, it could be that on the whole we're a lot larger now
           | than even overweight medievals were, or that St. Thomas was
           | never the portly friar described by his legend," Father
           | Aquinas quipped, adding, "Regardless, the stories of St.
           | Thomas' size are probably exaggerated."
           | 
           | This is certainly in stark contrast to the centuries-long
           | traditional notion of Aquinas' appearance, which may require
           | some further detail why and how this choice was made. - I can
           | see why the quoted father Aquinas should be excited by this
           | "angelic" appearance, but this may be hardly sufficient to
           | motivate a scientific choice. Personally, I can't see how the
           | size of the skull (the sole evidence) should or could
           | correlate with body mass.
        
           | Rebelgecko wrote:
           | It's crazy how standards for body size can change over even
           | shorter time periods.
           | 
           | I was watching an old game show with Bob Barker and one of
           | the competitions was for people to guess stats about the
           | "average" man, and then run around Hollywood looking for a
           | man who matched that description. So each competitor would
           | guess the average age, height, number of kids, etc. One woman
           | guessed that the average man weighed 180 pounds and Bob
           | Barker mocked her mercilessly for thinking that the average
           | man is such a fatso.
        
             | abecedarius wrote:
             | Similarly, 70s Steve Wozniak was supposed to be kinda
             | chubby, but people this millennium seeing those old photos
             | are like "what? he's totally average?"
        
               | gadders wrote:
               | He looks semi-hench in the pic on this page with David
               | Lee Roth: https://lamag.com/news/steve-wozniak-us-fest
        
             | kenjackson wrote:
             | During the Super Bowl they put up a stat about the size of
             | the average lineman in SB 1 vs now. In SB1 they were 6'3"
             | and about 248lbs (something like that). And now they are
             | 6'6" and 330lbs.
             | 
             | That old OLine gets killed in P5 college football now.
        
             | caymanjim wrote:
             | I was about 180lbs by the end of highschool, and I was one
             | of the fattest kids in my class. Not to the point that I
             | was given fat kid nicknames or openly mocked, but I was
             | almost always the fattest kid in any given group. Picked
             | last for teams in gym class, chuckled-at when trying to do
             | pullups for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
             | 
             | Now I'm 260lbs and fat by any standard. What I wouldn't
             | give to be 180lbs again.
        
               | aaronblohowiak wrote:
               | Idk if you are serious about that, but if you are there
               | is hope. For about $200/month (not going through
               | insurance) it can be quite easy to not eat so much. I
               | have been really shocked by how much my mind has been
               | quieted by not being obsessed about food and never
               | feeling deprived. Downside: you feel full all the time.
               | Hims.com it's super easy (no office visits no video
               | conferencing) and fast. Not affiliated except as a happy
               | customer (my wife is happy too.) you CAN out-eat it, but
               | it's far easier not to.
        
             | nu11ptr wrote:
             | Yes, and people have gotten used to the new standard. I
             | know many people who have lost weight, look great and have
             | a healthy amount of body fat. People then say they are "too
             | skinny", but they aren't by any standard measurement and
             | are still heavier than most from 1980s or before. When like
             | 75% of people are overweight, healthy weight people tend to
             | look thin to people (I get these 'too skinny' comments
             | myself occasionally: 5'10" male, 170lbs, ~13-14% bf).
        
           | pantalaimon wrote:
           | How about 25000 years ago?
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
        
             | masswerk wrote:
             | This is close to home, geographically speaking (65km). ;-)
        
         | TheFreim wrote:
         | The idea that St. Thomas Aquinas was "portly" or even obese is
         | likely an exaggeration that occurred over time due to
         | overemphasis of certain aspects of his appearance. Early
         | accounts depict him as being both very _tall_ and _strong_
         | having a _big head_ , often with a build closer to a wrestler
         | or football player than that of an obese man. As far as I can
         | tell, St. Thomas was certainly an imposing figure but people
         | have decided to engage in exaggerations based on some accounts
         | of his appearance to the detriment of others.
         | 
         | For example, one of the earliest works covering St. Thomas'
         | life was written by William de Tocco in the early 14th century,
         | St. Thomas is described as "showing himself a robust and virile
         | man" during manual labor. Contrary to the extremely exaggerated
         | accusations of extreme gluttony by people like Shibley, William
         | de Tocco emphasizes that the physical stature of St. Thomas was
         | in accord with moderate and virtuous conduct which would
         | preclude severe gluttony, "[I]t seems that God had fashioned
         | his body as the noblest of instruments, which St. Thomas always
         | held subservient to acts of virtue and which he never permitted
         | to contravene the judgement of reason."
         | 
         | The iconographic tradition is also not uniform, with large
         | variation across the centuries. I'll link some early depictions
         | of St. Thomas Aquinas from the 14th and 15th century that don't
         | match the "morbidly obese" claims:
         | 
         | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Lippo_Me...
         | 
         | https://www.kressfoundation.org/kress-collection/artwork/498...
         | 
         | https://catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/saint-thomas-aq...
         | 
         | https://catholicclassicalict.wordpress.com/wp-content/upload...
         | 
         | https://www.wikiart.org/en/fra-angelico/st-thomas-aquinas-14...
         | 
         | There is another source I recall reading recently that gave
         | credence to the thinner depictions, but unfortunately I haven't
         | been able to dig it up.
        
           | abrenuntio wrote:
           | It might be added that Dominicans had the explicit calling to
           | crown their preaching by leading virtuous lives marked by
           | poverty. As an example of this, especially in the early days,
           | Dominicans traveled a lot by foot as a form of austerity.
           | This could certainly work with having a bit of a girth, but
           | the full experience of 13th century Dominican life is hard to
           | square with "morbid obesity" or being "physically grotesque".
           | We also know that Aquinas was humble, spiritual and deeply
           | motivated to join this new mendicant order specifically. He
           | resisted all attempts of his noble family to steer him in
           | other directions that would have been more prestigious in the
           | eyes of the world. I also remember reading that Aquinas ate
           | only once a day to devote himself more fully to his work (not
           | sure where though).
        
           | masswerk wrote:
           | > Early accounts depict him as being both very tall and
           | strong having a _big head_
           | 
           | The article, on the other hand, makes a point that the skull
           | is quite small... (which seems to be the principal argument
           | for the rather slim reconstruction)
           | 
           | At this point, it's probably really more a case of
           | iconography (which, for the most, features Aquinas as one of
           | the most prominent portly men in history) than of actual
           | history. But, I think, any concepts or notions guiding the
           | reconstruction should have been provided, and I'm kind of
           | missing these.
        
         | michaelsbradley wrote:
         | It's been awhile since I saw reference to Sister Mary Martha.
         | 
         | SMM is (was -- inactive for 10 years now) an online persona and
         | it's not clear if the blogger was actually a religious sister.
         | The blog's content seems intended mainly as entertainment.
        
         | argentier wrote:
         | Chesterton described Aquinas as looking quite like Chesterton.
         | Judging by the name at least half a millenium separates Myron
         | Shibley from Aquinas.
         | 
         | Can't it just be a myth, as it seems to hang on a single
         | anecdote?
         | 
         | For comparison, the medievals thought that Ovid's name, Publius
         | Ovidius Naso, was because he had a good nose for sniffing out
         | the truth.
        
           | taurknaut wrote:
           | > Chesterton described Aquinas as looking quite like
           | Chesterton.
           | 
           | I was unaware that Chesterton met Aquinas! He must have been
           | quite old at that point.
           | 
           | I can't imagine anything that Chesterton could add to this
           | conversation. He's reading the same texts the rest of us are.
           | TBH this pretty much sums up his entire career.
        
           | masswerk wrote:
           | Of course, this is by no means historic evidence, it's more
           | an example of the common notion of his appearance - and,
           | admittedly, a rather extreme one.
           | 
           | (And, as already mentioned, Umberto Eco kind of made fun of
           | the semblance.)
           | 
           | Regarding Ovid's name, I think, there was kind of a joy in
           | circular evidence, more for aesthetic reasons than others.
           | Compare, "artifex generale nomen vocatur quod artem faciat"
           | (Isidore), or the notion that the lion indeed obscures its
           | tracks by wiping its path by its wagging tail, because the
           | lion is thus the example of Christianity preserving its
           | secrets from its pagan enemies. There's a medieval joy, even
           | satisfaction, in closures and folds, like this.
        
       | MiddleEndian wrote:
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yj1gf2/whatcha_gonna...
        
       | penneyd wrote:
       | Are there any examples of these types of reconstructions where
       | the reconstruction has been performed blind on the skull of
       | someone for which we have photos?
        
         | 725686 wrote:
         | I would also love to see this. I I'm very skeptic about this
         | kinds of reconstructions based only on the remains.
        
         | CobrastanJorji wrote:
         | Yes, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5931631/
         | 
         | Note that the National Library of Medicine is hosted on NIH,
         | and the administration has been scrubbing much of that content,
         | so I think the link works now, but I can't promise that it will
         | stay good.
        
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