FREE THE TROTULA: AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE MEDIEVAL COMPENDIUM OF WOMENS MEDICINE PDF

Monica H. Green | 248 pages | 28 May 2002 | University of Pennsylvania Press | 9780812218084 | English | Pennsylvania, United States Trotula - Wikipedia

Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine. The Trotula was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to the first English translation ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Green here presents a complete English translation of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the midthirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The work is now accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice. Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Temporarily Out of Stock Online Please check back later for updated availability. Overview The Trotula was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Product Details About the Author. About the Author Monica H. Her dual-language critical edition of the Trotula is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. The Middle Ages Series. Project MUSE - The Trotula

The Trotula was the most influential compendium on women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to this first edition of the Latin text since the sixteenth century, and the first English translation of the book ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Arguing that these texts can be understood only within the intellectual and social context that produced them, Green analyzes them against the background of historical gynecological literature as well as current knowledge about women's lives in twelfth-century southern Italy. She examines the history and composition of the three works and introduces the reader to the medical culture of medieval Salerno from which they emerged. Among her findings is that the second of the three texts, "On the Treatments for Women," does derive from the work of a Salernitan woman healer named Trota. However, the other two texts—"On the Conditions of Women" and "On Women's Cosmetics"—are probably of male authorship, a fact indicating the complex gender relations surrounding the production and use of knowledge about the female body. Through an exhaustive study of the extant manuscripts of the TrotulaGreen presents a critical edition of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine form of the texts that was produced in the mid-thirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The facing-page complete English translation makes the work accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. Institutional Login. LOG IN. In this Book. Additional Information. Table of Contents. Cover p. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication pp. Contents pp. List of Illustrations pp. Preface pp. Introduction pp. Edition and Translation of the Standardized Trotula Ensemble pp. Notes pp. Bibliography pp. Index Nominum et Locorum pp. Index Verborum pp. General Index pp. Project MUSE Mission Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Eliot Prose. Contact Contact Us Help. The Trotula | Monica H. Green

Trotula is a name referring to a group of three texts on women's medicine that were composed in the southern Italian port town of Salerno in the 12th century. The name derives from a historic female figure, Trota of Salernoa physician and medical writer who was associated with one of the three texts. However, "Trotula" came to be understood as a real person in the Middle Ages and because the so-called Trotula texts circulated widely throughout medieval Europefrom Spain to Poland, and Sicily to Ireland, "Trotula" has historic importance in "her" own right. In the 12th century, the southern Italian port town of Salerno was widely reputed as "the most important center for the introduction of Arabic medicine into Western Europe". They The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine topics from childbirth to cosmetics, relying on varying sources from Galen to oral traditions, providing practical instructions. These works vary in both organization and content. For the next several hundred years, the Trotula ensemble circulated throughout Europe, reaching its greatest popularity in the 14th century. More than copies exist today of the Latin texts, and over 60 copies of the many medieval vernacular translations. The Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum "Book on the Conditions of Women" was novel in its adoption of the new Arabic medicine that had just begun to make inroads into Europe. As Green demonstrated inConditions of Women draws heavily on the gynecological and obstetrical chapters of the ViaticumConstantine the African 's Latin translation of Ibn al-Jazzar's Arabic Zad al-musafirwhich had been completed in the late 11th century. Galen, as opposed to other notable physicians, believed that menstruation was a necessary and healthy purgation. Indeed, the author presents a positive view of the role of menstruation in women's health and fertility: "Menstrual blood is special because it carries in it a living being. It works like a tree. Before bearing fruit, a tree must first bear flowers. Menstrual blood is like the flower: it must emerge before the fruit—the baby —can be born. Seemingly conflicted between two different theoretical positions—one that suggested it was possible for the womb to "wander" within the body, and another which saw such movement as anatomically impossible—the author seems to The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine the possibility that the womb rises to the respiratory organs. There are discussions on topics covering menstrual disorders and uterine prolapse, chapters on childbirth and pregnancy, in addition to many others. De curis mulierum "On Treatments for Women" is the only The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine of the three Trotula texts that is actually attributed to the Salernitan practitioner Trota of Salerno when it circulated as an independent text. However, it has been argued that it is perhaps better to refer to Trota as the "authority" who stands behind this text than its actual author. There is a lack of cohesion, but there are sections related to gynecological, andrological, pediatric, cosmetic, and general medical conditions. In a work stressing female medical issues, remedies for men's disorders are included as well. De ornatu mulierum "On Women's Cosmetics" is a treatise that teaches how to conserve and improve women's beauty. It opens with a preface later omitted from the Trotula ensemble in which the author refers to himself with a masculine pronoun and explains his ambition to earn "a delightful multitude of friends" by assembling this body of learning on care of the hair including bodily hairface, lips, teeth, mouth, and in the original version the genitalia. As Green has noted, The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine author likely hoped for a wide audience, for he observed that women beyond the Alps would not have access to the spas that Italian women did and therefore included instructions for an alternative steam bath. One therapy that he claims to have personally witnessed, was created by a Sicilian woman, and he The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine another remedy on the same topic mouth odor which he himself endorses. Otherwise, the rest of the text seems to gather together remedies learned from empirical practitioners: he explicitly describes ways that he has incorporated "the rules of women whom I found to be practical in practicing the art of cosmetics. Six times in the original version of the text, the author credits specific practices to Muslim women, whose cosmetic practices are known to have been imitated by Christian women on Sicily. And the text overall presents an image of an international market of spices and aromatics regularly traded in the Islamic world. Frankincense, cloves, The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine, nutmeg, and galangal are all used repeatedly. More than the other two texts that would make up the Trotula ensemble, the De ornatu mulierum seems to capture both the empiricism of local southern Italian culture and the rich material culture made available as the Norman kings of southern Italy embraced Islamic culture on Sicily. The Trotula texts are considered the "most popular assembly of materials on women's medicine from the late twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Certain versions of the Trotula enjoyed a pan-European circulation. These works reached their peak popularity in Latin around the turn of the 14th century. The many medieval vernacular translations carried the texts' popularity into the 15th century and, in Germany and England, the 16th. All three Trotula texts circulated for several centuries as independent texts. Each is found in several different versions, likely due to the interventions of later editors or scribes. In all, when she surveyed the entire extant corpus of Trotula manuscripts inGreen identified eight different versions of the Latin Trotula ensemble. These versions differ sometimes in wording, but more obviously by the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of certain material. The trend toward using vernacular languages for medical writing began in the 12th century, and grew increasingly in the later Middle Ages. The first known translation was into Hebrewmade somewhere in southern France in the late 12th century. This fragmentary translation of the De curis mulierum is here collated The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine the copyist probably a surgeon making a copy for his own use with a Latin version of the text, highlighting the differences. The existence of vernacular translations suggests that the Trotula texts were finding new audiences. Almost assuredly they were, but not necessarily women. Only seven of the nearly two dozen medieval translations are explicitly addressed to female audiences, and even some of those translations were co-opted by male readers. Medieval readers of the Trotula texts would have had no reason to doubt the attribution they found in the manuscripts, and so "Trotula" assuming they understood the word as a personal name instead of a title was accepted as an authority on women's medicine. The physician Petrus Hispanus midth centuryfor example, cited "domina Trotula" Lady Trotula multiple times in his section on women's gynecological and obstetrical conditions. The Amiens chancellor, poet, and physician, Richard de Fournival d. Alongside "her" role as a medical authority, "Trotula" came to serve a new function starting in the 13th century: that of a mouthpiece for misogynous views on the nature of women. In part, this was connected to a general trend to acquire information about the "secrets of women", that is, the processes of generation. When the Munich physician Johannes Hartlieb d. The Trotula texts first appeared in print inquite late in the trend toward printing, which for medical texts had begun in the s. The Trotula was published not because it was still of immediate clinical use to learned physicians it had been superseded in that role by a variety of other texts in the 15th century[35] but because it had been newly "discovered" as a witness to empirical medicine by a Strasbourg publisher, Johannes Schottus. Schottus persuaded a physician colleague, Georg Kraut, to edit the Trotulawhich Schottus then included in a volume he called Experimentarius medicinae "Collection of Tried-and-True Remedies of Medicine"which also included the Physica of Trota of Salerno 's near contemporary, Hildegard of Bingen. He also took the liberty of altering The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Womens Medicine text here and there. As Green has noted, "The irony of Kraut's attempt to endow 'Trotula' with a single, orderly, fully rationalized text was that, in the process, he was to obscure for the next years the distinctive contributions of the historic woman Trota. Kraut and his publisher, Schottus retained the attribution of the text s to "Trotula. Schottus praised her as "a woman by no means of the common sort, but rather one of great experience and erudition. From then until the 18th century, the Trotula was treated as if it were an ancient text. As Green notes, "'Trotula', therefore, in contrast to Hildegard, survived the scrutiny of Renaissance humanists because she was able to escape her medieval associations. But it was this very success that would eventually 'unwoman' her. When the Trotula was reprinted in eight further editions between andit was not because it was the work of a woman but because it was the work of an antiquissimus auctor "a very ancient author". The idea came from Hadrianus Junius Aadrian DeJonghe, —75a Dutch physician who believed that textual corruptions accounted for many false attributions of ancient texts. As Green has noted, however, even though the erasure of "Trotula" was more an act of humanist editorial zeal than blatant misogyny, the fact that there were now no female authors left in the emerging canon of writers on gynecology and obstetrics was never noted. If "Trotula" as a female author had no use to humanist physicians, that was not necessarily true of other intellectuals. Here is the origin of the belief that "Trotula" held a chair at the university of Salerno: "There flourished in the fatherland, teaching at the university [studium] and lecturing from their professorial chairs, Abella, Mercuriadis, Rebecca, Trotta whom some people call "Trotula"all of whom ought to be celebrated with marvelous encomia as Tiraqueau has notedas well as Sentia Guarna as Fortunatus Fidelis has said. Mazza, concerned to document the glorious history of his patria, Salerno, may have been attempting to show that Padua could not claim priority in having produced female professors. In in Jena, C. Gruner challenged the idea that the Trotula was an ancient text, but he also dismissed the idea that "Trotula" could have been the text's author working with Kraut's edition, he, too, thought it was a single text since she was cited internally. And so the stage was set for debates about "Trotula" in the 19th and 20th centuries. For skeptics and there were many grounds for skepticismit was easy to find cause for doubt that there was really any female medical authority behind this chaotic text. This was the state of affairs in the s, when second-wave feminism discovered "Trotula" anew. From up through the s, all claims about an alleged author "Trotula," pro or con, were based on Georg Kraut's Renaissance printed text. But that was a fiction, in that it had erased all last signs that the Trotula had been compiled out of the works of three different authors. Benton published a study surveying previous thinking on the question of "Trotula's" association with the Trotula texts. This was not one text, and there was no "one" author. Rather, it was three different texts. For example, the epithet "de Ruggiero" attached to her name was sheer invention. Likewise, claims about her date of birth or death, or who "her" husband or sons were had no foundation. After Benton's death inMonica H. Green picked up the task of publishing a new translation of the Trotula that could be used by students and scholars of the history of medicine and medieval women. However, Benton's own discoveries had rendered irrelevant any further reliance on the Renaissance edition, so Green undertook a complete survey of all the extant Latin manuscripts of the Trotula and a new edition of the Trotula ensemble. Perhaps the best known popularization of "Trotula" was in the artwork The Dinner Party by Judy Chicagonow on permanent exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Artwhich features a place setting for "Trotula. Chicago's celebration of "Trotula" no doubt led to the proliferation of modern websites that mention her, many of which repeat without correction the discarded misunderstandings noted above. Likewise, medical writers, in trying to indicate the history of women in their field, or the history of certain gynecological conditions, keep recycling outworn understandings of "Trotula" or even inventing new misunderstandings. That it is taking even longer for popular understandings of Trota and "Trotula" to catch up with this scholarship, has raised the question whether celebrations of Women's History ought not include more recognition of the processes by which that record is discovered and assembled. Since Green's edition of the standardized Trotula ensemble appeared inmany libraries have been making high-quality digital images available of their medieval manuscripts. The following is a list of manuscripts of the Trotula that are now available for online consultation. In addition to the shelfmark, the index number is given from either Green's handlist of Latin manuscripts of the Trotula texts, or Green's handlist of manuscripts of medieval vernacular translations. Search under the Library and then the individual shelfmark. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Green, ed. The text of the original preface can be found in Monica H. See also Monica H. Cambridge: D. Leyser and L. Smith Aldershot: Ashgate,pp. A Bilingual Anthologyed. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,pp. Jefferson and A.