Domestic Medicine and Society in Early Modern Italy

Communities of Healing: Domestic Medicine and Society in Early Modern Italy

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY

Emily Beck

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Advised by Jole Shackelford

April 2018

i Acknowledgements

As the granddaughter of restauranteurs and doctors, I can't quantify how fortunate

I feel to have spent my graduate career in the pages of handwritten medical recipe books.

I grew up in kitchens, learned how to have a healthy argument at the dinner table, and analyzed every bite of food with my family, readily consulting our food reference collection. From my earliest lessons of the embodied culinary knowledge of my great grandmothers to the most recent historiographical suggestions from my advisers, I have had many teachers who have been instrumental to my success.

All my instructors and advisers at Smith College contributed to helping me build a foundation from which I learned to ask questions, dig deeper in research, and follow threads regardless of how wandering they might have been. I credit Alfonso Procaccini and my other Italian teachers and our lessons in the garden with my knowledge of Italian.

I may never be as proficient as I hope in the language, but I acquired enough curiosity and enthusiasm from them to make up for my lack of innate ability.

The community I have found at the University of Minnesota has been instrumental to making this project a success. The intellectual diversity of my home department, the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, has given me the tools to ask cross-disciplinary questions and the confidence to appeal to broad audiences. Jole Shackelford has read many versions of this project over many years, and somehow always maintains the ability to make corrections, offer suggestions, and tell jokes, all with the same red pen. This project and my sense of humor have benefitted much from his counsel. The Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World has given

ii me fundamental opportunities to find a group of scholars and friends who have become my recipe community and important sounding boards for ideas both good and bad in this dissertation project. My library family at the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine has been fundamental to my success with this project, and in graduate school in general. The mentorship I have received from Lois Hendrickson and Elaine

Challacombe from my very first day at the University of Minnesota has ensured my success in many ways.

I also have much to credit to those off campus. My dissertation simply could not have happened without my many paleography instructors at the Minnesota Manuscript

Research Laboratory, Rare Book School, the Medici Project, and the Newberry Library. I learned much about the history of culinary recipes from Barbara Ketcham Wheaton and my classmates at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. Librarians, archivists, and curators in London, Milan, Genova, Bergamo, Bologna, Venice, Vicenza, Padua, Florence, and

Modena provided encouragement as well as practical and intellectual assistance on innumerable occasions while I did my research. My hosts in all of those cities lifted my spirits and fed me well on many occasions, and I am grateful for them.

I have received generous support for my dissertation research from the Graduate

School, the Center for Early Modern History, the Consortium for the Study of the

Premodern World, the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, and the Cushing/Whitney Library at Yale. Parts of this project have been presented at the History of Science Society, the Medieval Academy of

iii America, and the Minnesota-Ontario-Manitoba-Saskatchewan conferences, and I appreciate the feedback from those meetings.

It goes without saying that I could have neither embarked upon nor completed this project without the patience, support, and encouragement of my friends and family. I am especially indebted to the many strong women who have taught and challenged me, talked with me, and cooked with me, supporting my development as a scholar and as a human. I am lucky to have parents who encouraged me and respected my decisions about what my academic path should be. Their sacrifices have made it possible for me to spend almost my entire life on learning, a privilege for which I will always be grateful. Finally,

I’m sure there will never be another computer programmer with as much knowledge of early modern recipe culture as Ken has gamely acquired alongside me over the past few years. There are not enough words to adequately thank Ken, but he has wholeheartedly, unfailingly supported me and my completion of this project.

iv Abstract

Many scholars have employed a variety of means to investigate the interactions

between the range of people who practiced medicine in the early modern period, from

charlatans and midwives to physicians and surgeons. These non-academic practitioners have been marginalized by previous histories of medicine, which reflect both their absence in contemporary printed works as well as the origins of the history of medicine as a field that prioritized finding the roots of modern medical practice. Recovering lay

histories requires looking beyond printed treatises to working texts such as formularies,

recipe collections, and other ephemera. This project investigates the form, movements,

and activities of lay healers and their practices in the medical marketplace of early

modern northern and central Italy.

In this project, I propose that the anonymous manuscript medical recipe books of laypeople can be dissected to provide further information about not only interactions

between healers, but also the theories, supplies, context, and educational practices of non-

professional healers. Influenced by works in microhistory, chapters one, two, and three

present focused investigations of small groups of manuscripts in order to contextualize

the practice of medicine in northern and central Italy. Chapter one examines three

manuscript recipe books written by a Capuchin monk, showing how laypeople drew on

the rhetoric of printed medical books and offered medical education to their brethren.

Chapter three also draws on these manuscripts, but turns to questions of the patient

population that the author anticipated his practice would treat. Although information

about specific patients is generally lacking in manuscript recipe books, focusing on

v recipes for women provides a rich set of information from which to draw conclusions about the medical interactions between clerical men and women in surrounding communities.

Chapter two is a comparison of recipe writings in manuscript recipe books and in the first pharmacopoeia in Florence, the Ricettario Fiorentino. This comparison lends itself to enlivening how historians understand the ways knowledge changed, circulated, was adopted, or was ignored by both professional and lay healers from the late fifteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries.

In chapter four, I claim that manuscript recipe books provide a rich source of information about the material context in which laypeople created medicines and healed their patients. Rather than allowing incongruent themes like veterinary medicine, beauty aids, and mischief to fall to the side for thematic consistency, this chapter asserts that examining all these manuscript recipe book entries together leads to a more holistic picture of the landscape of lay healing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.

vi Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES ...... VII INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER 1: LAY MEDICAL EDUCATION IN MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOKS: WELLCOME MSS. 689, 690, & 691 ...... 22 CHAPTER 2: AUTHORITY, AUTHORSHIP, AND COPYING: PROVENANCE RECORDS IN THE RICETTARIO FIORENTINO AND TUSCAN MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOKS ...... 79 CHAPTER 3: MONASTIC MEDICINE & FEMALE PATIENTS ...... 137 CHAPTER 4: BEYOND HEALING: DOMESTIC MEDICINE AND THE CULTURE OF MAKING ...... 203 CONCLUSION...... 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 277 APPENDICES ...... 299 I. SYMBOLS FOR WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND COMMON ABBREVIATIONS ...... 299 II. PROHEMEO, OLIMPIA FITTIPALDI, NUOVO RICETTARIO FIORENTINO (1498) TESTO E LINGUA, 18...... 299 III. RECIPE AUTHOR REFERENCES IN THE 1498 AND 1567 EDITIONS OF THE RICETTARIO FIORENTINO ...... 301 IV. RECIPE AUTHORS WITH MULTIPLE REFERENCES IN MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES FEATURED IN CHAPTER 2...... 302 V. GLOSSERY ...... 304

vii

List of Figures

Figure 1 & 2. Pg. 34. Letter to the reader, Wellcome ms. 689, 38r-v. Figure 3 & 4. Pg. 44. Frontispieces, Giulio Boninsegna, Ricettario. Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio. Figures 5 & 6. Pg. 46. Gasparo di Cagali, Libro di Ricette Medicinali, Manuscript. c. 1529. ms. 174, Cover and Flyleaf. Figure 7. Pg. 62. Almanac for the year 1485, Augsburg: Johann Bämler. Courtesy of the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. Figure 8. Pg. 93. Frontispiece, Nuovo Receptario... 1498. (Luigi Crocetti. Collana di facsimili a cura della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze. 1968.

Figure 9. Pg. 93. Frontispiece, Ricettario Fiorentino... 1567. (Digitized by Universitats- und Landesbibliothek Dusseldorf). Figure 10. Pg. 102. "Olio di Mandragora di Niccolao" with the annotation, "Mirifice operat contra Hepatis calorem." Ricettario Fiorentino, 1623, 255. Wangensteen historical Library of Biology and Medicine. Figure 11. Pg. 117. Weights and measures, Ricettario Fiorentino 1498 - Facsimile del l'esemplare Palatino E. 6. 1. 27 della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, ed. Luigi Crocetti. Part 3. Figure. 12. Pg. 126. Common Recipe #1 – Pillole di Reubarbero secondo Mesue.

Figure 13. Pg. 128. Common Recipe #2- Diacimino di Nicolao.

Figure. 14. Pg. 130. Common Recipe #3 – Pillole di Maestro Antonio dalla Scarperia.

Figure 15. Pg. 148. Image of the uterus in Vesalius's Epitome, 1543. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. Figure 16. Pg. 172. Frequency of ailments and body parts in Wellcome mss 689, 690, and 691. Figure 17. Pg. 218. Marginal drawing with the caption "To make hair beautiful" next to the recipe to make hair longer and curlier in Wellcome ms 529, p. 50. Figure 18. Pg. 240. Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del Cavallo... (Venetia: Fioravanti Prati, 1618): 235.

viii Figure 19. Pg. 240. Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del Cavallo... (Venetia: Fioravanti Prati, 1618): 245. Figure 20. Pg. 241. Giambattista della Porta, Della fisonomia dell'huomo: libri sei (Padoua: Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1623): 71v. Figure 21. Pg. 246. Manuscript sketches of horses in Riccardiana Manuscript 3049, 13v- 14r. Figure 22. Pg. 251. Image of a "serpent" next to a recipe forgetting rid of serpents or other animals inside of the body. Gasparo di Cagali, Libro di Ricette Medicinali (1529). Wellcome manuscript 174. 37r.

Figure 23. Pg. 262. Upupa in Konrad Gesner, Historiae Animalium, vol. 1 (Tiguri: C. Froschoverum, 1551): 703. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine.

Figure 24. Pg. 264. Image of a dissection featuring a window made of occhi. Johannes Ketham, Fasiculus Medicie, 1522. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, University of Minnesota.

Introduction

“Communities of Healing: Gender, Domestic Medicine, and Society in Early

Modern Italy” considers the form, movements, and activities of lay healers and their

practices in the medical marketplace of early modern northern and central Italy. Although

medical schools and medical guilds had existed in Italy for centuries, the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries saw shifts in the way that university-educated physicians attempted

to maintain their position at the top of the medico-legal hierarchy and gain power over

other kinds of practitioners. The introduction of pharmacopoeias and protomedicati were

some of only a few medical regulatory tools that medical colleges and cities employed to

restrict specific kinds of practice to specific kinds of practitioners. Systems of education

and licensure were supposed to ensure the public welfare as well as the stability and

prestige of the medical establishment.

In reality, however, medical practice continued much as it had in previous

centuries in homes, in shops, and in religious spaces. The act of making was fundamental to everyday life. Individuals expected to make everything from soap and ink to food and

painkillers rather than purchase pre-made products produced by laborers, artisans, or professionals. Thus, regulations about the ways that physicians and apothecaries made

decisions about treatments and the formulas for medicines set forth by cities in their

pharmacopoeiae influenced the ways that individuals made their own decisions and

medications. The handwritten recipes for medicines of all sorts that circulated within

literate vernacular communities were an essential component of the way that people had

always and would continue to exert their power of choice on the medical marketplace,

2 which included university-professionals, itinerant practitioners, midwives,

grandmothers, and priests.

Although the major cities of northern and central Italy, like Venice, Florence, and

Genoa, enjoyed higher literacy rates than many places in Europe, as well as more robust

printing presses than almost anywhere else, the personal writings of non-professional

practitioners are difficult for scholars to come by. These individuals did not publish the

details of their day-to-day, mundane activities, so their names are, for the most part, lost to the wind. Thankfully, there are many anonymous, undated manuscript medical recipe books in which these practitioners recorded their reference material that remain in rare book libraries and archives. These documents are rich in detail about the illnesses they treated, the patients they saw, and the people from whom they learned about medicines, health, and illness.

The social turn in the history of medicine has resulted in an abundance of recent scholarship about the people who participated in medical care aside from official physicians.1 Work on charlatans, midwives, apothecaries, surgeons, and others has enriched our understanding of how practitioners competed and collaborated, developed and justified their areas of expertise, and operated within or ignored social, political, and religious boundaries. Some scholars have, for example, turned to legal records to investigate the people who received special licenses to practice, as well as the people who

1 Mary E. Fissell, “Making Meaning from the Margins: The New Cultural History of Medicine,” in Locating Medical History: Their Stories and Their Meanings, ed. Frank Huisman and John Harley Warner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 364-389.

3 were taken to court by unhappy patients (or the families of deceased patients).2 Others

have attempted to reconstruct networks of communication between natural historians,

apothecaries, and others.3 Patients are, as in every time period, much more difficult to pin

down than practitioners, but recent scholarship on the experience of health and illness in

the early modern period has begun to reveal the ways in which people understood and

experienced their bodies.4

Conversations within the history of science and medicine have cast and re-cast the history of popular medicine and science – in terms of folklore, magic, and mystery – in a variety of lights. Some, like David Harley, have argued that the tendency to situate midwives and other female practitioners in terms of magic and witchcraft was almost entirely incorrect.5 Others, such as David Gentilcore, have suggested proceeding with

caution and recognizing that magic and witchcraft occupied early modern people’s minds

and contextualized their experiences with health and illness.6 The continuum on which

academic and popular medicine interacted continues to be complicated to investigate

because of the variety of ways in which people of different genders and backgrounds met,

interacted, worked together, and shared knowledge.

2 Gianna Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 3 Valentina Pugliano, “Botanici e Artigiani a Venezia: I (Pochi) Amici di Carolus Clusius,” Yearbook for European Culture of Science 6 (2011): 1-25. 4 Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 5 D.N. Harley, “Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch," Social History of Medicine 3 (1990): 1-26. 6 David Gentilcore, “Was there a ‘Popular Medicine’ in Early Modern Europe?” Folklore 115 (2004): 151-166.

4 It is not for no reason that this is a difficult gap to close. Many of these participants, who are only referenced in shadowy ways in the historiography, did not leave behind written records, or were not literate, or do not appear in the records of the natural historians and physicians who employed and worked with them. Traces of some of them have been reconstructed by those who study early modern networks of natural historians who traded specimens and attempted to document the entirety of the natural world.7 The ways that people of different backgrounds worked together appear, for

example, in the records of such early scientific journals as the Philosophical Transactions

of the Royal Society, reminds scholars of the importance of understanding the mechanics of performing early modern medicine and science.8

Manuscript recipe books are a genre that was largely ignored by scholars until

about twenty years ago, likely for a variety of reasons. These volumes rarely have named

authors, rarely include dates or geographic references, and usually arrive in the hands of

scholars without contextual information or associated documents that might shed light on

7 See, for example: Deborah E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); David Freedberg, Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Karen Meier Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991). 8 For example, John Lightfoot recounted, "The nest and eggs of the bird I am about to describe first attracted my attention, and led to the discovery of the bird itself. They were repeatedly brought by a fisherman on the Uxbridge river, in the parish of Denham, to her grace the Duchess Dowager of Portland, who first communicated them to me. They were supposed by the fisherman to belong to the Sedge-bird of PENNANT, or Motacilla Salicaria of LINNAEUS; but being well acquainted with the nest and eggs of this, I was very sure he was mistaken, though he actually produced this bird as the true proprietor of the subjects in question." John Lightfoot, "An account of an English bird of the genis Motacilla, supposed to be hitherto unnoticed by British ornithologists; observed by the Rev. John Lightfoot, M.A. F.R.S. In a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P.R.S.," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 75 (1785): 8.

5 the lives of the authors and / or patients. This striking lack of information, which

historians seek in order to write narrative histories, is, perhaps, unappealing and

confusing, which does not help the aforementioned historiographical bias that tends to

relegate these practices in general to the sidelines. Elaine Leong and other scholars

working on the English context have, however, demonstrated the possibilities for

enriching our understanding of household and other non-professional medical contexts by

using manuscript medical recipe books.9

Additionally, recent advances in digital technologies and the advent of digital

humanities mean that there is a new wealth of tools that researchers can employ to

examine these masses of recipes in new ways and apply different kinds of numerical

analysis to them, allowing new pieces of information to appear and patterns in writing to

emerge. David Gentilcore and Tessa Storey's extensive database of Italian books of

secrets and Barbara Ketcham Wheaton's lifelong project of entering all western printed cookbooks into a database are indications that future scholars will continue to embrace connections between digital humanities and recipes research.10 Mapping and other kinds

9 Elaine Leong, "Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowldge in the Early Modern English Household,” Centaurus 55 (2013): 81-103; Elaine Leong and Sara Pennell, “Recipe Collections and the Currency of Medical Knowledge in the Early Modern ‘Medical Marketplace,” in Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c. 1450-1850, eds. Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis, (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007): 138. Sara Pennell, “Perfecting Practice? Women, Manuscript Recipes and Knowledge in Early Modern England,” in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing. Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004): 237–58. Jennifer K. Stein, Opening Closets: The Discovery of Household Medicine in Early Modern England, Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996. 10 David Gentilcore & Tessa Storey, Italian Books of Secrets Database (Leicester: School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, 2008). Accessed 7 December 2017.

6 of numerical analysis allow scholars to view patterns that are otherwise invisible, or

discernable only with decades of study.

Microhistory

Essentially, this project uses approaches from microhistory and employs

techniques of both close and distant reading in order to paint a vivid picture of the

landscape of lay healing in early modern northern and central Italy. The pioneering

microhistory The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg showed scholars the potential of looking very closely at a very small case study and using it to contextualize larger trends in the cultural and social atmosphere of the era of study.11 In a later analysis

of the genre(s) of microhistory, Ginzburg asserted that

Italian microhistory has confronted the question of comparison with a different and, in a certain sense, opposite approach: through the anomalous, not analogous. First of all, it hypothesizes the more improbable sort of documentation as being potentially richer: the "exceptional 'normal'" of Edoardo Grendi's justly famous quip. Second, it demonstrates... that any social structure is the result of interaction and of numerous individual strategies, a fabric that can only be reconstituted from close observation... This heterogeneity, the implications of which we

https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/4335; Bee Wilson, "The Archive of Eating: One 84-year- old librarian has spent more than half her life building a comprehensive database of cookbooks throughout history," The New York Times Magazine, October 29, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/the-archive-of-eating.html 11 Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). For recent reviews of this work see William Monter, "Review of Llo formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un munagio del '500," The Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009): 117-120, and James S. Amelang, "Review of The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller," The Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009): 31-34.

7 are just beginning to perceive, constitutes both the greatest difficulty and the greatest potential benefit of microhistory.12

Here, (mostly) anonymous manuscript recipe books provide access to the ways in

which lay practitioners interacted with each other, professional medical practitioners, and

patients, constructing their healer identities and taking in diverse kinds of medical

knowledge from all kinds of sources. Where The Cheese and the Worms followed an

individual in a single community, I closely examine the de-contextualized individual manuscripts of authors who are otherwise unknown to the history of medicine. Although these volumes lack specific details about individual interactions, they are deliberately constructed documents that reflect experience and anticipated interactions, as well as their authors’ hopes that they would be seen as reliable providers and educators. By

examining many manuscript recipe books together, the documents can be made to

contextualize each other, showing the tendencies, general questions, and theoretical

justifications that lay authors wrestled with in their medical writings. These manuscripts

also provide an avenue for exploring the culture of making in general, permitting

questions about the categorization of “medicine” as an individual practice in general to

rise to the surface.

Gender & Sources

Much of the existing scholarship on medical recipe books and domestic medicine

has focused exclusively on English and German noblewomen. However, scholars like

12 Carlo Ginzburg, "Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It," Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 33.

8 David Gentilcore have insisted that crucial differences between England and the Italian peninsula render comparison of Italy with northern Europe problematic. Italy is a particularly meaningful location in which to study recipe books because of its status as a center for printing, medical training, and economic wealth in the period when medical texts began to appear in print and the intellectual and social atmosphere of Europe was shifting. The northern and central regions of the Italian peninsula, home to the powerhouse territorial centers of Florence and Venice and the medical centers of Bologna and Padua, will be the main focus of my study. The cities and their hinterlands were significant locales in the sixteenth century because they contained important printing houses, stood in communication with transalpine Europe, and because of their roles as economic and intellectual centers in the Mediterranean and Europe.13 These cities were early centers for the production and distribution of vernacular medical works. They represent areas of political power, wealth, and intellect that placed value on medical knowledge and thus supported thriving communities of established medical practitioners.

Manuscripts from other areas in northern and central Italy will also be part of this study, as they augment the assessment of the medical knowledge available throughout the region.14

Although the lack of scholarship on Italian manuscript recipes might indicate a paucity of sources, manuscript recipe books abound in libraries and archives across Italy

13 Dario Del Puppo, "All The World is a Book: Italian Renaissance Printing in a Global Perspective,” Textual Cultures 6, no. 2 (Autumn 2011): 1-22. 14 The manuscripts consulted in this dissertation come from libraries in Milan, Bergamo, Genova, Bologna, Venice, Vicenza, Padua, Florence, and Modena. Although it is frequently unclear whether the manuscripts originated in the cities in which they currently reside, it is likely that they did not travel far.

9 and in other European collections (I also draw on the Italian manuscript corpus that is part of the Wellcome Collection’s library). I employ these specific manuscripts here because of a combination of factors, including legibility, access to existing digitized images or the ability to create new ones, and variety of content. Some archives, like the municipal archives of Modena, contain large numbers of single sheets of recipes. Because of my focus on recipe books as a genre, however, I have chosen not to include these loose manuscript collections in this study.

Practices and Practitioners in the Medical Marketplace

Deciding on a single set of terms to define the people and the practices they undertook in these manuscript recipe books is a near impossibility, but for the sake of clarity, I will regularly refer to the linked concepts of the medical marketplace and professional and non-professional (or lay) medical practitioners. The historiography of non-professional practitioners and other participants in the medical marketplace has continually expanded since social and cultural methodologies became popular in historical disciplines in the mid- to late-twentieth century. The concept of a marketplace has become a fundamental framework in which to understand interactions between groups of individuals in early modern medicine. As Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis explain in the introduction to Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c.

1450- c. 1850, the concept of the medical marketplace has opened the field, which was once dominated by a narrow, discipline-bound definition of medicine, to allow historians

10 to understand the lines between groups of practitioners and patients as blurred.15 This

method of contextualizing medical practice in the early modern period also provides

space for scholars to recognize the power of choice and marketing that patients and non-

official healers exerted. The medical marketplace today represents the complex

relationships and interactions between more loosely defined practitioner groups of

academic physicians, apothecaries, surgeons, charlatans, itinerant practitioners, legal

systems, merchants, religious figures, domestic practitioners, and patients. The medical

marketplace is a powerful theoretical approach because it shows how intangible

advantages, like prestige, relationships, and authority, were made and negotiated

alongside material goods. The advantages found within this medical marketplace were

fundamental to the functioning of its complex network of buyers and sellers.

Throughout this project, I will refer to two umbrella categories of practitioners:

professional and nonprofessional, or lay, healers. Medicine has arguably had professional

status since the foundation of the first European universities in Italy, France, and

Germany. Physicians learned and practiced medicine much earlier, but the organizational and regulatory structures of university colleges of medicine began the effort of standardizing the education and practice of learned physicians, medical doctors, and licentiates. Later additions, to arrive at different points in time in different locations, of guilds, medico-legal boards, and territorial licensure solidified the medical hierarchy of practice and increased the power of academically trained physicians in early modern communities. Official regulations were certainly not universally followed (or perhaps

15 Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis, Medicine and the market in England and its Colonies, c. 1450- c. 1850 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007): 2.

11 even expected to be followed), but the growing sixteenth-century hope that

academically-trained physicians could control the activities of all other medical

practitioners using a variety of methods was an important feature of the Italian medical

landscape.

Non-professional healers, however, preceded the universities and have been the

primary occupiers of this market for centuries before the more modern developments in

laboratory sciences began to shift medicine into a practice that required and was subject

to very specific instrumentation, spaces, legislation, and drug production techniques.

Although recent scholars have recognized the existence and legitimacy of lay medical

practice in the early modern period, as mentioned above, there has historically been an

unfortunate tendency to assign these healers to lesser categories like “herb women,”

“empirick,” and “folk.”16 Although discussing charlatanry, Gentilcore notes that diverse

16 Margaret Pelling has done careful work to avoid classifying non-licensed practitioners in this way, and suggests that the lack of serious attention to practitioners that lay between "elite physicians, and their polar opposites, the least orthodox among the irregulars... has been the historiography constructed by medical practitioners themselves as part of their urgent need to acquire credentials as a learned profession." (Margaret Pelling, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London: Longman, 1998): 3). These medical authors mentioned herb women, for example, alongside bone-setters and witches, leading to this casual classification of certain kinds of medical practice as fringe (for example, Grace Forman, "The Treatment of Families in Which There is Sickness," The American Journal of Nursing 3 (1903): 540). The impact of contemporary observers, however, on the way that later historians categorized medicine cannot be denied. For example, "Thomas Johnson, one of England's best botanists, deplored in 1632 the common attitude that a mere book knowledge of plants was sufficient for medical botany. Doctors and dealers endangered their patients by buying plants from herb-women who, he charged, frequently misrepresented - if they really knew - the species sold. Good medical botany... must replace 'the herbal knowledge of an ignorant and crafty woman.'" (Neal C. Gillespie, Natural History, Natural Theology, and Social Order: John Ray and the 'Newtonian Ideology,'" Journal of the HIstory of Biology 20 (1987): 15.)

12 kinds of practitioners are regularly cast in opposing dichotomies: "regular vs.

fringe/irregular medicine; orthodox vs. unorthodox; learned vs. popular/folk/primitive;

official vs. unofficial; licensed/authorized vs. unlicensed/unauthorized; conventional vs.

alternative/unconventional; scientific vs. naturopathic; and biomedicine vs. holistic

medicine."17 Studies like this one demonstrate the inaccuracy of categorizing

practitioners, whether licensed or not, in individual categories, and highlights the

importance of instead recognizing that most, if not all, healers operated within a fluid

continuum of theories and practices.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online includes three examples for the term “folk-

medicine,” the first of which – from 1898 – seems to resonate especially well with much

of the current usage in the historiography of medicine: “Folk-medicine, the wide world

through, is full of prescriptions based on sympathetic or antipathetic magic.”18 While not

incorrect - there were many aspects of lay healing that included elements of magic - the categorization of lay medicine as “folk” with an undercurrent of magic has a tendency to reflect the anachronistically-applied nineteenth and twentieth-century skepticism about magic rather than the early modern reality that magic was a fundamental, legitimate part of everyday, as well as academic, life alongside the use of herbs from kitchen gardens,

17 David Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford University Press, 2006): 52. 18 E. Clodd, Tom Tit Tot. An essay on savage philosophy in folklore, London: Duckworth & Co: 1898, in “folk-medicine n.”, The Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed July 16, 2017.

13 minerals, and animal parts in medicines.19 This combination was entirely normalized across almost all types of medicine in this era. It is useful to recall that magic, in its astrological and religious forms, was securely located in the academy until far beyond the

era in question. Indeed, in a review of Folk Healing and Health Care Practices in Britain

and Ireland: Stethoscopes, Wands, and Crystals, Lucinda Myles McCray writes,

Folk healing can be either the culturally embedded charming and wool measuring exercised by traditional healers in Northern Ireland and Wales, respectively, or the eclectic practices used by self-identified healers in contemporary Staffordshire. This lack of consensus is reflected in the phenomena and societies the volume addresses -- and is, itself, of interest, considering expanding recourse to alternatives to biomedicine throughout the Western world.20

The difficulties with the continued use of "folk" to describe non-professional medical

practice are, then, both the lack of clarity with what "folk" indicates about medical

practice as well as the implied assumption that a healer would practice only one type of

medicine.

It should not be surprising that a dichotomous separation of professional and lay is problematic, since most medical practitioners, official or non, did not solely practice medicine and did not always practice the same type of medicine. The motivations people

had for practicing medicine were complex and explain the historiographical difficulty of

19 On historiographical categorization of women's practice as witchcraft, see: David Harley, "Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-witch," Social History of Medicine 3 (1990): 1-26. 20 Lucinda Myles McCray, Review of Folk Healing and Health Care Practices in Britain and Ireland: Stethoscopes, Wands and Crystals. Edited by Ronnie Moore and Stuart McClean. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85 (2011): 506.

14 separating practitioners into distinct groups.21 For example, Walter W. Woodward

identified 126 physician-ministers in seventeenth-century New England and showed how

John Winthrop, Jr., eventual governor of Connecticut, offered free or reduced price

medical services to the poor in his community because of his commitment to Christian

charity.22 Other types of practice have been considered to be of lower status and to have

operated outside of the bounds of the expectations of the official medical hierarchy.

David Gentilcore, William Eamon, and Bruce Moran, however, have written extensively

on charlatans and the culture of secrets in early modern Italy and have shown how

important it is to consider seriously non-professional practitioners and less-easily visible

professionals (like charlatans and itinerant practitioners) in the medical marketplace.23

The simple fact that charlatans and itinerant practitioners were regularly licensed by the

protomedici in various Italian cities indicates that they were a part of the official medical

marketplace, rather than being apart from it. Regardless, Jenner and Wallis argue that

21 While not agreeing with the usage of “Medical Marketplace,” David Gentilcore has asserted that rings of practice, like ‘“medical,” “ecclesiastical” and “popular”’ can be more useful than the professional labels that have been used in the past. David Gentilcore, “Was there a ‘Popular Medicine’ in Early Modern Europe?” Folklore 115: 163. 22 Walter W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2013): 175; 193. 23 David Gentilcore, in Medical Charlatinism in Early Modern Italy, 2. Gentilcore’s earlier work, such as “Apothecaries, ‘Charlatans,’ and the Medical Marketplace in Italy, 1400-1750,” (91-94) and “’For the Protection of Those Who Have Both Shop and Home in this City’” Relations Between Charlatans and Apothecaries” (109-122) in the special issue “The World of the Italian Apothecary,” Pharmacy in History 45 no. 3 (2003) also discuss charlatans and society in early modern Italy. Bruce Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1994).

15 scholars “still know very little about the scale, scope, boundaries or international dynamics of the market for medicine.”24 Focused studies of individual groups,

organizations, types of practices, and places are crucial for continuing to develop a much

more holistic picture of the medical marketplace, and, ultimately, a better understanding

of how health care was practiced, understood, and appreciated by early modern

Europeans. Manuscript recipe books are thus a crucial epistemic genre in continuing to

dissect the landscape of this complex system. As Gianna Pomata explains, “by focusing

on epistemic genres, we pay attention to the forms of literacy in which cognitive practices

are inscribed. As shared textual conventions, genres are intrinsically social. Contributing

to a genre means consciously joining a community.”25 The community aspect of medical

recipe books combined with their proximity to actual rather than idealized, expected, or

recommended medical practices makes them powerful pieces of evidence that illuminate

the functions and boundaries of the marketplace.

The concept of a marketplace implies competition, but the question of how that

competition played out in the process of the sick selecting healers is relatively unclear.26

Some printed medical manuals and books of secrets feature gripping stories about interactions between different kinds of healers. Alexis of Piedmont, for example, recounts a story about how he learned the difficult lesson that he should share his miraculous medical secrets in order to save as many lives as possible. While we should not dismiss

24 Jenner and Wallis, Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, 2.

25 Gianna Pomata, “Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine,” Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010): 197. 26 Jenner and Wallis, Medicine and the market in England and its Colonies.

16 the genuine emotions of these stories out of hand, it is impossible to ignore the fact

that their continual presence in printed volumes is evidence of competition in the

marketplace. By effectively putting their best, most sympathetic, most expert foot

forward, these authors asserted their medical legitimacy through stories that asserted their

knowledge and likeability. Aside from these printed, rhetorically provocative stories, it is

difficult to know how exactly these interactions played out. Some sources recount

instances in which university-trained physicians, itinerant practitioners, and priests were

all called to the same bedside in the hope that if one type of medicine did not work,

another might.27 According to Katherine Park, however, “there was little sense of

competition between domestic and professional medicine… only the rich could call in a

physician for the minor or chronic illnesses” of everyday life.28 Florence, for example,

had a respectable number of physicians per capita, but because of cost and availability,

people needed to find other healthcare options.29 Interestingly, the manuscript medical

recipe books examined here show that lay healers regularly interacted with professional

practitioners, seeking their expertise and using their theoretical knowledge to justify their

own practices.

Non-professional healers were important members of the medical community and

offered all kinds of cures to all levels of the population. This project will emphasize the

diversity of medical complaints addressed in manuscript recipe books. From the

27 See, Susan Broomhall, Women's Medical Work in Early Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Pomata, Contracting a Cure. 28 Katherine Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985): 49-50. 29 Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence, 57.

17 mundane, like coughing, to the immediate and life threatening, such as broken limbs,

burns, and prolapsed uteruses, manuscript recipe books reflect the facets of medical

knowledge available to and practiced by early modern readers.

The Organization of this Study

Because of the lack of dates in the majority of manuscript recipe books, both

consulted for this project and in general, this dissertation will proceed thematically. The

first half of this project considers the ways that different types of practitioners created

authority for themselves and interacted with each other in the diverse and competitive

early modern medical marketplace. Chapter one takes as its subject the three manuscript

recipe books of a supposed Capuchin monk in order to introduce the recipe book genre

and explore the ways that early modern non-professional healthcare providers educated other practitioners. The organization of the volumes, the types of people that the author references, and the kinds of theoretical justifications that the author offers all elucidate an educational system that allowed lay healers to communicate with a wide variety of other practitioners in the medical marketplace. Although the medical theories of Galen,

Hippocrates, and others were the structure upon which academically trained physicians hung their claims to authority, it is clear that lay practitioners were conversant in these same theories and regularly employed them in their own practices. This close reading exposes the ways in which one individual used manuscript writing to craft a place for himself and his protégés in the medical marketplace.

Shifting to a wider lens, chapter two examines the relationship between lay and official practitioners from the viewpoint of the College of Physicians of Florence and

18 manuscript authors. The chapter compares the first (1498) and third (1567) editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino, the pharmacopoeia of the College of Physicians, and five manuscript recipe books that were likely written by lay practitioners in Tuscany in the same time period. Some scholars have insisted on the impossibility of making a clear comparison between lay and professional practitioners because of the vast differences in the ways that their practices were (or were not) represented in the extant writings to which scholars today have access. This chapter insists that careful reading of the provenance notations in recipe books shows the similarities and differences in the ways that each group of practitioners employed diverse knowledge bases to further their goals in the medical marketplace.

The second half of this dissertation turns to the people and objects upon which manuscript authors practiced their skills. Chapter three returns to the three manuscripts of the Capuchin monk to examine how gender and social roles played a part in the way that practitioners interacted with different types of patients. Although the ecclesiastics were a regular and expected part of the medical marketplace, the strict nature of society and religious custom meant that men and women were not to practice medicine on the opposite gender. Scholars of natural historians and physicians of the early modern period have noted the increased attention of these men toward physical and physiological differences between the reproductive organs of men and women. Although these learned men expressed interest in the workings of female organs, it appears that most simply had academic rather than practical interest, reinforcing the historiographical notation of the strict separation of sexes in the realm of medical practice. In contrast, the Capuchin author of these three manuscripts focused intently on female medical issues and used

19 practical rather than theoretical language to explore different types of cures around

menstruation, breast health, and childbirth. These manuscripts show the realities of the

flexibility of day-to-day practice in the face of religious, cultural, and legal regulations.

They also highlight some questions around how the academic nature of scholars’ interests did or did not play into the way that male, lay practitioners understood and experienced the health issues of their female patients.

The final chapter moves away from health and illness to the context of making and dispensing medicines in early modern Italy. Although scholars regularly acknowledge the diversity of subjects within manuscript recipe books, authors tend to pick one, or perhaps two, themes to address, such as medicine or cookery, a tendency likely due to disciplinary boundaries as well as the trend of early modern printed books of recipes to focus on more select themes rather than everything that could be made in a household.30 However, the presence of recipes for art products, food, cosmetics, animal

30 For example: Elaine Leong, "Collecting Knowledge for the Family: recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household," Centaurus 55, no. 2 (2013): 81-103. It is important to note the effect that libraries and archives have had on this tendency to contain recipe books in only one or two categories. For instance, a manuscript titled "cookery book" suggests that cookery is the only subject contained therein, where medicines and household aids might also be important subjects in the volume. Michelle DiMeo notes that Wellcome ms 1340 was first identified upon purchase in 1922 "as a seventeenth-century 'cookery book,'" although it is primarily composed of medical recipes, an attribution that likely affected its use (or disuse) in the history of medicine until it was re-described in 1960. Michelle DiMeo, "Lady Ranelagh's Book of Kitchen-Physick?: Reattributing Authorship for Wellcome library MS 1340," Huntington Library Quarterly 77 (2014): 333. In terms of printed recipe sources, some household manuals, such as Isabella Beeton's popular Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861), "comprising information for the mistress, housekeeper, cook, kitchen-maid, butler, footman, coachman, valet, upper and under house-maids, lady's- maid, maid-of-all-work, laundry-maid, nurse and nurse-maid, monthly, wet, and sick nurses, etc. etc.,” contained food and medical recipes, they did not as frequently include

20 care, and household management in individual volumes reveals the entanglement of all of the practical activities that people undertook. This chapter suggests that investigating this wide assortment of subjects in tandem rather than separately leads to important information about the context in which early moderns existed. The lack of details about the authors of these manuscripts is a continual frustration, but the variety of recipes I examine in this chapter touches on the personalities of the individuals who kept track of all of this practical information. Entries on making cheap wine taste expensive, curing dogs of illnesses and making pigs follow you around, and making invisible ink peel back the anonymity of recipe books to show the multifaceted lives of the authors who needed to cut costs, cared for their pets and domestic animals, and were mischievous. Most importantly from an historical perspective, these miscellaneous collections show how medicine and these various other activities occupied the same intellectual and organizational space in the minds of the authors and readers. This offers an important opportunity to consider the culture of making itself as the context of early modern non- professional medicine.

Essentially, this project grapples with the question of what recipe books were, why and how they were constructed, and how scholars can use them to identify and incorporate voices that are typically silent in the archives into the broader historical scholarship of medicine of the early modern period. Since the majority of medical practical information about animal husbandry, agriculture, or magical recipes. (Isabella Beeton, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, (London: S.O. Beeton, 1861): Title page.) Early almanacs, on the other hand, contained astrological, religious, medical, and agricultural information, but not culinary recipes. On Italian almanacs see, Marco Cuaz, "Almanacchi e 'Cultura Media' nell'Italia del Settecento," Studi Storici 25 (1985): 353-361.

21 decision-making took place outside of the sphere of academic medicine, it is critical that historians of medicine have a better understanding of the ways that individuals themselves attempted to heal themselves and those around them. Since manuscript recipes are some of the only documents that remain to document these practices, this genre deserves to be sifted through and analyzed.

Chapter 1: Lay Medical Education in Manuscript Recipe Books: Wellcome mss. 689, 690, & 691

Introduction

Existing within communities of healers and non-healers, recipe book authors

reveal themselves in the pages of their volumes. Authors’ expectations for themselves

and their communities in terms of illnesses, economics, and social relationships are

embedded in authors’ decisions to compile useful, specific remedies into volumes that

were kept and added to, often over many generations. Because they were not logs of

interactions with patients, recipe volumes are not evidence of medical intervention.

Rather, they represent individuals' medical practices: they are remnants of individuals’ knowledge and intent and cover a multitude of topics, from human health maintenance to the production of artistic products.

In the early seventeenth century, three manuscript medical recipe books were written by an author who was likely a capuchin monk living near Rimini. With more than fifteen hundred recipes, the volumes represent a monumental amount of medical knowledge collected by an individual and written into volumes so that he and his readers could care for those around them. The volumes stand out among Italian manuscript medical recipe books because they are together so large, because they were written in one hand, and because the author prefaced the volumes with a letter to his readers explaining his expertise and his hopes for his manuscripts.

From a quick glance, manuscript recipe books occupy a simple space between a notebook and a reference volume. By the mid-sixteenth century, many manuscript

23 authors had begun to include reader technologies like tables of contents and indices,

and many continued to organize their volumes according to the traditional scheme of top

to bottom, exterior to the interior of the human body. Although manuscript recipe

volumes were created to suit the needs of unique individuals, the majority are

disorganized amalgamations of recipes for anything that could be – or hoped to be –

made by human hands. Some manuscripts were written carefully with neat handwriting

along straight lines, others are hurried, with lines drifting in slants and letters mushing

together or lengthening out to become almost illegible. Some authors used standard Latin

abbreviations continuous with medieval manuscript practice, while others devised their

own shortening of words, or used Latin abbreviations for non-traditional purposes.

Studies of manuscript recipe books reveal the ways that authors wrote themselves

into the books, packaging their knowledge, goals, and prowess into single volumes and

presenting themselves to the medical marketplace and their reader- and patient-publics. In

addition to being reference materials, the Capuchin monk wrote his volumes, now

Wellcome Library mss. 689, 690, and 691, as educational books.1 By following the structure, narrative pieces, and different kinds of entries in the volumes, this chapter will explore this previously unstudied record of non-professional medical education. These three manuscripts are demonstrative of how these lay healers educated and legitimized themselves in the crowded medical market.

Scholarship on domestic medicine in the context of medicine in general emphasizes the importance of care provided by lay practitioners for families and

1 See below for more information about how these volumes arrived in the Wellcome Collection.

24 communities and shows how health concerns infiltrated all parts of life. Because of

this, medicine made social, economic, and intellectual boundaries more permeable and

practitioners, theories, and patients from different walks of life could interact with each

other more as equals. In terms of Italian medicine, the study of domestic practice

provides a way to examine the way medicine was actually practiced on a broader stratum

of society than what can be gleaned from printed medical treatises. Recipe book analysis

in the Italian context provides an important point of reference for understanding how

people navigated the boundaries, imagined or actual, between groups of practitioner in a

market where recipes and medicines were traded both for financial and social gain.

Aside from the aforementioned lack of scholarly discussion of the Italian context, men are frequently all but entirely absent from studies of domestic medicine. Although many authors include references to moments in which their primary subjects communicate and work with the men in their lives, whether husbands, brothers, or friends, men are consistently left out of the historical discussion as historical actors taking part in the act of making medicines in domestic spaces.2 This is a problem insofar as it

leaves the historiography with blank spaces in analyses of the medical marketplace, as

well as an incomplete assessment of the recipe book genre. It also imposes a gender

dichotomy on the medical marketplace that should not be accepted unconditionally across

geographic contexts without further evidence.

Domestic medicine has long been characterized by narratives of women

2 A notable exception is Elaine Leong's article "Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowldge in the Early Modern English Household,” Centaurus 55, no. 2 (2013): 81-103.

25 practicing medicine on their families and friends because caregiving was fundamental to the woman's role in society. That women would not request fees, that they had no official training or fit within an official medical structure, that they healed others out of a sense of responsibility related to their position as head caregiver of a household, are all qualities ascribed to female medical practice. More broadly, “care” itself is a term in the historiography of medicine that is fundamentally linked to women. From mothers offering remedies to their children to nurses during the First World War, “caregiving” is

characterized as an essentially feminine activity. This both removes male caregiving from

the picture as well as demotes the actual importance of care in the grand scheme of health

maintenance. Across historical disciplines, female labor largely has not been included in

studies of intellectual practices. Recent scholarship on invisible labor has begun to bring

to light the contributions of women to important scientific and medical discoveries.3 It is

also important to emphasize that both women and men who operated outside of

historically defined intellectual spaces also participated in those same intellectual

pursuits, utilizing the same resources and employing some of the same theoretical

rationales as their official counterparts.

With this in mind, Wellcome mss. 689, 690, and 691 are especially interesting because they were written by a monk. Although there have been studies of monastic medicine in early modern Italy, connections are rarely made between household medicine

3 The Max Plank Institute, for example, has a working group titled "Knowledge Production in the Human Sciences: (In)visible Labour," (https://www.mpiwg- berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/invisible-labour-knowledge-production-human- sciences).

26 and the type of healing that took place in monasteries.4 Placing the medical practices

of monastic houses in the broader context of domestic medicine in Italy during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries opens our understanding of how relationships

involving medicine were navigated. Once we recognize that domestic medicine was not

simply a pursuit for women in their kitchens, other individuals enter the landscape of lay medicine as educated, authoritative, and compassionate healers and provide a foil for the practices of professional healers, whether physicians or surgeons.

Because manuscript authors rarely included personal details in their volumes, including information about when, where, and how they lived, it is extremely difficult to assess the diversity of locations where medicine was practiced in the early modern medical marketplace. Traditionally, historians of early modern medicine have located practitioners mainly in hospitals and anatomical sites.5 Recent studies of more flexible

locales such as apothecary shops have shown how individuals of different social strata

and diverse types of medical practitioners interacted with each other with relative

4 For more on medicine in convent and monastic spaces, see: Sharon Strocchia, "The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: marketing medicines in the convent,” Renaissance Studies 25 (2011): 627-647. 5 For example: Guenter Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Claudia Stein, Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009). For more information about anatomical theaters, please see, Cynthia Klestinec, Theaters of anatomy: students, teachers, and traditions of dissection in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2001). Also, Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson, and Roger French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997) contains two interesting chapters on hospitals for incurables with specific reference to French Pox.

27 freedom in the early modern medical marketplace.6 Apothecaries, of course, also catered to a wide variety of needs aside from medical ones, such as for those wanting to make paint and perfumes and people who were buying or renting candles for funerals.7

The variety of products that existed alongside medical ingredients speaks to the diversity

of the clientele in apothecary shops and again emphasizes the continual interaction

between medicine and many other kinds of practices. Based on this diversity within

apothecaries, a professional medical space, it is unsurprising that medicine practiced by

lay healers also took place in and around a wide variety of practices. Because the

volumes examined here were likely written by a monk who practiced medicine on his

brothers and his community, they offer an interesting opportunity to examine not only a

different kind of “domestic” medical space, but a “domestic” space that was also male.

Perhaps most importantly, manuscript recipe books such as the volumes included

here are reflections of individuals. Like the letters that Cavallo and Storey study in

conjunction with printed regimen books, manuscript recipe books were written outside of

the framework of official medical structures and so highlight how practitioners adopted

diverse strategies and interacted with a variety of practitioners as they dealt with patients

of varying ages and genders in their communities.8 Like Ginzburg's Manocchio, the

Capuchin recipe book author's individual context can be fruitfully used to contextualize

the dominant historiographical narrative and offer insights into the lives and practices of

6 Filippo de Vivo, “Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice” in Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine, edited by Sandra Cavallo and David Gentilcore (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008): 33-49. 7 Evelyn Welch & James Shaw, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Leiden: Brill, 2011), especially chapter 6. 8 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Renaissance Italy, 56.

28 individuals who are silent in the archive but were vibrant members of the medical

marketplace.

Accounts of the pedagogical system of theoretical training of early university

medical colleges abound in the historiography of medicine, but understanding how both

professional and non-professional healers gained practical skills remains elusive. 9

Michael Stolberg’s and Gianna Pomata’s discussions of bedside teaching and consilia

show the importance of practical knowledge among medical students and physicians but

they assert that there is considerable historical work yet to be done on how these skills

were gained.10 Studies of how lay healers in the community, such as of this Capuchin

monk, will broaden and enrich this knowledge.

Although the theoretical training of official practitioners has been studied, the

methods by which official and non-official healers gained practical training has not been

explored in depth.11 Many scholars have asserted that all kinds of healers, both professional and lay, participated in a kind of apprentice system. Some records recount,

9 Professional medical education: Bullough, Vern L. "Education and Professionalization: An Historical Example”, History of Education Quarterly 10 (Summer, 1970): 160-169. 10 "Medical education in the early universities, then, was essentially about the acquisition of stock knowledge and its transmission from one generation to the next in the form of a gloss. More specifically, it centred on the process of 'completing' the text." (Cornelius O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine: Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250-1400, (Leiden: Brill, 1998): 260). Michael Stolberg, "Bedside Teaching and the Acquisition of Practical Skills in Mid-Sixteenth Century Padua,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69 (October 2014): 633-661; Pomata, "Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine,” 193-236. 11 “The history of early modern medical practice and, more particularly, of practical training and the acquisition of embodied practical skills is still largely uncharted territory. Much more research is needed on the situation in different universities and institutional contexts and on changes during the early modern period.” Stolberg, "Bedside Teaching and the Acquisition of Practical Skills in Mid-Sixteenth Century Padua,” 660.

29 for example, the experiences that medical students had participating in anatomical dissections in their professors’ houses or by accompanying them as they visited their patients.12 There is a tendency in the history of medicine to accept the notion that lay healers simply received their knowledge orally and from practical experience gained while shadowing other healers. Although many early modern healers likely did learn medical practice in these ways, the Wellcome manuscripts analyzed here provide evidence for a textual tradition of lay medical education.

Ann Blair’s monumental study Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly

Information Before the Modern Age makes strong arguments for the study of notes and reference compilations. Although Blair does not deal with manuscript recipe books, these volumes lend themselves well to similar study.13 Referring again to epistemic genre, recipe books are textual evidence of individuals taking part in a distinct knowledge community. Recipe books are, nonetheless, recalcitrant sources. However, scholars such as Jennifer Stein have demonstrated that close analysis of individual authors’ recipe compilations can reveal meaningful insight to the writer’s aspirations, perceived role among patients, and community.14 Although, as Blair says in a chapter on reference books, “nonspecialist reference works… offered access to the material that one had to master to be considered well-educated - Latin language and classical culture, and the

12 For information about medieval medical education, see: Nancy G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 13 Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 14 Jennifer K. Stein, Opening Closets: The Discovery of Household Medicine in Early Modern England, Ph.D. Diss, Stanford University, 1996.

30 wisdom accumulated in sententiae and historical examples... since antiquity,” the

category of “medical books” that she excludes also includes medical manuals explicitly

written for non-specialist use.15 Manuscript recipe books are the result of lay

practitioners' writing habits as they learned and performed vital tasks to ensure proper

management of home and body.

Wellcome mss. 689, 690, and 691 contain over 1500 recipes detailing everything

from how to make an antidote for plague and how to help a woman give birth easily, to

remedies that ostensibly would stop balding and get rid of calluses on the feet. Aside

from provenance notations, the only names in the volume come from notes on the first

flyleaf of each volume. In the early seventeenth-century, Capuchin priest Bernardino da

Rimino lent these three substantial volumes of medical recipes to a knight named Daniele

Antonio Felice Cappello. Upon the books' return, he proudly inscribed a record of their

time in the knight’s hands and noted that the knight had appreciated them.16 I have not, unfortunately, been able to find evidence of how these manuscripts arrived in Rimino's hands, or how they arrived in the hands of the bookseller from whom the Wellcome

Collection acquired them in the early twentieth century.

This chapter will first focus on the structure of the manuscripts. Bibliographic details reveal important information about the structure of the author’s medical practice

15 "I have not included specialist reference books, for example, in law, medicine, and theology, though these featured many of the same and sometimes more complex finding devices because they reached narrower readership with more specific professional needs." Blair, Too Much to Know, 118. 16 "Di me Fra Bernardino da Rimino Sae.te Capucino imprestato al Ill.mo Sig. Cavaliere Daniele Antonio Felice Cappello e doppoi disse che il detto Sig. Cav. se lo tenesse. Quare gratias egit." Bernardino da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. c. early 17th century. From the Wellcome Library, ms 689: front flyleaf.

31 as well as his intentions for the volumes. Then, I will discuss the letter to the readers, which is unique among Italian manuscript recipe books and is a singular opportunity to investigate the expectations and goals of the author in his own words. Lastly, I will focus on the didactic entries in the three volumes. These narrative sections – separated into three main groups: ingredients, “best practices,” and illnesses – are snapshots of the kinds of information that the author thought were necessary for his readers and are reflections of his experiences. Some entries are accounts of personal experience told in the first person while others are simple, general explanation. As a whole, careful examination of these parts of the manuscripts reveals important details about the author, his patients, his readers, and their patients. In terms of the medical marketplace and the role of non- professional healers, this close analysis of these three manuscripts removes some of the muddiness surrounding the medicine that most early moderns experienced and reveals the way knowledge, experience, education, and care interacted among lay healers at the end of the long sixteenth-century.

Structure

Purchased from Sotheby’s in 1931, the Wellcome Collection’s accession record identifies mss. 689, 690, and 691 as being written in the early seventeenth century. A single hand wrote the entire set, except for ownership notes on the flyleaves of each volume saying, “This book is mine, Brother Bernardino da Rimino,” and an insistent assertion scrawled in ms. 691: “Do not believe these recipes because they are false and

32 wicked. Bartolomeo Gaudenzi, 24 June 1798.”17 The three quartos are virtually the

same height and width, although ms. 689 has about twice as many pages as the second

two volumes. The hand is neat and uniform throughout.

The uniformity of the pages of each volume speaks to the great care with which

they were written. The majority of each volume is written in single columns, although the

recipes written on the endpapers are in two columns with smaller letters to maximize use

of the remaining space.18 The capitals are generally rubricated - emphasized with red ink

- and some are a modified Gothic style and made with small flourishes. Book owners

often trimmed book pages over time as volumes were bound and re-bound, leading to a

loss of marginalia and obscuring details about the original dimensions and layout of the

volume. Fortunately, the pages of these three quartos seem to have been unchanged over

their lifetime. No marginalia have been cut off and there are black and red lines lining the

outside margins of each page, occasionally interrupted by manicules, clearly delineating

17 "Non date fede a queste ricette perche sono false e cattive Bartolomeo Gaudenzi. 24 Giugno 1798." Bernardino da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. c. early 17th century From the Wellcome Library, ms. 691: flyleaf. 18 In addition to the main section of recipes that takes up the great majority of the space in this volume, ms. 689 begins with a section of recipes with alphabetical foliation (S_S_ r – E v; C r- V v (and 1 page of no foliation); X r-v), comes before the table of contents, and was likely bound in after the main part of the text was written. This is followed by a table of contents and is nestled in the midst of the alphabetical foliation, though it has no foliation of its own. The third part is the introductory letter (no foliation). The fourth and main part of the text is loosely organized alphabetically by title (1r – 148v). Ms. 690 has 86 folios. Only five are not part of the numerically foliated main portion of the text and include some recipes and the table of contents. Ms. 691 has 7 un-foliated pages containing some recipes and the table of contents. The main portion of the text is numerically foliated and begins with folio number 42. After folio 46, there is an unfoliated, blank page, followed by folio number 1. The foliation is continuous (this includes another set of numbers 42-46) through number 77, with one additional recipe written on the inside of the back cover.

33 the margins of the original text. The binding of each volume is likely original; only the

first volume is bound in leather, where the other two are bound in paper. The text fills the

pages almost entirely.

It is clear from the structure of the volumes that the author intended to make them usable not only for himself, but for others. They were organized and indexed to assist readers in using them as reference volumes rather than to be read in their entirety. There

are few marginalia, and what is there appears to be written either by the same author or a contemporary, owing to the regularity of the hand and ink. It is impossible to know how the volumes were really used since they did not serve as a logbook of when the medicines were used, or how effective they were, but the cleanliness of the pages point to the likelihood that the volumes did not occupy a production space like a kitchen. Since there is little to glean about use, the remainder of this chapter will focus on the author’s intent.

A Letter to His Reader

Even though recipe books are highly personal, authors rarely included biographical details about themselves. According to Blair, they instead preferred to focus on the individuals whose advice they quoted or referenced: “Medieval compilers, especially in florilegia and encyclopedias, typically cultivated a posture of humility and sometimes remained anonymous, highlighting the authority of the authors they excerpted rather than their own.”19 The primary indicators of reading and commenting are the

occasional "+" or similar personal marks next to an entry. These, for obvious reasons, do

19 Blair, Too Much to Know, 176.

34 not offer very much information about who wrote the note. Although the Capuchin

monk did not name himself in his manuscripts, he included a letter to his readers, a rarity

among manuscript recipe books. Although the Wellcome Library's catalogue record for

Figure 1 & 2: Letter to the reader, Wellcome ms. 689, 38rv.

these volumes does not reference Arnaldus de Villanova, the thirteenth-century Spanish

medical writer who died in Genova, Italy, the Capuchin monk's letter to the reader is a

lifted and edited copy of the letter to the readers in Arnaldus de Villanova's Herbolario

Volgare.20 The letter is interesting and important, then, because it serves as an example of

20 Arnaldus de Villanova, Herbolario volgare, nelquale le vertu delle herbe, & molti altri simplici sde dechiarano: con alcune belle aggionte novamente de latino in volgare tradutto (Venetia: Francesco de Leno, 1565): 1r-v. Although the publishers were different, this letter appears in the 1536 edition (Vinegia: Francesco di Alessandro Bidone, & Mapheo Pasini campagni). For more on Villanova, see: Michael McVaugh,

35 how manuscript authors took advantage of rhetorical strategies in the marketplace,

adjusting and then including them in their own works as part of the creation of their

identity as practitioners.

The manuscript letter and the printed letter begin nearly identically, both

reflecting the importance of specific kinds of rhetorical techniques in the medical marketplace:

Do not settle, dear brothers, for the knowledge of our ancestors without greatest diligent effort of seeing and not [simply] rewriting. Those things that are faithfully translated from one language to another, then, are much better. [This is why] now, with attention to the prayers of my dear disciples and brothers, I wrote most faithfully these following little things that I practiced and experimented for many years for the benefit of my sick brothers, and others, and of the good community.21

Both authors thus address their readers by asserting the importance of personal, hands-on

experience. Although the medical prescriptions of "our ancestors" – perhaps medical

greats like Galen and Avicenna - were canonical in this era, the author insists that seeing,

practicing, and experimenting - or, gaining experience - were essential parts of his

practice, hinting that these should also be characteristics of any good medical

practitioner. The language of assurance in recipe books is interesting to consider,

although there appears to be a lack of consensus about trends across regional contexts. In

(1970). "Arnald of Villanova". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons): 289–291

21 "Non si posano cariss.mi fratelli le cose de nostri antiqui senza grandiss.ma fattica diligienzem. vedere e niente trascrivere. Molto maggiore ad i unq.e e' quelle da l'una lingua a' latra fedelmi.te tradotte. Hora havendo con ogni diligenza a' preghi de mei cari disepoli e' fratelli scritto fedelm.e le qui conguinto cosarelle da me praticate et, esperimentate per molti anni a' pro' de mei fate infermi, et altri, et al ben comune." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library ms. 689: 38r.

36 English recipe books, for example, Alonso-Almeida noted a shift from the Middle

Ages to the early modern period in terms of the words authors used to describe efficacy in titles. Words like "good" in the medieval period are replaced with more forceful descriptors like "excellent." 22 Guido Majno, on the other hand, pointed to ancient

Egyptian remedies with "comments like... "good, good," "really proven," proven... (a

million) times."23 Regardless of some confusion around general trends, the Capuchin

monk's letter and Villanova's printer's letter do work in reassuring the reader less of the

efficacy of the recipes and more of the expertise of the author himself.

The Capuchin author of the manuscript made a couple of important changes to the

original printed text. First, he replaced mio lettore with carissimi fratelli, a change that is

present throughout the manuscript letter. The monk's intended audience was certainly his

monastic brothers and not the general community of literate healers who may have read

Villanova's text. Second, the manuscript does not, for obvious reasons, include a lengthy

passage extoling the virtues of the Herbolario Volgare's printer, although this section

serves Villanova's goals well by asserting that not only did he, the author, write with the

common good in mind, but so did too the printer.24 Instead, the manuscript author

replaces the printer's wishes with those of his dear brothers for such a book, as well as his

experience offering them the prescriptions featured in the volumes. It is, of course,

22 Alonso-Almeida, “Genre conventions in English recipes.” 74. 23 Guido Majno, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982): 116. 24 "Hora havendo con ogni diligenza a prieghi de uno diligente Impressore huomo veramente degno de ogni laude, non solamente al proprio bene, ma molto piu al commune inclinato, come veder si puote lui sempre cercar de imprimer cose necessarie & utile, onde havendo visto, sua dimanda utile & buona," Villanova, Herbolario volgare, 1r.

37 important to recall that this version of Villanova's Herbolario was published well after his death in the early fourteenth century. It is likely that the printer wrote as Villanova, praising himself with the attributed author's voice.

The manuscript author returns to the Herbolario's letter to the reader to reassert the importance of making this medical information, and good medicines in general, available to more people:

Hence I translated from the Latin language to the mother tongue [these things]. It is the truest in itself and good and useful, [because] without health, no perfect working [of anything] could exist; Therefore, you have, my dear brothers, this little book, [which is] is not only beneficial for the poor but also for the rich. [I am] most grateful now because, as I have said, I have this great treasure, and I know many common needy people [will use it] and maxim of the poor of my redeemer Jesus: I have, very gladly, faithfully translated these few, small things. Lest there are still those who do not have the Latin language, [they will now be] able to know and understand [those] secrets of nature which the ancients left for our use. We should use them to good end.25

Owing to the sweeping popularity of the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio,

Tuscan, the vernacular which would eventually transform into modern Italian, was becoming ever more important across social classes in northern and central Italy. The growing merchant class of the late medieval period wrote with particular fervor in

Tuscan, and many noble courts conversed in and kept records in the vernacular. This was

25 “Onde ho traddotto dalla lingua lattina alla matterna volgare e' verissim.te: in se e' buona, uttile quanto e' la' sanita' senza la quale nula perfetta operatione puo' essere; havrete ad'unque: fratelli mei cari un libretto non solam.te: a poveri giovevole, ma ancora a' richi, gratiss.mo: hora per che detto vi ho questo esser un grandiss.mo: tesauro e' conoscendo molti bisogniosi a' commune uttiliza' e massime delli poveri del' mio reddentore gieso xp.: molto piu volontieri queste poche fattiche fedelm.te: tradotte ho fatto; accio' ancora quelli che non hanno la' lingua lattina possano sapere, et intendere li secreti della natura li quali a' noi d' antiqui lasciaeci a' nostra uttilita' sono et a' bo'n fine adoperarli dobiamo.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library ms. 689: 38r-v.

38 not accompanied by a diminished focus on Latin, but a substantial portion of the

population that was not schooled in Latin was literate in the vernacular.26 The

combination of the popularity of Tuscan, the literacy rates in the peninsula, and the

popularity of medical topics created an environment that was ripe for vernacular medical

printing. Authors like the manuscript writer and Villanova's printer who he copied saw

opportunities to translate and print medical works that had formerly only circulated in

Latin, the language of both the academy and the Church.

These translation efforts clearly reflected the strong market for vernacular printing, but the rationales that authors and publishers offer in introductions and prefaces reveal the ways that they contextualized their work as selfless acts of sharing for the common good. For example, a physician named Traffichetti who wrote a regimen volume in 1565 with the "declared intention of presenting preventive advice by the best authors on the subject in concise and accessible language ('in ordine essentiale e assai facile') for

those who did not know about medicine."27 "Accessible language" likely referred both to

vernacular language and to non-technical language. The sixteenth century Alexis of

Piedmont also made a case for breaking with the tradition of secrecy and revealed his

knowledge. He insisted that he needed to share his knowledge because he had kept his

secrets to himself one too many times:

A poore artifacer was marvellous tormented with the stone, and had bin two daies without making his urine The Chirurgian that dressed him, knowing wel that I had many secrets, and singularities for the stone, came unto me and requested me that I would teach him the receipt, or at the least to give him the medicine composed and redie made, for the health of

26 See below for more information about literacy in early modern Italy. 27 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, 21.

39 the patient: But I perceiving that he would use other mens things for his own profit and honour, refused to give it him, but willed him to bring me to the sickeman, and that I my selfe would minister the medicine unto him gratis. The physitian...[refused] yet twoe daies more: with diverse excuses and colours, til he brought me to the patient, whom at my comming I found so nighe his end, that after he had lifted up his eies, casting them pitiously toward me, passed from this into a better life: Not having any need, neyther of my secret, nor anie other Receipt to cover his health.28

Feeling extremely remorseful, the author decided to publish his secrets such that others would be able to take advantage of them and more patients would not die unnecessarily.29

The rhetoric of “the common good” also permeated vernacular medical writing outside of Italy. For example, the late seventeenth-century English author and unlicensed physician William Salmon repeatedly emphasized the public good his work was performing. In his 1689 Select Physical and Chyrurgical Observations he identified his audience as “ladies and gentlewomen” who wanted to help “poor neighbors” in instances where other medical practitioners were unavailable. In 1693, Salmon asserted that his

Seplasium: The Compleat English Physician: Or, the Druggist's Shop Opened was

“designed” for general use by laypeople in order to “restore their health.”30 In 1695

Salmon wrote that his Synopsis Medicinae was had "exceeding Usefulness to the World,” even though there were those who jealously spoke out against him. He insisted that he published the book “for the sake of charity and humanity” in order to help “all the poor and diseased” that he possibly could. Salmon’s use of the rhetoric of public good

28 Alexis Piedmont, The Secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont, containing excellent remedies against diverse diseases, wounds, and other accidents, Translated by William Ward (London: Peter Short for Thomas Wight, 1595): 4v. 29 Piedmont, The Secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont, 5r. 30 William Salmon, Seplasium: The Compleat English Physician: Or, the Druggist's Shop Opened... (London: Matthew Gilliflower, 1693): 1r-v.

40 continues throughout his published books.31 In 1703, he explicitly titled one of his

books, The Country Physician: or, a Choice Collection of Physick Fitted for Vulgar

Use.32 And in his translation of Thomas Sydenham’s Processus integri, published in

1707, Salmon asserted that the book was practical, small and of an “easie price,” making

it even more accessible to the common person.33 Salmon’s self-identification as a selfless practitioner interested in assisting the poor is present throughout his work and is an example of the way many medical authors talked about their rationale for writing.

The most significant editing that the manuscript author did to this section of the letter to the reader was to delete the praise that Villanova's printer wrote about his decision to include an alphabetical table for the medicines found in the book: "And so you will more easily be able to find what you are looking for. For this [reason] I have added a table, organized alphabetically, in which you can find all of the medicines for diseases according to the letters of the name, in which it will be convenient to find diseases. "34

In terms of the history of technologies of readership, Villanova's printer's

awareness of what is essentially an index is interesting. The traditional formatting of

31 William Salmon, Synopsis Medicinae: Or, a Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Physick in Seven Books (London: J. Dawlts, 1695): 5r. 32 William Salmon, The Country Physician: or, a Choice Collection of Physick Fitted for Vulgar Use (London: W. Taylor, 1703). 33 Sydenham, Thomas, Praxis medica. The practice of physick; or, Dr. Sydenham’s Processus integri, translated out of Latin into English, Translated by William Salmon (London: J.B., 1707): 4r-v. 34 "Et accio piu facilmente bisognando si possi quello che si cercara trovare. A questo aggionger mi e piazuto una tabula ordinata per alphabetto, per la qual secondo l'ordine de le lettere nomi de esse egritudine potrai tutte medicine, che in questo si contiene convenevole a esse egritudine trovae." Villanova, Herbolario Volgare, 1r.

41 herbals and other printed pharmaceutical texts did not include indices of illnesses or

cures, although, by the sixteenth century, they did frequently include tables of contents of individual herbs. The development of an index of recipes within an herbal would have

greatly assisted the reader in using the volume as a reference for pharmaceutical

preparations and medical treatment rather than only a reference volume for research on

individual ingredients. While the Capuchin author of the manuscripts did include a table

of contents in each of the three volumes, he did not include an index, so this section of

the Herbolario's ad lectorem is simply missing from the manuscript letter.

Although there are no indications that the author of mss. 689, 690, and 691 hoped

that his volumes would eventually be printed, he nonetheless clearly participated in the

contemporary print rhetorical tradition of translation for the purpose of the public good.

This copied rhetoric is powerful evidence of the author's intent that his volumes be both

public, in a way, and educational. It is also evidence that this manuscript author wanted to

participate in the medical marketplace using similar tools to those employed by his

published colleagues. Although many of the authors of printed books, like Villanova's

printer, asserted that their volumes could be used by anyone, even women, the author of

mss. 689, 690, and 691 identified it as a guide for a specific group of people – his dear

brothers.35 The author finishes the letter with the following, which is essentially identical

to the last portion of the Herbolario's letter:

35 For example, Cavallo and Storey refer to “Traffichetti, a physician active in the small town of Rimini, published L’arte di conservar la salute tutta intiera in 1565 with the declared intention of presenting preventive advice by the best authors on the subject in concise and accessible language (‘in ordine essentiale e assai facile’) for those who did not know about medicine.” Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy,

42 “Therefore, they do not rest, dear brothers, to warn you that there are many great and noble things in this book, which you [should] wish to make with every mature consideration. First, it is good to understand that which is needed and [will have] a good end. For this, I advise you, my dear brothers, that medicines given regularly are divine, and if they are given as they are not recommended: they are diabolical and deadly. With everything, I put my eyes toward God's judgment, and his justice, to which everyone should give prize according to his work. I say this in order that you do not let yourself be tempted by the devil my dearest brothers: those who do not have this knowledge truly work in a bad way. But if you find that God does not want someone, that he was evil, and, that is my very serious advice: if the cure is not working the fire falls from the sky above. This is the way of God's justice, from which you cannot escape. Those who truly have good ends to their work [because of this book] I beg you all to pray to God (for) me, to the end that great things can be extended”36

Chapter three will explore the role that medicine played in the lives of Capuchin monks, but for now, suffice it to say that the author of these manuscripts makes it clear that medicine was an important pursuit for him, and he assumed that it would continue to be important for his monastic brothers. Not to ignore his obligations to God and medical authorities, the author also insists on the importance of using medicines properly - because they can be deadly, and reminds his brothers that God is the ultimate decider of

21. They also assert that the vernacularization of medical knowledge in terms of preventive medicine began much earlier than has been previously suggested. 36 non re'staro' adunq.e: Frattelli mei cari d'amonirvi essendo inserte in questo nostro libretto molte grande et nobili cose, quelle operar vogliate con ogni mattura consideratione, e' prima bene intendere quello favia bisognio, e con bon fine: che io vi aviso fratteli mei cariss.mi: che le cose medicinalli regolatem.e: date sono divine e' se sono date ancora sregolatam.e: sono diaboliche e' mortale; con tutto cio' io niente dimeno vi pongo avanti gli hocchi il Giudizio di Dio, e la sua giusizia, la quale ad' ogni uno secondo le sue opperationi daralli il' premio: dico questo accio' non vi lasciate tentare dal' demonio frattelli mei cariss.mi: quelle senza conoscim.to: ho vero in mala parte operiate: ma' se pure si ritrovasse che dio non voglia alcuno, che fosse malvaggio, et, che della mia admonitione malam.ne: operando non si curase lo foco dal' cielo caschi sopra di quel' tale, e' la' gius- tizia di dio lo' ponischi la' quale non si puol' fugire Quelli che veram.ne: havano bon fine nel' opperare li prego tutti in premio di queste poche fatiche fate preghi il' sig me, accio' che a' maggiore cose estendere possa." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library ms. 689: 38v.

43 the fates of the ill. ⁠37 It is important to note that Villanova and other medical authors

from this era included the same kinds of admissions to God's role in the fate of sick

patients. The invocation of God is a subtle reminder that the recipes were not guaranteed

to work, but rather that it was hoped they would work.

The manuscript letter is, thus, a text through which the author positioned himself

very carefully as a member of a distinct community of practitioners that valued personal

experience as a kind of proof, who was aware of the dangers of exactitude in preparation

and prescription, and who was, perhaps most importantly, both motivated by social

responsibility and deferential to God’s will. Villanova was an author whose works were

published relatively widely and was referenced in other manuscript medical recipe books

from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It is unclear whether the monastic brothers of

the author of these manuscripts would have read Villanova's Herbolario enough to know

that the author lifted most of his letter and inserted it into his volumes, but it is plausible

that they would have been familiar with Villanova's 16th-century printed volumes.

It is important to at least mention that copying the work of others was a fundamental part of medical writing in the premodern period and was essential to the project of creating recipe books in general. If the Capuchin author's readers noticed that he copied Villanova, they likely would not have been bothered by it, at least in the way

that it would offend our modern sensibilities around plagiarism. There are no explicit

references to Villanova in the Capuchin author's manuscripts, and it is clear for a variety

of reasons that the manuscripts are not a simple copy of Villanova's works. The

37 da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library ms. 689: 38v.

44 Herbolario volgare is, as it is titled, an herbal - a pharmaceutical text focused on describing individual ingredients, mostly plants, and what kinds of illnesses they were good at treating. Although the Capuchin's manuscripts contain some ingredient entries, none of which appear to be direct copies of Villanova, the majority of the entries are recipes.

Figure 3 & 4: Frontispieces, Giulio Boninsegna, Ricettario. Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio.

It is useful to point out that other manuscript presentation recipe books do not include this kind of letter, whether original or copies of other texts. For example, ms. A.

324 at Bologna’s Biblioteca del Archiginnasio is certainly a presentation copy. The manuscript was written by Giulio Boninsegna, an apothecary from Mantua, and contains two elaborate paintings as frontispieces. Rather than a letter to the reader, Boninsegna

45 included a sonnet by the Italian mathematician "Giovanni Demissiani della

Zasalonia."38 Since well before 1617, when Boninsegna was writing his recipe book,

apothecaries were part of the professional medico-legal hierarchy, as will be discussed in

chapter 2. The frontispiece to the volume itself functions to position the author as

someone to be supported by a wealthy patron. The page features a painting of a coat of

arms under which is written, "Iulius Boninsegna Aromatarius motu proprio Divino

auxilio cooperante fecit Anno Dni. Nri. Iesu Christi MDCXVII. Regante Ser.no

Ferdinando Gonzagae Mantuae Duce, & Montisferrati &c."39 All of this taken together would indicate that this volume was intended to serve at least some kind of public function that was somewhat different from that of Wellcome mss. 689, 690, and 691.

Where the apothecary’s manuscript was illuminated, partly written in Latin, and included a poem by another person, the monk’s letter was a first-person address by the author: the apothecary was probably looking for patronage, and the monk was probably trying to have a conversation with his readers. Rather than being similar to manuscript presentation volumes, the Capuchin author positioned himself in the community of medical authors who published printed volumes that would be read by nonprofessional healers.

The ways that Boninsegna, the apothecary, and the monk communicated with their audiences demonstrate that the differences between the manuscript recipe books of

38 Giulio Boninsegna, Ricettario composto da Giulio Boninsegna, 1617. Biblioteca dell Archiginnasio, ms. A. 324: 2r. 39 "Iulius Boninsegna Aromatarius motu proprio Divino auxilio cooperante fecit Anno Dni. Nri. Iesu Christi MDCXVII. Regante Ser.no Ferdinando Gonzagae Mantuae Duce, & Montisferrati &c." Boninsegna, Ricettario composto da Giulio Boninsegna, Biblioteca dell Archiginnasio, ms. A. 324: 1r.

46 professionals and lay practitioners were not always clear-cut. Another example of this is on the inside cover of Wellcome Ms. 174. Barber surgeon Gasparo di Cagali, a professional medical practitioner, introduces himself as the son of a Mister Antonio di

Chagalii, inhabitant of "San. Zen." and dates the volume 15 August 1529. He follows this information with details about a daughter who was born 14 November 1527 and baptized

Figures 5 & 6: Gasparo di Cagali, Libro di Ricette Medicinali, Manuscript. c. 1529. ms. 174, Cover and Flyleaf.

21 November 1527 at seven at night and was named Chatalina.40 Baptismal information about Cagali’s children (a son is mentioned later) in their father’s recipe book reflects the importance of baptizing one’s children in this period, as well as the potentially extremely

40 Gasparo di Cagali, Libro di Ricette Medicinali. c. 1529. Wellcome Library, ms. 174: flyleaf.

47 useful alliances that could be constructed via the godparent-child relationship. These particular kinds of entries thus also speak to the longevity that di Cagali assumed his recipe book would have.41 A couple of other personal notes are included on this page and on the last flyleaf, with the rest of the volume dedicated to medical recipes. Although a medical professional wrote the volume, the inclusion of family records, similar to how a

family bible was used in early America, makes it clear that the book was a personal rather

than presentation volume. Recipe books were treasured volumes that were often passed

down through generations, and the inclusion of family records shows how Cagali

assumed that his book would continue to be a treasured family artifact that could preserve

information about his children.

The monk’s letter, Boninsegna’s poem, and Cagali’s family records, while

diverse, all point to the ways that manuscript recipe books were used and how they

circulated in early modern society. The physical characteristics of many volumes, the

extra sheets of paper bound with the manuscript text, and half-filled pages of indices and tables of contents confirm that authors and owners expected their volumes to be adjusted over time. Many manuscripts stayed within family circles, in which information like

Cagali’s makes sense. Both Boninsegna and the author of mss. 689-691, however, viewed their books as distinctly public and non-familial. Including information about themselves, their connections, and their status served as a kind of advertising. The economics and social standing of a legal business of an apothecary as compared with the community-

41 For more information about father-child relationships and baptismal culture, see Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence 1300-1600 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

48 oriented, non-official practice of a monk would require different strategies, however,

which are evident in the differences between these two works. The paintings and poems

in the beginning of Boninsegna’s volume speak to the height to which he reached for

support, and the monk's lengthy explanation of his service emphasizes his commitment to

his community and his probable monastic vow.

The marginalia probably added by later owners confirms that owners as well as

authors used manuscript recipe books for similar social purposes. The notations on the

inside flyleaf of each of the Wellcome volumes, left by the later owner of the volumes,

Bernardino da Rimino, tell about lending the books to a knight, which might also be read as a play for future patronage. Unfortunately, additional information about the connections between Rimino and the knight are too sparse to do more than invite speculation about their actual relationship. Regardless, the notes remind us that manuscript recipe books traveled and held value for a wide variety of readers. The letter is a window into how the author viewed his responsibilities and expectations as a member of a community: he saw himself as an authority that could provide specific medical advice and general medical education to his readers. With further analysis of the didactic entries and personal information sprinkled throughout the volume, it will become clear that a kind of educational, monastic domestic medicine was being presented. Domestic medicine has been understood to be a medical practice undertaken in a household, often by and for members of a particular family and those for whom they were responsible, and this can be extended to monastic houses as well. By removing private households and women as the defining features of domestic medicine, volumes like the monk’s become extraordinarily useful in the effort to better understand how non-official practitioners

49 communicated and educated each other.

Didactic Entries and Expectations of Readers

The city-states of Tuscany and Venice were powerful economic and political

centers in the Mediterranean, and their ruling families were significant patrons for the

improvement of medical knowledge in their cities and hinterlands. The Medici grand

dukes' interests were captured by alchemy, for example, and their laboratories in the

Florentine palazzo employed artisans who worked on developing all sorts of products.42

Italy was also a printing powerhouse; in the sixteenth century the peninsula had seventy-

three printing presses (the most in Europe) as opposed Germany’s fifty-one.43 Medical

printing in Italy was a lucrative part of the printing business, as can easily be seen by the

number of sixteenth-century Italian medical texts still extant in libraries around the

world. Vernacular medical writing from the time reflects a strong curiosity about both

canonical academic medicine, mostly based on the ancient Greek Hippocrates and ancient

Roman Galen, as well as the more contested medico-chemical theories of alchemists like the Swiss Paracelsus and Italian Alexis of Piedmont. Italian medical manuscripts reflect

the large amounts of information moving around the peninsula as well as the literate

public’s lively interest in medicine.

Although the oral transmission of medical information was fundamental to lay

42 See, for example Christina Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscan: Medicine and Botany (Franham, Surey: Ashgate, 2016), and Sheila Barker, "Cosimo de Medici's Chemical Medicine," The Medici Archive Project. 2 March 2016. http://www.medici.org/cosimo-de-medicis-chemical-medicine-2/ 43 Gregory Hanlon, Early Modern Italy, 1500-1800, Three Seasons in European History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

50 practice, the existence of vernacular manuals and recipe books shows that reading and

writing were essential components of nonprofessional healing activities. Paul Grendler’s

Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 provides powerful

evidence of literacy as an important skill in early modern Italian households. According

to Grendler, Italian writers generally thought that “a girl should acquire vernacular

reading and writing skills appropriate to her expected role as a virtuous and practical

spouse and mother,” but that she did not need to know Latin, since she would not have a

public role.44 According to Silvio Antoniano (1540-1603), even women of “middling

status” should be able to read and write well.45 Boys made up the majority of the school population, however. Interestingly, Grendler estimates that the “overall literacy (reading and writing)” for the male population of Florence in 1480 and Venice in 1587 was between 30 and 33 percent.46 Although the majority of the populace was not literate, but it is significant that a relatively large portion of the male population was, and that there was a popular expectation that women of a certain social class would have basic reading, writing, and arithmetic abilities. Unlike the religious competition that was integral to creating a literate European population in New England, Italian women, as well as men, were expected also to use reading and writing for generally practical purposes.47 The

44 Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989): 89. 45 Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, 89. 46 Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, 78. 47 Mattingly argues "that competition among religions to attract and maintain members may have been more important in the sponsorhip of literacy than religious beliefs per se." Carol Mattingly, "Beyond the Protestant Literacy Myth," in Literacy, Economy, and Power: Writing and Research after Literacy in American Lives, edited by John Duffy,

51 arguments described in Elizabeth S. Cohen’s chapter “Miscarriages of apothecary

justice: un-separate spaces of work and family in early modern Rome” highlight the

presence of female experts in some official medical spaces – in this case, an apothecary

shop – and how their labor was essential for maintaining a medical business.48 Other

scholars have noted the way licenses for individual medicines of itinerant practitioners

and for static pharmaceutical businesses were regularly transferred to a woman upon the

death of a father or husband.49 Reading, writing, and arithmetic are not actually essential skills for kitchen compounding, especially when craft knowledge is transferred orally and tacit knowledge is gained through experiential training. However, it is clear that literacy was a valued ability that many possessed in sixteenth-century Italy and that a copious amount of medical information was transmitted in both vernacular print and manuscript form. It is certain that knowledge of how to make medicines moved orally, but it is also clear that laypeople had a flourishing culture of recipes on paper.

Suffice to say that the manuscripts examined in this project occupied literate spaces and that their readers likely came from a relatively wide variety of social and economic levels, although both the readers and writers probably came from privileged backgrounds just by virtue of their being literate. What remains to be examined is how

Julie Nelson Christoph, Eli Goldblatt, Nelson Graff, Rebecca S. Nowacek, and Bryan Trabold (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013): 46. 48 Elizabeth S. Cohen, “Miscarriages of Apothecary Justice: Un-Separate Spaces of Work and Family in Early Modern Rome,” in Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Medicine, edited by Sandra Cavallo and David Gentilcore (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008): 8-32. 49 For example: Justin Rivest, "Beyond the Pharmacopoeia? Secret Remedies, Exclusive Privileges, and Trademarks in Early Modern France," in Pharmacopeias in the Early Modern Atlantic World, Forthcoming, University of Pittsburgh Press.

52 information came to authors and readers and how authors and readers interpreted and

retransmitted that information. It can be debated whether the writer of mss. 689-691 should be considered an “author” or “compiler,” since it is unclear whether he included independent contributions. What is more important for our purposes than the novelty of the ideas presented by the writer is the role that he played in selecting particular pieces of information and deciding upon an organizational structure since the way compilers of manuscript recipe books “selected, summarized, sorted, and presented textual material to facilitate its use by others” is a kind of “self-presentation” that cannot be overstated.50

The majority of each volume of Wellcome mss. 689-691 is taken up with recipes for making medicines. As will be discussed in greater depth in later chapters, the proportion of recipes in these volumes dedicated to medicine is somewhat uncommon.

Most recipe volumes contain a variety of entries on veterinary medicine, cleaning, and artistic recipes, for example, in addition to those for human care. However, the way these manuscripts were compiled, including their organization, the rubrication, and the letter to the reader, it is likely that the author viewed them as books that would be read by others instead of personal repositories of generally useful information. Especially considering the author’s focus on medical education, as well as his location in a monastic community, it makes sense that the three volumes are focused tightly on medicine rather than displaying the more typical mix of recipes for a wide variety of products.51

The recipes in these manuscripts vary in length and complexity, but in general

50 Blair, Too Much to Know, 175. 51 See chapter 3 for more information about specialized labor in monastic communities.

53 they contain a title, a list of ingredients, and a description of how to compound the

cure.52 Sometimes there are provenance notations in the body of the text, but most of the

time they are built into the title. There are also occasional notations reflecting personal

experiences, but information about patients is very rare. Unlike a log of activities that one would expect to find in a physician’s casebook or diary, authors of sixteenth-century

Italian manuscript recipe books did not keep track of whom they treated or how well the medicines worked.

Entries in these manuscripts often consist of one or more recipes. For example, the entry titled “Ardor d’Horina” is followed by three additional recipes:

Pain from urination. Mallow root, smallage root, parsley root, a handful of each. Boil them in a sufficient quantity of water until a third is boiled away, to which add, A piece of fresh butter as big as a nut, melt it in the boiled mixture, and take it two hours before lunch, repeat as needed.

Similarly. Powdered armenian bole, 1 drachm, with plantain water53

Similarly. Powder of henbane seeds, of poppy, 1 drachm of both, with lettuce water, and purcelane [water] 1.5 ounces of each. Repeat as needed.54

52 For more on recipe book and recipe structure, please see: Francisco Alonso-Almeida, “Genre conventions in English Recipes, 1600-1800,” in Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800 (Manchester University Press, 2013): 68-92. 53 “Boloarmeno” according to Florio, “a kinde of yellow and reddish earth good against poison and infection, growing in Armenia, called Bole.” (John Florio, "Bolarmeno," Queen Anna's New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues (London: Melch Bradwood, 1611): 64) 54 “Ardor d’Horina. Radice di Malva, Radice d’Altea, Radice di Persemolo, Anna – M. I – Si faccia bolire in sufficiente quanità d’Acqua, sino alla consum.e della 3.a parte,

The structure above is typical of the recipes in these volumes as well as recipe books

from across northern and central Italy. Although titles, information about making and

dispensing medicines, details about the origin of the recipe, and explanations of illnesses

can all appear in recipes, Francisco Alonso-Almeida’s “Genre conventions in English recipes, 1600-1800” confirms the general idea that the only compulsory information in a recipe is a list of ingredients.55 The non-essential components, such as titles,

compounding information, and provenance, are the parts of recipes that reveal some of

the most interesting information about recipe authors and readers, because they were

flexible and could be adjusted based on the author’s needs and experiences. Many of

these adaptable components in Wellcome mss. 689, 690, and 691 became locations in

which the author could most effectively instruct his reader.

Didactic sections are sprinkled throughout each of the three volumes. Where a

simple recipe’s goal is to communicate how to do something, didactic entries are written

in order to inform the reader of a specific piece of information while describing how to

perform an action.56 The difference is a subtle one that demonstrates how a writer offered

either general or specific information to give context about an illness or symptom that

would aid the reader in treating his or her patients. These didactic entries reveal what the

cui adde, Buttiero frescho quanto sia una noce, si distempera con il’ deccotto, et si piglia due hore Avanti pranzo, si replica secondo il Bisogno. Item. Bolo Armeno in pol. -i- con Acqua di Piantag.e. Item. Polver di Seme di Iusquiamo, di Pappavaro, ana -i- con Acqua di Lattuga, e di Portolag.a ana i-5 si replica secondo il bisogno.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms 689: 3v. 55 Alonso-Almieda, “Genre Conventions in English Recipes, 1600-1800,” 71-72. 56 Most didactic entries in these manuscripts also include recipes.

55 Capuchin author expected his readers to already know and what additional information

he thought would be most useful for their practices. From the letter to the reader, it is

already clear that the monk was very aware of how his books might communicate with

future readers. The didactic entries in these three volumes reveal the author to be a

practitioner who was versed in the basics of medical theory, cognizant of the expectations

that were placed on lay practitioners, and sensitive to the expectations that future readers

would have of a medical reference text like his. They also reveal that he assumed his

readers would not be physicians, because the information he provides would have been

standard for those educated in universities. The didactic entries demonstrate how the

monk worked to offer his knowledge that would, in a way, work to level the playing field

with their professional physician colleagues, by offering them access to privileged

information.

Didactic entries in these volumes fall into three general categories: entries on

individual ingredients or simples, entries explaining illnesses, and entries describing best

practices or basic medical information. Considering these manuscripts as a kind of “cliff

notes” of medical expertise, we learn more about how laypeople distilled and interpreted

information into essential knowledge for practical purposes. This, then, also reveals the

complexities of their practices and communities, highlighting how information traveled

and changed as it moved between diverse social and economic sites.

The majority of recipes for all kinds of products, not just for medicines, did not

include detailed instructions like recipes have today. Instead, the majority of the

knowledge necessary to make these items was embodied, and recipes functioned more as reminders of amounts of ingredients and other important, specific details. The recipes in

56 the monk’s manuscripts are, unsurprisingly, relatively simple, for example this recipe

for a plaster to be applied to breasts simply says:

Fava bean flour, of lentils, of orzo -ana. lib - 5 - and with sapa [sodden wine] - 5 ounces - Boil until it becomes thick - 5 - L - , and use [this plaster] because it dries, mollifies, and little by little resolves the milk.”57

By integrating many of his recipes into larger narrative discussions about illnesses, often including descriptions of diseases and several recipes, the monk emphasized the importance of the relation of each individual portion to the entirety of the entry. These recipe books are didactic volumes from which readers could actively learn about illnesses as they make decisions about which treatments to offer their patients.

Recipes such as the above were often organized into thematic sections, in this

case: “On the fissures of the breasts, and of the sores of the breasts,” that included

introductory information to teach the reader about the illness in general. Sections such as

"On the fissures of breasts, and on sores of the breasts," "On dropsy," "On choleric and

iliac pain," and "On vomiting" provide multiple recipe entries in addition to general

statements about the illness. These sections, such as “On Dropsy,” stand in stark contrast to the decontextualized recipes present in the majority of manuscript recipe books.

Significantly, many of these entries include theoretical information that placed the illness discussion in the context of humoral medicine. "On dropsy," for example, says

There are three kinds of dropsy: one is from the windiness in the belly, the other is from water, and the third is from phlegmatic material throughout

57 " Farina di fava – di Lentecchie – di Orzo – ana – lib – 5 – è con Sapa – 9 – 5 – Bolli fino che venga spesso – -l- et, Usalo, pè che disecca, mitiga et, resolve à poco à poco il’Latte." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 690: 12v-13r.

57 the body. The first we call Dropsy of the Belly. The second is Aqueous [Dropsy]. The third is Dropsy of the Whole Body. If you want to cure dropsy of the belly it has been well experimented that to cure it you should comfort the liver, and provoke and vivify [the liver's] heat. Firstly, therefore, you should see to comfort the liver and resolve the windiness in the body.58

The following recipe grouping, “On Aqueous Dropsy,” further specifies the correct type of treatment for this particular version of dropsy:

On Aqueous Dropsy. Regarding watery dropsy, it has been seen through experience that bleeding the patient from the vein in any way will kill the patient; for this reason it is recommended in the case of Aqueous Dropsy, and also in cases of asthma, that the physician not bleed the patient, but it is found through experience that it is best to primarily comfort the liver, and then to digest the [aqueous] material, and evacuate it from the body. This [approach] is very appropriate in these cases.59

By grouping recipes according to illness and adding introductory text and placing relevant sections next to each other, the author created a vastly more pedagogical text than the typical recipe reference volume. Although these phrases were perhaps abbreviated from more theoretical and more comprehensive texts on these illnesses, the

Capuchin author nonetheless crafted a text that would have been very useful to practitioners who needed refreshers or basic education about how to determine what

58 “On dropsy," for example, says "La hidropisia e di 3 sorte: una da ventosita nel ventre, l'atra d'acqua, la 3.a da matteria flegmatitica di tutto il corpo. La prima si adimanda hidropisia ventosa. La 2.a acquosa. La 3.a anasarca, et e. hidropisia di tutto il corpo. A voler curare la hidropisia da ventusita e sperementato che la guarire il conforter il fegato, et eccitare et vivicare il suo calore. Pimariamente adunque si vegga d'andar confortando esso fegato e risolvendo la ventusita del corpo,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 93v. Dropsy is now referred to as edema. 59 “Della Hidropisia Acquosa. Al’ Hidropisia Acquosa, si è visto per Esperienza che il’ cavar del’ Sangue, per là Vena, in ciascun modo amaze l’infermo; per il’ che consiglio nella Hidropisia Acquoso e nè lasm ancora, che il’ Medico non tia ordito cavar Sangue, mà si è trovato p. Esperienza, che il’ confortare primeramen.te il’ Fegato et, di poi digierita là Matteria, et evacuate, e molto Aproposito in questo caso.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 94v

58 illnesses they were faced with, as well as what to do about them.

This type of entry represents the powerful change that a compiler could enact on

knowledge in the process of organization. In some ways recipe books are implicitly

educational, because they contain instructions for making things that the reader is assumed not already to know how to make. Of course, some recipes function primarily as memory aids, but even those direct the actions of readers, instructing them to use

particular ingredients or amounts of ingredients. The entries in mss. 689, 690, and 691

occupy a different educational space, however, by not only clearly detailing how

particular recipes were to be composed, but explaining how they relate to each other and

to the complaint in question.

In the context of non-medical reference works, Blair argues that “by grouping the excerpts under headings or topical chapters, compilers created parallels between passages from different authors and contexts and invited interpretations focused on thematic parallels that might differ from the thrust of the passage in its original context.”60 In

controlling the way in which individual recipes were ordered – arranging them under a

single heading – manuscript authors like the monk both acknowledged the abilities of his

perceived reader and dictated the way the information was to be received by the reader.

Considered in this way, it is much easier to understand how the volume as a whole has an

educational objective.

Domestic medicine is frequently classified as “folk,” lower in status than

academic medicine because it supposedly did not require or utilize the kind of theoretical

60 Blair, Too Much to Know, 176.

59 training, rigor, or organization that physicians were expected to maintain. In discussing

charlatanry in early modern Italy, David Gentilcore suggested that a helpful

conceptualization for Italy’s diversity of medical practitioners might be “medical

anthropology’s model of formal vs. informal medicine. It is less value-laden and puts the emphasis not on divergence from accepted standards and models of medical care, but on aspects such as organization, practice, and reception.”61 Yet, as he identifies, this

categorization is still difficult, because many practitioners crossed these boundaries,

existing comfortably in multiple locations.

Indeed, the monk’s educational entries demonstrate that manuscript authors did pay attention to the theoretical bases of formal medicine even while existing in the more

informal realm of medical practice in general. Offering a dual description of the breast

sores described above, the monk included a note that these sores can occur because of

“cold humors.” The entry is essentially practical because it assists the reader in learning

how to identify the issue and how to solve it, but the inclusion of humoral language

shows how he operated within the scope of accepted academic theory and discussed

medicine with the language of formal medicine. Similarly, the different types of dropsy

are defined according to their humoral qualities. These brief theoretical qualifications of

diseases establish that the writer aimed to offer the reader a more holistic picture of the

illness rather than leaving the reader either to not understand the context of the disease, to

know it already, or to figure it out on his or her own.

Many other illnesses are described in humoral terms throughout the manuscripts.

61 Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy, 52.

60 A recipe for a sore knee describes the swelling as “windy” and about cold and hot humors mixing: “And, if [the knee swelling is from] the material of cold humors mixed with hot material, put the decoction of marshmallow mucilage with althea [on the knee].”62 The author of Wellcome mss. 689-691 appears to have followed the trend evident in other printed vernacular medical manuals in offering recipes that were not tied to particular people.63 Aside from recipes specifically for children or women (discussed in depth in chapter three), discussions of the humors are related to illnesses rather than individuals. Cavallo and Storey find that “printed health advice was not intended for the specific complexion… of a named person or dedicatee… Far from being rules ad personam the recommendations outlined in [printed regimen books] had universal value.”64 They continue by saying, “Overall, the discourse on complexion shifts from being centered on the individual to being structured around particular categories in the early modern age… Our study of printed regimens confirms the prevalence of a taxonomic approach to complexion.”65 For certain categories, such as fevers, this trend of humoral qualities of illnesses began even earlier in the medieval period.

Humoral information also appears in “best practices” entries. These are entries that, with a varying degree of complexity, explain basic theories and general practices of medicine outside of the context of a particular illness. For example, the grades of medicine are explained in brief detail to the readers of ms. 689:

62 “Et, se sara’ la’ matteria de’ gli humori frigida, misturata con materia calida, In cambia di Liscia, Vi si ponga Decotto mucilaginoso d’Althea.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms. 690: 11r. 63 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Renaissance Italy, 31-2. 64 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Renaissance Italy, 31. 65 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Renaissance Italy, 32.

61 Attention - It is noted that the degrees of medicine are four: So say the physicians: And when they say that the medicine is hot in the first degree, they mean that it is a little hot: and when it is hot in the second degree, it is moderately hot. And when it is hot in the third degree, it is very hot. And when it is hot in the fourth degree, it is poisonous. And so with coldness, humidity, and dryness.⁠66

The presence of this section makes sense in the context of the humoral descriptions of illnesses mentioned above. Long before the sixteenth century, the Galenic gradations of heat and moisture were accepted as factors that fundamentally affected health and illness.

As such, these were important features in medicine making, because the heat or moisture

of a drug was intended to counteract whatever imbalance existed in the patient, either by

natural or non-natural cause. Interestingly, the passage both aligns the author and his

readers with an official authority and sets them apart from that authority. The presence of

the passage alludes to the practical importance of being able to speak about illnesses and

medicines in the humoral terms that were common in the medical marketplace. On the

other hand, both the need to include the information as well as calling the knowledge out

as belonging to physicians explicitly identifies that the monk and his readers were not

physicians or part of academic medicine. This section is also notable because it appears

in the same sixteenth-century editions of Villanova's Herbolario Volgare that contain the

lifted and edited letter to the reader.67 By providing information about humoral theory,

the author of the volumes gave his readers an access point for more effective

66 “Aviso. Nota, che li gradi delle Medicine sono 4.: Cosi dette dè Sig. Medici: È quando si dice che là Medicina è calda nel’ Primo grado, sintende che è poco calda: È quando è calda nel 2.: grado, è calda temperatam.te È quando è calda nel’ 3.: grado, è molto calda. È qando e calda nel’ 4.: grado è Velènosa È cosi del’ Freddo, Humido, è Seccho.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms 689: 129r. 67 de Villanova, Herbolario volgare, 1536: 3v.

62 communication with others in the medical marketplace, likely both academic

physicians as well as patients who were accustomed to thinking about their bodies’

internal balance.

Other kinds of “best practices” entries are lists of various kinds of information.

For example, ms. 689 has a list of the

best and worst days to let blood:

"November has its good day to bleed,

the 28th, but for two days it is [bad] to

bleed, those being the 21st and the

25th."68 ⁠ The inclusion of a calendar for

bleeding is yet another moment in

which the author aligned himself with

traditional medical practice. Figure 7,

for example, a broadsheet published in

1485, is an almanac describing the Figure 7: Almanac for the year 1485, Augsburg: Johann Bämler. Courtesy of the Wangensteen Historical correct times of the year to bleed young Library of Biology and Medicine. women. Similarly, there is also a list of prognostications of the level of danger of illness on different days in the lunar cycle.69 ⁠

68 “Novembre, `ha il’ suo Bon giorno dà Salassare li 28 mà a due giorni caattivi dà salassare, cione li 7 è alli 9 e, alli 22 di detto Mese.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms. 689: 130r. 69 “Pronostico Sopra li Giorni della Luna, per Conosere lè Inferm.tà sè sarano Pericolose; per quanto Influiscono; Luminari Li numeri, sono li Giorni, che sis ono Amalati.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms. 689: 128r.

63 Regular bloodletting for health maintenance was a practice that had been in place for centuries.

Other kinds of memory devices include a section of lists of ingredients in ms. 491.

Featuring lists such as, "Five major opening roots," "Four anodini," "four very cold seeds," and "three kinds of sweet ointments," among many others, could have been quick go-to guides for finding ingredients for specific effects.70 A section titled "Signs of different kinds of dropsy" follows these plant lists.71 These simple lists are similar in some ways to the list of reviews of "name brand" recipes mentioned above and likely functioned as memory devices. As a textual device, lists like these indicate that the author assumed that his readers had certain kinds of knowledge. In this case, the author and his readers did not need full explanations of the complex properties of each plant or the purpose of bleeding according to a calendar, but rather they simply needed reminders about some basic pieces of information.

Other didactic entries in the volume describe individual plant ingredients.

Ingredient information was readily available in the many printed and manuscript herbal texts that circulated in Italy during this era. The first printed herbals in Europe were produced in the fifteenth century and for centuries the genre continued to have a heavy focus on medical uses of plants rather than strict botanical information. Since they were pharmaceutical texts, most also included information about different kinds of non-plant

70 "Cinq.e Radici Aperitive Maggio.re," "Quatro anodini," "Quatro semi freddi maggiori," and "Tre Sorti di Mirabolani." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 691: 42r. 71 "Segni delle spetie dell’Hidropisia." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 691: 42r.

64 ingredients such as those from animals (honey, meat, milk) and from chemicals (alum, mercury). The monk, however, included specific anecdotes about only a few aspects of each ingredient rather than writing comprehensive entries about finding, storing, and using ingredients.

"Simples" were a significant part of pharmaceutical practice across early modern

European medicine, but these entries are descriptions of how particular ingredients can be used in complex, compounded medicines. The first entry, for example, in ms. 689 is dedicated to the walnut. Describing how to prepare them, scorched in their shells and pounded, the author asserts that they can be put on the belly, removing pain in the body.

He suggests a few other ways of preparing them and describes how they can also be used to help hair grow on young boys and heal cancers and fistulas.72 Different from a recipe entry, this section, titled "Virtù della Noce," is dedicated to explaining how an ingredient should be prepared and what it was good for rather than offering particular recipes.

Covering a full ten lines of text, nearly a quarter of the page, the entry is relatively extensive and stands out on a page that is otherwise occupied with recipes that deal with menstruation, sweaty feet, and hemorrhoids, among other complaints.

Unlike herbals, Italian manuscript recipe books rarely have images of plants in them - in fact, they rarely have images at all. These ingredient entries explain how to use

(rather than identify in the wild) specific types of (usually, but not always) plant-based

72 "Virtù della Noce. Brusciate col’ guscio et peste, et Applicate sopra L’ombelico, mittigano il’ Dolor del’ Corpo. I gusci delle noci Abrucciati et fattine pol’ et incorporate con oglio, et vino g.5. et, untone il’ capo à Fanciulli, fanno crescere li capelli, et rinasere one sono cascati; Lè noce vecchie, malticrate [?], cioe I garvici [?]] et et applicate S.A. sarano prestamente le Cancrene, I Carboni, et lè Fistole lacrimale è fanno rinasere I capelli." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: S.S. r..

65 ingredients that appeared in medical recipes. The entry for fava beans in ms 689 is a

good example of this:

Fava [beans] and their virtues. Fava, or little favas, cooked very well in acqua ferata73 and mixed with a portion of rose oil, or violet [oil] to form a plaster, is a remedy for women’s breast tumors caused by curdled milk in the breasts, and the flour [of fava beans], cooked in vinegar and honey and made into a plaster prevents cancers.74

Rather than describing how to identify fava beans when presented with them or where

they grow or how to find them (this was probably basic, assumed knowledge), the entry

explains how to prepare the beans and what they might be most useful for. Described as

good against tumors and cancers, particularly in women’s breasts, in some ways the entry

reads as a recipe entry. Owing to the title itself, a reader would likely approach the entry

hoping to learn about the virtues of the fava bean rather than with a particular illness to

solve already in mind.

In addition to plant material, the author included information about non-plant

ingredients such as, for example, a passage about “Sandaracha” (sandarac). The author

says that it is called "sandaracha" by the Arabs, but it means “Vernice.” He offers a

warning: “Pay close attention [while making a recipe] so that you do not indifferently

73 Florio defines "acqua ferata" as smiths water wherein iron was quenched." Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, 8. 74 “Fava, e sue virtu. Fava, ho’ favetta, cotta benissimo ne l’acqua ferata in forma d’empiastro, e misiatoni, una portione di hoglio rosato, ho violato, rimedia alli tumori delli mamelle delle donne, cagionati dal’latte appresso in dette mamelle, et la sua farina, cotta con acetto, e mielle, in forma d’empiastro pribisse alla canchrena,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 34v.

66 take one [ingredient] for another.”75 On the reverse side of the page, another entry has an additional description of sandaracha: “Sandaracha is a mineral stone that is born in the same way that metals are, and very often [appears] with orpiment [painter’s gold], which is the color red, like vermillion.”76

The sixteenth century is often characterized by the historians of science as a period of intense collecting and naming of the natural world. As part of renewed interest in classical sources, natural historians first attempted to establish correct knowledge of classical plants, especially those described by Dioscorides. Scholars could then correlate this “pure” knowledge with what they found in the natural world, assigning plants their correct names and attempting to incorporate ingredients into the pharmacopoeia that were unknown to the Greek and Roman canon. Generally discussed in terms of the great minds of natural history in this era who attempted to clarify the Dioscoridean pharmacopoeia, the monk’s commentary on sandarac is an example of how far the worries about practitioners using incorrect ingredients permeated in early modern medical culture.

Other ingredient entries, like “On the Juice of the Lemon”, have practical concerns that highlight the diversity of the author’s practice. Although women frequently use lemon juice to make their faces more beautiful, the author says, he has seen the juice of lemons dissolve stones and pearls. Therefore, one should really think twice before

75 “guardasi bene nelle ricette delle medicine, di non pigliare una p. l’altra indifferentem.te.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms 690: 24r. 76 Polver nostra singolare, per quello che noi sapiamo, chiamata” …“Sandaracha è una pietra minerale che nasce nelle maniere de metalli, et il piu delle volte insieme con l’orpimento, qual e’ di color Rosse come il cinabro…” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690: 24v.

67 applying it to human flesh.77 A later entry, “On all of the Belletti which are harmful to the health, and to the faces of everyone [who uses them]," is a simple, general description

of the kinds of things people put on their faces.78 Like the cautionary lemon juice

warning, the author also advises against particularly potent ingredients like iron, lead,

camphor, and vitriol.79 The author must have regularly encountered people who used these ingredients was familiar with their effects. He not only asserted his general knowledge of the effects of the ingredients, but also affirmed his ideas by recounting the outcome of experimentation. He also assumed that his reader would also encounter

people who also used these ingredients in similar ways. By recounting stories about the

strength of lemon juice, for example, he provided transferrable evidence to his readers

that they could then use to convince their own patients to be cautious with these beauty

aids. These entries also serve as a reminder of the fluidity of medicine as a material

77 “Del’ Sugo de’ Limoni, et dè loro Effetti: Vi sono molte Donne che per farsi Belle là faccia, ussano il’ succo di Limoni, il’ quale adoprano per non sapere là sua male qualità; Mà io dirò l’effetto chef à, è poi chi vorrà adoprarlo l’adopri a sua posta è, sè gli succederà male, si suo d’anno. Dirò dunq.e che il’ Succo di limone è di tanta forza, quando c’ben Accido, che solvein Acqua quasi tutte le Pietre per dure che elle siano; Et, non si trova cosa al’ parer mio, che solva lè Peale con maggior prestezza di quello che fa il detto sugo…” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms. 690: A.B.r- v. Popular advice magazines today continue to debate the benefits and dangers of using lemon juice to brighten one’s complexion. See, for example, Bellatory, “Can Lemon Juice Really Lighten Skin?,” April 19, 2016 https://bellatory.com/skin/Can-Lemon-Juice- Really-Lighten-Skin and Buzzfeed, “14 Things You’re Doing Wrong to your Skin,” December 13, 2014 https://www.buzzfeed.com/chanelparks/things-youre-doing-wrong- to-your-skin?utm_term=.smL7ER2GY6#.te23e4m28d 78 Belletti: "painting for a woman's face." Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, "Belletti," 58. 79 “Del’ Oglio di Tartaro, è sua Corrottione,” “Del’ Alume di Rocca, è sua mala qualità,” “Del’ Sal’ Nitro, è Sua mala qualità ne Beletti,” “Della Canfora, che si Usa, per far lè Donne Belle.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms. 690: A.B.r-v. For more on women in the monk’s medical practice, see chapter 3.

68 practice in this period, since cosmetics were partly medical aids and partly vanity tools in this period. Chapter four will discuss the categorization of medicine in the minds of early modern individuals in greater depth, but it is important to recall with each of these manuscripts that the authors and readers approached their practices with a set of questions and issues that did not fit neatly within the bounds of the official, medicalized body.

Efficacy & Authority

Because there are no marginalia to speak of in these three volumes, it is impossible to know to what degree this author’s attempt at teaching his monastic brothers about medicine was effective. Focusing on the instances where the author’s own voice comes through in the manuscripts instead provides a way to analyze how he attempted to ensure that his work would be read and that his knowledge would be trusted. For example, under the heading “On kidney stones,” the author includes a recipe with a description that says “For the same problem, it has been experienced that with the below- noted morsels, the patient will without a doubt pass the stone, or it will break apart, or it will make it [into] powder.”80 Although the recipe worked in multiple ways to save the patient from his or her pain, there are eight total recipes under the kidney stone heading.

It is in some ways obvious why manuscript recipe books almost always include multiple recipes for the same ailment. Although early moderns certainly had medicines that

80 “A questo medesimo e sperimentato l’infrascrito Boccone il’ quale dandosi al’ Infermo, Senza dubbio, orinerà là Pietra, hò Vero si romper, hò là fara in Polver.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 109v.

69 worked well for their purposes, and some that worked according to modern standards, the lack of sulfa drugs, antibiotics, and advanced imaging technologies meant that certain illnesses could almost certainly not be cured or targeted at their roots. The authority that manuscript authors wove into their recipes by constantly reassuring their audiences that remedies were tested and worked is a central piece of information to help to bring the history of non-professional practitioners into step with the historiography of the Italian medical marketplace. The monk’s personal experience and provenance notations are useful for underscoring the creation and assertion of authority in individual healers’ practices. Personal experience and patient information become public records of skill and trust that would reflect back on the author’s abilities as a medical authority.

Unlike physicians’ notebooks that contain records of interactions with specific patients and the ways in which they were healed, manuscript recipe books were not frequently used to record personal information or records of specific cases. Instead, anecdotes of personal experience are relatively frequent in manuscript recipe books and are important because the volumes on the whole lack specific information about instances in which remedies were used. Like many Italian manuscript recipe books from this period, the author of mss. 689, 690, and 691 frequently ends his recipes with a statement such as this: “Rose water for the face: it is something marvelous and I have myself tried it many times.”81 The use of words like “miraculous” are important to note and are reflective again of the rhetoric that was common across medical writing in this period.

Alonso-Almeida has noted a difference in the words authors used to describe efficacy in

81 “Acqua al’ Rossore della Faccia”: “e’ cosa maravigliosa e’ piu’ volte da’ me’ provata.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library ms 698: G v.

70 titles from the medieval to early modern period: words like “good” in the medieval period are replaced with more forceful descriptors like “excellent.”82 Other recipes include references to ‘experiment,’ or the witnessing described by Gentilcore. For example, “This is a secret that has been proven to always be helpful with the help of

God.”83 Authors constantly included very brief commentary on how effective and proven each recipe was, regardless of an almost complete lack of specific evidence – a more modern requirement of proof – of the recipe’s efficacy.

Published books of secrets also feature this formula of efficacy notations, such as

Tommaso da Francolino’s pamphlet Tesoro di Secreti Naturali. Recipes assert that: “this remedy will cure the patient with the help of God,” “this is an excellent remedy,” “you will witness it [working],” and “this [remedy] in short order will restore your health.”84

That Francolino included this type of reassurances to his reader so frequently in this short, seven-page pamphlet, with only forty-five recipes, is a useful counterpart to the

Capuchin’s recipe books. Even recipe books that include this kind of language less frequently, such as Novo Recettario ilquale, e intitolato Thesoro de Povari, the formulaic structure of justifications is still present. For example, a recipe “For the bite of dogs, and other animals which are not mad,” “is a proven thing.”85 Another entry states that a

82 Alonso-Almeida, “Genre conventions in English recipes,” 74. 83 Questo e’ Secretto Approvato piu’ volte e’ senpre aiutito con laiuto di Dio.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 48v. 84 “Tù guarira con l’aiuto di Dio,” “questo è ottimo rimedio,” “che ne vedrai l’esperienza,” “che questo in breve di render la sanità.” Tommaso da Francolino, Tesoro di Secreti Naturali, Dispensato da me Tomaso da Francolino detto l’Ortolano. In Roma, Venetia, Siena, Bologna, & in Modona, Giulian Cassani. [n.d., est. 1620s]: 1. 85 “Alle morsicature de Cani, & altri animali che non sono arabiati… che è cosa provata.” Novo recettario ilqvale e intitolato thesoro de poueri : divisio in due parti, nella prima

71 recipe to cure “intolerable pain in the belly” was “a miraculous secret, and is not

dangerous at all.”86 Yet another “for tooth pain” asserts that the recipe is “proven and

true.”87 This language is not limited to pamphlets, though, and shows up in larger printed, vernacular recipe books as well. In Secreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese

(1555), the author writes that one recipe, for example, “is for whom had received a blow to the head, or had fallen, or had bruised his head... will perfectly heal him."88

When references to specific patients do appear in the Capuchin’s manuscripts,

they function as proof of the author’s efficacy, authority, and trust. For example, in a

recipe for a plaster the author writes, "And from this simple medicine I have healed ...the

son of the ... protomedico of Padua."89 ⁠ By mentioning that he cured a specific person, and

that the specific person was the son of another highly respected medical professional

(who presumably could not cure his own son), the author emphasized his own medical

prowess.

Scholarship on evidence of personal experience in medical writing highlights the

complexities of this particular kind of medical rhetoric. Michelle deMio and Alisha

parte si contiene il flagello, cura, & rimedii de tutte le sorti de veleni, nella seconda parte, la scelta delli rimedii più sperimentati, ad aclune particolari infermità, lequali giornalment molestano i corpi humani (Milano: Michel Tini, 1584): 4. 86 “A dolore intolerabile di ventre… questo è mirabile secret, & senza veruno pericolo.” Novo recettario ilqvale e intitolato thesoro de poueri..., 8. 87 “Al dolore de denti… è cosa provata e vera.” Novo recettario ilqvale e intitolato thesoro de poueri..., 13. 88 "a chi havesse ricevvta botta in testa, ò fosse caduto, et havesse ammaccata, et gòsiata la testa… sanerà perfettissimamente." Girolamo Ruscelli, Secreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese, (Venetia: Sigismondo Bordogna, 1555): 45. 89 “Et, di questo senplice Medicamento Io hò guarito, e liberato à fatto con laiuto di S.D.M. il’ figliolo del’ Ecc.mo Malacreda, Protomedico di Padova.” (da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, 689, 44r.)

72 Rankin, for example, have noted that different kinds of assertions of personal

experience tend to be used by different types of practitioners. During this period,

physicians tended to mistrust public trials because charlatans and mountebanks used them

so frequently. In order to preserve their integrity, they instead relied on assertions of

personal use.90 The overarching lack of references to specific instances in which remedies

were successful, and the presence of generic, formulaic statements seem like the likely

textual counterpart to this mistrust of public performance. Although expressions of

efficacy were likely more “expressions of good will rather than promises,” these notes

also carried with them the weight of the author’s personal experience.91 “In medieval

scholasticism” and in ancient sources, according to Gentilcore, “something proven ‘by

experiment/ experience’ was something witnessed; it did not refer to a deliberate

methodology designed to test hypotheses.”92 It appears as if this habit of professional

practitioners was mirrored in lay recipe books like the Capuchin, with commentary about individual recipes: “…this is miraculous,”93 “…this has a wonderful effect,”94 and [this]

90 Alisha Rankin and Michelle deMio discussed this in their 2015 History of Science Society talks: Alisha Rankin “Poison Antidotes, Panaceas, and Proof in Sixteenth- Century Europe,” and Michelle DiMeo, “Robert Boyle’s Medical Recipes: Efficacy, Trials, and Experimentation,” talks given at the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. 2015.

91 Alonso-Almeida, “Genre conventions in English recipes,” 78. 92 Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy, 141. 93 “qual’ e’ Miracoloso,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: T v. 94 “fara’ effetto mirabil,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: V r.

73 “works wonderfully.”95

Most of these notations about efficacy were written in the third person, as in the

examples above, and instances in which the author wrote in the first person are relatively

uncommon. In addition to the letter to the reader, a few recipe entries have more personal

efficacy notes than the ones listed above. In a recipe for “il Mal’ Caduco” (the falling

sickness, or, epilepsy), for example, the author writes, “I like this, and it is a tested secret,

being used by the sick person two or three times a week; when they go to sleep [they

should take] one of the above-written pills….”96 Another example where his voice comes through is in ms 690 under the category heading “On the non-cancerous hardness in breasts.” The author writes, “We have invented and experimented, between the plasters, that for this illness, most will agree, the cooking of rice in broth of capons or hens, or another kind of fat meat....”97 These instances of first-person narrative are examples of

the importance of the information that compilers imbued in their writing by organization,

formatting, and adding details to existing information. In attesting to his personal

attention to the creation, testing, and regular use of the medical recipes, the author

asserted his own authority, and thus showed his reader how effective he and his medical

recipes were.

95 “fa’ mirabile operationi,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 4r. 96 Mi piace, et e’ Secretto, sperementato, ussando L’infermo du o 3 volte la’ settimana, quando si ne va a dormire una delle sopra scritte pirolle…” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 689: 80r. 97 “Della Dureza delle Mamelle, non Cancherignie…. Habbiamo trovato e’spermentato, fra gli’ Impiastri, che a’ questo male, piu vi si convengao, che il cucere il’ Riso, in brood grasso di capponi, o di galline, o’ d’altra carne grassa in 9.s” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690: 21r-v.

74 An author’s authority could not rest simply on his or her own personal

experience, however, and the Capuchin and many other manuscript and print authors

referred to other people’s authority in order to reinforce their own reputations. Many

recipes in the volumes include such canonical names as Galen and Mesue, and others refer to individuals who have not left records behind. 98 It is possible that the author had

simply forgotten the man’s name, but perhaps he did not think that including the name

would be useful. Unlike the cases mentioned by Leong and Pennell, the author of this

volume seems to be using the manuscripts less as evidence of his networks of exchange

and more as an advertisement of his abilities. A remarkable section featuring references

to canonical authors is titled “Advertisements and Memories for Necessities.”99 By the

late middle ages, manuscripts and, later, printed books and pamphlets of medical advice

circulated throughout northern and central Italy. This section, covering two pages of text,

is particularly interesting because it does not consist of recipes, but of opinions about

particular recipes. For example: “Diachilon Magnio Plaster of Mesue. The Diachilon

Magnio valiantly and expertly ripens and resolves every hardness and inflammation related to hardness.”100 Similarly, the recipe “Cirotto Hissopo” says, “This hyssop plaster

of Galen amends every defect and heals and dissolves hard tumors of the liver, of the

98 Mesue (777-857) studied and worked in Baghdad where he directed a hospital. Galen (129 – 200) was a Greek physician working in the Italian peninsula. Both physicians’ writings, but especially Galen’s, eventually became fundamental to the medical canon across medieval and early modern Europe. 99 Avertimenti e Riccordi per Bisogni.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690: 22r-v. 100 “Cerotto Diachilon Magnio di Mesue. Lo Diachilon Magnio è valoroso et esperto in maturare e’ risolvere ogni Dureza et, Infiasone di quella.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690: 22r.

75 spleen, of the belly, of the joints, and of other parts of the body.”101 Short and to the

point, the entries in this section are essentially reviews of “name brand” medicines

attributed to particular individuals. Curiously, the recipe for “Cerotto Diachilon Magnio

di Mesue” does not appear in any of these manuscripts. Instead of being self-referential,

the author expected that readers would have ready access to other sources with these

recipes.

Even where analyses of organization, the letter to the reader, didactic entries, and persuasive notes are taken together, it remains clear that the potential audience of the volumes as seen by the author was complex. Certain parts of the volumes make it clear that the author expected his readers to have some awareness of academic medical theory.

Perhaps he thought his readers would have already had some medical training, or perhaps these passages are simply indicative of a certain level of common knowledge. After all,

Shakespeare assumed that his audience would know about humors and temperaments in his plays.102 Lay healers and their patients clearly operated within the same medical

framework that academic physicians have and likely did not feel the need to acquire

deeper knowledge of prevailing philosophies of the body. As in the 20th and 21st centuries, germ theory is accepted by the masses regardless of the overarching lack of training in microbiology and bacteriology.

101 “Questo cerotto hissopo di Galeno, emenda ogni diffetto e molifica e digierisse I tumori duri del fegato, della milza, dello ventre, dello gionture, del’altre parti del corpo.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690: 22v. 102 For more on Shakespeare and humors, see Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

76 Conclusions

In her exploration of Taddeo Alderotti and his network of students, Nancy Siraisi

considered the continual writing and copying of collections of consilia - which included

medical recipes - "suggests that an important secondary purpose of the genre was to serve as aids to teaching and study."103 The Capuchin author's manuscripts demonstrate that lay practitioners at least occasionally wrote in a similar educational tradition as the famed

Taddeo Alderotti. Manuscript recipe books like these have many important facets on which to base historical analysis, but this brief overview of his recipes shows that at least some lay practitioners participated in an educational system that was very closely aligned with both vernacular printed medical culture and university medical education.

Although we do not have much specific information that could locate our author

in a specific Italian city or state, the notes added to mss. 689-691 by Bernardino da

Rimino can be traced. From Bernardino’s name, we know that he was from Rimini, an

Italian town on Adriatic Sea in the southernmost part of the modern Italian state of

Emilia-Romagna. A little over 200 kilometers from Florence and Venice, and around 100 from Bologna, it was within reach of the medical epicenters of early modern Italy. The

Biblioteca e Archivio Provinciale dei Cappuccini dell’Emilia-Romagna identifies

Bernardino da Rimino as Filippi Bernardino, a capuchin brother born in Rimini in 1663.

He became a novice at Cesina in 1682 and became a full monk the following year. In

1687 he became a deacon at Bertinoro, and was the vicar at the Convent of Rimini from

1715-1716. He was made the guardian of Lugo, then Cesenatico, and finally at Verucchio

103 Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils, 272.

77 between 1718 and 1721. He died in the Convent at Rimini on 19 January 1743 at the age of 80. The Wellcome Library and the previous owner of the volumes identify the main hand of the manuscripts as being early 17th century, but further information about the author has disappeared. Although we cannot be sure to which monastic order the author of mss. 689, 690, and 691 belonged, it is not unlikely that he was a Capuchin like

Bernardino da Rimino. The history of the Capuchin order and monastic medicine will be discussed in further depth in chapter three, but suffice to say at this point that these manuscripts clearly call into question the gendered classification of domestic medicine.

Domestic medicine is a category that has been applied primarily to women, but these manuscripts are evidence that this was not always the case, and cannot be taken for granted.

Like many other medical authors across the early modern period, the author of

Wellcome mss. 689-691 declared that his practice was motivated by the ideal of offering assistance to those for whom he was responsible. Considering that he did not reveal his profession or status in his community in any exact way, he likely was not a member of the official, professional medical community. Rather, it is likely that he was a member of a monastic order (especially because of his reference to his “carissimi fratelli”). Since there is no mention of an apothecary shop that the author may have practiced from, it is plausible that his house or order did not practice medicine for profit like some other

Italian monastic orders.104 Even if the author's order did not have an apothecary shop,

104 For example: Antonio Corvi, La Farmacia Monastica e Conventuale (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1996). Sharon T Strocchia, "The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: marketing medicines in the convent,” Renaissance Studies 25, no. 5. (2011): 627-647.

78 many monastic orders held medical care as an important objective of their labors, both because of their goals of self-sufficiency as well as the importance of caring for both members of their orders as well as for pilgrims and members of the broader community.105 In the case of Benedictine monks, it was this self-sufficiency that necessitated a continuity of medical knowledge and practice, likely leading to educational medical recipe books such as the Capuchin monk's. According to Leonardo Colapinto, "it was necessary to have a continuity of [medical] tradition and teaching to ensure that the monastery would always have at least one person present who was appropriate for this purpose: and so was born the figure of the Monacus Infirmarius, to which the Rule attributed a tripartite function: doctor, apothecary, and nurse."106 It is this sense of self- sufficiency alongside the trio of functions that most clearly and succinctly links monastic medicine with household medicine. In writing these three manuscript recipe books, the

Capuchin author demonstrated how he acted, and how the practitioners whom he educated would act, as a doctor, diagnosing and advising patients, an apothecary, compounding medicines, and as a nurse, offering care to those around him.

105 Leonardo Colapinto, "Monachesimo e Spezierie Conventuali in Italia dal XII al XVII Secolo," Atti e Memorie 12 (1995): 107. 106 Colapinto, " Monachesimo e Spezierie Conventuali in Italia dal XII al XVII Secolo," 109.

Chapter 2: Authority, Authorship, and Copying: Provenance Records in the Ricettario Fiorentino and Tuscan Manuscript Recipe Books

“Just as no art can achieve its end if its instruments are not ready and well organized, Medicine also cannot preserve or bring about health where it is needed if its instruments are not similarly ready, which at its end are agreed upon. And because apothecaries manage medicines, it is necessary to describe in this book what the simple and compound medicines most used in our City should be....”1

Introduction

Well before the late fifteenth century, the scope of medicine in the Italian peninsula covered a huge range of practices and practitioners. As is evident in manuscripts like those of the Capuchin monk, questions about how to treat illness and maintain health permeated society in profound ways. Medicine was a lively subject in medieval manuscript culture, and in the early decades of print all kinds of health advice was printed frequently and broadly in both Latin and vernacular languages, as we have already seen. Medical manuscript and print culture are evidence that members of the literate public took an active role in their own healthcare and that practitioners of all sorts tried to make recommendations to support individuals’ wellness activities.2 Alongside lay

1 “Si come tutte l’arti non possono conseguire il fine, se gli strumenti loro non sono presti, & bene ordinati, così la Medicina non può conservare, ò indurre la sanità dove si richiede, se gli strumenti suoi non sono apparecchiati tali, quali al suo fine si convengono. E perche I medicamenti sono maneggiati dallo Speziale, è necessario trattare in questo Libro quali debbino essere I medicamenti semplici, e quali I composti, che sono più in uso nella nostra Città…” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, “Proemio,” Ricettario Fiorentino (Firenze: Heredi di Bernardo Giunti, 1567): 1. 2 For more on schooling and literacy rates in early modern Italy, see: Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

80 healers, professional medicine flourished. By the sixteenth century, medical schools

and physicians’ guilds had been established across Europe with particular strongholds in

Italy, France, and Germany. These organizations endeavored to regulate healing and

professionalize their ranks, establishing their practitioners as “official,” both in training

and practice. The College of Physicians in Florence, Italy stands as one of the earliest

examples of an adolescent medical body using print to assert control over a local medical

marketplace.

It is evident from manuscript and printed medical texts from the period that lay

and professional medical practice in 16th century Florence used similar supplies and theories, and treated similar kinds of illnesses. The manuscripts of the Capuchin monk discussed in chapter one contain many examples of references to the same kinds of theory and medical authorities that appear in printed medical literature. The differences in the ways that lay and professional authors wrote their medical texts, however, show that there were fundamental differences in the goals of their authors. Examining manuscript recipes alongside official printed recipes from the same geographic area and time period demonstrates the nuances of the medical marketplace, showing how different kinds of practitioners used writing to establish the status of their specific kind of medicine as well as themselves.

Put most simply, this chapter examines the motivations and self-conscious positioning of the College of Physicians of Florence through the lens of its official pharmaceutical text, the Ricettario Fiorentino. Then, I place the Ricettario Fiorentino as a counterpoint to manuscript medical recipe books produced in and around Tuscany in the same period. In addition to functioning as educational volumes, manuscript medical

81 recipe books were self-conscious advertisements in similar ways to their official

counterparts. By recommending pieces of advice from specific kinds of medical authorities to their readers, and ignoring the advice of other healers, authors asserted their knowledge and connections. Analysis of these aspects of manuscript and printed medical recipes reveals general trends in the locations, in time, and in society of medical authority for different practitioner groups.

In 1498, the College of Physicians of Florence asserted that the city had long been in danger because of the immense variety of questionable recipes that were in use across the territory. They worried that unskilled practitioners would dispense medicines that were not made according to the strict and complex rules of heat and moisture that were fundamental to Galenic theory, and that these mistaken recipes could gravely harm patients. Plus, these errors also painted physicians in an unfairly negative light. A single reference book of all College-approved medicines would ensure that apothecaries would

fill doctors’ prescriptions accurately and not dispense medicines that might hurt patients.3

They thus offered up the New Florentine Recipe Book as a concise, easily understood

3 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina della Inclita Cipta di Firenze, "Proemio," Il Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498): Testo e Lingua, Edited and Transcribed by Olimpia Fittipaldi, 2011. Recent scholarship on the Ricettario Fiorentino is not abundant, but James Shaw’s and Evelyn Welch’s discussion of the College of Physicians is quite useful: James Shaw & Evenlyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, Brill: 2011. Also see: Sali Morgenstern, "The Ricettario Fiorentino. 1567. The Origin of the Art of the Apothecary and the Florentine Pharmacopoeias.” The Academy bookman, 30 (1977): 3-12. Ernesto Riva: "Confronto tra le prime due edizioni del Ricettario Fiorentino e l'Antidotario mantovano del 1558”, Atti e Memorie 8, no. 2 (1991): 99-104.

82 compilation of reliable recipes for College-approved medicines.4

The recipes in that first edition came mostly from such antique and medieval

Arabic authorities as Mesue, Niccholao, Avicenna, and Rhazes. More contemporary

authors would win places in the volume in subsequent editions, but even as the College

shifted from Arabic to Classical Greek and Roman authors, the foundation of the

Ricettario was a medical canon that had been established centuries previous. Although

scholars debate whether it was the first European pharmacopoeia, the Ricettario

Fiorentino served as a model for later regional and national pharmacopoeias across

Europe and the New World, which echoed both its form and contents.5 The authors that the Florentine College of Physicians cited largely continued to form the base of official pharmacy across Europe and in the Americas during the first few centuries of contact.6

4 Although modern editions of this first edition of the Florentine pharmacopoeia title it the Ricettario Fiorentino, the title as printed originally was, Nuovo Receptario Composto Dal Famossissimo Chollegio degli Eximii Doctori della Arte et Medicina della Inclita Cipta di Firenze. 5 Although whether the Florentine pharmacopoeia was first is not a vital question in this chapter, historians of pharmacy have debated the question of the first pharmacopoeia in Western Europe at length. Some argue that the Nuremberg pharmacopoeia was the first modern pharmacopoeia, and not the Florentine one, because it was published under the authority of the state rather than a medical college. However, the Ricettario Fiorentino is significant in the history of the genre at least because it served as a powerful example of a pharmaceutical regulatory text. Stuart Anderson, for example, has shown that the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis was modeled after an author saw the Ricettario Fiorentino and was impressed with it. (W. Monk, Roll of the College of Physicians, 2nd ed., London: Royal College of Physicians (1878). Vol I, 2. Stuart Anderson, "National Identities, Medical Politics, and Local Traditions: The Origins of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Pharmacopoeias 1618-1807,” in Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Matthew James Crawford and Joseph M. Gabriel, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Forthcoming. 6 Paula De Vos, "The Textual Tradition of Pharmacy in Early Modern Spain: Origins, Foundations, and Genres," in Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing

83 The authors of the first edition of the Ricettario Fiorentino, the Florentine

College of Physicians, directed their advice toward “speziali” (apothecaries). By the mid-

sixteenth century, apothecaries’ shops and stock had become subject to regulation by the

College of Physicians and the head of Florence’s medico-legal board, the protomedico.

The rules and advice offered to apothecaries about their labors became integral to the

Ricettario, and the Ricettario became a crucial component of apothecaries’ practice, since

they could be fined if they were not compliant with the regulations spelled out in the

book. The Ricettario made suggestions about the physical characteristics of apothecary

shops and how the apothecary should collect and conserve different ingredients. The

book also explained how all of the different kinds of medicines, like pills, plasters, and

unguents, should be made and kept. For example, in the eighth doctrine, the authors of

the Ricettario asserted that “all of the humid things, as are sugars, liquid gums,

confections, and liquid electuaries, you should keep in large vases made of glazed

terracotta.”7 All of these rules, pieces of advice, and recipes were meant to ensure that

apothecaries would make specific preparations that would be both effective and safe,

generally to be dispensed only on the prescription of a physician.8

Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Matthew James Crawford and Joseph M. Gabriel, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Forthcoming. 7 “Diciamo che tutte le chose humide, chome sono sughi, gomme, liquid, confectioni, et lactovari liquidi, si debbono riporre in vasi grossi di terra invetriati.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 40. 8 It is useful to recall, as James Shaw asserts, that “far more important than standard drugs solutions was a ‘magisterial’ approach to drug therapy, whereby drugs were used in combination or adjusted to suit the complexion of the individual, or where bespoke recipes were created specifically for individual patients… Doctors, therefore, employed a more limited range of standard products than was listed in the recipe books, but modified

84 Histories of early modern Italian medicine reveal a much more complex

medical marketplace than the simple physician-apothecary dichotomy described by the

Ricettario. The marketplace was filled instead with a wide variety of both official and lay healers. Although medical schools had been established centuries previous, surviving manuscript recipe books, as we have already seen, support the general assumption that family, friends, and members of the community mostly cared for themselves because of cost, convenience, habit, and the inaccessibility of licensed physicians.9 Apothecaries

were clearly not the only individuals compounding complex medicines. However, the

worries of the Ricettario’s authors about the diversity of recipe books and the need to protect both patients and physicians from these unregulated practices are the only

references made to the practices of lay practitioners in this first Ricettario edition.

Although it may be tempting to take the Ricettario’s recipes and assume that they

were common to practitioners throughout the medical marketplace, Nancy Siraisi has

argued, “medical texts [of all kinds] are essentially prescriptive; consequently, they are

unreliable and inadequate sources of information about actual medical activity and its

these extensively in practice in accordance with the condition of the patient.” (Shaw, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, 257). According to the College, however, Apothecaries were still not invited to make those adjustments themselves. The Ricettario Fiorentino explicitly states that “‘no ignorant and presumptuous apothecary could presume to be able to proceed himself, without the expertise of a physician, thus causing infinite scandal; and therefore in this collection of recipes of ours we have not given any indication of what they are for, because we hope that he who has to use it knows it, and he who does not know it will learn it and then will use it appropriately.” (Ricettario Fiorentino, 1498, II.XVIII.1, translated in Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany, 157). 9 See, for example, Andrew Wear, “Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700,” in The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to AD 1800, edited by Lawrence Conrad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 215-362.

85 social context.”10 Like cooking, medicine was highly customizable in the early modern

period, and it was expected that dosage and pharmaceutical formulas would be adjusted

on the basis of the heat and moisture levels necessary to treat symptoms of patients with

specific constitutions. The Ricettario and other printed recipe books can be understood,

then, as a starting point for doctors and apothecaries who would have tailored medicines

for their patients and customers.

Whether lay readers used the Ricettario Fiorentino is unclear, although it is very

probable that it was not a standard pharmaceutical reference text in non-apothecary

medical spaces. I have not found evidence to indicate that lay readers themselves used

these texts, although it is very probable that they would not have turned to the Ricettario

over cheaper, smaller volumes of recipes written explicitly for the public. The large size

of the books is just one factor that would have made owning this text difficult for all but

the wealthiest. However, the Ricettario and the goals of the College of Physicians still

raise questions about how closely aligned the practices of different groups were and

whether lay practitioners took notice at all of these official pronouncements. In the words

of Evelyn Welch and James Shaw, “One of the fundamental problems in the history of

medicine is to bridge the gap between written works of theory and the reality of daily

10 Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004): xi. Cristina Bellorini has made a useful comparison of official recommendations in the Ricettario Fiorentino with the evidence of Paracelsian alchemical medicine and activities in the grand dukes’ foundry in Renaissance Tuscany. Cristina Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany: Medicine and Botany, (New York: Routledge, 2016). 155-188. For another perspective on the utility of the Ricettario Fiorentino, see Teresa Huguet-Termes, “Standardising drug therapy in Renaissance Europe? The Florence (1499) and Nuremberg pharmacopoeia (1546),” Medicina & Storia – Saggi VIII 15 (2008): 77-101.

86 practice.”11 While manuscript medical recipe books are medical books that were prescriptive, they are also personal archives of practical information and thus provide a way of seeing beyond official recommendations to individual habits.

The medical practice of lay healers in the early modern period was less overtly systematized than official medicine because it lacked governance structures and educational institutions that produce durable records. This means that even though informal treatments from family and friends comprised the most common form of healthcare for early modern Europeans, these practices are less evident in the historical record. While lay healers assuredly took advantage of the multitude of published vernacular sources of information, handwritten recipes were a fundamental part of individual practice, as we have already seen with the monk’s recipe books. Recipes were traded amongst friends and colleagues, as well as purchased from experts. Establishing the exact mode of transmission of individual entries is often problematic, but even without robust databases and statistical analysis of a multitude of recipes, it is clear that medical recipes frequently moved in handwritten, printed, and oral forms. The collection of recipes over a person’s lifetime led to stacks of individual sheets and scraps of paper, amassing in folders and boxes. Recipe compilers often rewrote their recipes in bound books to organize them and keep them in one place for future use, like the monk, molding their practices (and reflections of their work and themselves as healers) into the paper genre of “the recipe book.” Recipe books are strong evidence that lay people routinely

11 Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, 236.

87 practiced medicine, often with attention to the same theories and with similar

ingredients that academic doctors promoted.

The substantial changes between the first (1498) and third (1567) editions of the

Ricettario Fiorentino demonstrate that the authors were interested in an increasing

diversity of source material as well as a stronger focus on specific kinds of information.

However, this chapter will show that although manuscript authors used some of the same

recipe authors, they prioritized very different aspects of medical authority in order to

reach their distinctive goals and so were in some ways more locally-focused than the local, printed pharmacopoeia. First, this chapter will detail the ways the Florentine

College of Physicians presented itself to the apothecary-public that was in principal subordinate to it, using the introductions and prefaces to the Ricettario editions. A clear understanding of the intent with which any volume is written is crucial for explaining how it was constructed and how the authors intended it to be understood. The narrative of these sections exposes the justifications that the College offered for its attempts to control medical practice in the region.

Then, I will focus on the different authorities referenced in the Ricettario editions and manuscript recipe books. Trust and efficacy were crucial in upholding a practitioner or practitioner group’s authority in the complex medical marketplace. The ways that the

College placed its trust in different kinds of medical authorities and focused on the localness of its practice in different eras highlights the College’s reactions to shifting perspectives among a wide variety of practitioners. Lay practitioners had had access to the Ricettario and many other examples of academic medical theory since before the advent of print, but it is unclear how they dealt with the official pronouncements of their

88 government. The current comparison does not reveal exact answers to this question,

but argues that comparing the writing practices of these manuscript authors with the

official documents of the College demonstrates the complex differences in the location of

authority as well as the striking similarities in terms of the way practice was composed.

Finally, I will provide several examples of common recipes in manuscript and print,

offering room for discussion about how the diversity of authority was used by different

practitioners.

Although, in many ways, a comparison of official and lay medicine is tricky to

perform, it is important to examine diverse document types together in order to visualize the ways that different practitioner groups may have interacted. This chapter is an exercise in this type of assessment, placing two editions of the official Ricettario

Fiorentino (1498 and 1567) in conversation with five Tuscan, sixteenth-century

manuscript medical recipe books from the collections of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in

Florence. The comparison lends itself both to understanding how the College of

Physicians changed its intellectual preferences over time as well as to visualizing the

different ways in which official and lay healers used their pharmaceutical reference

volumes to present themselves as knowledgeable and trustworthy in the medical

marketplace. Approaching the writing practices of these manuscript authors alongside the

official documents of the College exposes the complex differences in the citation

preferences as well as the striking similarities in terms of the way practice was composed.

The Ricettario Fiorentino

89 The Florentine College of Doctors and Apothecaries was founded in 1218 and

experienced varying levels of success at controlling the medical population of the city- state.12 It was not until 1498 that the College printed its first official recipe book for

apothecaries to follow, the Nuovo Receptario Fiorentino. The college titled the book,

Nuovo receptario composto dal famosissimo chollegio degli eximii doctori della arte et

medicina della inclita ciptà di Firenze, but this was the first official pharmacopoeia of the

college. The “new” of the title likely refers instead to the new practice of a regulatory

volume written specifically for the city. The College would not gain legal control over

apothecaries and medical practice in general in Florence until the mid-sixteenth century,

so the book was offered up as the common recipe book for apothecaries and physicians to

create a shared understanding of the composition of specific medicines. The authors of

the first edition began their book:

We doctors of art and medicine of the famous College of Florence, most respected Consuls, have thought about how much danger the sick in our city encounter, and about how numerous the errors of our apothecaries are, both in our city and in the surrounding country, because of the diversity of recipe books [that are available]. These books are about the preparation, selection, conservation, and composition of all of the electuaries, simples and compounds necessary and used by these aforementioned apothecaries. Thus, much infamy follows practicing doctors. Therefore we wish to avoid the dangers of sickness, and, according to our power, remove the infamy falsely given to doctors with honor and praise … there seemed to everyone to be a need to settle on a new recipe book, neither [simply] passing nor adding, indeed following the order of Mesue, Niccholao, Avicenna, Galen, l’Almansore, and all of the authors who have written under brevity. Because of this, we did not leave [out] the necessary things, but resected the superfluous things, and setting down all of the recipes revised of their errors. Therefore, all of the usual familiar and canonical medical things of

12 Edgecumbe Staley, The Guilds of Florence (London: Methuan & Co., 1908): 238.

90 practitioners in our city were ordered… 13

The College insisted that standardization of recipes and medical decision-making

was the key to avoiding the mistakes that came from apothecaries taking liberties with the

composition of medicines and the ills that came of them (both for patients and

physicians). So, they put forth a book that was concise and easy to decipher. It should

have everything necessary, but nothing unnecessary. They stated that apothecaries needed

to follow the examples set long ago by Mesue, Niccholao, Avicenna, Galen, and Rhazes,

and other presumably great physicians of centuries past.14 Although contemporary

authors, including physicians, wrote their own recipe books, these ancient and Medieval

authorities were the authors whose theories and standards formed the basis of academic

study.

The preface also reinforced the hierarchy of medical practice that the College

desired to impose on its community. By writing in the local Tuscan dialect, the authors

implicitly insisted upon the integration of certain non-Latin-literate practitioners who

may or may not have participated in academic medical life into their official medical

hierarchy, as well as affirmed the importance of the support of the ducal courts, which functioned primarily in Tuscan.15 The introductions to the 1567 and 1597 editions were

more simplified than that of the 1498 edition, but they continue to emphasize the

13 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, “Prohemio,”Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 18. See the appendix for a full, untranslated transcription of the prologue text in the 1498 edition of the Ricettario Fiorentino. 14 Rhazes is referred to in these volumes both by his name and by his book, Al mansore. He is one of the only authors whose recipes were referenced by a specific work. 15 The Ricettario was published in Latin for the first time in 1518. Morgenstern, "The Ricettario Fiorentino. 1567," 3-12.

91 importance of a standardized volume for apothecaries to use when making medicines

for physicians.16

Followed by the preface and a table of contents, the Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino

commenced part one with three doctrines.

First Doctrine. We say that every diligent apothecary should choose a site and a place for his workshop, and that site should be right for preserving all of the simple and compounded things. The site should have these properties, or better, that it is free from wind, dust, sun, humidity, and smoke.

Second doctrine. We say that every diligent person should have these books, those being the simplest, like Symon Genovese, the Panedette, Avicenna and his [book on] simples, and therefore the l’Almansore [of Rhazes], the quarto of Servitore, the antidotary of Mesue, and the antidotary of Nicholao. [You should have these] in order that all of the recipes can be read, collected, prepared for, conserved, and composed with diligence.

Third Doctrine. We say for this doctrine the months in which the diligent apothecary should collect or have collected all of the herbs, flowers, seeds, berries,17 and barks.18

16 The prefaces to the third and fourth editions are essentially the same, although they differ somewhat from the first edition: “Just as no art can achieve its end if its instruments are not ready and well organized, Medicine also cannot preserve or bring about health where it is needed if its instruments are not similarly ready, which at its end are agreed upon. And because apothecaries manage medicines, it is necessary to describe in this book what the simple and compound medicines most used in our City should be....” (Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino (1567), 1). James Shaw asserts that the College did not have legal authority over apothecaries until the 1560s. Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, 291-2. 17 The word is “barbe,” which means beards in modern Italian, but "berries" makes more sense in this context. 18 “I.I DOCTRINA PRIMA. Diciamo che ogni diligente spetiale debbe eleggere uno sito et luogho per sua bottegha, el quale sia apto a preservare tutte le chose semplice et composite, il quale sito habbia queste proprietà, o le più cioè che sia rimosso da vento, da polvere, da sole, da humidità et fumo. I.II SECONDA DOCTRINA. Diciamo che ogni diligente persona debbe havere questi libri, cioè uno semplicista chome è Symon Genovese, le Pandette, Avicenna et li semplici suoi, et chosì l’Almansore, el quarto del Servitore, lo anthridotario di Nicholao, a fine che possa eleggiere, cogliere, preparare,

92 Even though the Ricettario’s recipes were taken from the recommended authors, the

College still counseled apothecaries to have recipe books by certain authorities on hand,

and that they be proficient at making their recipes. Even in the 1567 and 1597 editions,

these recommendations remain nearly unchanged regardless of the new laws that actually

required apothecaries to use the Ricettario’s recipes. These first three doctrines are

followed by information about collecting plants in different months, information about

different kinds of ingredients and how to conserve them, and instructions as to how to

make and how long one could keep different kinds of medicines.

The differences in the frontispieces of the Ricettario’s first and third editions are

striking and are demonstrative of the fundamental changes that had occurred in the

medical marketplace between the end of the fifteenth and the mid-sixteenth century.

Where the first edition of the Ricettario consisted of simple text with no decoration, the third edition featured a grand illustration showing putti, doctors, and the Medici coat of arms displayed around the title and an image of the Madonna and child. Although frontispieces of printed volumes in general became more ornate during the second half of the first century of European printing, the differences in the Ricettario frontispieces also reflect the increased importance of the medical college’s place in the official medical

conservare et conporre con diligentia tutte le ricepte. I.III.0 DOCTRINA TERTIA. Diciamo per questa doctrina di che mese il diligente spetiale debbe cogliere o far cogliere tutte le herbe, fiori, semi, barbe, et corteccie.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 29.

Figure 8: Frontispiece, Nuovo Receptario... 1498. Figure 9: Frontispiece, Ricettario Fiorentino... (Luigi Crocetti. Collana di facsimili a cura della 1567. (Digitized by Universitats- und Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze. 1968) Landesbibliothek Dusseldorf) hierarchy in Tuscany. The appearance of the Medici coat of arms is a sign of the Grand

Duke’s support of physicians’ (and the volume’s) official place within the medical marketplace.

In addition to the much more elaborate frontispiece, the college also greatly expanded the 1567 edition. The desire for collecting and naming the natural world that characterized the sixteenth century that we see displayed in books such as Leonhart

Fuchs’s De historia stirpium (1542) is apparent in the differences between the 1498 and

1567 editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino in the expanded sections on ingredients.19 The

19 For example, David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003). Paula

94 entry dedicated to aloe, for example, was a mere 42 words in 1498, but by 1567 the

entry had grown to over 200 words, including additional information about where the

plant was found and its characteristics according to Dioscorides.20 The growing professionalization of the Florentine college is evident in this expansion: by referencing more authors and making more specific recommendations about the origins and characteristics of pharmaceutical ingredients, they asserted their knowledge and authority over the multitude of choices available to apothecaries through an ever-increasing (and

often ever-suspicious) global trade network.21 Many entries specifically identified from

where the ingredient should be sourced, and some warned against false versions. The first

edition featured a section specifically on only ten items that might be adulterated and

mistakenly used by apothecaries, like amber, camphor, and mummia. The entry for

mummia explains: “Good mummia should be black in color, shiney, stinking, tough, and easy to make into a powder, with a horrible flavor. That which does not have these qualities is not good. It is counterfeited with rosin and the blood of a male goat cooked well with burned bread, and you will know it by putting it to all of the abovementioned

Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 20 The 1498 edition finishes on pg. 87v. The 1567 edition is 246 pages plus table of contents and statutes. The 1597 edition is 296 pages plus table of contents and statutes. 21 Please see, for example, Daniela Bleichmar, “Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth- Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica,” in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, edited by Londa L. Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): 89-99; and Daniel Margocsy, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2014).

95 tests.”22 Rather than having a specific section on frequently adulterated ingredients,

the third edition integrated this information into the general ingredient entries, as the

Ricettario's authors worried that ingredients would not be of the best quality – and

potentially not the correct ingredient at all – if they came from certain places.23

Although the authors of the Ricettario were mostly traditionalists in their

inclusion of canonical doctors' recipes, they included three important American

ingredients in the 1567 edition. They asserted that the celebrated sixteenth-century cure

for syphilis,"Legno Guaiaco" - guaiac - came from the "west Indies," but the guaiac that

came from Isla Beata, an island off the southern coast of the Dominican Republic, was

the most renowned. The authors noted that readers should know that the bark could be

adulterated with that of "the ash tree, or of mulberry, or other similar trees: you can

identify these from their taste and smell."24 The second ingredient was "Balsamo

Occidentale." Although Balsam of Peru was well known in Europe, the Ricettario simply

identifies the West Indies as the origin of this ingredient. The last American ingredient,

sarsaparilla, was also to be found in the West Indies, specifically in "Isola della punta del

22 “La mummia buona vuole essere di colore nera, lucida, puzzolente, soda, et facile a polverezzare, di sapore horribile. Quella che non ha queste conditioni non è buona. Sophisticasi con la colofonia et sangue di beccho cocto bene et con pane arso, et conoscesi faccendo tutte le prove decte di sopra.” I.IX.9 “Della Mummia,” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 42. 23 “Porremo in questa nona doctrina alchuni admaestramenti per cagione che molte cose medicinali di pregio sono appresso di noi portate et sono fales, et acciochè se conoscino, porremo el modo come si falsano, non perchè gli spetiali si mettino a falsarle, ma perchè loro conoschino quelle che sono falsate.” I.IX.0 Doctrina Nova. Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 40. 24 Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino (1567), 43.

96 mare del Sur."25 The majority of the ingredients in the Ricettario Fiorentino could be

found growing around Florence, further afield in Italy, or in apothecary shops having been imported from places like Crete, India, and the Middle East. Since Italy was not a major player in New World explorations, it is perhaps not surprising that these late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century versions of the Ricettario Fiorentino did not include

more American ingredients.26

Medical recipes are, however, the backbone of each volume and are the focus in

this chapter. The 1567 edition of the Ricettario was “thoroughly corrected and

expurgated,” and was “no longer the work of a more or less independent body of

physicians and apothecaries. It was not only compiled at the order of the Duke, but also

by individuals (twenty) who, although represented by the whole body of the Florentine

guild of physicians and apothecaries, were to be elected by the prince…”27 The development of legal authority with the backing of the Duke likely encouraged the volume’s expansion into a more authoritative, comprehensive volume that would act not simply as a reference book, but also as a legally-binding text with well-researched, trustworthy information of all sorts. Ernesto Riva argued, in terms of the 1550 edition of the Ricettario Fiorentino and the first edition of the Antidotario of Mantova, that by the

25 Collegio de Medici di Firenze. Ricettario Fiorentino (1567), 59. 26 Even in the Spanish Pharmacopoeia Matritensis (1739), "only 5.2% of all the 'official simples'" were from the Americas. Matthew Crawford, "Pharamacopoeias as Witnesses and Agents of World History: An Imperial Pharmacopoeia in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic World," In Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Matthew James Crawford and Joseph M. Gabriel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Forthcoming): 12. 27 Morgenstern, "The Ricettario Fiorentino. 1567,” 9. Morgenstern also argues that in the later editions of the Ricettario, “most of the added new formulas and compounds were then in use and were taken from contemporary physicians,” (11-12).

97 mid-sixteenth century, classical medicine of the Greeks and Romans had been “hung

up” in favor of the experiences of official physicians, constituting “already an important

example of critical revision.”28 Cristina Bellorini argues, on the other hand, "the

prevalence of Arab medicine gave way to that of Greek and Latin medicine… A very

significant change was also that the preparazioni magistrali, that is to say the

preparations of recent or contemporary masters, became much more numerous."29 I

contend that a combination of these shifts occurred between the first and third editions of

the Ricettario, and that these shifts were reflective of trends in the broader medical marketplace as well as the increased push for professionalization of doctors in Tuscany.

The prefaces of the Ricettario proclaim from the outset that a particular group of

authors will form the base of the new pharmacopeia: Mesue, Galen, Avicenna, and

Rhazes. Authors and authorities in addition to these are referenced throughout the

volumes, including in the sections on ingredients, but the focus here will be on recipe

author references. Proving where the recipes originally came from is not the purpose of

this chapter, nor is double-checking whether print or manuscript authors actually got their

recipes from Galen or not, for example. What is in question here is how authors

employed specific references in order to achieve a rhetorical goal rather than whether

authors actually used a source base that was exactly what they asserted it was. This

chapter will accept the various authors’ assertions of recipe origins and use the term

“provenance” to describe the origin of these recipes.

28 Ernesto Riva: "Confronto tra le prime due edizioni del Ricettario Fiorentino e l'Antidotario mantovano del 1558”, Atti e Memorie 8, issue 2 (1991): 102. 29 Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany, 158.

Authority, Authorship, and Copying: Transitions in Print and Manuscript

Large-scale recommendations made by an official body usually have legal

ramifications for professional groups, but we can assume that the public often continues

to operate on its own, making independent decisions about how to interpret official

information and deciding which professional recommendations to utilize. Even today,

physicians worry about noncompliant patients who hear advice from their physicians but

continue to make independent decisions about what medicine and dosage is correct.30 As

mentioned above, medieval and early modern Italians had ready access to information

about academic medical theory as well as to practical advice from medical authorities,

and manuscript recipe books like those of the Capuchin monk show how these lay

practitioners integrated humoral theory into their practices.31 These handwritten

notebooks make it clear that the ingredients and instructions for drug compounding to

which non-professional practitioners ascribed were not so different from the recipes

provided in the Ricettario Fiorentino. Manuscript medical recipe books provide a link

30 A brief search in the Journal of the American Medical Association for “patient compliance,” for example, yields nearly 1000 articles written having to do with patient compliance since January 2000. From records of noncompliance among a particular patient group, to the effects of that non-compliance and intervention attempts in illness populations, physicians and other medical professionals clearly identify patient compliance as a significant issue in their practices. 31 See, for example, Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy. Although a full analysis of the intertextuality of these volumes is not within the scope of this paper, it is clear that this should be a question further investigated in the future. Martti Makin’s Between Herbals et alia: Intertextuality in Medieval English Herbals (Ph.D. Diss, University of Helsinki, 2006), for example, demonstrates the high level of intertextuality between herbals and recipe books in Medieval English recipe collections and regimens. (i)

99 between the prescribed knowledge of Florentine medical authorities and the day-to-

day practice of medicine among unlicensed healers. The comparison between manuscript

recipe books and the Ricettario Fiorentino offers evidence of the convergences in theory

and practice and divergences in authority between professional and lay healers in the

Florentine sixteenth-century medical marketplace.

The recipes that make up the majority of the Ricettario Fiorentino appear simplistic and straightforward to our modern eyes. Most are unassuming lists of ingredients: the modern, fundamental parts of recipes, ingredients, composition instructions, and recommendations for use, are separated in the Ricettario Fiorentino into

different sections of the volume. For example, a recipe will generally contain simply a

title and list of ingredients. The person making the recipe would need to return to a

different part of the book to recall how to make that specific medicinal form, such as a

pill or a salve. For example, a recipe for “stomach pills” reads: “Stomach pills invented

by Mesue, from the first description. Rx. Turbith finely cut up, 10 drachms. Mastic, 3

drachms. Rose, 3 drachms. Aloe wood, 2 ounces, 1 drachm. Wormwood juice, as much

as is needed. Mix it all together into a mass.”32

The section on how to make pills, located almost 100 pages before the above

recipe, reads:

On Pills. Pills are medicine that you take inside your body, and they mostly serve to purge and evacuate [the body]. The Arabs also used them in other approaches to stupefy the senses; like pills of cynoglossia [a plant

32 “PILLOLE STOMATI-che d’invenzione di Mesue della prima descrizione. Rx. Turbithi fini 3.x. Mastice 3iiii. Rose 3.iii. Aloè onc.ii.3.i. Sugo d’Assenzio, quanto b[asta].’ Fa massa.” Il Collegio de Medici, Ricettario Fiorentino, Di Nuovo Illustrato (1567): 189.

100 called “common hounds-tongue”] and similar things. They also serve to ease coughing. They are composed of dry medicines that are powdered very finely, and then with juices or distilled waters, or common water, or electuaries that are reduced in maddeoni. You preserve them wrapped in paper, or placed into [glazed jars]. When it is time to use them, you powder them once again, and with some humors you make them into a paste of a sort, such that you can make pills. They usually last perfectly for a year or more. According to how they are conserved, the opiates [will keep] for two, and three years, and sometimes longer.” 33

The construction of individual recipes, general instructions, and organizational tools is

indicative of the diverse kinds of readers that print and manuscript authors expected. The

titles of recipes, for example, are particularly telling about the kinds of knowledge that

authors expected their readers to have. As above, there is occasionally information in the

recipe title about the purpose of a remedy, but in general there are no indications about

recommendations for use on patients. More commonly, recipe titles are specific “brand

names,” such as “Catartico Imperiale secondo Niccolao.”34 Manuscript recipes, on the

other hand, generally have descriptive, symptom- or illness-specific titles with occasional recipe authors. For example, the title “Unguent for cracks” in ms. 3057 describes the

33 “DE PILLOLE. LE PILLOLE sono medicine, che si pigliano di dentro al corpo, & servono a purgare, & evacuare per la maggior parte: & in oltre appresso a gli Arabi a stupefare il senso; come le pillole di cynoglossia, & simili: servono ancora a lenire la tossa. Compongonsi di medicine secche pestandole sottilmente: di poi con sughi, o acque stillate, o acqua commune, o lattovari si riducono in maddeoni; & si conservano rinvolti nella carta, o riposte in vasi di terra invetriati. Nel tempo dell’usarle si pestano di nuovo; & con qualche humore si riducono in pasta, di sorta, che si posino formare pillole. Durano nella lora perfezzione le solutive un’anno, o piu; secondo che le sono conservate, l’oppiate due, & tre, & qualche volta piu.” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino (1567), 100-101. 34 Il Collegio de Medici. Ricettario Fiorentino, Di Nuovo Illustrato (Fiorenza: Giorgio Marescotti, 1597): 195. A “catartico” is a purgative. "Catàrtico," Vocabolario on line, Treccani. Accessed 29 December 2017. (http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/catartico/).

101 recipe as a plaster for cracks rather than assigning it a unique name or author.35 Some

recipe titles are even more descriptive, such as “A perfect electuary for paralysis of the

tongue and other members” in ms. 3059.36 As with the Ricettario, when recipe authors

are included in manuscript recipes, they are often included in the title, such as “Powder of

Mr. Giovanni di Griffo against stomach pain caused by coldness.”37 In the case of the

manuscripts, authors expected readers to approach the volumes with particular illnesses

or complaints in mind.

This contrasts with the Ricettario, which was written in vernacular Tuscan, and so

was accessible to a wider array of readers. The College of Physicians maintained

significant professional distance between their expertise and the lack of training of other

practitioners. Many medicines could be adjusted “according to the fantasy of the doctor,”

but the authors of the Ricettario worried about apothecaries who might adjust medicines

on their own without adequate knowledge and the direction of a physician, leading to

“endless scandal.” Therefore, they wrote: “In this, our present recipe book, we have not

indicated anything about what each [recipe] is appropriate for, because we hope that he

who has [this book already] knows how to use it, and that he who does not know, will

learn, and will learn how to use it correctly.”38 Individual readers could, and did, of

35 “Cerotto da Crepati,” Segni delle Febbri and Ricettario, c. 16th century, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, Italy. ms. 3057: 45r. 36 “Elattuario perfettissimo alla paralesi della lingua et delli altri membri,” Ricettario, c. 15th century, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, Italy. ms. 3059. 21v. 37 “Polvere di maestro Giovanni di Griffo contra dolore di stomaco per frigidita.” Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 3059. 16r. 38 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 140. For more on this section, see Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany, 157,

102 course, annotate the volumes to better suit their whims. The 1623 edition of the

Ricettario Fiorentino in the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, for example, is heavily annotated with Latin descriptions of what each recipe was meant to treat.

Figure 10: "Olio di Mandragora di Niccolao" with the annotation, "Mirifice operat contra Hepatis calorem." Ricettario Fiorentino, 1623, 255. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine.

Aside from titles, the content of the manuscript recipes reinforces the idea of a less academic manuscript reader, since recipes in manuscripts more often than not included compounding instructions where the Ricettario generally separates compounding instructions into separate sections. Neither the manuscripts nor the

Ricettario regularly include information about dosage or for whom a recipe was best suited. This may be explained in part for the Ricettario by the simple fact that apothecaries were meant only to fill prescriptions from physicians who would have, presumably, already communicated that vital information to their patients. It might also be a result of relatively non-potent medicines as compared with later distilled and chemical medicines that could be quite harmful if taken in large doses, such as mercurial and antimonials. Regardless of the exact reasons, dosage and patient interaction information is largely lacking from both print and manuscript recipes in this period.

103 Provenance notations were included alongside recipes in both manuscript and

print recipe books. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the recipe authors

represented in both the Ricettario Fiorentino and manuscript recipe books. Provenance

notations in individual recipes represent the bi-directionality of the strategic uses of authority in medical writing, reflecting both the author’s mastery of particular theories as

well as his or her (or their) membership in certain medical communities. Like print

authors, manuscript compilers made conscious decisions about whose recipes to include

in their volumes based on efficacy, trust, and authority. In their study of seventeenth-

century English manuscript recipe books, Elaine Leong and Sara Pennell found that “over

one-third of recipes came with the name of a donor or ‘author,’” many of which were

family members or personal acquaintances.39 Categorizing recipes and other medical

information as a type of currency, commodities “which flowed between people, and the

authority and reliability of which was inflected by the circumstances of that movement,”

they argued that citation practices in the process of recipe book compilation could

reinforce the authority of individual recipe entries and allow compilers to be legitimate

participants in the medical marketplace.40

Provenance notations in the Italian recipe books examined here, however, suggest that Italian manuscript medical communities were somewhat different from their English counterparts. Rather than serving as receipts of social interaction, Italian manuscript authors largely skipped over references to family members and personal relationships,

39 Leong and Pennell, “Recipe Collections and the Currency of Medical Knowledge in the Early Modern ‘Medical Marketplace,” 138. 40 Leong and Pennell, “Recipe Collections and the Currency of Medical Knowledge in the Early Modern ‘Medical Marketplace,” 134; 149.

104 citing other authorities in the process of creating a social and “professional” identity

via expressed mastery of particular kinds of knowledge. Importantly, only one recipe

author across the manuscripts examined here contains a reference to a family affiliation:

"Benedetto, my uncle," in ms. 2376.41 Provenance notations were included alongside

recipes in both manuscript and print recipe books, notably in the Ricettario Fiorentino.

Like print authors, manuscript compilers made decisions about whose recipes to include

in their volumes based on efficacy, trust, and authority.

Citation Practices in Print & Manuscript

The similarities and differences in the genres of early printed pharmacopoeias and

manuscript recipe books are significant and demonstrative of the deviations in knowledge

practices in medicine in the early modern period. Several Tuscan manuscript recipe

books from the long-sixteenth century in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence will

serve as counterpoints to the printed, official Ricettario Fiorentino. Because the authors

did not include information about where they were from, it is impossible to say with

absolute certainty that the manuscripts were written in Florence. Dates and placement can

be approximately determined based on language and paleography, but to be certain of

their origin is next to impossible. The ways in which the library’s collection was

accumulated over time also clouds their provenance: the Biblioteca Riccardiana’s

41 The author indicated that he or she copied 21 recipes from the writings of "M.o Ben.to mio zio." Ricettario, c. 16th century, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, Italy, ms. 2376: 98r.

105 collection was amassed by various members of the Riccardi family, from before the

sixteenth century through nineteenth century.42

Some manuscripts have remained unaltered throughout their lives, like the monk’s volumes, but many manuscripts were substantially modified as they changed

hands. Unfortunately, codicological details that may have been useful in identifying

provenance are often obscured when books are rebound, an issue that is a factor in most

book studies. Diverse manuscript recipes could be bound together with no reference to

whether they were written by the same author, written in the same family or community,

or whether a later owner simply wanted them bound together out of convenience, even if

they were not related by anything other than their status as recipes. Nevertheless,

42 The first index of the collection, “Books of the Garden of the Riccardi Signori through 15 November 1632,” contains one recipe book. Unfortunately, the entry, “Ricettario, 16” on shelf 14, does not permit a correlation with a “ricettario” in the current cataloguing system ("Indice di Libri nella Libreria dell'Orto dei Signori Riccardi Fino a quel dì 15 di Novembere 1632," Fondazione Memofonte onlus. Accessed 29 December 2017. http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/MGR_423_INS_6_INDICE_DI_LIBRI_1632.p df) The 1810 inventory was written only 4 years before the collection was acquired by the city in order to save it from being dispersed during the Riccardi’s financial woes contains several references to volumes about medicine from the sixteenth century ("Inventario e Stima della Libreria Riccardi: Manoscritti e Edizioni del Secolo XV in Firenze, 1810," Fondazione Memofonte onlus. Accessed 29 December 2017. http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/INVENTARIO_E_STIMA_1810.pdf). The two other inventories focus on acquisitions of particular members of the family, so it is unclear when and from where specific volumes entered the collection ("Codici Manoscritti Messi nella Libreria della Casa dall'Illustrissimo e Clarissimo Signor Marchese Senatore Vicenzo Maria Riccardi. Questo dì Primo Aprile 1741, Essendo di Proprietà di sua Signoria Illustrissima," Fondazione Memofonte onlus. Accessed 29 December 2017. http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/MGR_423_INS_19_CODICI_MANOSCRITTI _DI_VINCENZIO_RICCARDI_1741.pdf; "A dì 4 Giugno 1753, Indici di Libri Vari Comprati dal Nostro Reverendissimo Signor Suddecano Gabbriello Padrone, Cioè," Fondazione Memofonte onlus. Accessed 29 December 2017. http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/RICC_276_INS_12_INDICE_LIBRI_GABBRI ELLO_1753.pdf.)

106 somebody at some point thought that they belonged together as a group and had them

bound. Again, paleography is a factor in determining some of this, but it is difficult to be

certain about the origins of these manuscripts’ bits and pieces. Textual details are, of

course, helpful, but the authors of the Riccardiana manuscripts did not write their names

or geographic locations in their volumes. Still, it is fair to include them here since the

Riccardi family likely collected them at least somewhat locally. The vernacular Tuscan in

which they were written is regular and consistent, and there are no explicit comments in

the text that would suggest they were written anywhere else.

These manuscripts were written in the same approximate time period as the

editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino consulted here. Riccardiana ms. 3059 and ms. 3049

are both fifteenth century manuscripts, primarily written in a mercantesca hand.43 Part of

ms. 3059 is dated 20 July 1460, but there are no dates in ms. 3049, although the hand is

fifteenth century. Riccardiana mss. 3057, 3044, and 2376 are all primarily sixteenth

century. Ms. 3057 contains a copy of Antonio della Scarperia’s works and also includes a

section “Segni delle febbri” in addition to the recipes.44 The majority of ms. 3044 is

43 "Mercantesca, scrittura," Treccani, accessed 27 November 2017. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/scrittura-mercantesca/ 44 Antonio di Guccio della Scarperia (c. 1350- c. 1443) wrote his De signis febrium around 1392 in Florence. A copy is contained in ms. 2153 (“de Scarparia Magistri Antonii Tractatus Medicus…”) in the Biblioteca Riccardiana. It does not appear as though Scarperia’s De signis febrium was ever printed. Magliocco found that in the Regesto delle Provvisioni in the State Archives of Florence (25 November 1465) there was a recommendation to apothecaries to make and use the “pillole di Antonio della Scarperia.” Concetta Magliocco, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol 3 (1961) via Trecani, La Cultura Italiana, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antonio-di-guccio- della-scarperia_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. (Accessed 4 March 2016) There are no references in WorldCat to Antonio della Scarpe(a)ria. There are no references to his name in Manus, the online catalogue of Italian libraries’ manuscripts (although it should be

107 composed of recipes in Latin written during the fifteenth century in a Gothic hand (f.

1r-42v). The remainder of the manuscript is composed of Italian recipes (f. 43r-55r) written in a sixteenth-century hand. Ms. 2376 is again a mixture of Italian and Latin recipes written in the sixteenth century. One of the Italian recipes is dated 1576.45

It is clear from detailed studies of manuscript recipe books that authors took their information from a variety of printed, manuscript, and oral sources. Although most

Italian manuscript recipe books I have consulted contain at least a few Latin recipes, these entries fall outside of the scope of this project. Latin sections are relevant to the study of the recipe book genre in general, because they are evidence of the bi-lingual medical knowledge of the compiler. They also speak to authors’ flexibility in acquiring knowledge from a broad range of sources. However, since the Ricettario Fiorentino editions discussed here are written in Italian, my focus on the manuscripts will be on

Italian recipes in order to maintain a clearer view of the affinities of recipes between print and manuscript.

As already mentioned, the Ricettario Fiorentino was greatly expanded between the first and third editions of 1498 and 1567. In addition to the more detailed ingredient entries, 123 additional recipe entries were included in the 1567 Ricettario. Although the number of recipe author references remained essentially the same regardless of the additional entries, there was a significant shift in which authors were included in the

noted that there are a high percentage of Italian libraries’ manuscripts yet to be entered into Manus. http://manus.iccu.sbn.it//index.php, Accessed 26 May 2016). 45 For a complete reference on medical and pharmacological manuscripts in the Riccardian library, Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh, Medicina e farmacologia nei manoscritti della Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze (Roma: Vecchiarelli Editore, 1990).

108 volumes.46 43 authors are referenced in the first edition, and 37 are referenced in the third edition, but 31 of the first edition authors do not appear in the third edition, and 26

of the third edition authors were not included in the first edition. It is important to note

that the majority of authors referenced only appear once in each volume: 29 of 43 total

authors representing 462 recipe author references in the first edition and 21 of 37 of 410

total recipe author references in the third edition. It is true that there was a huge turnover

of authors represented in the book, but it is the change in representation of the few

authors who actually make up the majority of references that is most significant, since

those authors made up the majority of the references in the volumes. Table 2 provides a

list of authors with multiple references in the 1498 and 1567 editions of the Ricettario

Fiorentino.

It is more difficult to identify clear trends in manuscript recipe books because

they are so intensely personal and connected to the individual experiences of specific

authors instead of institutions, and it is worth pointing out that recipe author references

often appear much less frequently in manuscript form than they do in printed volumes like the Ricettario Fiorentino. Ms. 3044 has no recipe author references, ms. 3049 has 5, ms. 3059 has 11, ms. 3056 has 31, and ms. 2376 has 189. Of the over 100 recipe authors mentioned in the three volumes of the Ricettario Fiorentino and Riccardiana manuscripts, there are only 11 authors who appear in at least one manuscript and at least one printed

46 These numbers do not represent unique authors, but rather individual references to recipe authors. Clearly, not every recipe has an author, but it should also be noted that some recipes have more than one author. For example, “Mitridato d’Andromaco secondo Galeno” lists both Andromaco and Galen as authors. Il Collegio de Medici, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1597, 172.

109 volume: Mesue, Galen, Niccholao, Rhazes / Almansore, Andromaco, Gentile da

Fuligno, Serapione, Antonio della Scarperia, Marsilio di Sancta Sophia, Maestro Bonino,

and Dino di Firenze.” There are 1066 total recipe references to these 11 authors, accounting for 69% of all of the recipe author references across all volumes. More significantly, this percentage breaks down to only 10% of the manuscript recipe author references and 80% of the Ricettario Fiorentino recipe author references.47 The way that

the percentages of these in-common authors break down in manuscript and printed

volumes is significant for a couple of reasons. First, they show that the knowledge base

of the College of Physicians was accessible to and was accessed by lay practitioners. But

second, and more significantly, lay authors directed most of their provenance attention

toward other authors.

The inclusion of geographic locations in some provenance notations in the

manuscript recipe books allows us to map parts of the authors' knowledge networks. It is

likely, for example, that the abbreviations “S.M.N.” and “S.ta M.a N.a” in ms. 2376 refer

to Santa Maria Nuova (today, Novella), one of the main cathedrals in Florence, located

today near the main train station.48 Santa Maria Novella has one of the longest operating

church pharmacies in the world. Santa Maria Novella also operated a large hospital in the medieval and early modern period, although today it produces primarily luxury bath and body products like lotions and perfumes instead of medicines. Since the author included

47 The numbers here represent the recipe authors for the recipes that are legible and in Italian in each of the manuscripts. Unfortunately, portions of many of the texts are illegible because of preservation issues, microfilm that is difficult to read, or handwriting that is simply too challenging to decipher. 48 For example, "Tutte le sopradette Ricette ho havuto da A.M.S. in S.M.N. copiate in sur uno suo libro," Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2376, 28r.

110 64 recipes with references to the church (out of 189 references total), it was evidently

an important center of medical knowledge for this author.

This author also included recipes from surgeons in Pisa, Città di Castello, and

Montevarchi, and the ambassador from Lucca (all cities in central Italy).49 Even though

manuscript authors also referred to some of the same canonical authorities that the

College of Physicians did, these geographic notes demonstrate that the knowledge

networks of manuscript authors could also be relatively local. Unlike the authors of the

Ricettario Fiorentino who rarely included information about where their recipe authors

were from, including indications of geographic proximity seems to have been a strategy

of manuscript recipe book authors for demonstrating knowledge of and connections in the

local medical marketplace. Although the percentage of individual recipe authors with

associated geographic locations is similar in manuscript and printed volumes,

significantly more individual recipes have authors with geographic information in

manuscripts than in printed volumes (see figures 2 and 3).

Rather than include recipe authors associated with a variety of places to

demonstrate their medical network, the authors of the Ricettario Fiorentino wrote in the

first person to emphasize their ownership over medical practice in Florence itself.

Pharmacopoeias are significant volumes because they reflect a specific medical

community, including patients, and a specific government. Since they were produced and

49 "Per la cuttura del fuoco del Sr.e imbasciatore di Lucca provato da lui," Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2376, 54r. "Cerotto mag.le per le ferite cosa ottima... havuto da un' padre scappuccino usato da M.o Tommaso lignani Cerusico a Citta di Castello." Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2376, 60v-61r. "Tutte le sopradette ricete... ho copiate di certi scritti di M.o Maggio Barrante da mo.te varchi medico fisico e cerus.o." Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2376, 60r.

111 used locally, they present, with varying degrees of vagueness, a picture of particular

societies and offer opportunities for understanding whether and how medicine changed

from place to place. Because manuscript recipe books are intensely personal, they reflect

the interactions of a particular author within a community or series of communities.

Comparing these representations of local interactions in manuscript and print shows that

where the official medical community was concerned with detailing how recipes should

be made in Florence, manuscript authors used local references to highlight their

relationships with other members of the medical community.

The local atmosphere of Florentine drug production is apparent across the

Ricettario Fiorentino editions from discussions of which medicines were or were not

made “here.” For example, “Lactovaro di Re,” a recipe by Mesue in the 1498 edition, is

marked, “not used.”50 Other recipes were also included in the volume but were not recommended: "Sharp syrup diarodon of Mesue which is not in use," "Principle powder of Avicenna in the fifth part of the fourth [fen] which is not in use," "Sieffi of Mesue

which is not used," "A plaster according to the abovementioned [author, Guglielmo

Piacentino] for the said effect and which is not in use."51

50 “II.I.10 Lactovaro di Re. Questo lactovaro è di Mesue et non si usa.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 71. 51 “II.VII.48 Sciroppo di Marsilio di Sancta Sophia et non è in Uso” (100), “II.VII.52 Scrioppo acetoso diarodon di Mesue et non è in uso” (100), “II.X.7 Polvere capital di Avicenna nella quinta del quarto et non si usa” (108), “II.XII Sieffi di Mesue non si usano fargli” (116), “II.XV.18 Empiastro secondo el sopradecto [Guglielmo Piacentino] per lo decto effecto et non si usa” (130). Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua. The Accademia della Crusca defines a "sieffi" as a special medicine for diseased eyes. ("Sieffo," Accademia della Crusca, Dizionario 4th ed. Vol 4: 527)

112 An important question arises upon reading these entries: why include these

recipes if they are explicitly not used in Florence? The language is somewhat difficult to

decipher so it is unclear whether the authors of the volumes were warning their readers

against these recipes or whether they were simply uncommonly prescribed, but that

apothecaries should know how to make them should a physician require those specific

remedies. Considering the general importance of the authors of unused recipes within the

Ricettario it is possible that the compilers simply felt they needed to include the recipes

because they were part of the canon. It is also possible that the compilers themselves did

not recommend the recipes but knew that some prescribing practitioners or patients

preferred them. This kind of language demonstrates that even though the college was

asserting its dominance and legitimacy in the marketplace, it recognized that it could not

exert full control: “Magisterial plaster for splenetics. It is not used. However, because this

[recipe] and others are used by some people, and because they are notable, we have

included it here.”52 Titles like these also emphasize the value of referring to other well- known practitioners. Although the “some people” who have used this recipe are not named, the fact that they used it was reason enough for the Ricettario authors to include it in their compilation. The retention of the abandoned recipes also points to the very conservative nature of this genre, where medicines would only be dropped from official texts after long disuse.

52 “Enpiastro magistrale per lo splenetici. Non si usa; pur, perchè questo et gli altri sono usati da qualchuno, et sono notabili, però si ponghono.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua,130.

113 Two interesting changes between the 1498 and 1567 editions are the removal

of recipes that were not recommended and an increase in the number of recipes that

pointed to Florentine preferences. For example, the recipe for “Honeysuckle Unguent of

Carpi” says to “grind the honeysuckle (we use those with yellow flowers).”53 Similarly,

the recipes for “Unguent of the Apostles of Avicenna,” and “Diapipereos of Galen” say

specifically that “we” make the recipe in the following way.”54 Another instance of local

preferences is in the recipe “Diamoron composed by Galen,” in which the authors say, “It is well known that Galen in his Diamoron chooses apples; we use lump sugar instead.”55

The Ricettario’s recipe for Theriac also includes a regional preference: Although the

recipe instructions begin, “Make it in this way such that it is not different from the

intention of Galen,” the text includes this phrase in a list of roots to prepare for making

53 “Unguento di Madreselva del Carpi…Pesta la madreselva (Noi pigliamo q.la di fiori gialli).” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 225. 54 “Unguento Apostolarum d’ Avicenna… Noi lo componiamo in questo modo.” (Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 228) “Diapipereos di Galeno…Noi lo componiamo cosi.” (Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 238). “Diapipereos” refers to a “medicine containing pepper,” Juhani Norri, Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English, 1375-1550: Body Parts, Sicknesses, Instruments, and Medicinal Preparations, (London: Routledge, 2016): 294. 55 “Diamoron composto di Galeno…Se bene Galeno nel suo Diamoron toglie il mele, noi in quell cambio usiamo di torre il zucchero.” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 127. “Diamoron” refers to an “electuary containing crushed mulberries; used esp. in gargles for throats maladies.” Norri, Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English, 1375-1550, 290-291. Another like this is “Sciroppo di Papaveri compost di Mesue,” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 139. Not all of these recipes with local indications were by ancient, canonical authors. “Dyasena Frescha,” for example, is used in Florence and was authored by “Thomaso del Garbo,” who took it from Rasis. Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 82.

114 the medicine, “Acoro, which we use in the place of Jerusalem rose.”56 Although,

compared with the first person, plural “we”, “Firenze” is actually not used very

frequently in the Ricettario volumes, and when it does, it usually appears in phrases that

identify recipes that are used in Florence.

There are several important ideas to reflect on when considering how authors

included local preferences. First, the majority of these preferences are apparent in recipes

taken from ancient, canonical authors such as Mesue and Galen. As previously

mentioned, the end of the fifteenth through the sixteenth century was an epoch in which

scholars were reconsidering the place of ancient authority within the scope of a new

method of learning which required first hand observation.57 In terms of the larger context

of change in medicine, it seems useful to consider that the local preferences exhibited in

the first and third editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino were likely the result of the

medical community’s experience with patients and medicines and resulting decisions to

shift their pharmaceutical practice away from the traditional recipes toward something

more effective, useful, or locally available.

56 “Theriaca d’Andromaco vecchio secondo Galeno… Fassi in questo modo che non è diverso dall’intenzione di Galeno… l’acoro, che noi pigliamo in luogo dell’amomo.” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 171. Acoro is defined as “the sweet Cane, or as some thinke the great Galingale or false Calamus” by Florio. Other entries that include Florentine preferences include, “Trocisci d’Agarico di Mesue” (195) “Trocisci di Agarico di Galeno secondo Mesue” (195-6); “Trocisci di Myrrha di Rasis” (200); “Trocisci di Lacca di Mesue” (200); “Olio di Camomilla di Paulo” (210) “Olio di Cotogne di Mesue” (210-11); “Olio di Mortine di Mesue” (216). “Infrigidante di Galeno” (218-19); “Unguento violato di Mesue,” (221); “Triapharmaco di Mesue” (223). Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567. 57 See, for example, Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature.

115 A second idea to consider is why the authors of the Ricettario initially

included recipes that were not to be used and why they later removed them. Two recipes

in the 1498 edition are helpful to look at while considering this question. The recipe for

Dyarodon includes a longer justification for not using the recipe than other entries and is

followed by an alternate suggestion: “This electuary we find described by Nicholao and

Mesue. Yet we will put the one which Mesue described in his antidotary which we do not

use... Although we do not use this electuary, but because Gentile da Fuligo used it and

found it very useful, we put it here. We put the one we use below, but we do not use [this

one]."58 The following entry, “Dyradon Abatis,” begins, “This electuary is from

Niccholao and it is the one which we generally use.”59 From this example, it seems likely

that many of the recipes that were not to be used, but were included because they were

authored by canonical authors (like Mesue and Nic(c)holao). It is also possible that even

though the official authority did not find them as good for one reason or another, the

compounding apothecary needed to be able to make them because they were still used by

some practitioners.

As discussed above, the Florentine College of Physicians did not gain official

control over the medical community until the mid-sixteenth century. Where the first edition of the pharmacopoeia was offered as a method for standardizing the Florentine

58 “Questo lactovaro si truova descripto da Nicholao et da Mesue. Pure noi porremo quello di Mesue descripto nel suo anthidotario et non si usa… Questo lactovaro benchè non si usi, pure perchè Gentile da Fuligno l’usava et perchè è molto utile, l’ho posto. Quello si usa mettere qui di sotto, ma non si usa.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 70. 59 “Dyradon Abatis,” begins, “Questo lactovaro è posto da Niccholao et è quello si usa comunemente.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 70.

116 medical community, the third edition was a requirement for apothecaries and

prescribing physicians. Thus, there was likely no perceived need to include recipes that

were not recommended in the 1567 edition since the College had officially identified

them as medicines that should not be included in regular practice. All of this is, however,

not to say that even official practitioners did not prescribe or make unsanctioned

medicines. The recommended list of texts at the beginning of each edition remained the

same across editions and did not include disclaimers recommending that practitioners still

only make the recipes that were included in the pharmacopoeia itself.

The Ricettario also included practical local information in addition to official

preferences. At the end of the first edition of the Ricettario, the authors included a helpful

list of how to form the abbreviations for various weights and measurements (See figure

11).60 Regional differences also appear in this section. “The ounce which we use in

Florence is made like this ," and, "Some make an ounce from nine drachms, like they do in Salerno."61 The later editions also include these kinds of notations about Florence,

except for a few differences. Rather than including the recipes that are explicitly not used,

the authors included an expanded section on plants that detailed where plants were from

and which were specifically “our plants.”62

60 Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 113. 61 “L’oncia la quale Firenze si figura cosi ” and, “Alcuni fanno la oncia di nove dramme, come si usa a Salerno.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 154. 62 “Delle piante nostrali.” Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 7.

117 The local preferences

highlighted in the Ricettario

Fiorentino are useful pieces of

information in determining the

landscape of the Florentine medical

marketplace. Although the College

did not show an especially

noteworthy preference for local

authors, it is clear that in practice

they preferred some recipes to others

and adjusted established recipes in

print and expected that those in the

Figure 11: Weights and measures, Ricettario Fiorentino medical hierarchy would follow suit 1498 - Facsimile del l'esemplare Palatino E. 6. 1. 27 della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, ed. Luigi in their practices. Manuscript recipe Crocetti. Part 3. books also demonstrate individual

opinions, but, more usefully for our purposes, they include provenance notations that

highlight the importance that authors placed on personal connections within the local

medical community. Curiously, only a few of the recipe authors referenced in the 1567

Ricettario Fiorentino have names that could be traced to location, and none have titles that identify them as surgeons, physicians, or religious authorities. One of the only official titles of a recipe contributor in the Ricettario is that of the Contessa di Guglielmo

118 da Varignana.63 The prominence of Santa Maria Nuova that was noted in the manuscripts is also apparent in the Ricettario in a recipe for “Dyasena” in the 1498 edition, which states that says “this electuary is magisterial and is used in Sancta Maria

Nuova.”64

Recent histories of Italian medicine have characterized the marketplace as one that was extremely diverse with all sorts of practitioners, from physicians to charlatans, vying for patients.65 Those who were chosen as contributors of medical recipes to print and manuscript volumes represent the individual practitioners in whom the most trust was placed and who were knowledgeable about traditional theory; they were the standards.66

Even considering the broad distribution of recipe author references in the editions of the

Ricettario, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that recipe authors with multiple references made up over 80% of the references in the Ricettario Fiorentino.67 It is tempting to examine the Ricettario editions and argue that there was a sea change in recipe authorship toward contemporary authors in the later editions. Yet, the major

63 "Unguento della Contessa di Guglielmo da Varignana," Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 226. 64 “questo lactovaro è magistrale et usasi in Sancta Maria Nuova.” Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 83. 65 Gentilcore, David, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Gentilcore, David, “Apothecaries, ‘Charlatans,’ and the Medical Marketplace in Italy, 1400-1750,” in Pharmacy in History 45 (2003): 94-91; Smith, Pamela. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 66 This was, of course, not necessarily active contribution on the part of recipe authors, if for nothing else than the temporal and linguistic chasm that separated 16th century Italians from many canonical doctors. However, some were likely given directly from author to writer / compiler, especially in the case of local, contemporary authors such as Riccardiana manuscript 2376’s “S. Imbasciatore di Lucca.” 67 The top ten authors account for 713 out of 872 references total across the two Ricettario Fiorentino editions.

119 meaningful trend that appears between the first and third editions is the increasing preference for classical and local authorities over the medieval Arabic authorities whose work had made up the European medical canon for centuries.68 For example, in the 1498 edition, almost 60% of the recipe references are credited to Mesue, said to be a highly influential physician who lived and worked in Baghdad in the 9th century.69 In 1567, however, his contributions dropped to 44.6%. On the other hand, the number of recipes attributed to Galen, the Ancient Greek physician whose system of humors was fundamental to early modern medical theory, rose from 3.5% in 1498 to 22% in 1567.

There was also a general increasing presence across these editions of other classical authors like the 5th century Greek philosopher Democritus and the mythological Greek god of Medicine Asclepius.

These shifts in focus in the Ricettario editions are reflective of official medical and natural historical opinion more generally in the mid- and late-sixteenth century. For

68 Roger French, for example, has discussed the increasing preference for Hellenistic sources in the Italian medical world in the late 15th century. For example, French discusses Alessandro Benedetti, a physician who worked in Greek-speaking areas (which were controlled by Venice). When he returned to Venice, “he went as a Hellenist, convinced that the pure sources of medicine were Greek alone… As for Medicine, the Hellenists argued that the Greeks had discovered and perfected it, only for it to be stolen and corrupted by the Arabs.” (Roger French, Dissection and Vivisection in the European Renaissance, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999): 76). 69 Recent work on Mesue includes Paula De Vos, “The ‘Prince of Medicine’: Yuhanna ibn Masawayh and the Foundations of the Western Pharmaceutical Tradition,” Isis 104 (2013): 667-712; Teresa Huguet-Termes, “Islamic Pharmacology and Pharmacy in the Latin West: An Approach to Early Pharmacopoeias,” European Review 16 (2008): 229- 239. Huguet-Termes work confirms that the majority of compound medicines in the 1498 edition of the Ricettario were from Arabic authors (232). For more on Islamic pharmacology in general: Danielle Jacquart, “Islamic Pharmacology in the Middle Ages: Theories and Substances,” European Review 16 (2008): 219-227; and Vivian Nutton, “Ancient Mediterranean Pharmacology and Cultural Transfer,” European Review 16 (2008): 211-217.

120 example, the German natural philosopher Leonhart Fuchs asserted his mistrust of

Medieval Arabic authorities in his several botanical studies. Since the age of Dioscorides,

plant names had become so confused that natural philosophers and physicians alike were

increasingly concerned about whether patients actually received the medicines they were

prescribed. Issues of naming were not resolved for many years despite the efforts of

many authors and their illustrators.70 De Historia Stirpium, Fuchs’ landmark 1542 herbal, was largely based on the opinions of Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, a deliberate choice to move botanical medical knowledge away from Arabic writers toward classical authorities. More broadly, the transition within the Ricettario reflects the Renaissance trend of rejecting Arabic translations and returning to classical sources or replacing them with contemporary authorities. With this analysis, the Ricettario demonstrates the

College’s responsiveness to changes within the local medical community, making the volume uniquely Florentine and distinct from other areas in Europe. Paula DeVos, for example, has recently shown the opposite shift away from classical sources and toward

Arabic authorities among Spanish pharmaceutical texts in the same period.71 The

Hellenization of medicine in this period is therefore complex and contingent on local

contexts.

70 For more on Fuchs, Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. For more on naming and botanical exchange, Daniel Margocsy, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (University of Chicago Press, 2014). 71 Paula De Vos, "The Textual Tradition of Pharmacy in Early Modern Spain: Origins, Foundations, and Genres," in Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Matthew James Crawford and Joseph M. Gabriel, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Forthcoming.

121 What requires more thought, however, is how the changes from the first to the third edition of the Ricettario were related to opinions about the locations of medical knowledge in the lay sections of the medical marketplace. Where the College of

Physicians exhibited the movement from Arabic to classical authorities that was characteristic of the sixteenth century, manuscript authors do not seem to show a similar preference for classical authorities or mistrust of Arabic physicians. Part of this is most certainly related to the comparatively informal nature of manuscript recipe practice and to the ways that manuscripts were read and circulated (or not). For example, Riccardiana manuscript 2376 has the most provenance notations of the five manuscripts consulted for this chapter. Rather than including provenance notations for individual recipes, the author numbered each recipe and included recipe author information at the end of each section.

This means that, for example, the author with the most citations was "A.M.S. in S.M.N." for 45 recipes. Most authors cited in these manuscripts do have names rather than being lumped into general categories, but it is difficult to determine who they actually were in the historical record. Some authors have titles attached to their names. For example, the attribution “Giuliano Cerusico in Pisa,” informs us that this recipe was from a surgeon in

Pisa named Giuliano, who contributed 19 recipes in all. Unfortunately, that is not enough information to actually track down that specific Giuliano. Like Giuliano, most of the provenance notations in these manuscript recipe books include brief pieces of information that alert the reader to the recipe contributor’s location and / or status in society and to the diversity of the medical marketplace. Many of the over 30 recipe authors in ms. 2376 have either geographic locations– e.g. Pisa, Amelia, Citta di Castello

122 – or titles – e.g., archduca, cerusico, agostino dottori – attached to their names.72

Others, such as Galen and “Andrea Mattiolo”, would have been well known within the

medical community, both lay and official. Other names, like “M. Baccio” might refer to

the same Baccio Baldini who was referenced in the Ricettario, or to a different Baccio

entirely. Although manuscript provenance notations are largely opaque, many more

entries in manuscript recipe books contained information about locations and social

position than did the printed Ricettario Fiorentino volumes.

Comparing Individual Recipes

Delving deeper into both manuscript and print, we find that the recipes

themselves become powerful points of comparison. Recalling that there were only a few

authors in common between the manuscript and printed volumes examined here, it should

be unsurprising that there are only a few recipes in common in the manuscripts detailed

here with the Ricettario Fiorentino volumes. The fact that there are any recipes in

common at all, however, is important because it indicates that a pharmaceutical

knowledge base was at least somewhat overlapping. Three recipes (figures 12-14) from

ms. 3057 serve as our examples here.

The concept of the “discourse colony” serves as a tool for understanding how the rhetorical characteristics of the recipes differ between the manuscript and print sources.

In 1986, Michael Hoey observed that “Discourse analysts have developed descriptions

designed to account for the interconnectedness of arguments and narrative prose, without

72 Several recipe authors have names that are very similar, so it is difficult to determine exactly how many different recipe authors are referenced in this volume.

123 acknowledging the fact that not all discourses take the form of continuous prose

composed of complete sentences semantically related in respect of their lexis and the

propositions they articulate.”73 The category of “discourse colony,” he argued, offered a

theoretical framework in which to analyze works that were non-continuous, written by

multiple or anonymous authors, and were made up of components that could move

around but were not individually necessary, among other “properties.” Like

encyclopedias, phone books, and beehives, recipe books fit most of the qualities that

Hoey identifies as signifiers of discourse colonies.74 Later linguists and discourse

analysts have continued to embrace Hoey’s concept and its application to recipe books.

Rather than relegating recipes to the dustbin of miscellaneous historical resources

because they appear to be little more than simple lists or bits and pieces of information

without context, considering recipes as a type of discourse reveals them as

representatives of the rhetorical strategies and sheds light on customs of medical readers and writers in the early modern period.

Along the same lines, reflecting on recipe books as an “epistemic genre” allows access to the communities that produced and used these texts. Gianna Pomata has suggested that “epistemic genres,” or genres of cognition, are useful theoretical frameworks in which to understand cognitive practices and the functionality of certain

73 Michael Hoey, "The Discourse Clony: A preliminary study of a neglected discourse type,” in Talking about Text: studies presented to David Brazil on his retirement (Birmingham: English Language Research, University of Birmingham, 1986): 1. Although Hoey’s article discusses printed, works, Ruth Carroll has shown the utility of discourse colony as applied to manuscript recipe books as well. Ruth Carroll, "Assessing Palaeographic Evidence for Discourse Structuring in Middle English Recipes,” Boletin Millares Carlo 24-25 (2005-6): 305-325. 74 Hoey, "The Discourse Clony," 1-26.

124 types of texts for their creators and readers.75 Pomata argues, “as shared textual

conventions, genres are intrinsically social. Contributing to a genre means consciously

joining a community.”76 When applied to manuscript recipe books, the concept of

epistemic genre becomes a powerful way of explaining how recipe books as text-types

functioned within and across social groups. Similar to epistemic genre, text-types “are

part of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. A member of a linguistic community will be

able to identify an example of a text-type, to name the text-type that the example belongs

to (if it has a name), and to determine whether the particular text has correctly used the

expected or obligatory linguistic features and formulas of the type.”77

The model of “discourse community,” on the other hand, allows a directionality that is even more focused on those who received knowledge from texts. According to

Barton,

‘discourse community can refer to several overlapping groups of people: it can refer to the people a text is aimed at; it can be the set of people who read a text; or it can refer to the people who participate in a set of discourse practices both by reading and by writing… More generally, discourse communities are defined by having a set of common interests, values and purposes.’78

These linguistic and rhetorical lenses emphasize the fact that manuscript and printed

recipe books were firmly situated within both writer and reader cultures that had clear

75 Gianna Pomata, "Epistemic Genres or Styles of Thinking? Tools for the Cultural Histories of Knowledge," Lecture given at the University of Minnesota, May 10, 2013. 76 Pomata, “Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine,” 197. 77 Ruth Carroll, "The Middle English recipe as text-type,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100 (1999): 27. 78 David Barton, Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994): 57, in Claire Jones, "Discourse communities and medical texts," in Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, edited by Merja Kyto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 24

125 format conventions that allowed all parties to recognize and take advantage of diverse knowledge. While manuscript and print authors wrote their volumes in slightly different ways and with somewhat different content, the textual similarities emphasize the point that these authors circulated their medical knowledge with the same rhetorical structures and were thus understandable across intellectual communities. That this format of medical writing was not restricted to one kind of practice or another, it is evidence of the permeability of social and intellectual boundaries in the medical marketplace.

However, similarity and difference is a matter of degree. Because recipes as a discourse type are highly variable according to personal preference (re-ordering ingredients, using local names or different spellings, etc), it is difficult to determine what a meaningful degree of similarity really is between disparate sources. In the following examples, the ingredients and ingredient amounts are similar enough to make it clear that the recipes were essentially the same between manuscript and print even though they are not exactly the same. Rather than being copied directly from the Ricettario or from manuscript into the Ricettario, it is likely these recipes were in circulation in various other forms, both print and manuscript, and came to each author via diverse channels.

Considering that the authors of the recipes I have collected as examples are Mesue,

Niccolao, and Scarperia, all authors whose recipes circulated amongst medical practitioners in a variety of ways, it is not surprising that there might have been some degree of recipe standardization.

Variants of a recipe for “Pills of Rhubarb according to Mesue,” appear in one of the manuscripts and in both editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino, and it is easy to see that they are very similar (Figure 12). It is, perhaps, not surprising that the ingredients and

126 amounts of ingredients are nearly identical across sources. What is more interesting

from our standpoint of considering knowledge transfer, is the order in which the

ingredients appear and the similarity of language across recipes. It is very likely, for

example, that the author of the manuscript recipe had a similar source as the authors of both Ricettario volumes, especially the 1567 edition.

Figure 12: Common Recipe #1 – Pillole di Reubarbero secondo Mesue79 Ms. 3057, 16th century Ricettario Fiorentino, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1498 1567 “Pillole di Reubarbero “Pillole di Reubarbero di “Pillole di rhabarbaro di secondo Mesue . Mesue et Usansi. Mesue. Rx. Raued. iii. Recipe reubarbero fine Rx. Rhabarbaro fine 3.iii. Sugo di regolita, iii, Sugo di logorizia Sugo di assentio, sugho di regolita, d’assenzio, Mastice an. .1, sugho di assentio, an i; Mastice an. 3.1. Mirabolani citrine. .iii mastice I, Mirabolani citrine 3.iii ½. ½. mirabolani citrine ii ½; Seme d’Appio di Seme di appio, seme di appio, Finocchio an 3 ½. Seme di finochio. an. seme di finocchio, an. Trocisci diarhodon 3.iii ½. ½; ½. Hiera picra 3.x. Torcisci diarodon .iii ½. trocisci diarodon iii ½; Acqua di Finocchio q.b. Gliempigra x. & si spetie di yerapigra Fa pillole.” 82 faccino pillole.” 80 semplice 1 ii. Con acqua di finocchio fa’ pillole.” 81

79 See appendix II for descriptions of pharmaceutical symbols. See appendix V for a glossery of ingredient terms for figures 12, 13, and 14. 80 Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana Ms. 3057, 31r. 81 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii della Arte et Medicina della Inclita Cipta di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1498: Facsimile dell'esemplare Palatino E.6.1.27 della Biblioteca Nazionale centrale di Firenze, Edited by Luigi Crocetti (Firenze: Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, 1968): 54v. 82 Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 186.

127

The manuscript and print variants of the recipe are not exactly the same, but they rely on generally the same ingredients: rhubarb, licorice, wormwood, mastic, citron, parsley, and fennel, among others. Considering the lack of instructions, other than “make pills,” the fact that the ingredients are presented in roughly the same order is useful evidence that the three variant recipes were meant to lead to the same product. It is likely, as with modern cooking, that the order in which the ingredients are presented to the reader contains the implicit instruction to combine the ingredients in that given order, sometimes using a specific, unstated process, like the tacit knowledge of modern cooks to cream butter and sugar before adding eggs.

The two examples of a recipe for “diacimino di Nicolao” in figure 13 highlight the importance of keeping in mind that the category of recipes was extremely flexible according to the needs of the author(s). Although manuscript recipes often have more information about how patients should use the medicines than do printed ones, and the printed recipes in volumes like the Ricettario do not include composition instructions, the recipes for Diacimino di Nicolao deviate from these norms. These kinds of departures from what appears to be standard practice could be indicative of several factors. The

College might have found the recipe to be unique enough that they thought it was important to include compounding instructions with the recipe. Or, the manuscript author might not have needed compounding instructions, assuming the user’s tacit knowledge and requiring simply a reminder of what the ingredients and their quantities were.

Without more information about the motivations of both parties, it is difficult to account for the differences. Although the recipes use many of the same ingredients, the Ricettario

128 Fiorentino version is more complex, using several other ingredients – such as cardamom, santoreggia and black pepper – as well as including much more detailed instructions about how to make the medicine.

Figure 13: Common Recipe #2- Diacimino di Nicolao

Ms. 3057, 16th century83 Receptario Fiorentino 149884

Diacimino di Nicolao Questo lactovaro è di Niccholao et usasi. Rx. Cinamomo, Gherofani, an. .ii ½ Recipe cimino infuso per uno di in aceto Zinziberi et Melano piperi, an. .ii et seccho viii i Cinnaomomo, Gerofani, ana ii 1/2 Galange, cimbre, calomento, an. 3.1. ii Gengovo, Pepe nero, ana . ii gr. v Galinga, Timbre i. sa.ctoreggia, Ameol, Leuistico, an. .1. xviii Calamento, ana 1 ii Macro piperi .1a. Amemo, Lirustico, ana i gr. xviii Nardo, Noce moscada, an. . ii ½ & in Pepe lungho i altro 1 ½ Spigo idest nardi, Carvi, Mastice, ana Mele che basti. ii 1/2 Componi lactovaro con mele quanto

basta cioè 1 ii, puossi fare con zucchero in ruotoli.

There is no explicit author information in these manuscript volumes that explains why some recipe books have more recipes in common with the Ricettario than others.

One piece of useful information is that the first 33 pages of ms. 3057 are a copy of

Antonio della Scarperia’s treatise on fevers, so perhaps the author had access to or was more interested in the printed volumes of specific authors than other manuscript authors

83 Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 3057, 40v. 84 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii, Receptario Fiorentino, 1498, 32v.

129 were.85 It makes sense in that context that the manuscript author included the recipe by Scarperia in figure 14. While not exactly the same as the Ricettario versions, the ingredients are very similar and likely reflect a common recipe source that was shifted through various transmissions. One interesting deviation, however, is the use of the term

"zafferano" in the manuscript and 1567 edition of the Ricettario Fiorentino, and the term

"croco" in the 1498 Ricettario Fiorentino. According to Alberto Capatti, Massimo

Montanari, and Aine O'Healy, "It is indeed possible that the term crucum (crocus) and safranum (saffron)... are intended to designate two different things: the 'local crocus,' mentioned by the physicians of the Salerno school, and saffron from the orient."86 These recipes are important to examine because they reinforce the personal nature of manuscript recipe books – that one author might have had a specific interest in Scarperia and others may have had other preferences.

85 See above for more information about Scarperia. 86 Alberto Capatti, Massimo Montanari, and Aine O'Healy, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History (New York: Columbia University, 1999): 93.

130 Figure 14: Common Recipe #3 – Pillole di Maestro Antonio dalla Scarperia Ms. 3057, 16th century Ricettario Fiorentino, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1498 1567 Pillole di Maestro Pillole di Maestro Antonio Pillole di Hiera con Antonio dalla Scarperia della Scharperia sono agarico di maestro simile alle sopra scripte et Antonio da Scarperia. . Cenamomo, usansi. Zafferano, Spigaceltica, . Aloè epatico, Squinanti, Bachera, Cennamomo, Croco, Cinanamomo, Nardo Cassia lignea, Spigo Spignonardi, Squinanti, indica, Zafferano, nardi, Xilobalsamo, Bacchera, Mastice, Cassia Schinantho, Bacchera, Carpobalsimo, An. . 1a lignea, Xilobalsamo, Mastice, Casia, Viuole, Epittimo, Rose Carpobalsamo, Viole, Silobalsamo, rosse, Coloquintida, Epithamo, Rose rosse, Carpobalsamo, Viole, Mastice, an. .[?] Coloquintida interior, an. Rose rosse, Epithimo, Argario, Turbiti, an. .ii . 1 Coloquinthida, an. .1; Reubarbero, Scamonea, Agario fine, Turbitti fini; Agarico eletto, Turbith corretta, an. .iiii an. . ii fini, an. .ii; Aloe epatico, .xv. Reubarbaro fine, Rhabarbaro .iii Fa pillole triata [?] vino Diagridii, an. . iii Scamonea preparata, .iiii bianco.87 Aloe pathico . xvi. Theriaca onc.ii Componi con trebbiano et Trebbiano quanto basta. triacha.88 Fa pillole89

There are many complexities inherent in recipes research that make it difficult to

compare individual recipes and determine traces of knowledge transfer between specific

individuals or printed volumes. The mere fact that recipe titles in manuscript and print

speak to different standards and that authors of different kinds of volumes include or do

not include provenance information means that it is difficult to speak with clarity about

where a certain author received his or her medical knowledge. With a more

comprehensive analysis, one might be able to correlate recipes with symptom- or illness-

87 Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 3057, 47v. 88 Chollegio degli Eximii Doctorii, Nuovo Receptario Fiorentino, 1498, 57v. 89 Collegio de Medici di Firenze, Ricettario Fiorentino, 1567, 185

131 specific titles with author or formal name titled-recipes in the printed volume. For example, different kinds of coding in recipe databases might be able to assist in finding patterns in ingredients to correlate recipes that either had one or no authors with each other.

Conclusions

By way of concluding, it is useful to emphasize the point that the differences in which recipe authors are referenced as well as in the representations of local culture in each volume are reflective of the fact that manuscript authors and the authors of the

Ricettario Fiorentino faced goals that were fundamentally different. Scholarship on the

Ricettario Fiorentino, and on the history of pharmacy and natural history in general, has generally tended to relegate lay practice to a different and often unknowable location when compared with official practice. Stories of the ways that that natural historians occasionally sought out “wise women” for information about ingredients and remedies are recounted in histories of early modern Europe, but the ways that “wise women” talked to each other or took advantage of more “official” kinds of knowledge is left to the side.90 Although, as Cristina Bellorini identifies, “the multifarious world of empirics, quacks, and wise women… would not provide an easy comparison with an official pharmacopoeia,” it is important to examine these practices next to each other in order to

90 Reeds, for example, "The late thirteenth century Minorite brother, Rufinus, turned from teaching astrology at Bologna to study ‘the virtues of herbs and their workings in inferior bodies.’ He actively sought information from rustici, apothecaries, old wives, and doctors about the uses and properties of herbs.” Reeds, Karen Meier, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991): 10.

132 determine several key concepts.91 However difficult to determine, it is critical to

develop a better understanding of who was interested in talking to whom and what kinds of information were valuable across social, economic, and intellectual strata. The comparison of these Riccardiana manuscripts and the Ricettario Fiorentino volumes emphasizes what the analysis of the male, religious author of the manuscripts detailed in chapter 1 showed: that lay practitioners operated in different terms from official healers, but that both their realms of practice and their intellectual contexts were overlapping. The idea of the transfer of medical knowledge as a unidirectional stream, or even a bidirectional stream, is not particularly useful when we are confronted with documents that highlight the nebulous nature of these historiographical categories. Manuscript recipe books demonstrate that medical practitioners functioned within a network that operated across professional and social boundaries.

Although the five Riccardiana manuscripts under investigation here are anonymous, their authors were not necessarily different from the people writing or using the Ricettario Fiorentino. These were likely not the typical “wise women” or peasants who were mysteriously involved in collecting projects for famous natural historians. As discussed in chapter 1, literacy was a valued knowledge and skill set for both genders in a variety of social statuses, so anyone from a priest to a merchant might have written the volumes. Official practitioners composed many of the extant manuscript recipe books written in Italian, so it is clear that some healers used official texts and also maintained

91 Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany, 155.

133 their own stores of medical knowledge in separate notebooks. At the same time, there

is no evidence that the authors of these manuscripts were official practitioners.

Adding to the confusion, previous scholarship has indicated that very few early

moderns took part in only one “profession.” Examining 240 fourteenth-century writers,

Christian Bec argues that very few writers had only one profession.92 Bec’s research on writers and on merchant libraries also demonstrates the important fact that writing and reading was not restricted to a particular social or economic level.93 In fact, his work also

highlights that authors who were important to the upper classes were the primary

volumes to be of interest to merchants.94 This tendency is, as we have already

determined, also recognizable among manuscript medical recipes. Although the

manuscripts examined here have a noticeable preference for local authors, common

authorities exist across document types. And regardless of the professed interest of Duke

Cosimo de Medici’s – the leader of Tuscany and the primary political supporter of the

College of Physician’s claim to dominance in the medical marketplace –in new kinds of

medicine, the College was slow to adapt the Ricettario to manuscript preferences for

local and non-Arabic authors.95

92 Christian Bec, "Lo statuto socio-professionale degli scrittori (Trecento e Cinquecento)”, in Letteratura italiana, Volume secondo. Produzione e consumo, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1983): 230, 93 Bec, "Lo statuto socio-professionale degli scrittori (Trecento e Cinquecento)”, 229- 267, and Bec, Christian, “I mercanti scrittori,” in Letteratura italiana, Volume secondo. Produzione e consumo, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1983): 269-297. 94 For example, Dante, Donato, Boccaccio, Ovid, Boethius, Virgil, Petrarc, Livy, and Cicero are among the most read authors in merchant libraries from 1413-1520. Bec, “I mercanti scrittori,” 277. 95 Bellorini, The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany, 185.

134 Setting aside the cloudiness about who the manuscript authors may have been, there are recognizable differences between the volume types that reflect the fundamental differences in the functions of the manuscripts and of the Ricettario. As an official document, the recipe contents of the Ricettario Fiorentino would have likely had a limited effect on the non-professional medical community, even though it was written in vernacular Tuscan. The Ricettario, however, would come to be an official representation of the hierarchy in the Tuscan medical marketplace, complete with legal documents at the end of the volume.

As a document of the College of Physicians, the Ricettario Fiorentino was explicitly outward facing: the textual evidence of a body of practitioners attempting to craft a public image that would be authoritative and encourage (and later, require) followers because of a new and growing recognition of the importance of municipal control over health. Provenance notations in the Ricettario Fiorentino editions emphasize that the College’s medieval focus on Arabic authorities began to wane by the mid- sixteenth century, to be replaced by classical and Italian authors. By focusing on canonical authors, whether Medieval Arabic or classical Greek and Roman, instead of local authors, they highlighted their continued attention to university training. However, the commentary on local culture in the Ricettario makes it abundantly clear that its authors took the Fiorentino of the title quite seriously. Although they maintained attention toward official, approved authors, they adjusted the recipes to reflect their own medical culture. The end goal was codify all approved, official medical customs in the region in an effort to standardize practice for the health of patients and status of practitioners.

135 Manuscript recipe books are, on the other hand, textual evidence of individual

practitioners deciding whose advice they trusted and whose name would reflect the most

authority and authenticity back on the manuscript author. These manuscripts are notably

more recalcitrant than the Ricettario. They hide their purposes between lines of text that

do not overtly say very much at all. However, the decisions that manuscript authors made

about whose advice to include in their books speaks to the more geographically- and temporally-focused nature of their communities. The provenance records in both manuscript and print serve the same essential purposes: to be a record of knowledge origin and to be a record of the writers’ interactions with members of his or her knowledge community. Rather than using canonical knowledge, manuscript authors used their recipe books as repositories for records of local interactions.

The trope of the unknowable lay practitioner is, thus, one that can be shaken, and the practices of laypeople can in fact be placed in conversation with professional recommendations and compared with them. The documents presented in this study certainly do not offer a one-to-one comparison, and there is yet a multitude of scholarship to be performed. The differences within the recipe genre that are apparent when comparing manuscript and printed official recipes are important examples to help further historical studies of the interactions within particular knowledge communities and remind historians that the lines that are drawn to create social categories are extremely difficult to actually locate within historical documents. Accepting that manuscript recipe books were both public and private documents and evidence of practice (or evidence of intent to practice) allows us to recognize that their authors crafted them in a calculated manner not so dissimilar from the College of Physicians. Provenance notations, evidence of local

136 interactions, and subtle differences in textual organization, such as in titles and compounding instructions, expose the confluences and divergences of manuscript and print medical communities in 16th-century Florence.

137

Chapter 3: Monastic Medicine & Female Patients

Introduction

In one of the three volumes of medical recipes written by the Capuchin monk discussed in chapter one, the author included a two-page section with the heading “To make it so women can give birth easily.” The following entries range from general advice about childbirth and the role of the practitioner, to several recipes that deal with issues of increasing severity, from drinks to be given several days before birth to medicines to bring forth a dead fetus:

I advise you that no doctor can begin to assist a woman giving birth if she has not passed her ninth month of her pregnancy; in that time it is experimented that it is easy to help with childbirth. Rx. Every day when [the patient] goes to bed give seven grains or a little spoonful of it, that because aromatics and hot [things] alleviate the pains of childbirth.

To the same, the following drink has been tested. It not only facilitates birth but also makes the birth painless. The woman should use it ten or fifteen days ahead of giving birth… Misit. If you give it to the woman every two days, six hours before eating in the morning for ten or fifteen days, like it is said.

Another For the same issue and it is a secret, if the woman is giving birth and is having difficulty, use the below written recipe and she will quickly give birth… Misit. And pound everything together, and dip a thin linen cloth in the mixture and put it in the nattura by the hand of another woman at the neck, I mean at the neck of the womb, and she will soon give birth.

Another For the same, the below written recipe is excellent and has been tested. But you should not use it unless there is a great need, or truly, when God has seen that the fetus was dead… Misit. And make the beverage and use it as is written and you will soon see the effect.

Another

138 For the same, this below-written beverage is good when it is not possible to have the fetus either alive or dead.1

Although manuscript recipe authors rarely included detailed information about their

patients, entries like these about childbirth show a clear interaction with a general patient

group: women. Other patient groups occasionally appear in manuscript recipe books such

as the Capuchin monk’s, but women are by far the most common, explicit patient group

featured in medical recipes in these three volumes. This attention to women by a monk

author is surprising in the context of the care of women in Italy, between the strictures of

the Catholic Church and the official hierarchy of medical practitioners. This micro-study

of the monk’s three manuscript volumes thus presents itself as an occasion to explore the

nuances and flexibility of the medical marketplace in which the author found himself.

1 "Consiglio, che nessun Medico, non cominzi à facilitar il’ Partorire, delle Donne, in Sino che non sia passata là 9:a Luna, della loro Gravidanza; nel qual. tèmpo è Sperimentato, che facilm.te. facilita il’ loro Partorire. Rx. dandoli ogni giorno nel’ andarsi à Letto – 7 – grani hò vero coccole d’Aloro, lè quali per essere Aromatiche et, Calde, mittigano I Dolori del Parto.

Al’ medesimo è sperimentato L’infrascritta Bevanda, là quale, non solam.te facilita il’ Parto. Mà ancora fà Partorire senza Dolore: Usandolla là Donna, x- hò xv – Giorni Avanti il Parto… Misit; Si dia alla Donna, ogni 1 – Giorni, 6- hore havanti mangiare, là Mattina per dieci, hò quindici Giorni, come è detto, facendo Bevanda.

Altro. À questo medessimo, et è secreto, Sè là Donna fosse in sù il’ Partorire, et che havesse dificoltà usi l’infrascritto Rimedio, è Subito Parturirà… Misit; Et, pestasi ogni cosa insieme, et mettansi in una Peza di Panno lino, sottille, et Pongasi nella Nattura, per mane daluna Donna nel’ collo, dico dalo collo della Matrice è subito Partorirrà. Altro. Al’ medessimo è ottimo et, Speremèntato, L’infrascritto rimedio. Mà non si debbe ussare, se non in Grande necessità, hò Vero, quando Dio nè quandi[?] che là Creatura fosse morta… Misit: Et, facciasi Bevanda, et usasi, come è detto et, vedrasi subitto L’efetto.

Altro. À, qesto medess.mo e Buono, L’infrascritta Altra Bevanda, quando non si possa havere là Creatura nè viva, nè Morta.” da Rimino. Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, Ms. 689: 110v – 111r.

139

Thus far, I have introduced the genre of recipe books and argued that lay writers

used these volumes as tools in the marketplace. Authors employed medical and scientific

rhetoric while writing them and used them as literary spaces for educating other lay

healers about dominant medical theories. The manuscripts of the Capuchin monk from

Rimini (Wellcome mss. 689, 690 and 691) examined in chapter one served as a case

study of the manuscript educational practices that non-professional healers engaged in

and demonstrate the tacit as well as theoretical knowledge that was transferred via

manuscripts. Chapter two presented a second case study in which I investigated the

differences and similarities between the Florentine Ricettario Fiorentino and Tuscan

manuscript recipe books in order to continue the consideration of the knowledge bridges

between non-professional and professional medical practice. It is at this point quite clear

that most manuscript authors were at least somewhat conversant in the dominant medical

theories of their time. Many were aware of and occasionally turned to the same canonical

authorities that the medical colleges of Europe promoted. More often, however, they

relied on more local, diverse knowledge networks that included both professional and

non-professional practitioners.

Mentions of patients are noticeably lacking in most early modern manuscript recipe books. Modern readers cannot usually be sure whether recipes were even used at all, let alone upon whom. If this chapter were to be based on specific references to individual patients, it would be a very short chapter indeed. Instead, a cornerstone of this chapter is a database of the illnesses and complaints to which the recipes in the Capuchin monk’s manuscripts refer. The recipe books are artifacts of the author's medical thinking

140 and are, therefore, reflections of his practices. By connecting body parts and

symptoms to specific kinds of patients, an image of the patient base that the author of the

manuscripts had and thus the range of patients he anticipated his readers would encounter

begins to emerge. If we consider manuscript recipe volumes as repositories of “embodied

cognition,” breaking down and categorizing the kinds of illnesses and complaints that

authors wrote about reveals both the landscape of the kinds of patients and issues that

they confronted and the topics that most interested the author.2 By investigating the kinds of illnesses authors expected to encounter, a general patient profile appears, revealing that the care of women was a major focus of this male, religious medical practitioner.

Consequently, these manuscripts present a unique way to investigate how common trends and legislation around childbirth practices were implemented, or not, in an individual’s medical practice.

For a variety of reasons, a full numerical analysis of illnesses in these volumes is not possible at this point. For example, the diversity of the medical terminology that the author employs makes it difficult to determine which illnesses and symptoms refer to the same issue.3 So, I constructed a database by noting the different kinds of complaints and

illnesses that appear in the titles of the recipe without attempting to correlate symptoms to

specific illnesses. Titles are the primary mode of finding appropriate recipes for specific

issues. Although other illnesses and symptoms appear in the body of the entries, the

2 Pamela H Smith, "What is a Secret? Secrets and Craft Knowledge in Early Modern Europe" in Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800. edited by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin. (Ashgate, 2011): 66. 3 The question of retrospective diagnosis is one that has been debated at length by other scholars and does not need to be a focus here in order to examine the patient profile of our author.

141 books do not have indices that would help readers quickly identify which recipes to

read. The database reflects actors’ terms around early modern illnesses and complaints as

well as body parts. For example, recipes have titles that might say, “recipe against pain in the stomach,” and “recipe for the stomach.” The simple presence of a body part instead of a specific illness or issue points to the assumed tacit knowledge of the reader, adding a layer of confusion to the analysis. As argued here, however, that presence is still useful, especially in terms of recipes for female-patients that are directed to preserve a patient’s uterus or breasts.

Although there are a multitude of ways in which the database could be analyzed, concentrating primarily on recipes for women allows me do a micro-study of the way female health care was provided in the long-sixteenth century, problematizing histories that emphasize neat dichotomies over medical care’s highly personalized nature. Through the analysis of illnesses in the monk’s manuscripts it is possible to discuss and complicate the older historiographical narrative of the division of medical labor according to societal and biological categories, such as occupation and sex. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued against the idea that the division of care was clearly made along gendered lines.

Monica Green, for example, in discussing midwives and the care of women asserted that

“These assumptions [that midwives were ‘caretakers of all of women’s health concerns" and that the "sexual division of medical labor was so absolute that men did not concern themselves with female medical problems] are enticing in their simplicity, yet it is astounding how little historical evidence has been brought forth to substantiate them,” and that women were, in fact, represented at all levels of medical practice in medieval

142 Europe.4 Importantly, female midwives continued to be the primary caretakers of pregnant women in Italy even as obstetrics (or man-midwifery) became predominant in other areas of Europe. The monk’s recipe books offer a chance to look from the opposite viewpoint and question how non-professional men—religious men—cared for women’s health.

A large amount of recent scholarship around recipe books and books of secrets generally confirms the notion that the traditional categories of gender and socio- economic position do not correlate to the societal spheres of private and public, at least in terms of the domestic production and distribution of medicines. Printed books of secrets covered a wide range of topics and were read by both men and women: “The influential

De secreti del reverendo donno Alessio Piemontese….for example… addresses problems with infertility, pregnancy, and lactation alongside general remedies for skin rashes and stomach ache, and includes recipes for face creams, lotions, and rouges along with methods for preserving food and wine and removing stains.”5 Although domestic activities like cooking and cleaning are usually considered today as being the purview of women rather than men, Alisha Rankin and Elaine Leong propose in the introduction to

4 Monica Green, "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe,” Signs 14:2 (1989): 435; 439. 5 Meredith K Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015): 10. William Eamon asserts that secrets "revealed... recipes, formulas, and 'experiments' associated with one of the crafts or with medicine," and that in the sixteenth century, "the term was still densely packed with its ancient and medieval connotations: the associations with esoteric wisdom, the domain of occult or forbidden knowledge, the artisan's cunning, the moral injunctions to protect secrets from the vulgus, and the political power that attended knowledge of secrets." William Eamon, Sciece and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994): 4-5.

143 their volume Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science that “it is very difficult to partition secrets definitively by gender… These cases of male authors focusing on the secrets of domesticity call into question the perceived division in household roles and knowledge.”6

Much of this recent scholarship on manuscript recipes focuses on England, though, and the work of scholars like David Gentilcore, Sandra Cavallo, Montserrat

Cabrè, and Alisha Rankin demonstrates the necessity of hesitating before translating theories about manuscript and medical practice simply from one geographic context to another.7 Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, for example, argue, “Italian society was more attune to health concerns than its European counterparts.”8 At least in terms of the regimens that their study addresses, many volumes claimed to be written simply so that a

“well-read public of non-specialists and non-professionals” who were curious but not learned in medicine could treat themselves.9 Indeed, the format that Cavallo and Storey call out as being adopted by print authors to be more readable is present in the manuscripts discussed here. The alphabetical table of contents, clear headings, and relatively large print were deliberate inclusions to facilitate use of the volumes as

6 Alisha Rankin & Elaine Leong, “Introduction,” Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800, edited by Alisha Rankin & Elaine Leong (New York: Routledge, 2011): 19. 7 David Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy. Montserrat Cabrè, “Women or Healers? Household Practices and the Categories of Health Care in Late Medieval Iberia,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 18- 51. Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013). 8 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, 8. 9 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, 21-25.

144 reference materials, even though the manuscript author did not organize the volumes

in the head to foot, outside to inside manner typical of medical manuals. 10

It is possible that manuscript recipe books written by Italian women might have

disappeared in course of the culling process undertaken in personal as well as

institutional archives whereby individuals and institutions decide which documents to

keep and which to throw away. Although very few of the manuscripts examined for this

project included author information, it is meaningful that none of the authors whose

names were included were female. We should not, however, discount the possibility that

women may have composed some of the multitudes of manuscripts that are anonymous.

Additionally, women do appear in provenance notations, confirming that they were

certainly part of the Italian medical marketplace. Nonetheless, the assumption that

domestic medicine was the purview solely of wives and daughters seems tenuous at best.

In any case, it is important to consider the recipe books of men as well as women as part

of the ongoing effort to understand the landscape of healing and embodied knowledge in

the early modern period. Examining the manuscripts of a religious man is especially

interesting because they not only allow us to engage with gender, but with religion and

how medicines were understood and made in non-household, non-professional medical

spaces.

This chapter will first explore the general kinds of patient references in the

monk’s manuscripts, and then analyze references to women and the role of medicine in a

10 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, 25. It is especially useful to note here that other scholars have found little evidence that manuscript recipe books were generated primarily by women in a household context, unlike in England.

145 monastic framework, attempting to clarify the place of medicine in the life of our author. Although the author was a Capuchin monk, this analysis makes it clear that he did not simply have a passing interest in the secrets of generation, like many medical men of his day, but that he engaged meaningfully with women’s health issues in an effort not just to understand generation but to ease the pain of his patients. The recipe entries also reveal that the author communicated regularly with professional practitioners and included their recommendations amongst his own, reinforcing the notion that non-professional healers were conversant with the theories and practices of their professional colleagues. Women are the most prominent patient group represented in the manuscripts, but there are also sparse references to children, men, and the elderly. These references contrast with the majority of the very general entries in the volumes and are worth a close investigation because they reveal more about the kinds of people with which the author interacted as well as the points at which general medical cures needed to become more specific to the patient.

This micro-study approach to the history of non-professional medical practice pushes the boundaries of what have been considered to be the spheres of various types of medical practice and social mores in the early modern period. As we have already seen with the College of Physicians of Florence, the medico-legal literature of the sixteenth century expected clear divisions between the practices of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. It is also evident in the literature about religious orders and medical practice that women and men were expected to avoid practicing medicine on each other, and that monks who practiced medicine were sometimes viewed with some suspicion. Recent histories of Italian medicine have acknowledged the importance of recognizing that the

146 medico-legal system’s ideals did not actually play out in person, and the same is

likely the case in terms of religious orders’ regulations. Surgeons, for example,

prescribed internal medicine, and physicians performed surgery, habits that are well

documented in Italy as well as in the English context. Recipe books by laypeople contain

evidence that that laypeople themselves also took part in what we might consider more

professional practices like surgery and gynecological medicine, and that via their

practices, healers often moved with fluidity through social boundaries. 11 The manuscripts

of the Capuchin monk emphasize that the practicalities of women’s healthcare could be

the purview of religious men regardless of religious restrictions and social norms.

Identifying Patients in Manuscript Recipe Book

Throughout the early modern period and into the contemporary era, the basic

patient model was, in most cases, an adult male.12 Galen, upon whose theories was based

11 Filippo de Vivo, for example, presents an interesting case study in which pharmacies function as a space where social and cultural boundaries became more porous. “Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice” in Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine, ed. Sandra Cavallo and David Gentilcore (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008). 12 This is, of course, an overgeneralization, alibet a useful one. Gianna Pomata, in an article on men and menstruation, argues, “Present-day historians are wrong when they say that in early modern European medicine the male was invariably held as the standard of bodily processes. In empirical observation, in therapeutic practice, things looked to many doctors more complex than that. The stories of menstruating men were an attempt to record this multifaceted perception. Empirical observation that keeps us alert to complexity is always precious, even when it leads to error.” (Gianna Pomata, “Menstruating Men: Similarity and Difference of the Sexes in Early Modern Medicine,” in Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe, ed. Valeria Finucci & Kevin Brownlee (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001): 152).

147 much of premodern medical theory and practice, did not spend much time focusing

on women in his works. According to Mattern,

with the exception of the stories illustrating 'hysterical suffocation,' his case histories about women are not introduced to illustrate some problem specific to them, as part of a discussion about women's diseases or the nature of women. The normal or ideal ('archetypical') patient in his mind is a man--specifically, an adult urban man in the prime of life. Women are deviations from that norm, rather than a radically distinct group with its own subdivisions and age categories.13

In the earliest printed anatomical atlases, anatomical illustrations generally depicted adult men. Since the great majority of convicted criminals who were sentenced to death and then dissected in medical colleges were men, physicians and surgeons would have been more familiar with the intricacies of male anatomy.14 Female anatomies were pictured in

some texts, however. For example, the frontispiece to Andreas Vesalius’s De Fabrica

(1543) has at its center a woman whose womb is exposed to Vesalius’s knife and the eyes

of the surrounding crowd and reader.15 The times when images of female anatomy appear

in these early texts is generally in terms only of the woman’s reproductive organs, and

those organs were almost always conceptualized as inverted male organs. An oft-cited

13 Susan Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): 114. 14 For example, Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994). It is important to point out that anatomical investigations of women did happen. Katharine Park has pointed out the use of anatomical dissection in premodern Italian convents, for example. (Katherine Park, "The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy, Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 1- 33.) Although women were not regularly dissected in public, women were autopsied for legal reasons. Students would have likely had some experience with examining the female body, but it was probably not a regular appearance in anatomy theaters. 15 Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Basileae: Ioannis Oporini, 1543).

148 example of this is Vesalius’s depiction of the uterus that looks nearly identical to a

penis, which drew attention to the homologies between male and female reproductive

organs (figure 15).

For Aristotle and Galen, sex was a

fundamentally biological characteristic

related to heat during development, but

the distinction was primarily related to

differences in the generative organs, so it

makes some sense that most premodern

medical authors considered women as the

patient model only when the illness could

not be experienced by male patients.

Later medical thinkers like Hildegard of

Bingham considered males and females

as fundamentally different as well, Figure 15: Image of the uterus in Vesalius's Epitome, 1543. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and developing taxonomy of humoral Medicine characteristics of both genders and

asserting, "Adam was made 'from the vigor of the virile earth'... Eve was made from his

marrow and was therefore soft."16 Modern scholars have debated Thomas Laqueur’s

thesis of the one-sex – two-sex model in which he argues that the two-sex model – of

two-part biological diversity – arose only in the course of the Enlightenment. In the pre-

16 Joan Cadden, "It takes all kinds: Sexuality and Gender Difference in Hildegard of Bingen's 'Book of Compound Medicine,'" Traditio 40 (1984): 161-164, 153.

149 modern western world, a one-sex model predominated in which sex was a social

rather than a biological category, but not so in medicine, which drew on Hippocratic and

Galenic ideas.17 Helen King, for example, argues that gynecology developed as a

discipline because of a strand of Hippocratic thought that claimed the female body was

radically different “from the male body and call[ed] for a separate branch of medicine to

treat women, on the grounds that there is not one sex, but two.” There was also an

important flourishing of medical and natural philosophical literature on the "secrets of

generation" in the medieval and early modern period.18

In the realm of pharmaceutical recipes, it appears as though Laqueur's one-sex model does not function well. Manuscript authors seem to have implicitly ascribed to

Aristotelian notions that the male body was developmentally complete, making it the ideal, standard body. Writers generally only assigned patient types to remedies in cases in which the illness only applied to a specific patient type: remedies for absent menses only applied to women, but prescriptions for hair loss could be applied to any patient.

Additionally, although medicines could have been completely customized for patients based on their individual complexions in the Galenic humoral system, manuscript recipe books generally reflect a more empirical approach to medicine and the body. Humors, heat, and moisture are regularly mentioned, but instructions about adjusting a treatment for a specific type of person are infrequent. With this in mind, it is important to examine

17 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990): 5-10. 18 Monica H Green, "From 'Diseases of Women' to 'Secrets of Women': The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 5-39.

150 those few recipes that were directed toward women, the elderly, children, the poor, and the rich. Although the author’s patient base was probably more diverse than these few entries would indicate, explicit references to specific patient groups are an important tool for better understanding what kinds of patients the author interacted with.

Only one recipe in the monk’s volumes, for Mal Caduco [the falling sickness], gives extensive details about a specific patient: “And with this simple recipe, I, in fact, cured and saved with the help of God the son of the most excellent Malacreda,

Protomedico of Padua.19 This comment is important for multiple reasons, not least because the patient is identified as the son of the Protomedico of Padua. The protomedico, specifically “first among physicians,” was positioned at the top of the medical hierarchy within a city or region, usually a physician drawn from the ranks of the local medical guild.20 Occasionally non-physicians would hold the post, but they represented the authority of the guilds and colleges and were responsible for carrying out the legal regulations of the medical establishment by inspecting apothecaries, testing medicines, and working to control the actions of everyone who officially participated in medical activities.21 Other recipe titles, such as “This recipe has cured Most Noble

Princes, and Others,” include the titles of patients, which serve to express the worth of the

19 “Et, di questo senplice Medicamento Io hò guarito e liberato à fatto con laiuto di S.D.M. il’ figlio del Ecc.mo Malacreda, Protomedico di Padova.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 689, 44r. The protomedico’s last name was likely Malacreda, rather than the author calling him “untrustworthy.” 20 For more, see David Gentilcore, "All that Pertains to Medicine: Protomedici and Protomedicati in early modern Italy, Medical History 38, no. 2. (April 1994): 121-142. Gentilcore transltates Protomedico as “first among physicians” on 124. 21 For more on protomedici in early modern Italy, see: Gentilcore, “All that Pertains to Medicine,” 121-142.

151 recipe rather than to identify the actual patient.22 Here and in many other entries, the author also mentions that he cured the patient with the help of God. The combination of these references can be read as a rhetorical strategy to convince the reader that the remedy was especially effective because it cured a boy whose own father, the most respected physician in the region, could not cure, or that the author himself was humble enough to consider the cure a success partly because of God’s help.

In addition to the recipe that cured the protomedico’s son, there are a few other entries that offer treatments for children. Several entries are focused on a dermatological problem present on the scalp of children, for example, “On the splits and scabs that appear on the heads of infants, and of the pustules that generate on their necks.”23 The

explanation for the disease describes how sometimes on the heads of small children,

under age 7, “fissures and scabs appear with putrid matter,” because they have had bad

milk. The entry goes on to describe how to cure the illness both if the child is still lattante

and if the child is no longer breastfeeding. Covering two full pages, the entry reflects the

range of this particular complaint, from the difference that age made in treating to the

different degrees of presentation, from simple crusts to more complex pustules.

Within the scope of the manuscripts as a whole, and Italian medicine in general, it

is not entirely surprising that the author included so many recipes to deal with this

22 “a fatto come anco fatto curesti Sernissimi Prencipi, et Altri.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 689, 23r. 23 “Delle Rotture et, Croste, che nascono su il’ capo de’ Fanciulli, et, delle Posteme del’ Collo, che si generano da’ quelle.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 690, 25r. There are 2 more recipes for this problem in: da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 689, 135v; and one more on: da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, Ms. 691, 45v.

152 specific childhood illness. Dermatologic issues appear as frequent subjects

throughout the manuscripts, from ulcers, spots and redness, to dryness and cracked skin.

Considering the importance of complexion in humoral theory, having healthy-looking skin was an excellent indicator of a healthy body. Although cradle cap is an issue that is still common to newborns and infants today, perhaps early moderns were so concerned with it because important social networks, such as choosing godparents and, occasionally, making marriage contracts, were formed at birth and during infancy and being healthy was important to maintaining those networks.24 Weeping ulcers would have likely been

especially concerning since they were evidence of internal discord, not to mention were

probably uncomfortable and socially risky. Perhaps those networks would have been seen

to be at risk in cases when the child was not perceived to be as healthy as possible.

One entry describing the “signs to know if children have worms [mal di vermi]”

offers a unique window into the doctor-patient relationship:

You should lick the patient’s forehead, and if it is salty, that is a sign of worms.

If the eyes shine more than usual, or more than is wont, that is a sign of worms.

If you put your mouth in front of that of the patient’s and you sense that it stinks, that is a sign of worms.25

24 See, for example: Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence 1300-1600 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 25 “Segni, per conoser, se li Fanciulli anno mal’ di Vermi. Sè gli dovrà leccar là Frnote con là Lingua, et se sarà salata, sarà segnio che à li Vermi. Sè gli Occhi li rilucanno più del’ solito, hò consueto, suà segnio dè Vermi. Se si confronterà là sua Boccha, con quella del’ Paciente è che si sènta, che essa puzzasse, è segnio dè Vermi.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 68v.

153 Unlike the very clear instructions to distance the doctor’s hands from a pregnant

woman’s cervix, described below, this set of instruction requires extremely close contact

with the patient. It is not clear whether the patient’s gender made a difference as to who

should perform these tests, or what the age range of the patient was, but it is a vivid

example of what patients and doctors experienced.

Other recipes, such as an entry to help milk teeth come through, are also

obviously focused on children since they are for specifically childhood issues. In other

cases, it is unclear why specific entries are for children. For example, “Oil for pain in the

body. Good and proven, for children.”26 There is one recipe for both men and children,

“Unguent for foco volatico, that very often appears on the face of men and children.”27 In

this case, it is the illness that is found in both men and children, not that the medicine was

necessarily thus specified for a particular patient type.

There is only one recipe specifically for poor patients: “Colic pain, for the poor.”

Unfortunately, the entry does not actually specify why the recipe should be for poor

people or anyone else. The recipe is for ground cabbage seeds boiled in meat broth and

drunk by the patient as needed.28 Perhaps it was simply the economy of the recipe that

made it appropriate for the poor.

On a larger scale, studying recipes for these specific patient groups could be very fruitful. There has been some scholarship on childhood and children in the Italian family

26 “Oglio p. Dolor di Corpo, Ottimo è Provato p. Putti.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 37r. 27 da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 15v-16r. 28 “Dolori Colici, per Poveri," da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 690. 78v.

154 structure in this period, but studies of childhood healthcare are sparse. Analyzing the

kinds of health issues that children encountered as well as the ways that practitioners

attempted to assuage them would help our understanding of the experience of childhood,

the value that families placed on children, and the impact of living conditions on early

health.

Monastic Medicine

In the Ricettario Fiorentino and the manuscript volumes from Tuscany discussed previously, medical recipes frequently reference individuals located in the pharmacy of

Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The medical knowledge contained in the pharmacy and hospital at this church was evidently an important part of the Florentine medical community for centuries. Although it has been argued that the commercial religious

pharmacies that developed in the early sixteenth century were based on “the accumulated

knowledge and traditions of what has been called ‘domestic’ medicine,” it seems clear

that these business ventures were part of a long-standing history of making medicines in convents and monasteries rather than simply based on activities in homes.29 Religious

houses were locales that encompassed cooking, gardening, maintaining buildings and

equipment, studying, worshiping, caring for each other, and sometimes producing items

for sale.

The medieval and early modern monastery was, thus, a self-sustaining

environment not unlike familial households of merchants and the nobility that

encompassed business, employees, socializing, and family life. This comparison begs

29 Strocchia, “The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence,” 636.

155 further investigation into the kinds of similarities between “domestic” medicine and

the medicine that was performed in religious houses. It also invites speculation as to

whether “domestic medicine” is the correct term for the act of compounding medicines

and treating patients outside of an official medical space, or if there is term that that is

less location-based and gender-focused that would encompass this type of healthcare with

more accuracy. It is for this reason that this project uses the term “non-professional

medicine” instead of “domestic medicine.”

Even a cursory glance at the history of medicine in monastic orders highlights the

complex and at times confusing negotiation that monks who wanted or needed to practice

medicine had with the Catholic Church. The origin stories of many monastic orders

feature accounts of medical aid that was offered by the founding brother or brothers to

local populations, frequently in times of epidemic outbreaks. Saint Francis of Assisi, for

example, “offered both spiritual and practical help to lepers, gave them his friendship,

love, and compassion, shared their food and cleansed their sores, although, according to

Thomas of Celano’s First Life, Francis found the unpleasant physical tasks difficult to

undertake.”30 Different orders had varying views on the importance of bodily health as it related to spiritual health, but, in general, most orders recognized the value of a healthy body in guiding their religious flocks.31 In order to contextualize the Capuchin monk’s

recipes for dealing with childbirth, uterine, and breast issues, it is necessary both to

30 Angela Montford. Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004): 5. 31 For more on monastic medicine, see: Leonardo Colapinto, "Monachesimo e Spezierie Conventuali in Italia dal XII al XVII Secolo," and Tiziana Vecchi, "Sull'Antica Farmacia del Monastero Benedettino di San Pietro di Modena," Atti e Memorie 20 (2002): 155-166.

156 examine medieval Catholic views of medicine in religious orders as well as the role

that women themselves played in healthcare. Ultimately, this micro-study of a monk’s recipes for women complicates the histories of institutional structures like the Church and the medical hierarchy and social customs, demonstrating once again that medicine provided a way for practitioners and patients to move fluidly through boundaries that were more porous than previously thought.

Although the Capuchin order was founded later than the Dominicans or

Franciscans, which both existed in Italy in this period, the history of medicine in these two orders in the middle ages provide the foundation upon which Capuchins, who were also mendicants, would eventually build their order. The history of monastic medicine in the early modern period is somewhat sparse, but scholars of medieval medicine have done significant work to flesh out our understanding of the place of healthcare in religious houses. From the thirteenth century onward, Dominicans and Franciscans had a somewhat fraught relationship with medical education and providing medical care for both practical and spiritual reasons. It seems unlikely that many monks were actually trained in universities to be physicians since at least in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because the church repeatedly reiterated its concern that monks who were physicians would be distracted by medicine and the promise of making money, thus neglecting their spiritual duties. It is likely for this reason that in 1249 Dominican friars were “forbidden [by the Provincial Chapter of Palencia] to accept any sick persons for

157 medical care except their brothers, nor were they to test urines or give any

medicine.”32 Like other non-professional practitioners, monks who could not attend

university courses likely learned how to make medicines and care for patients from other,

more senior medically inclined brothers in their order.

Although religious brothers may have been strongly discouraged from attending university courses and charging for their medical services, it is important to point out that there were several orders which focused intently on the physical wellbeing of the poor, from the medieval period through the counterreformation. The medieval orders of the

Hospitallers, for example, was dedicated to nursing the sick in hospitals: “The ‘third order’ Franciscan Hospitallers… was composed of associations of women whose aim was to care for the poor and the sick… by 1500, they had about one hundred homes.”33 In

London, Augustinian “sisters provided care for women in childbirth (which contrasted to the situation in France)” in the 13th century hospital, St. Bartholomew’s.34 The separation of medical care according to gender seems to have been carried out in Florentine hospitals, however, since “nursing care in Florentine hospitals, with the exception of two or three special institutions reserved for men, was under the control of a secular order of women, the Florentine oblates,” founded in 1296.35

It was not only the spiritual danger associated with becoming official, university-

trained physicians (who might charge for their services) that discouraged monks from

32 Monford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 108. 33 Leigh Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011): 115. 34 Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 119. 35 Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 121.

158 becoming professional healers, but the financial and bodily danger of inviting illness into monastic houses. Some orders stated in their rules that new members would not be accepted if they were sickly. Because the order as a group was responsible for the care of its members, it was to their disadvantage to invite someone to become part of the order if he was sick because that would mean accepting responsibility for someone who could not perform his duties, such as traveling and preaching, and would cost the order more for his care. When brothers became sick, however, the orders did care for them, and when brothers traveled and became sick, other orders would take them in, expecting to be reimbursed for lodging and care by the visitor’s home monastery.36

Even with the contested status of medical practice among medieval monks and the

Catholic Church, it is clear from convent and monastic records that the supplies that were required to make most medicines that would have been recommended to patients were often on hand. Sylvia Evangelisti, for example, has noted that “not all the objects given to nuns were for religious or devotional use – some of them were simply for domestic purposes,” such as utensils, crockery and furniture.37 The majority of equipment necessary for making medicines was simple and in common with general cookery

(boiling, mashing, cutting, stirring) and, since most monasteries and convents tended gardens and had animals, many of the basic, raw herbal and animal-based ingredients would have been available.

36 According to Montford, Saint Francis of Assisi asked his brothers to care for “their sick brothers as they would wish to be cared for themselves.” Health, Sickness, and Medicine 14. 37 Silvia Evangelisti, "Monastic Poverty and Material Culture in Early Modern Italian Convents,” The Historical Journal 47 (2004): 12.

159 Monastic drugs likely used the same ingredients and compounding techniques

as most other kinds of drug compounding in this period. According to Montford, friars in

the medieval period “used drugs that were largely based on plant material, with only a

very few which appeared to contain mineral and animal ingredients. Those items that can

be identified suggest that, in practice, mediaeval materia medica had a much smaller

number of ingredients than the very complex recipes inherited from early medieval or

Islamic medicine.”38 Although the printed recipes in early pharmacopoeias reflect these

complex inherited recipes, what was actually on hand in apothecaries, at least in the early

modern period, was more closely aligned with the remedies found in manuscript recipe

books. This suggests that their presence in the pharmacopoeiae was due to lip service

rather than actual, regular use.39 The kinds of illnesses that practitioners were expected to treat, both in the Ricettario and in manuscript recipe books, are very similar, however, to the illnesses reported in the monk’s recipe books. So, while the early seventeenth- century manuscripts of the Capuchin monk are not as complex as the recipes in printed, official volumes, they are very similar to other manuscript recipes from this period. The majority of the recipes are based on plant ingredients with some presence of animal,

38 Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 217. 39 "Although recipe books like the Ricettario Fiorentino detail a vast number of drug recipes, only a limited range of these were much used in practice. Only two of the main categories of drugs listed in the Ricettario were much used (purgatives and ‘sweet electuaries’), and within those categories usage focused on a small selection of specific recipes (such as diacatholicon, diaphoenicon, and diasenna)." Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, 256.

160 human (such as breast milk), and mineral ingredients.40

Despite the initial concerns about selling medicines and medical services, monasteries and convents in Italy were important centers for medical practice and knowledge.41 There were occasionally lay physicians or healthcare providers who offered medical aid in monasteries and convents, but there were also monks and nuns who practiced medicine. According to Sharon Strocchia, in the beginning of the sixteenth century nuns in and around Florence began marketing medicines because of a convergence of market forces with broad shifts in piety that increasingly emphasized social welfare over older forms of penitence:

Lacking sufficient income from their endowments, most Renaissance nuns performed market work in order to survive. The surging interest in medicinals fuelled by printed health manuals and vernacular recipe books, the influx of drugs from the New World, and the advent of new diseases such as syphilis opened up new economic opportunities for religious women, whose resources were continually stretched thin by the rapid expansion of female monasticism throughout the Cinquecento.42

The moral danger in moneymaking was at least somewhat negated in that the nuns could

“make medicines that could be distributed to the poor at little or no cost in a circular

moral economy.”43

40 According to Montford, “Bernard’s words suggest that domestic simples were considered to be adequate and effective, and his approval of the types of medicine used by the poor suggests that the unsuitability of secular medicine was connected to its expense and sophistication for monks vowed to poverty, rather than a condemnation of its techniques or use by others in society." Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 38. 41 Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 81. 42 Sharon T. Strocchia, "The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: marketing medicines in the convent,” Renaissance Studies vol 25, no. 5 (2011): 628. 43 Strocchia, “The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence,” 630.

161 There is evidence of women who practiced medicine in convents (take

Hildegard of Bingham, for instance), but the question of how women were involved in

medicine (either producing or receiving) in monasteries is more difficult to answer.44 For

example, in 1337 a statute forbade Franciscans from being “shaved, hav[ing] their heads

or feet washed or be bloodlet by women. Female physicians were considered suitable for

the medical care of Franciscan nuns, suggesting that it was the practitioners’ gender, not

their competence, which caused the problems.”45 Indeed, orders of women caregivers and

hospitals for caring for the poor were founded in Italy during the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, including the Brignolines and Saint Catherine of Genoa’s

"'charitable fraternity.'"46

The Capuchin order, to which our manuscript author likely belonged, began in

Italy in the mid-sixteenth century when the founding brother, Fra Matteo, desired a

monastic life that would be dedicated to following the original orders of Saint Francis of

Assisi as strictly as possible. According to one history of the order, Fra Matteo

had a large heart and understanding sympathy of all human needs, this shy and silent young friar; as was shown in heroic measure when the plague came upon and devastated the city of Camerino in the year 1523. No sooner did news of the outbreak come to the friar in his friary at

44 Victoria Sweet, "Hildegard of Bingen and the Greening of Medieval Medicine," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999): 381-403. 45 Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 137. Importantly, Sharon Strocchia has found that a much larger number of women purchased items at a convent pharmacy than at the Speziale al Giglio in the the late 15th century. She suggests, “convent pharmacies functioned as sites of female sociability, much like convents themselves.” (Strocchia, "The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: marketing medicines in the convent,” 635-6) This difference falls along the same line of argumentation, that gender was not a cause for distrust of medical knowledge, but that men and women were not encouraged to assist each other. 46 Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 129.

162 Montefalcone than he set out for Camerino and there gave unstinged service to the plague-stricken people. Through the long months Matteo remained staunchly at his elected post, administering the sacraments and assisting the dying with words of comfort; nursing those who had none to nurse them and questing for food and bodily comforts for those in need.47

In addition to Fra Matteo’s inclination toward nursing sick people, other early members of the order and their patrons were involved in medical undertakings.48

Aside from these cursory notes about assisting the sick, there has been very little written about the early Capuchin order and its members’ participation in medicine.

Further research is needed to determine the extent to which they and other religious orders were involved in the day-to-day medical care of their communities. Occasional mentions of Capuchins in sources like letters and recipe books are helpful. In a brief case study of the Frenchwoman Madame de Sèvignè’s (1626-1696) letters, for example, Leigh

Whaley notes several instances in which the woman wrote about medicines received from

Capuchin monks. When Madam de Sèvignè had an illness in her leg, “rather than sending for a doctor, she called in the Capuchins from Rennes,” and she “claimed that the

Capuchins had saved the lives of two women, one of whom had ‘been weakened by twelve bleedings.’”49 Evidently in France by the seventeenth century, Capuchins were a great source of medical service for at least some laypeople, so it stands to reason that the

47 Father Cuthbuert, The Capuchins: A Contribution to the History of the Counter Reformation, vol. 1. (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1929): 18. 48 For example, “Maria Longa, a lady of Spanish birth, was the widow of a high official in the Neapolitan Chancery. Since her husband’s death she had devoted herself to works of charity and had founded a hospital for incurables, where she and some ladies associated with her gave themselves to the service of the sick.” (Cuthbert, The Capuchins, 68) 49 Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 167-169. Unfortunately, it is not clear whether the monks that de Sèvignè consulted also assisted with childbirth or other reproductive issues.

163 Capuchin author of these three Italian manuscripts was not entirely unique as a

Capuchin healer in Italy either.

As already mentioned, the anonymous author of these manuscripts did not include details about himself, including information about his training, whether he considered himself a physician, surgeon, or apothecary, or whether he asked for or received payment for his services. Given the early and continually reasserted restrictions placed on the university medical training of monks, as well as their vows of poverty, it is likely that the author was trained in a kind of apprenticeship system that was so common among lay medical practitioners of this era. The only information in the volumes about the author’s training are two provenance notations saying that certain recipes were “given by my master,” and by “my precetore.”50

The only personal information that remains in the volumes is the note by later

owner Bernardino da Rimino on the front flyleaf of each volume. Bernardino, who would

later become the vicar at the Convent of Rimini in the early eighteenth century, was not

himself a medical practitioner. He took pride in these medical books, though, since he

wrote his name prominently at the beginning of each volume, indicating that he lent them

to an esteemed local knight. When I contacted the archives of the order in Bologna, the

archivist indicated that Bernardino did not seem to have any official interest in medicine

or sustained practice that appeared in other parts of the archive. Although medicine may

not have been an official pursuit of the Capuchin order, the notations by Bernardino and

the scant references to Capuchin medical practitioners in other geographic contexts are

50 da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 44r & da Rimino, Bernardino. Manuscript Recipe Book. From the Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 66r.

164 important further evidence that healthcare was an important part of monastic life, and

that medicine was not an irregular presence in their monasteries.

Simply focusing on the presence of prayers and mentions of God does not provide

enough evidence that the author was a cleric since these are features of many manuscript

recipe books from this era. The occasional phrases like, “the recipe will burn a little but it

will pass quickly in the space of a pater nostro” might be construed to be evidence of the

author’s position, but in a society in which such a prayer would have been common for

all Catholics, it does not actually reveal much.51 A similar example is this recipe with a

reference to Pope Clement VII:

In 1523, in the time of Pope Clement VII, Fra Gregorio Caravita, author of this oil against poisons, found himself in Rome and publicly demonstrated the oil’s usefulness, from which the pope’s sanctity was moved to obtain the recipe. [The Pope] then sent [the recipe] to his relative, the most serene Duke of Tuscany, and from this the most serene Grand Duke Cosimo [de Medici] frequently made [the recipe] and behaved with regal generosity [giving it] to the needy poor. This is where the oil got its name, Oil of the Grand Duke against Poisons...52

References to various popes in manuscript recipe books are relatively common and do not necessarily point to an author’s religious vocation. It is possible that references to a

51 “vero è che abbrugia un poco mà passa subitto, in spazio diun Pater nostro.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, unfoliated page between A and F, r. 52 Pope Clement VII was born with the name Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici and was pope from November 1523 to September 1534. Cosimo I de’ Medici was born in 1519 and became grand duke in 1537. “In tempo di Papa Clemente – 7 – Si ritrova in Roma, l’anno – 1523 – frà Gregorio Caravita, Autore di quest Oglio contra Veleni è nè mostrò pubbliche esperièn ze, delle quali si mosse là santità del’ Papa, ad’ ottener là ricotta, là qual’ poi communicà à Seriniss.mi Duchi di Toscana suoi parenti è trà questi il’ Sereniss.mo gran Duca Cosimo frequentamen.te lò faceva compore, onde poi là compartiva con regal’munificienza à poveri Bisogniosi, di dove Venne originato al’Oglio su.o il nome del’ Oglio del’ gran Duca, contra Veleni.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 29r.

165 pope were rhetorically useful because of his celebrity. The textual presence of Pope

Clement VII perhaps also reinforced the Catholic spirit of the author. Similarly, the reference to Cosimo and his use of the remedy also reinforces the recipe’s status.

Nevertheless, hints as to the author’s vocation and his presence in a religious community can be gleaned from these volumes. Some provenance notations are strong evidence that religious figures were important resources for the author. There are two explicit references to Capuchins in the manuscript, other than the ownership notes by

Bernardino da Rimino. The first is in the margin next to an entry titled, “Distillation for rhume in the eyes” and reads, “From the priest Liberato da Scandiano, Capuchin medico.”53 The second is in a recipe against plague that includes this origin story: “This secret [recipe] was given to one of our Capuchin priests by a gravedigger during a time of plague in Savoy. The recipe helped the afflicted and kept him alive during the whole time the plague was there. Many years later upon his death, this man, our priest, gave this recipe to our doctor.”54 Other priests and monks appear throughout the volumes, such as

Pr. Lendenaca in a recipe for “Injured breasts” (the recipe was given to him by a certain

Sig.la Rigiarda) and Fra Maseo da Ravenna.55

53 “Distilazione di Cattaro nè gli Hocchi… del pre.t Liberato da Scandiano, Medico Capuccino.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 27r. 54 “Fù dato questo Secretto dà un Beccamorto, al’ tempo della Pes.te quando era in Savoia, ad’ un nostro Pre. Capuccino, qual’erviva alli Appertati, è si preserve sempre netto, tutti il’ temp.o che durò là Peste, quell. Pre. nostro campò molti Anni doppo et alla sua Morte lò significò al’ nro. Infermiero.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 64r. 55 “Della sig.la Rigiarda. Del Pr. Lendenaca,” Wellcome ms. 689, 46v, and “Unguento di frà Maseo dà Ravenna,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 76r. These references are interesting in the context of the Capuchins as a missionary order. Although Scandiano and Ravenna are within the same region in which these

166 Capuchin brothers could give last rites to dying Christians, so it is perhaps

unsurprising to note that several of the entries in the manuscripts include provenance

notations that describe the recipes as having been given to the author at someone’s

deathbed. For example, “A surgeon upon his deathbed taught me this secret which had

made him very rich.”56 The comment about the riches of the dying surgeon is interesting

considering the Capuchins’ (and many other fraternal orders’) vow of poverty and the

Church’s concern that monks who practiced medicine would stray from the fold in search

of worldly riches. Another recipe says, “This great secret was given to me by a person

upon her death for the great benefit that she herself took to many poor women who have

this illness which is born from milk in the breasts that is sometimes corrupt."57 In both of

these examples, the person who provided the recipe is significant: a surgeon and a woman both held knowledge that was uniquely profitable in the medical marketplace, the surgeon as an official practitioner and the woman as a holder of embodied knowledge, presumably, of breast ailments. Both their success, financial and spiritual, as well as

expertise is transferred textually into the repertoire of the Capuchin author.

These provenance notations are more like origin stories, rather than simple

attributions. The rhetorical role of the deathbed story is clear in these examples. They

first speak to the good character and medical knowledge of the recipes’ originators. The

manuscripts likely originated, the early movement of the order from Italy into France (Savoy) is interesting to see. 56 “Questo secreto me lò insegniò un Chirugico alla sua morte, qual’si era fatto molto riccho.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 29v. 57 “Questo secretto mi fù rifferito dà una Persona alla sua Morte per li gran Benefici che ella medema prèsò in molte povere Donne che aveva questo Male, qual’ procede dal’ Latte apreso nelle Mamelle et, Alle volte corotte.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 52v. (Per la Gonfieza delle Mamelle)

167 Capuchin brother curing plague victims for years was selfless and respectable and

also mirrored the image of Saint Francis of Assisi and the order’s founder Fra Matteo,

who also cured many plague victims during their travels. Even though the author of the

three manuscript volumes may not have known Fra Gregorio Caravita, his story does

important rhetorical work as it shares evidence of his close interactions with Pope

Clement VII and Cosimo de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, as well as the

medicine’s use in curing the poor. The recipes that were offered to the author by the

surgeon and physician on their deathbeds seem to have had an especially high status

because the originator had such success with the recipes. The original authors' godliness

and knowledge was thus reflected back on the author since he was trusted by them and

because the author included them in his “little book” in order that his brothers be able to

continue to cure their community.

Two recipes include references to churches: “Pills of the new church in Rome”58

and “Strong-smelling perfume for the church.”59 The inclusion of the recipe for a scent for the church is not really surprising since recipes regarding household management were regularly included in manuscript recipe books, even those that were primarily focused on medicine (see chapter four for more information about materiality of household practice). This perfume recipe is interesting because it hints at the status of the

58 “Pirolle della Chiesa nuova di Roma,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 57r. The description of the pills says, “misedandollo spesso con Spattola di legnio acciò si possa bene inbebine di d.ta Infusione, Tendendollo cuperto con una Tella di sedazio, acciò non vi vada alcuna sporchizia dentro, Si conserva per li Bisogni, Là sua dose sarà -3-s-.” (57v) 59 “Profumo Odorifero, per la Chiesa,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 61r.

168 church as a kind of “household space” for the author.

Remarks about religious figures throughout the volumes, combined with the letter to the reader that was discussed in chapter one and the size of the collection overall, shows that the author had a robust interest in medicine and likely had a significant medical practice that was an accepted part of his position as a Capuchin monk. The history of the Capuchins and medicine has not been investigated in enough depth to say to what degree the order viewed the care of physical bodies as within its realm of responsibilities, although their missionary activities might indicate that the care of bodies was considered as part of the saving of souls. Further explorations of medicine and

Capuchins might include an investigation of missionary handbooks. The history of the order’s founders, however, emphasizes the importance of healing. It is possible that the practical advice and goals of brothers doing mission work might mirror what is present in these manuscripts, and might also reinforce the idea that physical care was an important component of the order’s spiritual ministry.

Monastic Medicine and Women’s Health

Considering the medieval history of strict separation of the sexes in medical care among monks and nuns, the frequency with which this manuscript author included recipes for medicines to deal with female medical issues is quite striking. The medical complaints in these volumes around childbirth, menstruation, breast sores, and hysteria illustrate the experiences of the author, the social expectations of men treating women, the resources that the monk called upon, and the predominance of the idea that the uterus was a powerful force in a woman’s physical and mental state. It may be simpler to

169 assume that a monk did not personally take part in caring for women’s reproductive health, or that the recipes only demonstrate intellectual curiosity, but the role of recipes as

“assertion[s] of existence…and a community” insists that we not dismiss the possibility that he was present at births, or that he regularly cared for women.60 In any case, the number of recipes for women in the Capuchin monk’s manuscripts is an indication of his particular interests and priorities. What is especially curious about that focus on women is that he was presumably a celibate male living in a male-only community. The early history of Catholic orders in Italy provides some context for the kind of general and gendered medicine that the author of these manuscripts offers. Similarly, the history of midwifery in Italy adds further complication to this picture. The recipes themselves can shed light on the kinds of both practical and theoretical knowledge that the author had about reproduction.

From the little scholarship on medicine and the Capuchin order, it does not appear as though public pharmacies were a regular feature of their monasteries, as they were in some other major churches and monasteries in Italy, but it is likely that they had “kitchen gardens” that were stocked with medicinal plants. Even though in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century the order regularly interacted with the communities of laypeople, the presence of so many recipes that deal with conception, miscarriage, uteruses “out of place,” and breast milk seems surprising and deserves an in-depth examination. It is worth pointing out before beginning, though, that there are also many recipes throughout the manuscripts that offer cures for penile and testicular issues. Venereal diseases like

60 Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern Kitchen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016): 3.

170 syphilis and gonorrhea were extremely concerning in this period, and mentions of reproductive organs regularly appear in entries for these types of illnesses (although the author does not always indicate a patient’s sex when discussing venereal disease).61

Putting these venereal disease entries aside, sections dedicated to female reproductive organs appear more frequently than do recipes dealing with male reproductive organs.

The approximate frequency of recipes for women in the volumes is useful to keep in mind as we consider the place of the care of women in the scope of the author’s medical practice. Across the three manuscripts, there are over 2100 separate mentions of illnesses or body parts. By placing these individual mentions in categories like “mouth,”

“head,” and “burns,” there are around 330 illness or symptom categories. Out of the 2100 separate mentions, there are just over 150 mentions of female issues like menstruation, breasts, the uterus, and pregnancy. This amounts to an unimpressive approximately 7% of all of the individual illness references in the books.

One might look at this percentage and simply say that the author of these manuscripts fits squarely into the analysis that other scholars like Katharine Park have made about the theoretical interest that early modern medical men had in female reproductive issues. This current scholarship on female medical issues in the early modern period in Italy has identified an increase in interest in the secrets of female generation among male practitioners who did not necessarily treat women, but instead

61 On syphilis and other venereal diseases, see: Kevin Siena, Venereal Disease, Hospitals, and the Urban Poor: London’s ‘foul wards,’ 1600-1800, Rochester: University Rochester Press, 2004; Arrizabalaga, Jon, John Henderson, and Roger French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Claudia Stein. Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009).

171 looked to their reproductive capabilities as a natural historical or anatomical mystery to be solved. Monica Green has argued

that far from serving merely as a flimsy guard against the prurient interests of supposedly celibate clerics, the heading secrets of women was meant to imply that the same kinds of occult (if unprovable) truths were being conveyed in these text as could be found in other books of ‘secrets,’ such as those attributed to Aristotle or other philosophers and physicians. The books of secrets that address generation are called ‘secrets of women’ because, from the male perspective, women are a distinctive category only in the sense that they represent sexuality and generation.62

The transition from discussing the “diseases of women” to the “secrets of women,” as

Green demonstrates, was likely because of philosophical and social developments and boundaries. One example she uses is texts on gynecology in the collections at the

Sorbonne that were bound with non-medical texts, emphasizing that the subjects were philosophically linked, and that the volumes on gynecology were therefore not meant for practical uses: "it was not therapeutics but scientific curiosity that led the theologians of the Sorbonne to keep these two texts on the 'secrets of women' on hand in their reference collection."63 Since, as Green asserts, early modern anatomists and natural philosophers considered women to only be different from men with regard to their reproductive capabilities, these discussions of female anatomy was almost singularly focused on issues of generation.

62 Monica H. Green, "From 'Diseases of Women' to 'Secrets Women': The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 18. 63 Green, "From 'Diseases of Women' to 'Secrets Women,'" 22.

172 Rather than a philosophical interest in the secrets of women, however, the

Capuchin author of these manuscripts included these many entries about female medicine

because of an interest in practice. Instead of focusing on the overall percentages, it is

much more meaningful to consider the number of

times that the author mentions female-specific body • Eyes – 130 • Cancers – 68 parts compared with individual other body parts and • Stomach – 65 • Uterus – 64 illnesses. The majority of the more than 330 illness • Ears – 60 • Wounds – 46 categories appear only two or fewer times (only 64 • Urine – 45 • Fevers – 43 categories have more than 10 mentions), but the • Liver – 42 female-specific categories of uterus, breasts, and • Breasts – 38 • Spleen – 37 menstruation all appear among the top twenty most • Hemorrhoids – 35 • Testicles – 34 frequently referenced categories (see figure 16). Other • Teeth – 33 • Kidneys – 30 top-twenty categories include eyes, cancers, the • Menstruation – 29 • Legs – 28 stomach, ears, wounds, urination, and fevers with 130, • Body – 26 • Edema – 25 68, 65, 60, 46, and 43 references, respectively. Within

Figure 16: Frequency of ailments and the context of the volumes as a whole, it is clear that body parts in Wellcome mss 689, 690, and 691. the author had serious interests in female health and was not embarking on a project of natural historical inquiry with his recipes. Even if all of the recipes were not actually used, the volumes were dedicated to applied medicine.64

64 Green says that Peter Biller argues, “male medical literature… was derived at least in part from actual practice or discussions with midwives and was intended, in its turn, to be used to instruct them.” (Monica Green, "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe,” Signs 14:2 (1989): 459); Peter Biller, “Childbirth in the Middle Ages,” History Today 36 (August 1986): 42-48.

173 The question that this focus on female ailments brings up is, of course, why a male

religious figure was so interested in helping women whose menses needed to be

provoked, had breasts that had fissures, and needed help giving birth. This section will

focus on the recipes for women in these volumes, exploring the ways that the medical

marketplace and social atmosphere of female bodies are reflected in the monk’s volumes.

The combination of the kinds of practitioners the author refers to, the academic and folk

knowledge evident in the recipes, and the kinds of questions that the entries aim to

answer are powerful pieces of evidence of the flexibility and permeability of medical

categories and realms of practice in the Italian long-sixteenth century.

Although there are only a few recipes about women that include provenance notations, they reinforce the idea that practitioners received their medical information from a wide variety of sources seemingly regardless of social boundaries, in this case,

doctors, women, and the serenissima of Mantua. Although this recipe has been

referenced above, it is worth repeating here: In a recipe “for the inflammation of the

breasts” the author writes that “This secret was given to me by a person upon her death

for the great benefit that she herself had given to many poor women who have this

sickness, which comes from milk that has become corrupted in the breasts.”65 Another

recipe, “On the pain, and swelling, and windiness of the uterus,” was a “secret from a

65 “Per là Gonfieza delle Mamelle”; “Questo secretto mi fù rifferito dà una Persona alla sua Morte per li gran Benefici che ella medema prèsò in molte povere Donne che aveva questo Male, qual procede del’ Latte apreso nelle Mamelle et Alle volte corotto.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 52r-v.

174 woman of Bologna.”66 The entry, “For the fissures of the breasts, and for wounds on

the breasts” was a “secret from the most celebrated doctor, Giovanni Antharacino.”67 A

recipe for “Unguent for broken or inflamed breasts” was given by a Giovanni Battista of

Ravenna.68 A recipe to help “stinging breasts” was provided by the Serenissima of

Mantua.69

More significant than the provenance notations in these female-focused recipes is the lack of references to midwives. The story of the struggle between midwives and physicians in the early modern and modern periods is one that has been largely defined by the development of obstetrics and gynecology and the dismissal of traditional birthing practices in favor of hospitals and medical doctors. In Italy, however, the story is different. Compared to the rest of Europe and, later, North America, midwifery was professionalized rather than marginalized, so women continued to be primary caregivers:

“Rather than maneuvering to usurp women’s place in the birthing room… physicians and state officials in Italy aimed their efforts at professionalizing female midwives through new, formal courses of instruction.”70 In other western contexts, the development and use

66 “Del’ dolore, et del’ Gonfiam.to et, della Ventusità della Matrice,” “è secreto… delle Donne di Bologna.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 99r-v 67 “Delle Fisure delle Poppe, et delle Piaghe delle Mamelle,” “Secretto, del’ Celebratiss.mo Medico, Giovanni Antharacino.” da Rimino, Bernardino. Manuscript Recipe Book. From the Wellcome Library, ms. 690, 12v-13r. 68 “Unguento per le Tette Rotte, hò infiamate, di m. Gio. Batta. dà Ravnenna.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms 689, 148r. 69 “Della Sereniss.ma di Mantova per Tette offese” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 147r. 70 Jennifer F Kosmin, Embodied Knowledge: Midwives and the Medicalization of Childbirth in Early Modern Italy, Ph.D. diss, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014: 1. For more on women and scientific and medical practice in general, see: Ray,

175 of invasive instruments like forceps were used to leverage male-obstetric knowledge

over female-midwifery knowledge, pushing female practitioners out of the medical

marketplace.71 In Italy, however, Filippini has found evidence that “the use of

instruments to extract a dead child was probably not foreign to midwives, and there is

evidence that they carried out this practice in the countryside.”72 Jennifer Kosmin has

posited that Vesalius's depictions of female anatomy in his 1543 De Fabrica initiated a

trend toward privileging anatomical knowledge over midwifery experience:

By the early seventeenth century, for instance, statutes in Venice required midwives to attend anatomical demonstrations in order to obtain a license. Prospective midwives were also expected to read male-authored midwifery manuals, which reproduced the kind of anatomically based knowledge associated with men like Vesalius, regardless of the fact that many of these men themselves had limited experience with childbirth.73

So, while instruments may not have begun the transition from female authority to male

authority over the science of generation as in other European contexts, the increasing

Daughters of Alchemy. For a brief overview of female doctors in Italy during the early modern period, see Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, especially chapter 7. Whaley asserts, “as far as medical practitioners outside the university system are concerned, the medical system in Italy, particularly in Bologna, was predominantly male from the end of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century. Women could practice legally as midwives and as merchants of patented medicines.” (140) 71 On midwifery in early modern England and the impact of social status on midwifery practice, see: Samuel S. Thomas, "Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Professsion, Connecting the History," Journal of Social History 43 (2009): 115-138. 72 Filippini, "The Church, the State and Childbirth," 156. Filippini goes on to say, "The Milan Medical Commission speaks of 'roughly made hooks' which, it appears, midwives used in extreme cases to pull out a dead foetus, but, by the eighteenth century, this practice had all but died out in the towns, where a surgeon would be called in." (156) 73 Jennifer Kosmin, "Midwifery Anatomized: Vesalius, Dissection, and Reproductive Authority in Early Modern Italy," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 48 (2018): 80.

176 status of anatomical study in universities may have influenced the eventual

professional training of midwives.

The monk’s entries about childbirth are especially interesting in the context of the

role of the Catholic Church in this professionalization of Italian midwifery. According to

Kosmin, “early interventions, including those by a reinvigorated Counter-Reformation

Church, had the effect of transforming midwives’ traditional role within the community

by positioning them as intermediaries between local interests and the new privilege with

which Church and State sought to intervene in those affairs.”74 Although magic was present in all types of medicine,

The host of folk traditions related to pregnancy and childbirth, coupled with the fact that birth itself was still a mysterious, female-controlled event, made this an area of particular concern for the Counter-Reformation church. Through proper instruction of midwives, the Church therefore sought to eliminate one zone of superstitious folk belief and ensure that childbirth was accompanied by orthodox rituals and prayers... The canons and decrees of the Council of Trent firmly reminded the faithful that 'if any one denies, that infants, newly born from their mothers' wombs, even though they be sprung from baptized parents, are to be baptized' then he 'be anathema.'75

By 1624, around the time when the monk likely wrote his manuscript volumes,

Venetian officials kept registers of licensed midwives who had apprenticed to another

74 Kosmin, Embodied Knowledge, 2. 75 Kosmin, Embodied Knowledge, 23-24. This anxiety about midwives and baptism was felt strongly throughout Europe. In Germany, for example, "the main anxiety felt about German midwives foussed on their traditional practices of emergency baptism and the possible contamination of the young with superstition." (David Harley, "Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-witch," Social History of Medicine 3 (1990): 5) For information about midwifery in Italian Jewish communities, see: Leonard A. Rothman, "Jewish Midwives in Late Renaissance Venice and the Transition to Modernity," NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues 25 (2013): 75- 88.

177 midwife and been examined by the Provveditori alla Sanità.76 While the medical marketplace operated on its own nebulous terms rather than the guidelines set out by officials, the author’s focus on female medical issues is still significant because it deviates from legislation and religious doctrine. In terms of general habits in the medical marketplace, it is significant to note that others scholars have pointed out that “early modern women were less likely to turn to male medical practitioners to treat fertility problems than they were for other conditions, although they did rely on knowledge created by male practitioners in their own self treatment.”77 It is, perhaps, fair to simply

assert that the monk may have been operating under a more antiquated system than the

Church and medical standards of his day. After all, "most [medieval] written knowledge

about women's bodies is to be found in texts composed by male physicians and surgeons, for male physicians and surgeons... and incorporated into volumes owned by male medical practitioners or other male literates."78 Without demand from patients, however,

his manuscripts would likely not have such a strong focus on women’s healthcare.

Manuscript recipe books like the monk’s challenge generalizations like these and help

reveal the kinds of decisions that individual practitioners and patients made in the scope

of the various options that existed around childbirth and female healthcare.

Although midwives do not appear in these volumes, references to other medical

practitioners offer additional details about the author’s medical network and provide

insight to his confidence in performing various procedures. As an introduction to a

76 Kosmin, Embodied Knowledge. 56. 77 Daphna Oren-Magidor and Catherine Rider, "Introduction: Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine,” Social History of Medicine 29 (2016): 221. 78 Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine, 19.

178 section on recipes around childbirth, the author includes this statement: “I advise you that no doctor can begin to assist a woman giving birth if she has not passed her ninth month of her pregnancy; in that time it has been experienced that it is easy to help with childbirth.”79 This reference to the perceived amount of knowledge of physicians serves to remind his readers of the limits of medical practice: it is not possible for physicians (or the author himself) to do anything to facilitate a birth if the woman has not been pregnant for the full nine months. Like the Galenic admonition not to take on cases that are sure to end in death, understanding the limits of a one’s abilities was an important skill for early modern healers. Especially with the author’s religious vocation, it would have been crucial to know when childbirth was more likely to end in the fetus's death rather than a live birth, so timing was essential. The knowledge of when a pregnancy was (or would be) full-term would have been determined via the expertise of experienced practitioners who could hopefully, by virtue of measurements or movements, know the age of a fetus, an especially difficult task without imaging and chemical analysis technologies. Despite this caveat, the author displays confidence in his ability to assist women who were having difficult births: “For the same issue and it is a secret, if the woman is giving birth and is having difficulty use the below written recipe and she will quickly give birth.”80

In a section titled “On the abundance of menstrual blood,” the author writes that

79 “A fare che là Donna, Partorischi facilm.te. Consiglio, che nessun Medico, non cominzi à facilitar il’ Partorire, dell Donne, in Sino che non sia passata là 9.a Luna, della loro Gravidanza; nel’ qual’ tèmpo è Sperimentato, che facilm.te facilita il’ loro Partorire.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 110v. 80 “A questo medessimo, et è Secretto, Sè là Donna fosse in sù il’ Partorire, et che havesse dificultà Usi, l’infrascritto Rimedio, è Subito Parturirà," da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 110v – 111r.

179 when a medico visits a woman who has too much menstrual blood flow for the first

time, the practitioner should bleed the patient from a vein on the “opposite part of the

body.”81 Although this passage does not include a provenance notation, and medico in

this period translates to “physician,” it is important to recall that the use of this job title

was not really limited to doctors with university degrees or licenses from communes or

provinces, but was likely used by many kinds of healers. Nonetheless, the nearly page-

long passage on bleeding a woman to reduce menstrual blood flow is interesting because

it is evidence of those permeable boundaries of practice. In general, surgeons were the

practitioners who were officially “supposed” to be in charge of bleeding patients. The

passage itself guides the reader through several different locations for bleeding the patient

in case one or more of the options did not have the desired effect. This level of detail is

indicative of both the practicality of the passage – the reader was actually intended to

perform the procedure – and the expertise of the author. Following this bleeding

information is a series of five recipes for medicines to use if bleeding does not work.

Other non-female-focused entries throughout the monk’s volumes provide additional context around the kinds of interactions the author had with other medical professionals. One example is a recipe for “A sleep-bringing unguent, miraculous for

81 “Della troppo Abondanza dè Mestruì,” “Essendo chiamato il’Medico, nel’ Principio à Visitar Donne, lè quali habbiano troppo Fluso di Sangue di Mestroui, Consiglio in questo caso, che primieram.te si abbia intenzione dà ritirare il’ Sangue alla parte opposta del’ Corpo; Et facendo cosi là cosa suecedeva beniss.mo.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 102r.

180 making flesh fall asleep when you want to do any kind of surgical operation.”82 The

recipe, which features oppio tebaicho, describes that “You could say that this unguent is

miraculous and is mostly for use by surgeons, but those who have it can use it for patients

who have any kind of wound or need an incision; it can lift the pain in a tratto [short

amount of time].”83 The negotiation between different kinds of practitioners is plainly visible. Although the author is not a surgeon and does include information about surgical procedures in his volumes, he consulted with surgeons and adapted their knowledge to his uses. In another entry, the author describes the disagreements he had witnessed between physicians and surgeons about the various ways to cure anal fistulas.84 By

describing various presentations of fistulas and their surgical and non-surgical

intervention, the author positions himself as very well informed, making his statement,

“in these cases, I would recommend… the recipes I have written below.”85

82 “Unguento Sonifero Miracoloso, per far Adormentar la Carne, quando si volesse fare qualche opperazione ciroica.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 139r. 83 “Questo Unguento si puol’ dire quasi Miracoloso, e masime per li Sig.re Cirugici però p. quelli che l’anno, per che lò potrano adoperare p. qual’ si voglia piaga qual’ abbia di bisognio di taglio p. che leva il dolore in un tratto.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 139r. 84 da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, 47r-48v. 85 “Più volte hò sentito disputare trà Medici è Cirugici, che là cura della Fistola del’ sedere, là quale penetra sino al’ margine dèl sedere, non hà miglior ne più presenttanea medicine, che tagliar tutta là cavernosità della Fistola, dà un Bico all’altro, sibitam.te con là falcetta. Mà se là fistola penetra soura al’ muscolo dell’intestino Retto, si à in altra forma a fare; perche, l’incisione di tal’ muscolo, fà che l’homo in perpetuo, poi non possa ritenere lè feccie. Però, essendo alcuno dubio di questa penetracione, non sarà l’incisione senza pericolo di cadere in questo difetto. Per ciò, io conseglio che si governi per la venire con là cur ache si rivirò qui sotto, mediante à quale per il’ parato, anco spesso, habbiamo ridotto in porto di sanita.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 690, 48r.

181 Because of the limited references to other medical practitioners, it is

impossible to draw exact conclusions about the kind of medical network in which the

author situated himself. As a case study of this genre, however, the monk’s recipe books

show how individual recipe books throw neat classifications of medical responsibility

into question. Recipes related to abortions and miscarriages are especially interesting because of the author’s gender and religious vocation. In the passage of recipes about childbirth translated on the first page of this chapter, there are two recipes for initiating labor when the fetus is suspected to have died:

Another For the same, this below-written beverage is good when it is not possible to have the fetus either alive or dead.86

During the long-sixteenth century, the Catholic Church made several determinations about sin and abortion.87 According to John Christopoulos, “Looking up

Aborsus/Aborsum, the confessor would learn from such authorities that abortion is a

mortal sin; that abortion is homicide if the unborn is animate (that is, infused with a

rational soul); that an innanimatus (an unborn that has not yet received the rational soul)

86 “Altro. Al’medessimo è, ottimo et Sperimèntato, l’infrascritto rimedio. Mà non si debbe ussare, se non in Grande necessità, hò Vero, quando Dio nè guardi che là Creatura fosse morta… Misit: Et, facciasi Bevanda, et usasi, come detto et vedrasi subitto L’effetto. Altro. À qusto medem.mo e Buono, L’infrascritta ALtra Bevanda, quando non si possa havere là Creatura nè Viva, nè Morta.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 111r. 87 See: Christine McCann, "Fertility Control and Society in Medieval Europe," Comitatus - a Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 40 (2009): 45-62.

182 is not an homo, that it does not possess life, and therefore, in this case, homicidium

does not apply.”88 McCann argues, however, that many in the church distinguished

between different methods of contraception and abortion, assigning varying degrees of

penitence and punishment to those methods and the time frames in which they were

applied.89 In a period without the advanced imaging technology, the only ways of

determining whether the fetus was “animated” were to rely on the stated experiences of

the woman (if she had felt movement) or of birth attendants who would be able to say

whether the fetus was moving or not when it was born. If not from the word of the

woman, it was generally "thought that the fetus had a soul only after it took on human

form, roughly forty days after conception."90 The reminders in the monk’s recipes, then,

are important because they reflect the need to know the status of the fetus before acting to

initiate labor with medicines or instruments: “The physician was not to abort in haste.

Acting without knowing the state of the unborn was a mortal sin.”91

John Riddle has famously argued that early pharmaceutical recipes for bringing

on menstruation were likely veiled recipes for provoking miscarriage. Importantly, he

notes that the records of legal cases reinforce "our conclusion that the dividing line for a

convictable, felonious crime when harm was done to a fetus in utero was the fact of a live

birth. A woman who aborts a dead fetus has not been harmed unless she herself is bodily

88 John Christopoulos, "Abortion and the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy," Renaissance Quarterly 65.2 (2012): 447. 89 McCann, "Fertility Control," 55-6. 90 McCann, "Fertility Control," 53. 91 Christopoulos, "Abortion and the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy," 456- 457.

183 injured.”92 Essentially, if the woman did not give birth to a living infant, neither the

woman nor the practitioner (or assailant) was likely to be charged with causing an abortion. I have yet to find obvious references that point to anyone, say nothing for religious practitioners, offering remedies to abort living fetuses. In fact, more recent scholarship by authors such as Jennifer Evans has asserted that these emmenagogues were likely actually intended to make a woman more fertile rather than secretly provide her with an abortion:

It is apparent that for many medical writers of the early modern period purging the womb was not necessarily a damaging or negative action; it could stimulate venery and promote fertility… Although it is clear that women could and did use these remedies to remove an untimely or unwanted pregnancy, this was not their primary function. The overwhelming necessity of the fertile body to experience menstruation meant that emmenagogues could easily be understood as an essential component of sexual health practices designed to increase the fertility of the body.93

Other scholars like Monica Green provide evidence that fifteenth-century medical

practitioners regularly performed embryotomies, although whether for the physical health

of the mother or to simply end the pregnancy is not clear.94 From the recipes in these

manuscripts alone, it is impossible to know the exact cases in which the monk might have

offered these remedies. However, the entries show that using drugs to prematurely start

labor was clearly within the wheelhouse of lay and professional practitioners.

The presence of the same remedies to initiate labor in the manuscript of a surgeon

92 John M. Riddle. Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997): 97. 93 Jennifer Evans, "'Gentle Purges corrected with hot Spices, whether they work or not, do vehemently provoke Venery': Menstrual Provocation and Procreation in Early Modern England," Social History of Medicine 25 (2011): 17. 94 Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine, 255-256.

184 is a useful counterpoint to the monk’s manuscripts because it shortens the perceived philosophical, ethical, and intellectual distance between non-professional and professional and religious and non-religious healers. The manuscript of Gasparo di

Cagali, a surgeon, is much shorter than the monk’s three volumes and written approximately 75 years beforehand. Cagali and the monk, however, cover many of the same issues, from the French disease to eye pain and fistulas. Importantly for the current discussion, the surgeon included a recipe, “For one who has a dead fetus in her body.”95

Gasparo di Cagali’s manuscript is unique because it is not anonymous. He identifies himself with a note at the beginning of the volume, stating that he is a Barber and Surgeon, son of Antonio di Cagali who was also a surgeon. He included some information about the births and baptisms of a couple of his children and dated the note

15 August 1529, as discussed in chapter 1. This is interesting and useful because it specifies the manuscript’s environment as professional and male. With these, not only do we have evidence that a non-female, non-official medical practitioner, our Capuchin author, had knowledge of how to force miscarriages, but that he had the same knowledge as an official, male practitioner, neither of whom were, obviously, laywomen or midwives who we would have expected to have been the practitioners providing care in these cases.

In addition to explicit references (or missing references) to different kinds of healers, the recipes for women show the diverse and incongruous kinds of knowledge that the author used to treat his patients. These knowledge types are important indications of

95 di Cagali, Libro di ricette medicinali, Wellcome Library, ms. 174, flyleaf.

185 the ways that early modern practitioners picked and chose different kinds of theories

and remedies in order to fit their practices and patients.

As is well established in the scholarship, medical theory in the early modern

period did not often subscribe to notions of disease specificity. One disease could

transform into another and individuals might display the same symptoms and be seen to

have the same disease, but for entirely different environmental or constitutional reasons.

Similarly, bodily fluids were seen as interrelated. Rather than being diverse, they were

simply different versions of the same essential substance: Aristotle "insisted that women

belonged to the same species as man and differed only in having insufficient heat in her...

'principle'--to concoct fully the residue of her nourishment from blood into semen... the

volume of a woman's seminal material, being initially more abundant and less concocted,

vastly exceeded that of a man."96 These conceptions of non-unique, transforming fluids

and diseases are, unsurprisingly, reflected in the medicines in manuscript recipe books.

Several recipes related to female patients are good examples of this diagnostic flexibility.

Some recipes, for obvious reasons, were not recommended for more than one illness, like

medicines that provoke childbirth.97 The recipe titled “To stop either white or red menses in women, and this also works against gonorrhea in men, also involuntary ejaculation, either at night or during the day,” is not an isolated incident of medicines that treated

96 Lesley Dean-Jones, "Menstrual Bleeding according to the Hippocratics and Aristotle," Transactions of the American Philological Association 119 (1989): 179. For more on ancient theories of semen and blood, see Daryl McGowan Tress, "Aristotle against the Hippocratics on Sexual Generation: A Reply to Coles," Phronesis 44 (1999): 228-241. 97 Ex: “Per far Partorire lè Donne, è Provocar li Mestroui,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms 690, 77r-v.

186 menstruation issues and venereal disease. 98 The combination appears throughout the manuscripts, likely due to the early modern conception of the similarities between menstrual blood and semen, as mentioned above. Other recipes demonstrate the simultaneous treatment of diseases of women and non-gendered diseases. A recipe for an unguent to “soften every hardness and knottiness of members, as well as hard swellings” worked well for hardness in the joints, pain in the liver, spleen, kidneys, uterus, and bladder.99 This combination of illnesses was likely due to a similarity of symptoms

(“hardness”) rather than perceived etiology of a specific disease. Because of the semiotic

nature of early medical theory, it makes sense that many entries simply focus on

symptoms rather than diseases.

Recipes for the “mal di madre” abound in the manuscripts and are a good example of knowledge and practice that was counter to mainstream academic medicine. The 1611

Queen Anna’s New World of Words, an Italian-English dictionary by John Florio simply translates “Male di madre” as “a disease in many women,” but we can translate it simply as hysteria.100 A well-known and broadly applied disease in the early modern period, mal

98 “Mestroui fermare alle Donne quanto Bianche come Rossi, e Vale ancora alla Gonerea de gli Homini, cioe di seme involontario, si di Notte, come di Giorno,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 54r-v. 99 “Ceroto Diatesseronense, qual molifica ogni Doreza et, nodosità di membri, et lè Postematione dure, et Doreza di Giunture, et Doglia di Fegato et, di Milza, di Reni, di Matrice et di Vesica.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 40v. 100 Florio, "Mal di Madre," Queen Anna's New World of Words," 296. The Treccani definition of “madre” includes this explanation, “Come sinon. di matrice, o con sign. affini: a. Nell’uso pop., ant., utero (per es., nell’espressione mal di madre, l’isterismo, termine che etimologicamente è connesso con l’utero).” http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/madre/ Other recipes refer to a “suffocation della Matrice,” which I also translate to mean hysteria. Still others refer to “profocatione della

187 di madre was attributed to any number of symptoms. Since Ancient Greece,

“wandering womb” (hysteria) was a common diagnosis that blamed a wide variety of

symptoms on the power of the uterus over the female body, and the appearance of

wandering womb and all of its various names is a useful example of how the author of

the manuscripts at once utilized academic and folk medical knowledge. Since anatomical

knowledge in Italy during the long-sixteenth century was relatively detailed, it is likely that most physicians and doctors did not actually think that the uterus physically

“wandered” throughout the body. Although medical writers in England, for example,

occasionally derided scent as a cure for hysteria, they continued to include recipes for

medical fumigants that would be sweet smelling and encourage the womb to move back

down into its place.101According to William Salmon, “‘hystericals’ (substances that were

used as treatments for the womb) ... ‘are known chiefly by their scent: for sweet scents

draw the Womb that way they are applyed; stinking scents the contrary: and the reason is,

Matrice,” which Florio translates as “a disease among women called the Mother, which is a choking or stopping of the matrix whereby they fall into swounes.” (Florio, "Perfocatione di Matrice," 396) One recipe is “Per far Ritornar la Madre al suo Luogo.” (da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 53r) For more on hysteria, see: Helen King, "Once upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates," and G.S. Rousseau, "'A Strange Pathology': Hysteria in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800," in Hysteria Beyond Freud, ed. Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G.S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 1-90, 91-186. 101 According to Jennifer Evans, “The uncertainty around the ways in which smells were understood actually to work in the body becomes even more apparent in discussions of the womb. Many writers reiterated, from a long pedigree of ancient and medieval medical knowledge, that smells were known to affect the womb, causing it to move around the internal cavity of the body. It was explained that these peculiar sensations resulted from the womb’s superficial similarity to the brain.” (Jennifer Evans, "Female Barrenness, bodily access and aromatic treatments in seventeenth-century England,” Historical Research 2014 (87): 423-443, quoted 429-430). For background on "wandering womb" in the medieval period, see Green, The Trotula.

188 because it sympathizes with the head and brain, from whence the nervous parts take their beginning.’”102 It is unclear whether lay practitioners believed that the uterus wandered since the terminology indicating hysteria indicates a womb out of place. Since hysteria had been treated with fumigants since at least the medieval period, it is not surprising that this strategy continued to hold meaning for early modern practitioners and patients.103

In an entry under the heading “Mal di Madre,” the author explains the following about the

On the profocatione della mattrice, or mal’ di madre, caused by the retention of the menses, which happens frequently. In this case, you need to see how to make the menses return. If it is caused by some kind of abscess, cure it, as we will say [later], when we discuss the way of curing an abscess of the uterus. And seeing that [mal di' madre is caused by] the retention of sperm, or of seed, cure it in the way we describe it below.104

Florio defined "Perfocatione di Matrice" in much the same way: “a disease among women called the Mother, which is a choking or stopping of the matrix whereby they fall into swounes.”105

Many recipes dealing with hysteria suggest using asafetida in a pill form or as a therapeutic smoke, or in combination with other kinds of therapeutic smoke. Several

102 Evans, "Female Barrenness, bodily access and aromatic treatments in seventeenth- century England,” 430. 103 M.H. Green, The Trotula: an English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), pp. 71-3. 104 “Alla profocatione della Mattrice, ho vero mal’ di Madre, fatta per Retentione di Mestroui, come aviene il piu’ delle volte, in questo caso Bisogno veder di farlo tornare, et essedo per causa di qualche aposte.ma curasi, come si dira’, quando trattermo della curatione della postema della Matrice, Et venendo da retenzione di Sperma, ho vero di Seme, curasi come si dira’ qui di sotto, cioe.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 103r. 105 Florio, “Perfocation di Madrice,” Queen Anna's New World of Words, 396.

189 recipes suggest that using the asafetida pills or smoke might not only get rid of the

hysteria but prevent it from returning.106 After taking asafetida pills, the author

recommended, for example, that the practitioner "take boxwood leaves... and put them on

top of live coals in a warming pan. Put it below the woman and the uterus will receive the

smoke. Repeat as needed.”107 Interestingly, even though recipe also suggests that

smelling asafetida is useful, "the aforementioned asafetida held under the nose is

helpful," the body of the recipe instructs the woman to place the plant in a warming pan

used to keep beds warm and let the fumes enter the womb. Many other recipes require

that the medicine be used to fumigate the womb, but there are some entries that suggest

asafetida with “eforbio” (the plant "spurges") or “galbano” (a kind of gum) and “Castaro”

(beaver testes) be heated together, although in this case the woman is to “receive the smoke in her nose and mouth so that she return to herself.”108 This recipe, coincidentally,

was also useful against “Mal Caduco.”109 Other recipes, such as “Uterus that is out of

place," simply say to make “pastelli” with the ingredients and that they will “make the

uterus which is out of place return to where it should be, while the smoke is given to the

106 For example, “sono Buone nel curare essa infermita ma ancora in preservare en far che non torni.” (da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 103v) These recipes do not specify whether the pills were suppositories or to be taken orally. 107 “La sud.a Assa fetida tenuta sotto al naso, giova. Si piglia Foglie di busso… 9. 5. e si pone sopra Carboni accesi in un Scaldaletto, et la Donna se lo ponghi sotto, e riceva quell fumo la Nattura, replicandollo secondo il Bisogno.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 45v. 108 “si faccia in modo che la Donna riceva quell fumo per il naso e Bocca che ritornare in se.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 68v-69r. Uterine fumigation was a therapy that was also recommended in the Hippocratic canon. See Helen King, "Once upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates," 24-26. 109 Another recipe is meant to deal with both epilepsy and "mal' di madre:" “Altro per il’ sudetto Mal’ Caduco da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 50r.

190 part below, morning and evening, as long as is needed."110

Ultimately, the recipes the monk included in his recipe books expose how diverse

the author’s knowledge base was. A recipe for “Magisterial unguent for a woman’s

breasts,” for example, made a medicine that was good for a wide variety of both nursing

and non-nursing-related issues, and used academic, humoral language to describe the

conditions the medicine treated.

This unguent is great for medicating any kind of pustule that appears on the breasts because of retention of milk, [these may be] cold or hot [pustules] according to the complexion and nature of the woman, which are beginning to harden.111

On the other hand, a recipe to make a woman give birth directs the practitioner that, “A little snake tied to the leg or thigh will make a woman give birth very quickly, but take it

off right away because the woman could die.”112 The combination of academic language

and superstitious advice is a constant feature in manuscript recipe books and shows how

the author likely took his medical knowledge wherever he deemed it to make the most

sense.

Aside from explicit references to other practitioners and to different types of

110 “Matrice che Usisse for a della Nattura,” “fa ritornare la matrice usita fuori dal suo luogo alle Donne, mentre il Fumo sia preso per quella parte di sotto, Mattina, e Sera, quanto sara bisogno.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 691, 53v. 111 "Unguento Magistrale, Alle Mamelle Delle Donne,” “Questo Ung.o e ottimo per medicar ogni sorte di Posteme venute alle Mamelle per cagione della rettencione del’ Latte, frigida, hò calda, secondo poi la complesione è natura della Donna, incominciandollo ad’ osare.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 690, 75v. 112 "Serpentina legata alla Gamba, ho Cossa, fa incontinente partorire, Ma levalla subito, perche la Donna pericolerebbe," da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 59r.

191 knowledge, evidence of practical experience and social atmosphere provides useful

information about the social atmosphere in which the monk-author wrote his manuscripts

and treated patients. There are a few entries in the manuscripts that discuss time, giving

us a rough idea of the relationship between the patient and practitioner. Again, referring

to the long passage of recipes translated on the first page of this chapter, one recipe

requires that the patient take the medicine ten to fifteen days before birth: “To the same,

the following drink has been tested, it not only facilitates birth but also makes the birth

painless. The woman should use it ten or fifteen days ahead of giving birth… If you give

it to the woman every two days, six hours before eating in the morning for ten or fifteen

days, like it is said.” 113 The practitioner would have needed to know his or her patients well enough, or know the visual and physical cues of a pregnant body, to know when the woman was due to give birth. In an entry dealing with “retention of menses, or for purgation,” the author says,

I should, however, warn you that before you give the medicine [to the patient], you should find out from the woman when her when [her menses] would usually begin, and when it is two or three days before they would arrive, that will be the time to [use this recipe], because whoever wants to make them come before they should is someone who wants to put her whole life at risk, and I say this to give you a good warning.114

113 “Al’ medesimo è sperimentato L’infrascritta Bevanda, là quale, non solam.te facilita il’ Parto. Mà ancora fà Partorire senza Dolore: Usandolla là Donna, x- hò xv- Giorni Avanti il’ Parto.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, 689, 110v. 114 “Si deve però avertire, che Avanti di dar detti Medicam.ti sarà bene Informarsi dalla Donna, il’ tempo che sara solita à Venirli, et quando vi sarà due hò 3- giorni à venirli alora sarà il’ tempo di operate, per che à chi li volever far vènir Avanti il’ suo corso, sarà un Voler poner tutta là Vita sotto sopra, et questo sia detto per bon Aviso.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 101v.

192 Menses, as described above, were seen as a powerful force in a woman’s body, so

medical recipes reflect writers’ concerns about cases when they stopped, were too

abundant, or changed consistency or composition. The stern warning in this recipe to not

bring on a woman’s menses too early is, then, evidence of the kind of information that

that the practitioners needed to know from their patients. This entry and others, such as

“An unguent for women when they are pregnant, so they do not miscarry,” also recall the care with which healers needed to act in order to not bring on a miscarriage.115

In several entries, the author specifically mentions that other people should

perform the manual portion of the treatment. The author makes it quite clear that he (and

his readers) were not to be the ones to actually touch the patient since the cloth soaked in

the medicine needed to be put inside of the female patient “by the hand of another

woman:” “Misit; and mix everything together, and dipping a piece of thin linen cloth in

the mixture, put the cloth in the nattura with the hand of another woman. By collo, I

mean at the neck of the womb, and soon the woman will give birth.”116 Considering that

male monks were ideally not supposed to practice medicine on women in the first place,

it makes sense that some of these instructions at least explicitly indicated that another

hand (probably a woman’s hand) must be used to actually apply the medicines. In fact,

Green points out that the presence of a female assistant might have made "what might

115 “Cerotto per lè Donne, quando sono gravide, acciò non si Sconciano.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. From the Wellcome Library, ms 689, VVr-v. The recipe repeats on da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms 691, 56r. 116 “Misit; Et, pestasi ogni cosa insieme, Et mettansi su una Peza di Panno lino, sotille, et Pongasi nella Nattura, per mane deluna Donna, nel’ collo, dico dal’ collo della Matrice è subito Partorirrà.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, 689, 110v – 111r.

193 have initially appeared to be crucial gender differences--men's lack of personal

experience of female bodily functions and their limited access to the female body--... turn

out to be immaterial."117

Additional pieces of information about the social atmosphere of childbirth are

also visible in the recipes. For example, a recipe titled “To know whether a woman is

able to give birth” would have been a useful recipe for a family making a decision about

whether a woman was a good marriage prospect.118 By collecting the woman’s urine,

adding “5 handfulls of wheat” and waiting 4-5 days to see whether insects are attracted to it, it would become clear whether the woman could or could not give birth.119 The

following recipe is titled “To know whether the woman will give birth to a male or a

female,” which also speaks to the importance of successful pregnancies in early modern

Italian society, as well as the age-old curiosity and mystery about what kind of baby might be concealed in the mother’s womb, a frequent question amongst those concerned with the secrets of generation discussed above: "Take the urine of the pregnant woman

that she makes right away in the morning when she wakes up. Put that urine on top of

117 Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine, 20. 118 For more information on infertility, see Daphna Oren-Magidor and Catherine Rider, "Introduction: Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine,” Social History of Medicine 29:2, 211-223. 119 “Per conoser se là Donna è Abille à Partorir. Rx. Si prende Lorina prima fatta dalla Donna là mattina Avanti che si leva dà Letto, hò subitto che è levata, si ponghe dentro alla sud.a Horina -5- Pugni di Semolla di Form.ta. Poi si mescola detta Semola, con Lorina, è si lassie cosi per 4- hò 5- Giorni, Passato detto tempo guardalli dentro, Se vi trovarai Vermi, là Donna può Partorire figlioli; Se non vi ne sono, là Donna e Inabile.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 59v. “semola” is “bran or grets of corne.” “Form.ta” perhaps refers to “formento,” “any kind of corne but properly wheate. Used also for leaven.” (Florio, "Semola" and "Formento," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 498 and 193.

194 water [from a fountain or a cistern]. If the urine stays on top of the water, [the baby]

will be a boy. If the urine goes below the water, it will be a girl."120

Breasts are another significant subsection of entries dealing with female body

parts. Some of these are related to nursing (breasts which do not provide enough milk,

provide too much milk, and have abscesses because of nursing, etc.) and others are not

(abscesses and cancers, for example). “To make it so that a girl’s or a woman’s breasts do

not become too big,” for example, does not explain what “too big” is, or why this issue

might happen.121 It is possible, though, that this may have been a recipe to reduce

swelling or milk production in order to avoid fistulas or other breast sores that are treated

in other parts of the manuscripts.

Scholars such as Cathy McClive have pointed out that the majority of research on

generation and birth in the early modern period has been dedicated to questions of the

“scene of the birth itself and the nature of professional rivalries between male and female

midwives.”122 The entries in the monk’s manuscripts do not offer narrative insights to the

act of childbirth and he does not often enough refer to other specific practitioners enough

to determine many details about his medical knowledge network. Rather, they present an opportunity to consider the practical ideas and ideals of a male, clerical author around

120 “Per Conoser sè là Donna, parturirà Maschio, hò Femina... Fa che possi haver l'orina della Donna gravida che faca la Mattina quando e levata, cioe la prima.. che faca, e Riccolta la sud.a Horina sopra a L'acqua, Se l'orina starà sopra L'acqua, sarà Maschio, se L'orina starà sotto L'acqua, sarà Femina." da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 59v. 121 “A far che lè Mamelle non Vengano Troppo grande alle Putte, o Donne,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 10v. 122 Cathy McClive, "The Hidden Truth of the Belly: The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe," Social History of Medicine 15. 2 (2002): 210.

195 generation, childbirth, child rearing, and the role of a woman’s reproductive organs in her health as a whole.

Although recipe books are rarely entirely medical, they are largely manual and practical: the act of making – collecting ingredients, mixing, pounding, simmering – ensures that the recipes in manuscripts were meant to be used, and likely were. According to Wendy Wall in Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern

Kitchen, the recipe genre is “itself a striking syntactical and formal structure, as thus providing a case study for mapping domestic engagements with the intellectual and philosophical conundrums that emerged at the center of humanist thought in the

Renaissance.”123 The topics on which the author of these three manuscript volumes focused are, then, our keys to viewing his engagement with experience and medical practice and philosophy in the broader medical marketplace. As McClive identifies, the qualitative approach of micro-history provides a means to address contemporary ideas about what was considered ‘normal’ or ‘exceptional.’”124 In the case of the monk, focusing on the recipes dealing with female medical issues is a means of investigating the relationship between religion, different kinds of medical thought and practices, and women in Italy in the long sixteenth-century.

Conclusions

At the end of a section of seven recipes for hysteria, the author of mss. 689, 690,

123 Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern Kitchen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016): 3. 124 McClive, "The Hidden Truth of the Belly,” 211.

196 and 691 wrote, “[Here] I leave the writing about the uscir della matrice, which is like

the abscess... as with also the sores... They are the most common illness for surgeons, and

physicians, and also religious men."125 Even without the multitude of recipes for women discussed above, this comment is evidence that women's medical issues were a fundamental part of the Capuchin author's medical practice, and that he was not alone in having many patients who needed help with these illnesses. These manuscripts are important, thus, because they show that male religious practitioners could and did have significant interests in the care of women. Although it is unlikely that he was the person laying hands on female bodies and more likely that he used an intermediary when the woman could not medicate herself, it is clear that he actually interacted with patients in order to gain the kind of information to treat them effectively, even though male clerics were discouraged from treating patients of the opposite gender.

The kinds of entries in the manuscripts also speak to the general interests in

women in the broader medical community. The obvious homologues between male and

female genital and reproductive anatomy, as well as the uniform embryological origins of

those organs, are all good reasons for the ancient idea that was still prevalent in the early

modern period: that female anatomy was nothing more than inverted male anatomy. It

was not until much later that women’s medical care was considered beyond their

reproductive anatomical differences. Hysteria remained an important diagnosis for

centuries, well into the twentieth century. The academic interest in the mysteries of

125 “Tralassio il scrivere del usir della matrice, si come anco, della Apostema di essa, si come anco della Piaghe di essa, essendo Infermita che al piu commune al Cirugicho, che al Medico, e s a Religioso.” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, 689, 104v.

197 generation and the strengthening of male control over obstetric care in much of

Europe were important trends in this period through the modern era, but stand as foils to the interests and habits of this manuscript author. Whether our author engaged with women in his practices habitually or infrequently, his recipe book entries show that he was capable of treating a range of their illnesses.

It is important to point out again that even as men became more interested in the theories of generation, women themselves continued to be practitioners of medicine for many female issues. In addition to midwifery as a practice, in legal situations, “early modern judges would routinely seek specific expertise where general consensus placed it: for example, competence on female bodies remained with midwives well after learned physicians had launched their attack on women’s knowledge, and surgeons were the main port of call in cases of violent death.”126 Especially in Italy, midwives held a prominent place in the medical hierarchy as the official caregivers in childbirth.

In general, my study of these manuscripts has been a project that falls in line with what Saundra Weddle and others have articulated: “We must recognize that, until now,

126 Silvia de Renzi, "Medical Experise, Bodies, and the Law in Early Modern Courts,” Isis 98 (2007): 318. Julie Sanders also asserts, ““Midwives were figures of considerable social standing; many were employed on repeated occasions by particular families (the clientele representing a range of social classes), and such repeated empployment suggests a trust in, and a validation of, their work. Many midwives also acted as significant witnesses in trials for rape, infanticide, and bastardy, a fact which re-writes the stereotypical notion of the ‘midwife on trial’ which again stems from popular supserstitions relating to witchcraft. Such power helps to suggest why male science sought to enter and to control the social and professional spaces of the seventeenth- century midwife which, ironically, patriarchy itself may have helped to create.” (Julie Sanders, "Midwifery and the New Science in the Seventeenth Century: Language, Print and Theater," in At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period, edited by Erica Fudge, Ruth Gilbert, and Susan Wiseman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999): 77).

198 prescriptive literature focusing on the status of ruling-class women, taken at face value, has been the foundation for most of our assumptions about the subject of the public-private dichotomy.”127 In terms of the history of medicine, the very same conception of a public-private (and thus male-female) dichotomy has been applied to the division of labor in the medical marketplace. This is both in terms of ideas of medical spaces (women take care of people in the home, men take care of people in public) and in terms of medical practitioners and their proximity to gendered bodies (women take care of women and men, but men largely do not take care of women unless the illness is very surface-level and does not involve touching, i.e.: men are not present during childbirth).

Although the expectations of prescriptive literature in general were not always followed to the letter, medicine was a subject that provided people with ways of crossing boundaries. In early modern England, for example, according to Margaret Pelling,

social barriers remained intact, but networks of information about cures and practitioners ramified across divisions of gender, age, and class…This did not imply real or lasting tolerance, nor would one party to the exchange of information necessarily refrain from taking advantage of the other. However, something about the imperative to communicate on such matters was recognised by all parties, and proved a major obstacle to attempts by medical corporations at restriction and regulation.128

Scholarship on the history of women participating in medical practice shows that although the temptation to put women into a specific space and sphere existed, women

(and non-professional practitioners in general) held economic and social power within

127 Saundra Weddle, "Women’s Place in the Family and Convent: A Reconsideration of Public and Private in Renaissance Florence," Journal of Archivectural Education 55 (2001): 64. 128 Margaret Pelling, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London: Longman, 1998): 1.

199 both their households and society in general. In Italy, Monica Chojnacka has shown

that “women’s residential patterns reveal the ways in which women might exert authority

or independence within their homes… Whether they lived alone or with husbands, kind,

or companions, the residential choices that women made reveal the scope of their

connections to the larger world.”129 Chojnacka has also shown that many women worked

for a living, “A popolana who supplemented her family’s daily expenses with her own

earnings could command a level of respect from her husband that allowed her to make

decisions of importance within the home.”130 The social and economic power that women

in Italy held is useful context in which to consider how women both provided and

received healthcare.

In terms of medicine, women were also engaged with dominant medical theories

and practices that were largely outside of the bounds of official ideals. In the English

context, Linda Pollock makes the case that Lady Grace Mildmay’s

papers reveal that there was little difference between the care offered by a university-trained physician and that offered by a self-taught woman. The historical conjecture of the paucity of licensed practitioners, the availability of vernacular medical treatises and the acceptance of traditional female nurturing skills enabled those women who were

129 Monica Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001): 4. For more on gender and social structures in early modern Italy, please see Giovanna Benadusi, “Social Relations,” Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. Michael Wyatt (Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 2014): 338 - 363; Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Androniki Dialeti, "Defending Women, Negotiating Masculinity in Early Modern Italy,” The Historical Journal 54: 1 (March 2011): 1-23. 130 Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice, 9. She also notes, “the wealth that these women possessed was often independent wealth. That is, women often declared, petitioned for, or paid taxes on property or goods independently of their male relatives.” (26-7)

200 sufficiently educated, leisured and affluent to find an intellectually gratifying and functionally satisfying outlet in medicine.131

The lack of clear separation between official and lay practice is also evident in the

proliferation of medical manuals that were printed specifically for women at the same

time as various medical practitioners criticized women as false experts.132 Scholars

working on female medical practice in England have shown conclusively that some

women, especially those in the upper echelons of society, produced medicines regularly

and in such quantities that they could have been selling them, or at least offering them to

a large number of patients.133

The manuscripts of the Capuchin monk demonstrate that these same kinds of

assertions about the difficulty with putting women’s practices and experiences into a neat

category could also easily be made about men and various types of medical professions in

this period. The simple presence of female patients in the monk’s recipes calls attention

to the surprising breadth of the author’s community. As is to be expected, the realities of

everyday practice were different from the recommendations of the authors of printed works, and from the regulations of both the church and medical professionals.

Recipe manuscripts are rich with information about patients that future scholarship will hopefully take advantage of. Analyzing the presence of illnesses that were from exposure (like chilblains), were long-term or sudden (like cancer or a broken limb), or were debilitating or annoying (blindness or freckles) does important labor in

131 Linda Pollock, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentleowman: Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552-1620 (London: Collins & Brown Limited, 1993): 2. 132 See for example, Pollock, With Faith and Physic, especially p. 93. 133 See, Elaine Leong, "Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 145-168.

201 revealing details about the author’s patients and their lived experiences. Other scholars have reminded us that the early modern and modern obsessions with rabies might not have actually represented a constant threat of the disease, but might simply reflect fear of a horrific death. The presence of the fear holds meaning, though, and so it will continue to be worth considering all of the discussions of plague, leprosy and rabies that appear throughout manuscript volumes alongside the more mundane ailments of eyes, ears, and hair. Future work on manuscripts like this might, thus, include creating comprehensive databases of symptoms, illnesses, and body parts in order to determine even more about the patient profile in specific manuscripts.

The references to women in the manuscripts reveal the actual and potential interactions that the monk had with his patients, or expected his readers to have with their patients. These recipes are especially interesting because they highlight the kinds of problems that women expected to encounter during their experiences with menstruation and childbirth, with their breasts, and with the wide array of problems that supposedly stemmed from a “wandering womb.” It becomes clear from the assortment of issues that are presented that the author was not solely interested in the mysteries of generation, as many early modern medical men and natural historians were, but was invested in solving specific problems that his patients encountered. The entries about women also reveal how this individual author fit his medical practice into various social, professional, and theoretical boundaries and categories. Although he did not intend to put his hands on or in his patients’ intimate parts, the specificity of his advice indicates that he was accustomed to dealing with the practicalities of female medicine, going against the stated norm both in terms of religion and the medical hierarchy. Monica Green has argued,

202 "male practitioners throughout Europe were regularly treating female patients for all kinds of complaints, including gynaecological problems like menstrual irregularities or infertility. Gynaecology... had become a fairly normative part of many male physicians' practice... Despite occasional denunciations of the dangers of male practice on female patients, a variety of evidence... shows it was both common and accepted."134 It is clear from these manuscripts that although the author was a monk, he was integrated into the needs of the broader community outside of the monastery where he likely lived.

Harkening back to the founding efforts of St. Francis of Assisi and Fra Matteo, our author hoped that his recipes would be used by his “dear brothers” as he used them to cure both the “helpful poor” and the “most thankful wealthy.” 135

134 Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine, 23-24. Green discusses this idea at length in chapter 6 of Making Women's Medicine Masculine. 135 “Hora havendo con ogni diligenza à preghi de mei cari Disepoli e Fratelli scritto fedelm.e le qui congiunte cosarelle da me praticate et, Esperementate per molti Annì a prò. de mei Frati Infermi, et altri, et al’ ben’ commune… Havrete ad’unq.e: Fratelli mei cari un Libretto non solam.te à Poveri giovevole, ma ancora à Richi, gratis.mo: Hora per che detto vi hò questo esser un grandiss.mo Tesauro è conosendo molti bisogniosi à Commune,” da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, ms. 689, 38r.

203

Chapter 4: Beyond Healing: Domestic Medicine and the Culture of Making

Introduction

Household medicine was in practice embedded in a broader culture of making, and medical recipes need to be viewed in this broad context. Earlier generations of historians of medicine focused on significant discoveries and the development of important institutional structures that allowed for groups of practitioners to

professionalize and argue for the legitimacy of a hierarchy that prevented the “unlearned”

from participating in their structures. Although the field has shifted, developed, and

adopted methodologies to answer more socially and culturally-based questions, the

history of medicine as a field is still hesitant to focus on the ways that healthcare and

health maintenance practices intersected with other, less ‘scientific’ areas of everyday

life. The majority of early modern recipe books contained recipes for a multitude of

different products, like paint, glass, mixtures for cleaning windows, and medicines for

curing chickens. Recipe scholars have done important work to consider the non-male,

non-professional practices of their writers, but many continue to focus almost exclusively

on the medical and scientific practices of their authors, not including the multitude of

other kinds of practices that are almost always represented in the same volumes.

Throughout these chapters, I have illuminated the topography of early modern

Italian medical practice through manuscript recipe books, showing that the individual

choices and experiences of the manuscript authors can reveal details about their

knowledge networks and habits of practice. This last chapter is, then, positioned at a

slightly different angle to consider the kinds of objects and interactions that early modern

204 manuscript authors and readers dealt with in their everyday lives. Rather than letting

the recipes for invisible ink and coughing horses fall to the side for the sake of thematic consistency, this chapter will explore how the practicalities of early modern lives were embedded in the same intellectual spaces of manuscript authors. Manuscript recipe books

reveal the ways that writers understood and experienced these diverse practices as

integrally entangled rather than clearly divided, as represented by the guild structures in

which ‘professional’ physicians, textile-makers, and armorers sought membership.

Although some might argue that the cost of paper would have been a simple reason to incorporate diverse pieces of information into a single volume, examinations of entire volumes reveal how writers carefully selected pieces of information from different sources and rearranged them into an order that made sense and worked well for their purposes.

Instead of focusing on a single manuscript author or a group of manuscripts from a specific place as in previous chapters, this chapter will draw on Italian-language manuscripts in libraries across northern and central Italy, and in research libraries in

England and the United States: The National Libraries in Milan (Braidense) and in

Venice (Marciana), the libraries of the University of Bologna and the University of

Padua, the Archiginnasio Library in Bologna, the library of the Riccardi family in

Florence and of the Estenses in Modena, civic libraries in Padua and Vicenza, the state archives of Modena, the Wellcome Collection in London, and Yale’s Cushing Whitney

Library. My research in these libraries has yielded a set of manuscripts that are diverse and were written at different points in the long-sixteenth century. Some are clearly cited

compilations, and others are barely legible assortments of entries with no provenance. As

205 a group, however, they reveal general ideas about the kinds of processes and products that writers and readers expected to need or were simply interested in. The manuscripts I rely upon here are certainly not the only extant manuscript recipe books in these regions from the long-sixteenth century, but were chosen because of their general long size (I focus on volumes rather than single sheets of paper, for example), legibility, and variety of content.

By the sixteenth century, readers were accustomed to organizational technologies in books such as chapters, indices, and tables of contents (although they were still not a requirement of printed volumes). Manuscript authors, however, largely eschewed these technologies and copied recipes into their books in what appears to us as a disorganized,

‘fruit salad’-like system. While somewhat frustrating to analyze, this apparent randomness highlights how interrelated these recipes and the problems they solved actually were. This chapter argues that manuscript recipe books are a reflection of both the practical and intellectual organization of individual knowledge and practice and that these volumes provide vital information about the objects and interactions that sixteenth- century authors and readers experienced in their lives.

Topical diversity has been acknowledged by other scholars, but has yet to be fully represented in scholarship, especially in that on recipes and recipe culture. In the words of Wendy Wall, “early modern recipe practice straddles what will only later fragment into disparate knowledges. Recipes register a world that had yet to divide into the modern regimes that we call the arts and sciences. Their sheer heterogeneity informs their

206 meaning, and, by extension, the nature of domestic practice during this period.”1 By considering the variety of topics in manuscript recipe books, this chapter proposes that the intellectual boundaries that scholars have ascribed to medicine were much more permeable for early modern writers, in terms both of medicine’s status as an intellectual and as a practical pursuit. To explore this question, this chapter will focus on recipes that reveal the porous boundaries between healthcare and other practices. Although it is certain that by the sixteenth century, healing contained many professions, from physicians and surgeons to apothecaries and midwives, medicine itself was a category in flux for the people who compounded their own medicines and cared for those around them. Recipes that deal with caring for animals, making cosmetics, and cleaning household objects thus expose important details about early modern life, about diverse uses of recipes for the early modern individuals, and about the intellectual and textual spaces of making.

It is important to remind ourselves at this point that the lack of boundaries, or at least boundaries that do not apply as fixed in these manuscripts, reflect the similar fluidity in social categories in the context of making these kinds of products. “Scholars may now take seriously the fact that scientific and domestic communities were not just analogous,” Wall has argued, “but overlapping communities, with recipes providing a shared medium of communication among reformers, ladies, gentry, tradesmen, housewives, and servants.”2 Although professional titles and training existed, like for

1 Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern Kitchen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016): 3-4. 2 Wall, Recipes for Thought, 211.

207 university-trained physicians, individuals rarely had singular, defining professions in

the same way that individuals do today.

Reviewing Giovanni Rebora’s Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of Food in

Europe, John Varrion observes that the author “posits the theory of ‘dominant demand,’ the notion that growth in one economic sector can yield welcome by-products in

secondary markets. In food production, for example, the raising of sheep in a particular

region not only supplies its inhabitants with meat but brings the corollary benefits of

abundant wool, skins, and tallow. For cattle, the source of beef and butter, the primary

by-product is, of course, leather.” Although parsing economic trends through manuscript

volumes is beyond the scope of this project, Rebora’s example drives home the fact that

tight connections and porous boundaries existed between products and various activities

in the early modern world. Thus the existence of medicine, animal care, food, and

household goods in manuscript recipe books is logical and reflective of the ways that

early moderns experienced the materials in their lives.3 The connections between food,

health, animals, and home were a feature of early modern life, and are reflected in lay

writing.

The example of Wellcome manuscript 215 is a useful illustration of the challenges

that recipe books present scholars attempting to categorize and make sense of the kinds of

knowledge that early modern authors included in these volumes. Compiled across the

seventeenth and early eighteenth century, this volume is an assortment of recipes taken

3 John Varriano, Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009): 43.

208 from a wide range of published and unpublished authors. The Wellcome’s catalogue

description identifies the sources as follows:

Pp. 1- 16 Cortese (I.). Cavati de' Secreti della Signora Isabella Cortese. [First edition. 1563.] 16- 60 Miscellaneous receipts and secrets. 60-62 Gallo (A.). Vinti giorni di agricoltura. [First edition. 1569.] 62-121 Mattioli (P. A.). Cavati dal libro dei discorsi. [Commentary on Dioscorides: first edition. 1544.] 121-127 Durante (C.). Herbario. [First edition. 1585.] 128-132 Calestani (G.) Osservazioni. [First edition. 1564.] 133-145 Miscellaneous receipts 'di varii Autori'. 148-167 Various receipts by an 18th cent. hand. A heading on p. 150 reads 'Secreti cavati dai M.S. dal P. F. Gio[vanni] da S. Gio[vanni] Pred[icatore] Cap[puccino] nel suo libro composto nel 1745.4

Complete with parenthetical citations, the manuscript entries show how the manuscript author re-organized practical knowledge from a wide variety of sources into a

personalized, practical volume. In the first four pages, the author includes a recipe to

make the hands white (Book 4. Chapter 8), a recipe to make hands soft and beautiful

(Book 4. Chapter 28), a recipe to make an oil to conserve youth (Book 4. Chapter 56), a recipe to make the skin beautiful (Book 4. Chapter 199), and a recipe to make the face

beautiful (Book 4. Chapter 208).5 The citation at the bottom of page 4 identifies that the

preceding recipes are “from the books of secrets of sir Timoteo Rosello.”6 The author’s

citation system of writing book and chapter numbers in parentheses illustrates how the

4 Wellcome Library, catalogue record for Isabella Cortese (& Others), Secreti diversi... Ms. 215. Accessed 3 December 2017. https://search.wellcomelibrary.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1968969?lang=eng. Accessed 3 December 2017. 5 “A far bianche le mani (lib 4, cap 8),” “Saponetto ch. Fa le mani morbide e belle… lib 4 cap 28),” “Olio per conserver la gioventu… lib 4 cap 56,” “A far belle carni per tutto… lib 4 cap 199,” “a far bella facia… lib 4 cap 208.” Cortese, Isabella, and others. Secreti Diversi.... c. 1600-1745. Wellcome Library, ms 215: 2-4. 6 The Wellcome does not include Rosello in the list of authors cited in this volume. “Da I libri de’ secreti di don Timoteo Rosello.” Cortese, Secreti Diversi...., Wellcome Library, ms. 215, 1-4.

209 author of the manuscript went through Rosello’s book, picking and choosing the recipes that were most valuable for his or her purposes. The inclusion of the other recipes in this section, for erasing words from parchment and to cure hemorrhoids, makes sense in terms of the manuscript author’s maintenance of Rosello’s original ordering.

In addition to the cosmetic recipes previously mentioned, the author also includes recipes for cleaning linen, a recipe so that your feet are never cold, to make strong vinegar, to kill bedbugs, and to preserve fresh meat so that it does not spoil.7 By looking at the ways manuscript authors selected and arranged pieces of information in these volumes, it becomes easier to understand the intellectual, practical context of making these products. Although they are not strictly medical, all of these recipes have something to do with healthcare if it is broadly construed: household medicine had as its objective health, not just healing.

It is difficult to categorize the kinds of recipes in these manuscripts because so many overlap topically. Rather than assigning recipes to categories, it is somewhat easier to give them “tags” and allow for multiple tags on individual recipes, essentially creating a relational database. If we speak generally, there are seven main “tags” that we could assign to most recipes in the manuscripts under consideration here: human medicine, cosmetics, animal interactions, food or growing food, household aids, art products, and

‘mischief.’ With this notion of tagging, we can examine a recipe, for example, for making

7 “Acqua che leva ogni macchia sul panno” (8), “Rimedio provato a non sentir mai freddo alli piedi” (8), “A fare aceto fortissimo” (9), “A far morire le cimesi” (9), “A conserver la carne fresca che non si guasti” (10). Cortese, Secreti Diversi...., Wellcome Library, ms. 215, 8-10.

210 it so a pig follows a man, as both an example of animal interactions and food or agriculture.

In many ways, it makes the most sense to consider cosmetic recipes as a subcategory of human medicine because of the importance of complexion in humoral medicine. Humoral imbalance could be reflected on the skin in a multitude of ways, so recipes to treat for sores, pallor, and redness could reasonably be considered to be medical. As will be seen in all of these categories, though, some recipes complicate this categorization. For example, the multitude of recipes for whitening hair and skin were mostly reflections of fashion, not health. By the seventeenth century, cosmetics were a distinct category for chemical manufacturers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, as were confectioners. Although the distinction between medicine and cosmetics is fraught, I maintain the cosmetic label because it can represent the recipes that were applied to skin or taken internally to affect a visual change on a body part that was wrong or off in some way for non-medical reasons (i.e.: removing freckles versus curing a rash).

Although there are clear differences in modern society between human medicine and veterinary medicine, manuscript recipe books show how this divide was not at all clear in the early modern period. If authors meant these manuscripts to contain information to cure illnesses, it is logical that many of them include recipes for curing horses and other domesticated animals. There were obvious economic reasons for keeping animals healthy. Horses in particular were expensive and useful for farming, travel, warfare, and pageantry, but other types of animals like cows and chickens were fundamental to the nutritional and economic sustainability of early modern households.

We should not, however, dismiss the emotional connection that humans might have felt

211 with their animals. The rationale for including some of the animals in these volumes is more complex than simple economics. Recipes to cure dogs might, for example, have come from the importance of working dogs (shepherding or hunting dogs), because they

were beloved pets, or both.8

In addition to recipes for curing animals or demonstrating animal-human

interactions, there are several examples in which recipes were meant to cure both humans

and animals. Although animal medicine is not often included in historical studies of early

modern pharmacy, considering the prevalence of Aristotelian thought among natural

philosophers and theological teachings regarding the margins of the spirit and the

physical body in the Catholic church, it is not surprising that manuscript authors included

recipes that crossed the human-animal boundary.

Food recipes and household recipes are similar in many ways. Although culinary

recipes are relatively infrequent in Italian manuscripts from the long-sixteenth century,

there are enough to confirm the well-established notion that food and health were

intimately connected in this period. Many of the ingredients fundamental to medical

recipes, like wine, which held a dual purpose in the early modern diet and pharmacy,

appear time and time again in these manuscripts. Alongside culinary recipes, there are

also entries with advice about growing food, like different kinds of vegetables. These,

along with the veterinary recipes, point to the fact that manuscript recipe books were

8 For more on dogs and other animals in the premodern period, see: Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society, edited by Laura D. Gelfand (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Companion Animals and Us: Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, edited by Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S Paul, and James Serpell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

212 reflections of the material space that writers occupied and the role of these books as

containers for essential knowledge about maintaining what was around them. For this

reason, it is also logical that many recipe books included recipes for household aids.

Certain recipes, such as those to get rid of bedbugs and to cleanse the air, are certainly

medical since insects can harm the body and fresh, clean air was considered paramount to

health.

Manuscript entries for “art products” fall into a wide range of expertise. Ink

recipes are common and were, considering the fact that manuscripts were written with

ink, obvious candidates for entry into these volumes. Others, such as making false

gemstones, invite speculation about whether makers were trying to create gemstones for

use in medical remedies (in recipes or as amulets), to include in decorative items, or as

part of alchemical experimentation. Many recipes across these categories are more

difficult to insert into a medical framework, and are perhaps simply present because of

the essential nature of these volumes as repositories of information about making things.

The last category, “mischief,” is perhaps the most interesting because it presents

an opportunity to insert play into these very practical textual spaces. Recipes for invisible

ink, how to open a letter without it appearing to have been opened, and how to walk past

a dog in the night without it barking at you appear as the mischievous counterparts to

mundane, practical entries on preserving food and curing coughs. Cost-saving recipes also appear throughout these volumes for things like soap, candles, and food items, inviting speculation about whether authors were invested in the pharmaceutical /

213 alchemical culture of quid pro quo or if they were simply focusing on the basic

thriftiness of home economics.9

The way that manuscript authors wandered from one disparate subject to another in their volumes is indicative of the way that the problems that early moderns attempted to solve and the materials with which they worked moved without attention to the categories to which we are accustomed. Rather than a defined category of medicine, the production of remedies in lay spaces existed alongside a wealth of other practices.

Essentially, Italian medical practice in this period was not easily contained by the regulations of official medical bodies, or by the professional and intellectual boundaries of modern practice. Considering the textual spaces in which early moderns placed medicine exposes both the intellectual relationships between practices and the material

contexts in which medicines were made and used.

Recipes for Beauty: Hair & Skin

The desire to dye one’s hair or paint one’s face was certainly not new in the early

modern period. “According to the Book of Enoch, one of the arts taught mankind (or

perhaps one should say womankind) by the angel Azazel before the Flood, was that of

beautifying the eyebrows; and it was with kohl, no doubt, that Jezebel ‘painter her eyes’

9 On quid pro quo in pharmacy, see Alain Touwaide, “Quid pro quo: Revisiting the practice of substitution in ancient pharmacy,” in Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West: Essays in Honor of John M. Riddle, edited by Anne Van Arsdall, Timothy Graham (Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012): 19-62.

214 when expecting Jehu at Jezreel.’”10 In the sixteenth century, examples of pale, blonde

women abound in Italian literature from the sixteenth century. Their long hair and smooth

skin reflect a popular ideal of beauty in this period that is decidedly northern Italian, so it

is not surprising that there are so many recipes for whitening and smoothing skin and for lightening hair in manuscript recipe books. Men, too, needed to be responsive to

standards of appearance as "humanists in northern Italy [discussed] the idea that a man's

outer beauty could be an expression of his inner virtue."11 As reflections of cultural

standards and societal organizations, beauty ideals reveal the privileged status of the

physical evidence of wealth: those engaged in manual labor and work outdoors have

rough, tanned skin. On the other hand, humoral theory had clear justifications for why

blotchy, uneven skin was evidence of internal discord, and diseases with dramatic

external signs like leprosy were judged to be signals of serious imbalance.12 Cosmetic

recipes are interesting because of this dual association of beauty with both social

expectations and with bodily health. In addition to offering additional insight to lay

medical practices, beauty-related recipes are important because they highlight the social

and cultural mores of manuscript authors and readers.

10 H. Stanley Redgrave and Gilbert A. Fan, Hair-Dyes and Hair Dyeing Chemistry and Technique, (New York: Chemical Publishing Co., Inc., 1939): 13. 11 Hugh Hudson,"The classical ideal of male beauty in Renaissance Italy: A note on the afterlife of Virgil's Euryalus," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 76 (2013): 266. Hudson quotes the 15th century Ludovico Carbone who "once praised a young bridegroom in a wedding oration by noting that 'the noble brilliance and beauty of his body indicates as well a wondrous virtue of mind.'" (266) 12 On the history of leprosy and humoral medicine, see: Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006) and, Luke E. Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

215 There are a host of entries in recipe manuscripts on hair: from making hair lighter or darker to removing hair from where it should not be and growing hair where there was none, there was advice for most hair issues. Like skin, hair also had humoral associations: it was understood as a natural way for the body to purge itself. Like sweat, growing hair represented the body ridding itself of internal imbalance. The hair recipes in these manuscripts, however, do not discuss humors or purging, making likely that they were primarily cosmetic and reflective of cultural norms and social aspirations rather than bodily ailments or health maintenance.

The majority of hair recipes are not gendered. Some recipes are specifically for beard hair, but many are for just general “hair.” There are recipes both for making hair blonde and for making it black, perhaps reflecting the simple desire to not have grey hair, an ever-present symbol of aging. For example, a recipe in manuscript AC.IX.30 in the

National Library of Milan (Braidense) “To make head hair white” instructs the reader to

“take the horns of geldings which are white and burn them so that they are finely powdered, and then put this on the head. It is proven."13 Riccardiana manuscript 3044, which has many other cosmetic recipes as well, has two recipes for making hair blonde, one which tells the reader to “take the bark from the middle of the box tree, Spanish broom flowers, saffron, fenugreek, an egg white” and to wash the hair with this mixture, letting it dry in the sun. 14 The recipe that follows it has instructions to make a different

13 “A fari bianchi li capilli del capo… toli corni de castroni e chi sian bianchi e fali brusar e fani laffina e lavate el capo et e provato.” Raccolta di ricette, in Italiano. c. 16th century. From the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milano, Ms. AC IX 30. 2v. 14 “A far li capelli Biondi… piglia la scorza di mezzo del busso, fiore di ginestra zafferanno, feno Greco, Chiara d’ova ogni cosa mescola insieme et tempra con altr’acqua

216 mixture, also with fenugreek, again letting the mixture dry on the hair in the sun. “To

turn hair black” would have been a useful remedy against grey hair.15 An Estense manuscript has two recipes for blonde hair, one of which cautions the reader, "it is enough to wash your hair [with the blonding solution] once every fifteen days."16

Another recipe in the same manuscript is for tinting hair, although it does not specify

what color.17

The variety of sources that discuss ways of achieving blonde hair demonstrates

that light hair was an important beauty ideal in early modern Italy. “Women, like men,

wash their hair in order that it should be clean but in Renaissance Italy the washing

process was in many cases connected with the far more time-consuming business of

making the hair fairer, for in Italy, as the poet Firenzuola said, … as you know, where it

concerns the hair, the correct or real colour has to be blonde.”18 It is interesting to

consider that, on one level, the popularity of light hair and skin, and thus the recipes for

blonde hair and white skin may be related to the Aristotelian idea that “Fair-

complexioned men and women ejaculate more copiously than darker ones,” so were more

et puoi lava I capelli et lasciali sciguar al sole.” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 3044, 45v. 15 “A far diventar negri li capelli.” Libro di varie cose trattante: Astrologia, Virtu di molt'erbe, Segreti, Rimedi a vari mali. Di molt'olii. Followed by Regola della Caballa. Late 16th c. Wellcome Library, Ms. 423: 25v. 16 Secreti. c. 1551-1650. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense. Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 15, 17. "Bastera bagnarsene una volta in quindici giorni." 17 “Per tingere capelli che anco lavandosi... havuto dal Co. Carlo d’Atiene et e provato.” Secreti. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense. Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 32. 18 Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600 (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1991): 244.

217 fertile.19 More likely, however, was the desire to emulate the beauty ideals of the nobility. Lucrezia Boriga, the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI and wife of several important noblemen, including Alfonso d’Este of Modena, was renowned for her flowing, blonde hair.20

While most hair recipes do not refer to either men or women, there is an entry to dye a beard black in a manuscript in Bergamo’s Biblioteca Angelo Mai: "How to make a white or red beard turn black."21 It is clear from secondary literature that hair and beards had strong social meanings that make it obvious why so many authors included these recipes in their manuscripts. In general, “in men hair was a sign of virility, bravery, and of the vital heat that arose in adolescence and distinguished them finally from women.”22

On beards specifically, Douglas Biow makes a strong argument for the importance of beards in sixteenth-century Italy: “Knowing both where and when one should wear a beard, and what kind of beard one should wear, indicates an absence of selfishness. At the same time, it reveals worldliness and understanding and appreciation of otherness. It

19 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990): 38. 20 For more on the history of cosmetics and beauty, see: Sally Pointer, The Artiface of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics (Thrupp: Sutton Publishing, 2005). On Lucrezia Borgia's hair routine, see: Evelyn Welch, ‘Art on the edge: hair and hands in Renaissance Italy.’ Renaissance Studies 23 (2008): 241-268 21 “ A far venir la barba negra ad uno che l’avesse Bianca o rossa.” Rimedi Curiosi. c. 17th century. Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, Spec. Ms. 271: 5r. 22 Laqueur, Making Sex, 101.

218 signals that you are cognizant that you have entered a different place and know, as

well as respect, the social customs governing it.”23

There are also quite a number of recipes for growing and removing hair. Recipes

like "To make hair longer and curlier,"24 “To make skin

or fur grow,”25 “to remove fur or hair,”26 and “To make

hair grow” populate many recipe books.27 As mentioned

above, Riccardiana manuscript 3044 has a number of

recipes relating to hair, including “For marks and clouds

in the vision, and to remove fur and hair,” and “to make

hair or fur fall away from where it grows.”28 The author

Figure 17: Marginal drawing with of the manuscript also suggests that “To make hair grow the caption "To make hair beautiful" next to the recipe to where it does not grow" one must "take little mice that do make hair longer and curlier in Wellcome ms 529: 50. not yet have hair and boil them in olive oil such that they

23 Douglas Biow, "The Beard in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in The Body in Early Modern Italy, edited by Julia L. Hairston & Walter Stephens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010): 185. 24 “Fare allongiare I capelli e farli e farli piu crispi,”Collection of Short Alchemical Tracts and Receipts in Italian: Followed by an Incomplete Collection of Medical, Technical and Alchemical Receipts (Miscellanea Alchemica XXXIV). c. 1470. Wellcome Library. Ms. 529, 50. 25 “A far nascer pelli o capelli,” Secreti di Varie Sorti. c. 1500. Wellcome Library, Ms. 738, 83v 26 “A cavar li pelli o capelli.” Secreti di Varie Sorti. Wellcome Library, Ms. 738, 83v 27 “Per far venir I capeli” Andrea Stabile, Secreti Vari. Manuscript. c. 16th-17th c. Wellcome Library, Ms. 760, 169v. 28 “Per le machie et panne del viso, et a levar li pelli et capelli” & “A far cader li capelli o peli dove si siano,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana 3044, 44v.

219 fall apart piu coa and with that oil, anoint [the place where you want hair to grow].”29

Determining the context of recipes for making skin whiter, more even, and softer

is more complex than hair recipes because of that interconnectedness between medicine

and fashion around skin. The history of cosmetics has been explored by several scholars

who have asserted that cosmetics were a converging point for opinions about femininity

and appropriate comportment. Patricia Phillippy, for example, notes, “the ideal woman of

the anti-cosmetic polemicists is a woman of transparent surfaces - a ‘crystall glasse,’ as

the period’s mirrors for women frequently call her - whose colors are in agreement with her essence.”30 In general, “the overall fashion was still for the pink-and-white face that was popularised during the medieval period.”31 It is likely for this reason that there are no

recipes in the manuscripts for items like blush or eyeliner. Rather, recipes such as “To

make the face beautiful, remove marks, and save it from wrinkles and make it smell very

good,”32 “To conserve youth, that is a young face,”33 "To make a kind of soap without

soap to whiten and soften the hands," and "To whiten and make the face luminous

miraculously, and to conserve the flesh and make it fresh and without wrinkles"34 are of

more interest to our authors and their readers.

29 “A far nascer li capelli dove non sono…. piglia delli topi piccioli che anchor non habiano il pelo falli bolire con oglio di olive tanto che siano disfatti pui coa et di quell oglio ongi.” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044, 47r. 30 Patricia Phillippy, Painting Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006): 137. 31 Sally Pointer, The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics (Thrupp: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2005): 92. 32 “A far la faccia bella, levar le machie e conservarla dale grince et farla odorifera,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044, 45r. 33 “A conserver la giove.tu cio e la faccia giovenile,” Riccardiana 3044, 45v. 34 " Per fare una sorte di saponetti senza sapone p inbiancare et morbidire le mani,” and

220 One point of contention when considering cosmetic recipes is whether or not

they were cosmetic or medical. For example, Sally Pointer has asserted “medical texts of

the day also offered advice that was in essence cosmetic.”35 It is not clear whether this is

accurate, however, since people though that the skin was a reflection of interior balance,

so maybe the desire to remove freckles was cosmetic, but it may have also been in order

to emphasize the interior, holistic health of the patient. Other recipes in the manuscripts

include: “To make the face and hands pure white,"36 "To make a woman white and

beautiful,"37 "Milk to conserve the eyesight, the memory, and youthfulness,"38 "For

cracks in the hands and feet."39 It is important to recall that it was not simply pale skin, but unblemished skin that was important to early modern authors: for example, "To remove warts from the hands," "To remove warts," 40 "to remove extra redness from the

face," 41and "to get rid of freckles on the face."42

"Per imbiancare et illustrar la facia miracolosam.te et conservare la carne et fresca et senza crespe," Secreti. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6, 18. 35 Pointer, The Artifice of Beauty, 110. 36 “A far candida la faccia, e mani,” Libro di varie cose trattante, Wellcome Library, Ms. 423, 25v. 37 “Per far Bianca e bella una donna” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2376. 32v. 38 “Latte da conservare la vista e la memoria e la gioventu,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2376. 44v. 39 “Alle crepature delle mani e de piedi,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2376. 45r. 40 “A caciar via li porri dale mani”; “A caciar via porri”; “A caciar porri,” Stabile, Secreti Vari. Wellcome Library, Ms. 760: 91v- 92r. 41 and “A caciar il rosso dal volto superfluo.” Stabile. Secreti Vari. Wellcome Library, Ms. 760, 136r. 42 “A mandar via la lentigine del volto” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli; Delle Cure de' Bovi; and Libro delle Ricette per li Homini et Donne, c. mid-16th Century, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 46v.

221 Although there were clear contemporary criticisms of cosmetics, Montserrat

Cabrè has found in the case of the Iberian context, there was a significant amount of interest in cosmetic recipes: “This collection again demonstrates a widespread interest for beauty recipes — which were by far the largest of the additions — and also the commitment of readers of printed books ‘to complete’ the texts they owned according to their wishes, literally producing new books for their own use.” 43 Although it is difficult to say whether cosmetic recipes were the most common recipes added to recipe collections, the authors examined here who did include beauty information were evidently interested in similar themes. Hair and clear skin were by far the most frequent themes that authors included that were related to appearance, decisions that are reflective of the broader popularity of light hair and even skin tone.

Food Recipes: Convalescent Food, Preservation, and Agriculture

Like the historiography of medicine, the historiography of food is often divided between the female and male realms of practice: domestic cooking and household manuals versus “professional” cooking and banqueting. Domestic cooking has received less scholarly attention than professional cooking, and the cultivation of the kitchen garden is not always included as part of the culture of cooking. Although Italy’s many food cultures are well known today, and the culture of secrets and medical recipes flourished in the peninsula in the sixteenth century, early Italian cookbooks are not as

43 Montserrat Cabrè, "Keeping Beauty Secrets in Early Modern Iberia.” Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800, edited by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin. Ashgate, 2011: 151.

222 well known as those published in France and England.44 Several important, early

professional cookbook authors have received significant scholarly attention, such as

Bartolomeo Sacchi 1460’s and Bartolomeo Scappi's 1570 extensive volumes on cookery.

Scappi’s text, for example, “is nearly nine hundred pages long and includes over a

thousand recipes along with the name of every dish served at more than a hundred

multicourse dinners and suppers.”45 These comprehensive volumes represent food on a relatively grand scale, although Scappi focuses more on banqueting than Sacchi does. As with the history of pharmacy and medicine, printed cookbooks represent the comprehensive ideal of cookery, less so the day-to-day eating habits of individuals.

Unfortunately, the simple fact that so many scholars have focused almost exclusively on medical recipes and published recipe books has left little room for exploring the food recipes that do appear in manuscript recipe books. The exception to this is, of course, recipes for food items that appear as either convalescent food or as ingredients in medicines. It is likely for these reasons that scholars have noted that

culinary recipes appear infrequently in early modern Italian domestic manuals books.

Sara Pennell asserts, for example, that there is a "widely acknowledged trend: that

culinary texts explicitly embodying non-professional knowledge were relatively rare outside of English-, German-, and Dutch-speaking territories until the mid-eighteenth

44 On the history of Italian food, see: Alberto Capatti, Massimo Montanari, and Aine O'Healy, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Ken Albala, A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance, vol. 3. (London: Berg, 2012); Beat Kumin, A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age, vol. 4. (London: Berg, 2012). 45 John Varriano, Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009: 15.

223 century."46 If we consider culinary commentary more broadly, however, and include

recipes for food preservation, growing vegetables and fruits, and making wine, the non-

professional food culture of early modern Italy becomes somewhat more accessible.

With this adjusted focus, food actually appears quite frequently in the group of manuscripts featured in this chapter: there are a significant number of recipes for making or improving wine, making vinegar, conserving meat, fruits, vegetables, and milk, and encouraging the quick growth of different plants like mushrooms and grapevines. This section thus proposes to re-investigate food recipes in manuscript recipe books to consider the range of food-related recipes. Bearing in mind the importance of diet in early modern medicine, focusing on these food recipes is essential in understanding how authors attempted to control health through a wide variety of recipes. The food recipes in these recipe books, like the cosmetic recipes above and the animal and household recipes discussed below, are important to keep in mind in the context of medical recipes because they highlight the interconnectedness of these material products and processes of making for early moderns.

In premodern humoral theory, food was considered medicine, and many food recipes, like the ever-present chicken soup, were crucial medicines and convalescent treatments, so much so that the Ricettario Fiorentino includes a recipe for them.47 Like

46 Sara Pennell, "Family and Domesticity: Cooking, Eating, and Making Homes," in A Cultural History of Food in the Early modern Age, ed. Beat Kumin (London: Berg, 2012): 127. 47 Terrance Scully asserts, “When the medieval cook or housewife had a sick member of the household on hand to feed, he or she usually reached for a chicken and made up a mash, a broth, a cullis or a distillate of its meat and juices. Its temperate qualities in particular and the substantial nutritive values recognized in it made it a sort of sick-dish

224 ingredients in medical recipes, foodstuffs had qualities of heat and moisture that

could adjust the humoral state of the patient. Similarly, the way that food was prepared

imparted additional humoral qualities: “Roasting - since the food sits directly over a

flame - dries a food as it warms it. Boiling warms a food, though not as intensely as does roasting, but it also adds moisture to the food because of the liquid cooking medium.

Baking warms moderately, but dries only moderately as well.”48 Combining the humoral

qualities of foods with specific cooking processes, food was

theoretically understood to be one of the six non-naturals that gave men a way to control the body and its passions, and some dietaries would thus describe the virtues associated with different kinds of food make recommendations about the kinds of foods that different kinds of people should eat.49

Even printed culinary texts reflect the medical nature of food. For example,

Baldassare Pisanelli's 1586 volume Trattato della natura de' cibi et del bere presents twenty-five pages on nearly 140 different food items. Pisanelli's volume is a tabulated list that details for each item how to know which example of the food was best, what it was good for, what it would bring harm to, how it might be used in a remedy, the grades of heat and moisture associated with it, what time of year and for what kind of patients it was best, and the item's natural history. Dates, for example, were good for the liver,

staple.” (Terence Scully, Art of Cookery in the Late Middle Ages (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1995): 189.) The Capuchin author of Wellcome ms. 689, 690, and 691, for example, included a recipe against short windedness that features chicken meat cooked in water with ambrosine almonds, melon seeds, pistachios, and sugar. (da Rimino, Manuscript Recipe Book, Wellcome Library, ms. 690, 64v.) 48 Scully, Art of Cookery in the Late Middle Ages, 44. 49 Elizabeth Spiller, "Recipes for Knowledge: Maker's Knowledge Traditions, Paracelsian Recipes, and the Invention of the Cookbook, 1600-1660,” in Renaissance Food from Rebelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories, edited by Joan Fitzpatrick (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010): 61.

225 against coughing, but were bad for the teeth, mouth, and stomach. The author

recommended eating them "cooked, and sweetened with sugar, like other fruit, or eaten

with raw sour foods, or dressed with vinegar."50 Even books that focused on specific foods such as Salvatore Massonio's Archidipno, over,o Dell'Insalata e Dell'Uso di Essa

(1627) on salad featured regular discussions of medical qualities of foodstuffs. Massonio, for example, cited authors like Avicenna, Democritus, Galen, Girolamo Mercuriale,

Hippocrates, and Serapione.51 As mentioned in previous chapters, manuscript recipe

authors occasionally included entries dedicated to individual ingredients that described

their medicinal properties, and some of these ingredients would have certainly have been

used for both pharmaceutical and culinary preparations. Given the relative lack of

theoretical explanations and justifications present in most Italian recipe books from the

16th and 17th centuries, it is not surprising that the entries about specific dishes that I have found do not generally include humoral language or suggestions for modifications to make certain products more suitable for individuals with specific temperaments.

Some food products in the manuscripts, like wine, are very clearly medical since so many explicitly medical recipes used wine as an ingredient. There is, for example, an abundance of recipes in the manuscripts to give wine a specific flavor – moschio or moscatello. For example, a recipe in Wellcome manuscript 215 is “to give new wine that

50 "Mangiandosi cotti, e conditi col zucaro, come sono gli altri frutti, overo mangiando appresso a i crudi cibi Acetosi, overo conditi con l'Aceto." Baldasarre Pisanelli, Trattato della natura de' cibi et del bere (Roma: Vincenzo Taietti, 1586): 4. 51 Salvatore Massonio, Archidipno, overo, Dell'Insalata e Dell'Uso di Essa: Trattato Nuovo, Curioso, e non mai più Dato in Luce (Venetia: Marc'Antonio Brogiollo, 1627): 6r-7r.

226 is bottled clear the flavor of moscatello,” and “To give wine the flavor of

moscatello.”52 In 1611, Florio translated moscatello as “the wine Muskadine.” Although

he translates moscatella as “the Muskadine grape,” it is more likely that the term refers to

the family of grapes muscat (from which the wine moscato is made) rather than the

muscadine grape that is native to the southeastern United States. According to the Oxford

Companion to Wine, “Muscat grapes were probably the first to be distinguished and

identified and have grown around the Mediterranean for many, many centuries. With

such strongly perfumed grapes [they were] described in French as musque as though they

were actually impregnated with musk.”53 “Moschato” appears in some of the earliest

manuscripts in the set used in this chapter, such as ms. AC.IX.30 in Milan’s Braidense

library, which includes a recipe “to make one or three fruits [probably grapes] have the

flavor of moschato.”54 This recipe instructs the reader to “make a hole in the vine or in another tree in which you want to insert the moschato or of scammony and put it well in the hole which you would like to have the flavor of moschato.”55 The same recipe also

appears in ms It. 131/1-2 = Alfa. T. 7. 3 in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, including

52 “Per dare l’odore di moscatello al vin nuovo invasellato chiaro,” Cortese, Secreti Diversi.... Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 60 and “A dare sapor di Moscatello al vino,” Secreti Utili e Curiosi. c. Middle 17th Century. Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 6. 53 “Muscat,” Oxford Companion to Wine 4th ed. Edited by Janice Robinson and Julia Harding. Online edition, 2015. 54 “A far che una o tre fructi habieno sapor de moschato,” Raccolta di ricette, in Italiano. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Ms. AC IX 30: 5r. 55 "fa un buxo in la vite o in altro arbore che tu voi meti dentro la moschato o vero de scamonea et serza ben el buxo che anvera sapore de moschato." Raccolta di ricette, in Italiano. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milano, Ms. AC IX 30: 5r.

227 the comment that one could use moscato or scammony.56 These recipes are an

especially interesting case in which food and medicine collide, since the reader is

instructed to graft a piece of moschato or scamonea onto another plant – a clearly

agricultural process to create fruit that tastes of moschato. However, the inclusion of

scamonea, or scammony, “a juice whereof is much used in medicines to purge choller,”

suggests that the moscato-scented fruit grown from these grafts might have been used for

medicines rather than for a specific type of wine.57

Other food recipes seem to also have a medical focus. A recipe for “Mostarda

buona,” for example, is likely a medicinal one.58 Using mostarda as an example, Jo

Wheeler argues “Italian books of secrets contain relatively few recipes for foods. When they do, nearly all of them are for foods sold ready-made by apothecaries and viewed as highly medicinal. Mostarda falls firmly into this category (alongside similar quince pastes such as cotognata). This is why the recipe opposite was included in the

Compendium of Rational Secrets (Venice, 1564) by Leonardo Fioravanti.”59

The classification of Mostarda as a clearly medical item is confusing, especially

considering that the chef-author Bartolomeo Scappi classified Mostarda as a sauce.60

Manuscript recipes, and Fioravanti’s recipe itself, also put this specifically medical nature

56 “Se voi ch. Luva o alt. fruit abiano sapore d’moscatello fa uno buxo in la vita o in alt.a arbore e li .ut. nuti d’l moscato o d’ la scamonia esera lo ditto buxo e li fruit ch. Nascerano avano sapo.e d’ moscatel,” Liber Receptorum and Ricettario. c. 16th century. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, It. 131/1-2=alfa.T.7.3: 80r. 57 Florio, “Scammonea,” Queen Anna's New World of Words: 470. 58 Francisco Bulgarini, Raccolta di Varii Secreti... c. 1634. Manuscript. From the Wellcome Library, Ms. 168: 88. 59 Jo Wheeler, Renaissance Secrets, Recipes & Formulas (London: V&A Publishing, 2009): 89. 60 Wheeler, Renaissance Secrets, 89.

228 of mostarda into question. Francisco Bulgarini, who lived around Mantua

(Lombardy), wrote a manuscript recipe book circa 1634 and included a recipe for

mostarda buona that was made from quince jam, good honey, preserved oranges, citrons,

and melons, mustard, cinnamon, and cloves.61 Bulgarini does not specify what it might

be used for, either medically or in cuisine. The mostarda entry is directly followed by an

entry for “Spongate buone,” which is very similar to some modern recipes for spongata

cake, so it is not unreasonable to assume that Bulgarini’s mostarda may have been culinary.62 In the 1597 edition of Aldrovandi’s book of rational secrets (Del compendio

de’ secreti rationali) Aldrovandi’s recipe for mostarda is markedly similar to this

manuscript recipe. Much like Bulgarini, Fioravanti includes ingredients like quinces,

sugar, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Aldrovandi writes, “On the method of

making mostarda the way it is made in Venice, chapter 40. The mostarda that is made in

Venice is very healthful for the body, enjoyed by the stomach, and pleasant to taste, more

so than all of the other kinds of mostarda that are used in different places around the

world.”63 Although, as Wheeler identifies, mostarda was an item that could be purchased

at apothecary shops, and Fioravanti himself identifies that it is a healthy item, the fact

61 “Mostarda buona. Conserva di cotogni lib xxx. Miele buono colato lib xxxxxx. Naranci conditi lib xxv. Cedri conditi lib xv. Meloni conditi lib x. Senape lib xiii. Cinamomo al gus. Garofoli al gus. Messeda insieme.” (Bulgarini, Raccolta di Varii Secreti... c. 1634. Wellcome Library, Ms. 168: 88) 62 “Spongate buone,” Bulgarini, Raccolta di Varii Secreti... c. 1634. Wellcome Library, Ms. 168: 89. The recipe’s ingredients include breadcrumbs, cinnamon, two preparations of ginger, cloves, pepper, honey, almonds, pine nuts, an egg, nutmeg, and sugar. 63 “Del modo di fare la mostarda, che fa in Venetia. Cap. 40. La mostarda che si fa a Venetia molto salutifera al corpo, grata allo stomaco, et piacevole al gusto piu che tutte l’altre sorte di mostarde, che s’usano in diversi luochi del mondo.” Leonardo Fioravanti, Del compendio de’ secreti rationali (Venetia: Marc’Antonio Bonibelli, 1597): 164v.

229 that recipes for it circulated indicates that people other than apothecaries produced it.

And, as Fioravanti indicates, it could also function as a culinary preparation simply to be

enjoyed.

Like the mostarda, most recipes for moscatello actually seem to be simple culinary recipes. In manuscripts such as Wellcome ms. 215, recipes such as “To give the flavor of moscatello to newly bottled clear wine” does not talk about other ingredients

that are medical, or about having a medical purpose.64 Other wine recipes also focus on

taste, such as those entries that provide advice for making wine taste better: “To remove

the musty smell from wine,” for example, is a recipe simply meant to get rid of a jar of

wine’s bad smell.65 “To make wine good” is general advice for making wine taste

better.66 Although patients might have preferred good-tasting, non-musty wine, it is likely that these recipes were for questions of taste rather than health.

There are very few other recipes for composed dishes in these manuscripts.

Riccardiana ms 2376 has a series of three recipes for “Way of making Neapolitan mostaccioli,” “Neapolitan Biscotti,” and “Neapolotian Morselletti.”67 Although Francisco

64 “Per dare l’odore di moscatello al vin nuovo invasellato chiaro,” Cortese, Secreti Diversi.... Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 60. Nearly the same recipe is recorded in Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 6. Both recipes recommend soaking dry flowers of sambuco in the wine. 65 “A levar l’odore della muffa al vino,” Cortese, Secreti Diversi...., Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 39. “A caccare la muffa al vino,” in Miniere Diverse, Manuscript recipe book in "Medici e Medicina 13," Archivio di Stato di Modena: 158r is nearly the same recipe. 66 “Per far vino buono,” Receipt-Book, Italian. c. middle 17th-century. Wellcome Library, Ms. 665: 10v. 67 “Modo di fare mostaccioli alla Napole.a,” “Biscotti alla napoletana,” and “Morseletti alla napoletana,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2376: 27v-28r. The mostacciuoli recipe calls for sugar, marzipan paste, canella, an egg yolk, musk, and flour. According to Capatti, Montanari, and O'Healy, Scappi referred to a banquet "consisting exclusively of

230 Bulgarini titled his manuscript Raccolta di Varii Secreti Parte Chimici e Parte

Medicinali, he still included a recipe for “The way of making sorbetti like they have in

Constantinople” that covers a full five pages of text.68 In this period, sorbetto refers to “a

kind of drinke used in Turkie made of water and juice of limonds[sic], sugar, amber, and

muske, very costly and delicate.”69 Riccardiana ms. 3044 has a recipe for a “Way of

cooking cuttlefish in zimino” with a long explanation about the origins of the dish:

Way of cooking squid in zimino that also cooks the little bones of the squid in such a way that they will not annoy you when you eat them. This is a method that has been tried many, many times in the happy memories of Signoria Margherita de Ridolfi... I learned from her cook and which I have many times prepared.70

Preparing various kinds of seafood in zimino is classically Tuscan. According to

the Oxford Companion to Italian Food, zimino is

"a Florentine way of cooking baccalà, salt cod, or seppie, cuttlefish. The distinguishing ingredient is spinach or swiss chard. The leaves are wilted, then sliced into coarse strips. The cod is soaked and trimmed of bones and skin and fried golden in olive oil in which a chopped onion, garlic, and plenty of chopped parsley have been cooked; some skinned and chopped tomatoes come next, then the spinach is added, and the mixture is left to simmer for a while."71

sweets," including Neapolitan mostaccioli. Capatti, Montanari, and O'Healy, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, 167. 68 “Modo di fare i sorbetti come s’usa in Costantinopoli,” Bulgarini, Raccolta di Varii Secreti..., Wellcome Library, Ms 168: 107v. 69 Florio, "Sorbetto," Queen Anna's New World of Words: 513. 70 “Modo di quocere il pescie ceppa in zemino et operare che le lische piccolo che vi sono di ventine in modo che non ti dii no fastidio nel mangiarle et e modo che stato adoperato piu e poi volta della bona memoria della signoria Margherita de Ridolfi ... l’ho imparato della sua Crecinicera che moltissime volte l’ha messo in pratica.”” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044, 54v. 71 Gillian Riley, Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009): 589.

231 The manuscript author included an addendum after the recipe saying, “I think, however, that you could make it the same way with using only water [instead of wine].”72

Interestingly, the author also recommends that the reader remind the baker not to let the dish dry out while it is cooking, a brief but important indication that the author of this, and probably most manuscript recipe books, was not always the person doing the making, but rather the person telling others around him or her – whether employees or other community members – how to make things.73 Along the same lines, the abovementioned recipe for Spongate Buone makes a quantity of cakes equal to approximately 50 recipes of many modern recipes for the same pastry, calling for approximately 10.5 kilograms of breadcrumbs, for example. Like medicines, households made foods in large quantities when they could to cut down on work, preserve raw ingredients, and feed large numbers of people at once.

Following the cuttlefish in zimino the author included an entry for “way of cooking a roasted chicken in a pot, taught to me by the same person previously mentioned.”74 Like so many medical recipes, the author completes the entry by asserting that “this is the method which I have tried very many times, which I believe is very delicious, and it is for this reason that I have included the recipe here.”75

72 “Io credo pero che si potessi farla stessa con metterci solo l’acqua pura,” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044: 54v. 73 “Raccomandondolo al fornaio che no. lo lasci secchare affatto.” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044, 54v. 74 “Modo di cuscere uno pollo arrosto in una pentola insegatomi dalla medesima di la d.a” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044, 55r 75 “Questo modo io l’ho piu volte assoporato, che mi e p.arto molto buono, e pero ne ho fatto questo ricordo.” Ricettario, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 3044. 55r.

232 More frequent than composed dishes are entries with advice about preparing or growing individual food ingredients. Wellcome ms. 215, for example, features a recipe titled “to conserve fresh meat” that instructs the reader to “take fresh meat and put it in the sun for three or four hours, then pick it up and place it in a dark, cool place. Leave it there for 15 days and it will become perfect like a capon, this is a proven and true method.”76 One manuscript in the Estense library contains a number of recipes for catching, growing, and fattening various animals. One entry discusses a way of capturing lots of fish with little effort by fashioning an artificial light that when lowered into the water on a dark night, will cause the fish to congregate around it.77 Another is for hatching a large number of eels that explicitly mentions monetary gain.78 There are also recipes for fattening veal, cows, capons, and chickens.79

76 “A conserver la carne fresca” that instructs the reader to “piglia la carne fresca e mettila al sole per tre o quatto hore, poi levala via e salvala in luogo ombroso e fresco e si conservara per giorni 15 e veniva perfetta come un cappone, et e cosa provata e vera.” Cortese, Secreti Diversi...., Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 10. 77 “Secreto beliss.o p. pigliar pesci. Piglia luciole, et accio durano tutto l’anno subito prese in buona quantita le metterai in un bocaletto di vetro, et facendoli un profumo d’aceto farai andare il fumo nel bocaletto che morirano le quali morte le metterai a secchare et cosi gli restara il suo splendore, piglierai una balla di vetro et glie le metterai dentro poi uando non luce la luna che sia ben scuro mettela nel acqua o sia viva o morta purche vi siano peschi et li tenderai reti di qual sorte di piacera che li pesci tutti vicini q. questo posono scorgere quell lume subito vi corerano, p. che e sua natura corere all ume nel tempo oscuro, et chi potesse fare un ingegno come una lantern di cristallo, et metterli dentro una lume saria cosa rara, p. che saria tanto maggior lume, et in caso di necesita quell legno che luce fa effetto.” Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 21. 78 “Secreto Mirabile p. far nascere Anguile in grandiss.a quantita et di grandiss.o guadagno havuto da M. Stefano di Colonia,” Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Modena. Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 98. 79 “Per ingrassare li vitelli in termine di 40 giorni che vengono fuori del ordinario grassi” (43) “Per far li bovi grassi con pochisa spesa del istesso” (44) “Per ingrassare assaiss.o li caponi e galine” (46), Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense. Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6.

233 Like the indication of a baker who might oversee the overnight cooking of a

cuttlefish dish, the economics of the authors also appear in entries that demonstrate how

to economically and quickly produce more food. Wellcome ms. 739 has a particularly

large number of these: “To cook beans quickly,”80 “bread that multiplies,”81 “mushrooms

that grow in three days,”82 and “To increase saffron.”83 Other manuscripts include recipes

like: “To increase bread 40 for 100.”84 A manuscript at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena

features a recipe “to make beans grow in an hour. Take beans and put them in hot oil and

leave them to sit for 9 days. From that point, let them dry as much as you want. Plant

these beans and go to have dinner and when you leave the table you will find them

sprouted. You can do this with pumpkins.”85

Recipes for food preservation are common throughout recipe collections, both

printed and manuscript, across Europe from this time period. Printed household manuals

regularly included instructions for preserving vegetables and fruits, so it is not surprising

that these manuscripts include that kind of recipe. Many food recipes, as with the

mostarda buona above, used many different kinds of preserved fruits and vegetables. “To

80 “Legumi, che si cuocano presto,” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 13 81 “Pane che moltiplichi,” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: p. 15 82 “Funghi che nascano in tre giorni,” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 42. 83 “Aumento di Zafrano,” Secreti Utili e Curiosi Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: p. 68 84 “Per crescer il pane 40 per 100.” Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 2v. 85 "A far naser li fave in una hora. Toi li fave e mitili in olio caldo e lasali viiii di poi li meti asecare q.no tu voi pianta queste fave e va adisnare e qu. tu levarai da tavola tu li atuarai nati e questi se po fare de li zuchi." Liber Receptorum and Ricettario.c. 16th century. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It. 131/1-2=alfa.T.7.3: 80r.

234 prepare apples for composte,” and “To prepare squash so they are preserved all year

round, in the Genovese style,” for example, may have led to a product necessary in the production of products like mostarda (although the above recipes use quinces instead of apples).86 “How to preserve pomegranates” may have been useful as a way of producing

vinegar-flavored, preserved pomegranates for culinary purposes, as well as for medicinal

purposes.87 Another manuscript asserts that “In food we should frequently add wine of

pomegranates” during periods of plague.88 A very brief entry “To conserve milk” simply

says, “add ginger oil, like you also do with that made by crushing almonds,” which was

also the way of conserving vinegar.89 Not all preservation entries are identified as such, but recipes for making mortadella, for example, would have been useful as kitchens prepared the summer abundance of meat for storage.90

Although food recipes do not appear with the same frequency in Italian-language

manuscript recipe books as they do in English-language ones, it is clear that there are

enough in extant manuscripts to examine them as a group. Food recipes such as the ones

described in this section show the multiple uses of foodstuffs in this period. From costly

86 “A preparare lo melle per le composte,” Secreti di Varie Sorti. c. 1500. Wellcome Library, Ms. 738: 71v. “Per acomodar le zucche che si conservaranno tutto l’anno alla Genovese,” Secreti. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense. Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 66. 87 “A conservare le pome granate,” Secreti di Varie Sorti. Manuscript. c. 1500. From the Wellcome Library, Ms. 738: 62v. Vinegar was also used to preserve meat, as in “Modo p. condire ogni sorte di ucelli che durano p. un anno del medico corter” Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, It 111 = alfa.S.6.6.: 48. 88 “Ne cibi si metta spesso del vino delle pomagrane,” Medical Receipts. c. 15th century. Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. Yale University, Ms. 58 vault: 22r. 89 “Latte a conservarlo. Ponine dentro dell’oglio di gengero come anco quello d’amandole fatto per esprexione,” “Aceto à conservarlo. L’oglio di gengero.” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 21. 90 “Per far mortadella alla gennovese di fegato” Secreti. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Modena. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 72-3.

235 and foreign foods, like sorbetti from Constantinople and Neapolitan sweets, to

economical advice, like how to grow mushrooms and cook beans quickly, food recipes

emphasize the highly personal nature of these manuscripts. They also show the variety of

economic considerations attached to food in the early modern period, from cheaply and

profitably producing lots of eels to making expensive sorbetti, acquiring and making food

were ways of conserving and displaying wealth. And since food was one of the six non-

naturals, it was essentially linked to health. In Yale’s ms. 58, in a section “Advice of

Maestro Tomaso da Garbo about the Plague,” the author included a section titled, “On the

things which we should eat.”91 It is for these reasons that it is important to reevaluate the place of food recipes in the context of medical recipes in early modern Italy. Although composed dishes are less frequently found in these sources, recipes for individual

ingredients are important indications of preference, taste, economics, and health in this

period.

Human – Animal Interactions and A Remedy for Beast and Man

While the majority of medical remedies and cosmetics in these manuscripts were

composed of plant-based materials, the common presence of animal-based ingredients like honey, milk, eggs, and meat emphasize how animals were fundamental components of medical and beauty practices in the early modern period as they were in Dioscorides’s day. These same ingredient categories were also crucial in culinary traditions of the era as well, even though meat would have taken a much less prominent role in the diet than we

91 Medical Receipts. Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Ms. 58 vault: 21v-22r.

236 are accustomed to today. Although it is more difficult to identify in recipe books,

historians have also argued for the importance of animals in the early modern economy in

terms of the labor they provided, in addition to the products that humans could derive

from them, like wool for textiles and meat for consumption.92 In many ways, then, it

makes sense that there are often a number of recipes for curing animal illnesses in Italian

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscript recipe books. Although I have found one

recipe for curing chickens, the majority of veterinary recipes are for horses and cows, and

a few for dogs.93 I have not seen recipes dealing with cats in Italian manuscript recipe books, although it should be noted that they were often pets, and also held economic value as mousers: “Cats are rated quite highly in an early medieval Irish law text called

Catslechtae (Cat-sections), which values a cat as worth three cows if it could purr and hunt mice.”94

In general, historians of veterinary medicine have focused on the history of the

development of the veterinary profession, on the economics of animals, and on

relationships between animals and humans. Veterinary medicine is also largely absent as

a topic within histories of medicine. Louise Hill Curth argues in her 2013 volume A

Plaine and Easie Waie to Remedy a Horse: Equine Medicine in Early Modern England

that veterinary medicine has been less represented in the history of medicine because of

92 See, Louise Hill Curth, "The Care of the Brute Beast: Animals and the Seventeenth- Century Medical Marketplace," Social History of Medicine 15 (2002): 375-392. 93 “A guarire u.a galina ch. Facia l’ovara n.a vetula.” Libro d'alchune ricette sopra l'oro e l'argento, et altre cose belle. Early 17th c. Wellcome Library, Ms. 421: 20v. 94 Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Cats (London: The British Library, 2011): 11.

237 “a long history of anthropocentric attitudes.”95 Although this is likely a factor in the historiography, it is also plausible that most early modern doctors did not treat animals, so animal cures rarely appear in texts authored by professional healers. Lay medicine, on the other hand, attended to all aspects of care and thus animals appear as patients in manuscript recipe books by lay practitioners, showing how animal and human healthcare went hand-in-hand.

Because veterinary medicine did not develop into a distinct profession until much later than human medicine, there is a significant lack of scholarship on early modern care of animals or on animal-human interactions.96 The historiography of veterinary medicine is young as a field and mirrors the thematic foci of early historiography of human medicine. Curth refers to Philip Teigen saying, “the most common reasons for writing works on veterinary history are either: 1. To celebrate achievements and innovations of important veterinarians or institutions. 2. To explain who, what, why, when, where and how a specific event occurred. 3. To advise or recommend a course of action based on lessons learned form the past.”97 It is these gaps in the historiography of both medicine

and veterinary medicine that manuscript recipe books can fill by showing the ways that

humans interacted with animals and how human and animal bodies were treated with the

95 Louise Hill Curth, A Plaine and Easie Waie to Remedy a Horse: Equine Medicine in Early Modern England, 2013: 8. 96 For later histories of veterinary medicine, please see ed. Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle, Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010); Joanna Swabe, Animals, Disease and Human Society: Human-Animal Relations and the Rise of Veterinary Medicine (London & New York: Routledge, 1999); Lise Wilkinson, Animals and Disease: An Introduction to the History of Comparative Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 97 Curth, The Care of Brute Beasts, 15.

238 same cures.

We have some very early evidence of humans caring for animals: Lise Wilkinson asserts that India,

among the ancient civilisations probably made the most distinguished contribution [to veterinary medicine]… Two veterinary counterparts to the Charaka samhita of more than 10,000 verses each are the Haya-Ayurveda, on horses, and the Hasti-Ayurveda, on elephants. At the time they were written, around 800 BC, physicians treating human beings were also trained in the care of animals, although some practitioners specialised in animal care exclusively, or even in the care of one class of animals only. Hospitals for animals were provided alongside the State hospitals for needy human beings as early as the third century BC.98

This early focus on horses in India is also similar in Europe, where equine medicine was one of the first areas of animal healthcare to become specialized and for a profession to develop. A 1574 edition of Vegetius's Mulomedicina covers many of the same medical concerns that appear in the manuscript medical recipe books explored here, from fevers and cholic to pain in the sides and bleeding.99 Aside from these brief references, though, there is not much scholarship on early veterinary care, although theologians and natural philosophers considered animals in their musings about the nature of the soul and the physical body.

In the early modern period, natural philosophy and Christian doctrine provided a theoretical framework for human and animal medicine to overlap:

As Christian scholars adopted Aristotelian philosophy during the Middle Ages, the scholastics conventionally explained human beings in relation to brute animals.... Animals and men share certain abilities related to their

98 Wilkinson. Animals and disease. 4-5. 99 Flavius Vegetius renatus, Mulomedicina: Ex Trib. Vetustiss. Codd. Varietate Adjecta: Unde Infiniti Loci Addi & Expurgari a Quovis Poterunt, Usu Magno Publico (Basileae: Petrum Pernam, 1574).

239 physical and organic existence, such as nutrition and sense perception, and differ with regard to their intellectual and incorporeal abilities, such as free well or discursive thinking.100

Additionally, the nature of Christ’s blood was an important question in Catholic doctrine, and early modern church fathers determined that the four humors were part of the physical body rather than the soul.101 Since the humors were responsible for the state of health and illness in all animal, not just human, bodies, it was logical that there were homologies in both the function and structure of these bodies.

Comparative anatomy had long been important to human medicine, especially since anatomical dissections of pigs and dogs were experiences from which physicians like Galen made declarations about human anatomy.102 By the mid-sixteenth century, medical authors and natural historians were printing volumes that were, essentially, anatomies of animals. From pigs and horses to primates and cows, many done in the style of Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, some of these volumes emphasized some of the homologies between humans and animals. One of the earliest examples of an anatomy done in the style of Vesalius was Carlo Runi's 1598 Anatomia del Cavallo,

100 Sander, "For Christ's Sake," 56. 101 Christopher Sander, "For Christ's Sake: Pious Notions of the Human & Animal Body in Early Jesuit Philosophy & Theology," in Human & Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine, edited by Stefanie Buchenau & Roberto Lo Presti (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017): 55-73. Additionally, in 1565, the Superior General of the SJ, Franciscus Borgia decreed to Jesuit colleges that “the soul in man or in beasts is not in hair of the body or of the head.” (58) 102 See, for example, Heinrich Von Staden, "Anatomy as Rhetoric: Galen on Dissection and Persuasion," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995): 47- 60.

240

Figure 18: Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del Cavallo... Figure 19: Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del Cavallo... (Venetia: Fioravanti Prati, 1618): 235. (Venetia: Fioravanti Prati, 1618): 245. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. Medicine. infermitia, et suoi rimedii (see figures 18 and 19).103 Especially after the public demonstration of the motion of blood in the body and the publication of the Padua-trained

William Harvey's De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, comparative dissection of animals was an important research methodology for anatomists.104 Samuel Collins, for example, published a lengthy study of comparative anatomy in 1685 with extensive images comparing individual organs of various mammals, reptiles, fish, and birds.105

103 Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del Cavallo... (Venetia: Fioravanti Prati, 1618). 104 William Harvey, De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Lugduni Batavorum: Ioannis Maire, 1639). 105 Samuel Collins, A systeme of anatomy: treating of the body of man, beasts, birds, fish, insects, and plants (London: T. Newcomb, 1685).

241 Authors like Giambattista della Porta and Filippo Finella writing on physiognomy

used descriptions and images of animals as a point of analysis of human physical features

and personality characteristics (see figure 20).106

Even though, as Wilkinson

asserts, epizootics broke out

periodically in the medieval period,

when “scribes of the Middle Ages

wrote on disease problems of

several species, there was little

attempt to benefit from

comparisons in the field of Figure 20: Giambattista della Porta, Della fisonomia dell'huomo: libri sei (Padoua: Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1623): 71v. infectious disease, although Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. comparative anatomy and to some extent physiology had been practised with some

success from the time of the Greeks.”107 As will become clear, however, manuscript

authors regularly wrote recipes that could cure both humans and animals, which makes sense, especially in the context of the humoral nature of disease and perceived homologies.

Veterinary medicine does not appear in all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century

Italian manuscript recipe books, but recipes for products intended for horses, cows, and dogs appear frequently enough to invite a serious investigation. The first 12 sheets of

106 Giambattista della Porta, Della fisonomia dell'huomo: libri sei (Padova, Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1623); Filippo Finelli, Fisonomia naturale (Napoli: Domenico Maccarano, 1629). 107 Wilkinson, Lise. Animals and disease: An introduction to the history of comparative medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 22.

242 manuscript 125 in the Biblioteca Bertoliana in Vicenza, for example, are dedicated to

cures for dogs, horses and other animals, while the rest of the manuscript is focused on

other subjects.108 Clearly, from a contextual standpoint if nothing else, it is useful to

know more about the ways that humans cared for the animals for which they were

responsible. The economic and emotional connections between humans and animals were

a driving cultural force for many people, so the intellectual and theoretical rationales

behind the care of animals in the long-sixteenth century are also pertinent to this current

project. Veterinary recipes are noteworthy, and examining them is useful because it

allows us to consider the specific medical and general cultural boundaries that existed

between humans and animals.

Considering the lack of focus in the history of medicine on veterinary medicine,

the ways that the rhetoric of veterinary recipes overlaps with that of human medical

recipes is interesting. Like entries for human medicine, veterinary recipes cover a range of topics that vary from the superficial (like cuts) to more complex issues (like eye problems). Horses are probably the most common non-human animals to be addressed in these manuscript volumes. A series of entries in Wellcome ms. 739, for example, offer solutions to a range of mostly equine complaints, such as fevers, eye problems, foot

108 Biblioteca Bertoliana (Vicanza, Italy) ms. 125 is not dated, but is written in a regular 16th century hand. From the catalogue entry: cc. 1r-12v: Rimedi per cavalla, cc. 13r-24v: Ricette di medicina; 25r-30v: Egregia remedia quod deducebat in usum cui opus fuerat doctor Aloisius Bellacatus… (Aloisius Bellacatus); 32r-48r: Trattato della pestilenza; 50r- 62v: Trattato sulla magnesia. "Descrizione del Manoscritto: Vicenza, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125," Nuova Biblioteca Manoscritta. Last updated 26 June 2009. http://www.nuovabibliotecamanoscritta.it/

243 ailments, coughs, tail issues, pain, thinness, warts, and bots.109 As mentioned above,

horses were some of the most economically valuable animals that early moderns might

own, and this is likely the reason that equine medicine became specialized before other

kinds of animal medicine. Although veterinary medicine did not develop into a

profession until much later than human medicine did, these manuscript authors often

included clear references to medical theory and famous animal doctors in their entries on

veterinary medicine. Recipes such as “How to know when a horse has a dry fever” in the

above-mentioned Bertoliana ms. 125 beg considering how humoral theory was applied to

bodies that were nonhuman.110 The entry is followed by suggestions for remedies for when horses have a dry fever: “These are the signs that a horse has a dry fever. It eats and drinks little and remains calm; for at the end of five days no one who goes and tries can cure it.”111 Another is a remedy for “heat in the lungs.”112 Another section of this

manuscript is a long explanation of five different types of fevers. The third fever, for

example “is the one which is born near the heart and makes the horse's heart beat very

109 “Verme” translates to “any kind of worme or vermine. Also a disease in a Horse called the bots.” Bots, or the horse bot fly, lay their eggs on horse hairs. When the larvae develop, they take up residence in the horse’s mouth, esophagus, and stomach. (http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/livestock/horse_bot_fly.htm ). Not all of these entries about horses were related to medicine, though. For example, one recipe is is titled: “Se tu fu voi che lo cavallo vinca lo corso delli altri.” (Rimedi Curiosi. c. 17th century. Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, Spec. Ms. 271, 9r.) 110 “A conosere quando un cavallo ha la febre secca,” Rimedi per Cavalli. c. 16th century. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 2v. 111 “Quando uno cavallo ha la febre secca, fa questo segnale. poco mangia e poco beve e sta quieto : per fin alli cinq. giorni non gli fare rimedio alcuno, poi va et provede.” Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms.125: 2v. 112 Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Vicenza, Ms. 125: 1r.

244 fast.”113 These recipes reveal the authors' belief that equine fevers and human fevers

originated from the same humoral bases of imbalances of heat and moisture. The

complex recipe that follows the fever information, “Remedy for horse fevers," which

covers more than an entire leaf of paper, is an indicator that animal medicine could be

just as complicated as human medicine.114

As in recipes for human medicine, veterinary cures often included provenance

information. Giordano Ruffo is an author who is regularly referenced in these manuscript

volumes. The Bertoliana manuscript, for example, contains a passage that reads, “This is the memory, that which Sir Ioanne made in the time of King Carlo Magno, Emperor,

[about how] Sir Giovanne knew the conditions of all of the fevers, and their warning signs, which occur in the bodies of horses and understood very well the things that can be done for opening parts.”115 A manuscript in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena (Lat 961/3

= alfa.U.5.26) has the same note.116 According the catalogue of Italian manuscripts at the

Regio Biblioteca Parigiana, which also has a manuscript with this passage, the section

113 “e che nasce allo vicino al cuore et batte forte il cuore dell cavallo.” Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 1v. 114 Rimedio per la febre del cavallo,” Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Vicenza, Ms. 125: 2r. 115 “Questa e la memoria, la quale messer Ioanne fece nel tempo del Re Carlo Mano imperatore il quale messer Giovanne sapea la conditione de tutte le febre et altre infirmita che occorreno nelli corpoi di cavalla et adverti et intende bene actio li possa [ad]operare ap.te per parte.” Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 1r 116 "Questa e la memoria la quale Meser Joanne fe nel tempo del / Re Carlo Magno Imperatore quale mes[?] Joanne fa peva / le conditione et tutte febre et altre infirmitate che se gene/rano he li corpi deli cavalli." Receptae. c. 16th century. Manuscript. Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Lat 961/3 = alfa.U.5.26: 115r.

245 represents a “vulgarization” of the work Hippiatria Jordani Ruffi Calabrensis.117

Giordano Ruffo (12th c.) was a farrier to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and

King of Sicily whose work on equine medicine was foundational in the medieval and

early modern period.118 Ruffo’s treatises on horse medicine, which circulated in

manuscript and printed form across Europe, was part of a long tradition in which

blacksmiths and farriers wrote about medical care of horses. The manuscript recipes and

the popularity of Ruffo’s work and others writings speak to the importance of horses in

the Italian peninsula during the medieval and early modern period.

It is hard to say whether authors copied Ruffo's work so frequently because it was

truly useful or because his name afforded some social cachet to the writer's volume, or

both. Other names appear in provenance notations on veterinary recipes, which is another link to recipes for human medicine. One recipe with provenance in the same veterinary section in Bertoliana ms. 125 is titled, “Medicine for the heads of horses made for the

Duke of Calabria."119 Another is titled, “Medicine to heal the warts of horses, made for

the Count of Altammilla."120 Another in the same section, titled "Against poison" was

"given by the Prince of Salerno," although it is unclear whom the recipe was meant to

117 Antonio Marsand, "7242. 20. Volgarizzamento del libro di Mascalcia, già composto da Giordano Ruffo," I manoscritti italiani della Regia Biblioteca Parigina 1, (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 864): 20-21. 118 Giuseppe Vatti, "Veterinaria," Enciclopedia Italiana (1937), in Treccani. Accessed 10 March 2018. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/veterinaria_%28Enciclopedia- Italiana%29/ 119 “Medicina di teste di cavallo fatta per il il Duca di Calabria.” Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 8v. 120 “Medicina per sanare porri del cavallo fatta per il Co. di. Altamilla.” Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 8v.

246 cure.121

Figure 21: Manuscript sketches of horses in Riccardiana Manuscript 3049, 13v-14r.

In addition to the rhetorical and theoretical similarities between human and animal medical recipes, these manuscript entries also beg investigation into the perceived boundaries between humans and animals and how medical writers represented them.

Wellcome ms 705, Libro dell’infermita dei cavalla: Delle cure de’ Bovi; et delle ricette per li homini et donne, is another manuscript that cites Giordano Ruffo and includes recipes that are meant for both horses and humans. For example: “To make a human or a

121 “Contra veneno … datta il Principe di Salerno,” Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 9v.

247 horse urinate,”122 “This [remedy] is good for a human or a horse that has bodily

pain,”123 “To stop bleeding in a human or a horse,”124 and “Unguent for itchiness for

people or animals.”125 Recipes in Biblioteca Bertoliana, Vicenza, ms. 125 include “To

kill pests on dogs or humans," and "to stop the bloodflow from a cut vein," which says "it

is good and has been tried on humans and beasts." 126 Recipes like “When a man or a

horse is wounded, say these words so that he will not feel anything on the wound," highlight both the perceived homologies between human and animal bodies, as well as the lingering believe in the power of words to cure some ailments.127 The remedy was also useful for horses when they were shod.

Recipes that cure both humans and animals are important because of the broader intellectual discourse at the time about what separated humans from animals.

Occasionally, some of the recipes offer adjusted instructions for treating humans or animals. For example, in the entry for pain in the bodies of humans and animals, the author indicates that the human should drink the concoction of various ingredients mixed

122 “A far pisciar una persona overo cavallo,” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Ms. 705: 39v. 123 “Questo è buono al homo et al cavallo quando han dolori in corpo,” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 33r. 124 “A stringer il sangue a una persona over cavallo,” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 40r. 125 “Ungento da rogna per le persone, et bestie, et e buono a traverse, a rape, crepacci et a ricciuoli,” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 3412. 126 “Per amazzare li vermin a cani o a homini,” (Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, ms. 125: 7v) and “A strengere il sangue a vena tagliata … e bono et e provato a homi et bestie.” Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 10r. 127 “Quando un homo o cavallo fusse ferito dirai queste parole che non ti senta alcuno sopra la ferita … E cossi anchora quando uno cavallo fusse inchiodato mettegli delle detto olio sopra la inchiodatura volte cinque direndo le sopradette parole e questi cose sono provate nello capo. delle re et altri lochi trei fiade." Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 4r.

248 into hot wine "in a warm bed, but you should have the horse drink it when it is covered with a warm woolen cloth.128 Similarly, in “To stop bleeding in a man or a horse," the human patient must say three pater nosters and three ave marias, but if an animal is bleeding, the reader is instructed to say the words over the wound.129 In entries such as the magical recipe “to make a person or a horse urinate,” authors offer the same advice for both humans and horses: Clean the space where the person or horse will be, then taking “blessed olive wood, and write on the right foot of the horse dinanzi giron, and on the left hoof, "dirieto fison"... and similarly do the same on the nails of the feet and hands of a person. Then toss the blessed wood in running water or into a well."130

Simply, where the words should be written on the horses hooves, the words should also be written on the person’s nails of the hands and feet. Like many manuscript recipes from this era, the entry “Unguent for itchiness on people or animals” does not offer any instructions for how to apply the unguent to the patient, either human or animal.131

128 “Questo e buono al homo et al cavallo quando han dolori in corpo. LXXVI. Togli gengevo, mirra, grana di lauro astrologia polverizata dragoni. una p. ciascheduno, et stempera co. vino caldo biancho et bevalo lhomo cosi caldo et stia i. letto caldo, et cosi dallo abere allo cavallo et stia cop.to coru. pa.no di lana caldo.” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 33r. 129 “A stringer il sangue a una persona over cavallo. CXXVIII. Se glie homo i.fermo, f ach. lui dica le parole sotto scritte… A stagniar il sa.gue al caval et no. si lassa ferrare CXXIX. Dic.t parole 3 volte allo vechio sta.cho.” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 40r. 130 “A far pisciar u.a p.sona o,vero cavallo. CXXVII. Prima fa ben spazar i. quell luogo dove sara la p.sona o, ver cavallo, et poi piglia del legno benedecto doliva, et scrivi i. sulpie destro del cavallo dinanzi biron i. sulpie sinistro dirieto fison, i. sullo pie sinistro, et i.na.zi sigris sullo pie diritto di drieto fu frates et similmente faccia alla piedi et mane di una p.sona alle u.gne et poi si butta quell legno i. aqua corrente o,ver nm[?] pozo.” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 39v-40r. 131 "Unguento da rogna p. le p.sone, et bestie," Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 54r. Rogna today translates to mange or scabies, but Florio translates it

249 Another, titled “There is a sickness that horses get where they throw themselves onto the ground because of hairy worms in their bodies,” describes the how horses could be affected by the same parasites that invaded human bodies: “There is a sickness in horses caused by black, hairy worms, and sometimes those long ones that humans have in their bodies, which go into the heart of the horse."132 Given the economic importance of horses as well as the dramatic symptoms that some illnesses, like these "black, hairy worms," caused in their hosts, it makes sense that some early modern manuscript recipe authors included recipes such as these. Like maintaining beauty standards, as discussed above, and the cleanliness of the household, discussed below, caring for animals was a normal part of everyday life for many people.

It should not be surprising that it is not always clear whether a recipe was intended for a human or animal patient. For example, the author of the recipe titled

“Bestia to make it swell” (which also include directions on how to cure the swelling) does not elaborate on whether this recipe should be for humans or animals.133 Given the translation of the word bestia in this period - Florio translates “bestia” as “any kind of beast. Also a mans privie parts. Also a buls pizell” – as well as the presence of these other as “any kind of scab, itch, scurffe, tetter, or scabbednesse.” (Florio, "Rogna," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 450. He translates Crepaccii as “The scratchets, cratches, or rats-tails in a horse, some horsemen say they are little chaps or rifts about the coronets of the horses hoofe” (Florio, "Crepacci," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 130) and Ricciuoli as “a kind of disease about a horses legges.” (Florio, "Ricciuoli," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 434) 132 “Viene una infirmita al cavallo che si butta per terra per caso di vermin pilosi che ha in corpo... Viene una infirmina al cavallo per caso di vermi nigri pilosi et alcuna volta di quelli luoghi che ha in corpo l’homo si q.li vermi vanno al quore dello cavallo….” Libro dell'Infirmita dei Cavalli, Wellcome Library, Ms. 705: 33r. 133 "Bestia à farla gomfiare." Secreti Utili e Curiosi. c. Middle 17th Century. Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 67.

250 widely-circulating recipes for humans and animals, it seems plausible that the author

and readers of this manuscript would not have been troubled by the lack of distinction.134

This is an important point to emphasize when considering the utility of including these veterinary recipes in the scope of human medicine from this period: it is clear that at least for sixteenth century authors of Italian manuscripts, the boundaries between humans and animals were flexible, and medicines for one could occasionally easily treat the other.

These veterinary entries also reveal information about the kinds of things that writers and readers were interested in doing with or alongside fauna. Readers of early

modern manuscript recipe books are familiar with the constant presence of recipes dealing with rabies. It is likely that rabies was not actually rampant amongst these communities, but rather that it was a disease that was extremely concerning because it could not be cured, and a death from rabies is strikingly horrific. Although most manuscript authors focused on how to cure humans with rabies, the author of Bertoliana ms. 125 was interested in curing dogs that had the disease. 135 Since the author also

included remedies for dogs that were “wrathful and scabby,” and for dogs that have lice,

we can assume that this author and his readers interacted with dogs regularly enough that

they would want to cure them of not only their everyday ills, but would want to save

them from fearsome diseases that also affected their owners and communities.136

Like the recipes dealing with horses, cows, and dogs, entries like “Che un porco

134 Florio, "Bestia," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 60. 135 "Medicina p. cani morduti de rabia," Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 1r. 136 "Per cani stizzoli et rognosi," and "Per li cani ch. han.o li pulci p. amazzarli ch. no. tornan.o." Rimedi per Cavalli. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 1r.

251 seguiti l’huomo,” highlight the practical uses of working animals in agricultural life.137 Considering the importance of pigs in hunting truffles, or perhaps just the ease of control if a pig simply follows its owner around, it makes sense to want to have a pig follow a human like a dog might. Since the recipe simply instructs the reader to feed the liver of a mouse to the pig, this is a recipe that might have been useful and accessible to early moderns. Other entries are more clearly connected to agricultural production, for

example fattening cows and chickens.138 One recipe, “to geld animals

without iron,” would have been a practical piece of information for

people who owned animals that needed to be castrated.139

Some entries related to animals fall more into the category of

mischief rather than veterinary medicine. Readers in sixteenth-century

Italy cultivated a passion for secrets, and these manuscript entries

often reflect human-animal relationships. Authors such as Alexis of Figure 22: Image of a "serpent" next to a Piedmont asserted that they revealed information that was important recipe forgetting rid of serpents or other animals inside of and practical for a huge variety of issues and situations, so it is not the body. Gasparo di Cagali, Libro di surprising to see them in domestic manuals. These books, which look Ricette Medicinali (1529). Wellcome manuscript 174. very much like recipe books, dealt with many of the same medical 37r. issues that have already been discussed in previous chapters. In

137 “Che un porco seguiti l’huomo,” Rimedi per Cavalli, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Ms. 125: 20. 138 “Per far li bovi grassi con pochissa spes. del istesso” (Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 44). “Per ingrassare assass. li caponi e galine” (Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 4901) 139 "Animale a castrarlo senza ferro” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 72.

252 addition, they contained advice for how to do more mysterious tasks for nefarious, honorable, and sometimes confusing purposes.140 Recipes such as “To make it so that birds of every sort are born completely white,"141 "doves which go away and then come back,"142 and "so dogs will not bark at you,"” fit into this culture of secrets. 143 Recipes such as walking past a dog without it barking give modern readers the impression of thieves sneaking past guard dogs. Two entries in a manuscript in the Estense library in

Modena also could be categorized as “secrets” since they deal with ways of controlling wolves and foxes. “Wonderful secret that has been proven to make foxes and wolves go where you wish," and, "To catch foxes and wolves, a proven thing," reveal moments in which humans dealt with less friendly animals than the usual horses and cows.144 It is not clear whether this snake wax secret for making a room appear as if it is full of snakes was simply a joke or had another purpose: “To make it seem like a room is full if snakes. Kill a snake and put it in a pot with new wax on a fire to dissolve it such that it is well dry, and then with the wax make a candle, and at night light it in a room and it will appear as though the room is full of thousands of snakes."145 All of these entries, however

140 Insignificant for this section, but still interesting is a recipe for making a man disappear and then reappear. Find that recipe, insert better reference. 141 “A far che gli ucelli di qual si voglia sorte nascano tutti bianchi,” Cortese. Secreti Diversi.... Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 12. Another recipe for the same result is in Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 5. 142 "Colombi che vadino et ritornino," Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 35. 143 “Che un cane non t’abai," Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 20. 144 “Secreto bellissima et provato per far venire volpe et lupi dove vorai” and “Per pigliar lupi e volpi cosa provata,” Secreti, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It 111 = alfa.S.6.6: 22. 145 "A far parere una camera piena di serpi. Uccidi un serpe e mettilo in una pignatta con cera nova al fuoco a disfarli tanto che sia ben secca e poi con la detta cera fa una candela

253 mysterious their purposes were, give modern readers a sneak peak into the fears and aspirations of people in this era.

Entries in manuscript recipe books dealing with animals thus reveal the complicated ways in which humans and animals interacted in the long-sixteenth century.

Although they are clearly not all encompassing of those relationships, they highlight some interesting features of those interactions. Medical recipes for animals emphasize the importance of animals – especially horses– for early moderns. Although an emotional connection is not explicitly evident in the recipes, it is clear that the authors paid significant attention to their animals and afforded a lot of effort to keeping them healthy and comfortable. The medical recipes that offer one cure to both man and beast are even more interesting because they further emphasize the close physical connection in this period between humans and animals. Although Christian theology and natural philosophy had clear opinions about the separation between humans and animals, manuscript entries like the ones detailed above highlight areas in which those discussions were not present, or were not as important. The culture of secrets that appears in manuscript recipe books underlines the different kinds of interactions between humans and animals, such as entertainment, ceremony, agriculture, and mischief.

Recipes for Comfortable Living and Entertainment

e la sera allumala in una camera e parera che in quella camera siano migliaia di serpi." Cortese, Secreti Diversi.... Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 55. Snakes and other household pests are discussed in further depth below.

254 Entries on solving household problems abound in manuscript recipe books, which contribute to giving depth to our modern understanding of the kinds of issues that early moderns cared about and were adept at handling. Many important studies of early modern artifacts and inventories have revealed the kinds of materials that people lived with. Inventories provide details about economic resources, markers of status, and the ways that people decided how to distribute their possessions amongst younger generations. These documents are less useful, however, in terms of understanding how household materials were made and cared for. Inventories and artifacts are also typically reflective of upper-class families, giving a very good picture of the upper ranks of

society, but not adding much to scholarly knowledge of the materials of ordinary households. Analysis of manuscript recipe books can fill in this gap, so this section is dedicated to the details of sixteenth-century authors’ domiciles that are reflected in their recipe books.

This final section aims to address the deceptively simple questions, “what did people own and what did they do with those things?” The recipes under consideration are not directed toward individuals, whether human or beast, but toward spaces and activities: recipes for getting rid of bedbugs, making reflective windows and soap, for making dyes and invisible ink, and for caring for armor. The individual concerns of authors and readers of these volumes are, then, useful additional pieces of information in the context of the overall material culture of early modern northern and central Italy. As will become clear, just as these lay writers had aspirations to have beautiful hair and skin, they also wanted to own finely dyed clothing and shining armor, and care for it well. By threading these disparate topics together with discussions of economics and self-

255 presentation, the manuscripts show the ways that writers negotiated cost concerns and object maintenance.

From making soap to cleaning fabric, early modern manuscript recipe authors

were invested in maintaining an image and feeling of cleanliness on their person and in

the spaces they cared for and lived in. According to Douglas Biow, “the Italian

Renaissance witnessed a broad-based concern with the topic of cleanliness and that, above all, the Italian Renaissance contributed to a significantly varied treatment of the

topic as well as a form of cultural and artistic expression.”146 Biow also asserts, “a clean

household bespoke a clear understanding of purpose and place. It was a mark of

legitimacy: you were the right person for the right household in the right spot at the right

moment.”147 The many recipes for cleaning fabrics and getting rid of household pests,

then, speak to the importance of presenting a spotless, comfortable self and home.

As mentioned above, estate and household inventories have been helpful documents for historians studying questions of material culture, economics, and gender in the early modern period. Typically written at the death of an estate owner or upon the dissolution of a household, these inventories list the kinds of objects around and with which early moderns made their lives.148 However, they "tend to minimize the apparent

importance of textiles in Renaissance interiors, because … the textiles are carefully

folded and put away, making it even harder for historians to imagine just how and when

146 Douglas Biow, The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006): 30. 147 Biow, The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy. 66. 148 An interesting inventory is that of Lorenzo di Medici: Richard Stapleford (ed. & trans.), Lorenzo de' Medici at Home: The Inventoryof the Palazzo Medici in 1492, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2013).

256 they were being used, and what they looked like."149 Additionally, inventories may

not mention the kind of wear that textiles were exposed to, or discuss the kinds of

unwelcome visitors that lived alongside people. Manuscript entries that discuss textiles,

cleaning agents, and pesticides show how early moderns interacted with the objects in

their environment.

Fabric was readily visible as clothing, bed linens, carpets, and table coverings, so

clean fabric likely presented the household and the individual in a positive, legitimate

light. Although rich fabrics may have been more impressive, "clothing was valued

property… even at the humblest levels of society... These items, though less valuable

than land tracts, buildings, or large sums of money, gave poorer women some financial

security beyond their modest wages."150 Since, for example, "'a grand lady’s clothes,

along with the jewelry she was wearing, would usually be the most expensive and

striking items in any room she occupied,'" the cleanliness of clothing and other fabrics

would have been essential to presenting a positive image.151 Clothing was an essential

component of society in Renaissance Italy, for both women and men. According to

Elizabeth Currie, "Different sartorial rules governed the social scenarios that courtiers operated in, and when used successfully, dress could assert gender and power, unite

149 Alison A. Smith, "Gender, ownership and domestic space: inventories and family archives in Renaissance Verona,” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 382. 150 Monica Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001): 46. 151 Thornton in Alison A. Smith, "Gender, ownership and domestic space: inventories and family archives in Renaissance Verona,” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 382. Also see Robert Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze, 1540-1580: Cosimo I de' Medici's Style (Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa, 2011); Joyce De Vries, Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Surry: Ashgate, 2010).

257 families, and forge reputations."152 Regional contexts supply additional information about the meaning of textiles and clothing. Florence, for example, "had long been famed for its wool and silk-weaving industries, which were vital elements for its economic prosperity, and Florentine textiles were an important symbol of local identity."153

According to Peter Thornton, there were three main, general words for "cloth":

Tela, drappo and panno. Tela was usually employed in reference to linen cloth and to canvas, ticking and that general class. This is a fairly sure guide if it appears in a description (e.g. Tela di renso was a linen cloth from Rheims). Drappo was much vaguer; it might be used for a silken material but some fine woolen materials were probably also embraced by this term. Panno was often used in connection with woolen cloth but a linen might be called a panno lino.154

Fabric would have been abundant in the early modern household. Clothing, bed linens

and drapes, window coverings, carpets, and table linens were common to most people,

aside from the very poor. Although terminology for specific types of silks, tapestries, and

other kinds of fabric is abundant in the Italian language at this point, the majority of

entries in manuscript recipe books use these three general terms when discussing

conserving fabric from insects or stains. Some recipes in the manuscripts emphasize the

general nature of the term "panno." One recipe, for example, is meant to "to remove ink

152 Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016): 3. 153 Elizabeth Currie, "Clothing and a Florentine Style, 1550-1620," Renaissance Studies 2008: 49. 154 Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600, (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1991): 69.

258 marks from every panno, except white,"155 which emphasizes that the recipe could

take away marks from every piece of cloth.156

This is not to say, however, that the people who wrote and read these manuscripts

only had cheap fabric. Although a few recipes would confirm Thornton’s assertion that

the words tela, drappo, and panno are essentially general categories that encompassed

basic, mostly inexpensive fabrics, this assertion is troubled somewhat by the descriptions

of fabrics in the recipes themselves. One entry in Wellcome Library manuscript 739 titled

"Macchie da oglio o grasso" points out some specifics about a variety of fabrics. The first section of recommendations is for green fabric. The recipe then goes on to offer advice for fabric of "any other type." The entry goes on to say, "For oil marks in panno of silk, wool, or tela dyed with grana (a red dye), and zendado rosso (taffeta sarcenet)…"157 In this case, panno and tela both diverge from Thornton’s description and encompass much finer fabrics made from silk.

Additionally, grana was a red dye derived from a Mediterranean species of cochineal, the prized Mexican insect that was responsible for bright red dyes that fixed very well onto fabrics. Although it was "half as expensive as kermes [chermisi]," it was

155 “Cavar macchie d’inchiostro d’ogni panno, eccetto bianco,” Cortese, Isabella, and others. Secreti Diversi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 215: 15. 156 That later marginalia indicates that this recipe is “not true” is perhaps not surprising, given the variety of composition of both ink and fabric-types in this period. 157 "Macchie da Oglio, ò grasso. Se il panno è verdi piglia greppola pista, et mescola con lisciva[?] chiara, et lava la macchia. Se d'altra sorte piglia herba soponando[?] et [?] copra la macchia, et lasciala seccare, poi lava con acqua calda. Ancora piglia chiara d'ovo et mescola con mele et poni sopra ogni machia che la leva... A macchia da oglio in panno di seta, lana, ò tala fuor di alla grana, et zendado rosso..." Secreti Utili e Curiosi. Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 56-57. Sarcenet is today defined as a thin, fine silk.

259 the "second most prized red" dye.158 In a manuscript in the civic library of Padua

there is a recipe titled, "To take marks out of linen or wool cloth for every reason, or of

grana or of chermisi."159 Kermes, "the desiccated bodies of a species of kermes shield

louse, probably Porphyrophora hameli" mentioned above, was the "in the fifteenth

century, highest quality and most intense dyestuff for crimson red… [it was] never

wasted on inferior cloth, being used in Florence for silk velvets."160 Although it may have

been less expensive by the sixteenth century when this manuscript was written, kermes

was an important, costly dye. It is clear from these manuscripts, then, that individual

authors recorded household advice that worked best for their purposes, problematizing assertions of trends recorded in modern scholarship.

Entries in other manuscripts reveal other types of cloth that authors needed to deal with. The second part of the recipe “To lift marks of every sort” in ms. A.13 in Padua’s

Civic Library says, "From then, when you want to use this recipe on plain fabric or

damasks ... or other fabrics without a high pile, take the part of the fabric where the mark

is and put it on a sunny table and put the abovementioned powder on the mark. Let it lay

158 Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, 102. 159 "Da levare machie di panno o drappo a tirarre nuota di panno lano odi seta dogni ragione o di grana o di chermisi o altro," Ricettario, c. 16th century. Biblioteca Civica, Padova, ms.A.13, 89v. 160 Caroline Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, 101-102. Other entries on fabric emphasize the importance of maintaining a cloth’s color. For example, one recipe finishes by saying that at the end of the cleaning the process, the cloth will “return to be white like flour.” (Ricettario, Biblioteca Civica, Padova, ms.A.13: 88v.)

260 in the sun for three or four hours, and the mark will go away."161 The entry goes on to

detail how to adapt the recipe to fabrics with longer piles. Silk damask was "somewhat

higher up on the cost-scale than satin… the figure is produced by the contrast of satin

with the reverse of satin weave. Silk damask came primarily from Venice and Genoa… it

was not until the sixteenth century that it came into wide use in the furnishing field."162 In terms of the different types of fabrics that would have shorter or longer piles, it is not clear if these refer to simple taffeta and carpets, or more luxurious fabrics like velvet.163

Another example of a recipe about drappi, which translates today as drapes and Florio

defines as "any manner of clothes [cloth]. Also vestements, apparel or attires," is in

Wellcome ms. 739: "Cera a levarla da drappi."164 Unfortunately, this recipe simply says

to "wet the area with acqua vita until [the wax] falls off," not specifying the types of

fabrics the recipe should be used with. There are two additional recipes “to lift marks

from silk,” in Wellcome 739, although the silk type is not specified.165

161 “A levare machie dogni sorta... Di poi quando la voi adoperare circha arasi (plain / shaven) o domaschi (damasks) e pochato che non abi pelo e altri drappi sanza pelo piglia detto drapo dove e la machia e mettilo in suruna tavola piana al sole che l’abbi bene e metti di detta pluere sopra alla macchia e lascia la stare al sole inispazio di 3 e 4 ore sara ita via…” Ricettario. Biblioteca Civica, Padova, ms.A.13: 88v. 162 Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600, 70. This manuscript author, whose volume is part of the collection of the civic library of Padua, likely lived near Padua which was in the sixteenth century part of the Venetian republic. 163 It is worth pointing out that Thornton’s categorization of basic textile terminology is quite useful but does not fit in all cases, as with the silk panno, which he says panno is either wool or linen. This confusion of terminology is, however, typical of the premodern period. 164 “Cera a levarla da drappi.” Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 29. 165 "A levar le Macchie dalla Seta," (7-8) and "A levar macchie d'ogni sorte sù seta," (21). Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739.

261 In addition to the oil and fat stains and wax in the entries mentioned above,

the recipes around the above-mentioned recipe dealing with damask reveal other kinds of

wear and tear that authors were concerned about. Aside from the general recipes to get rid

of general marks, there are a few entries that are more specific. One, for example, is

meant to get tar out of cloth. Another is good for getting rid of “blots from oil, grease,

sweat, or wine, or other marks.166 Another is meant “to draw out oil, grease, filth, [and]

sweat.”167 Unsurprisingly in some ways, early moderns were generally concerned with

cleaning the same kinds of marks out of their fabrics that people are today.

The language that manuscript authors use to describe their textiles provides an

interesting point at which to pause and consider both the economic and social status of the authors and readers as well as recipe books as a genre and their place in the social positioning of early moderns. Scholarship on inventories and other archival evidence of the textiles of the nobility use many specific terms for different types of fabric that do not appear in these manuscripts.168 This may be an important indication that the authors of

these manuscripts were not members of households or communities that reached that

level of economic and social power that members of the nobility did, at which they were

required by custom to dress in more elaborate costumes of "satin, taffeta, and

sarcenet."169 Authors and readers did, however, provide other signs that they had

166 "A levare machie dogni sorta. A levare nuota dolio sevo sudore o vino o alte machie sudore di bestia," Ricettario, Biblioteca Civica, Padova, ms.A.13: 88v. 167 "A cavare olio sevo sudiciume sudore e sia di che sorte si vuole," Ricettario, Biblioteca Civica, Padova, ms.A.13: 89r. 168 See, for example, Elizabeth Currie, "Clothing and a Florentine Style, 1550-1620," Renaissance Studies 2008: 33-52. 169 Currie, "Clothing and a Florentine Style, 1550-1620," Renaissance Studies 2008: 51.

262 expensive silks and damasks in recipe entries. Instead, this disconnect between the

language of inventories and recipe books is a signal of the different spaces that

inventories and recipe books occupied. Although healers used recipe books to present

themselves as authoritative and trustworthy in the medical marketplace, these volumes

seem not to have been used as evidence of economic and social standing in the same way.

Where volumes could at once be used as a presentation of self to a public audience, they

could also simply be private reference volumes.

Alongside the general

cleanliness of textiles, vermin

were greatly concerning to

sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century manuscript authors.

There are a few recipes for

dealing with insects in the

context of fabrics. For example,

Figure 23: Upupa in Konrad Gesner, Historiae Animalium, vol. 1 one entry to "preserve clothes (Tiguri: C. Froschoverum, 1551): 703. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine. or other fabrics from tarmei," suggests taking, “one or two citreni (probably citrons) and putting them in the “cloth chest and no vermin will ever eat them.” The entry advises that some assenso

(wormwood or incense) will also discourage animals from chewing on the fabric.170

170 "A conservar li vestimenti o altri Panni dalle Tarmei. Piglia uno o due citreni, e mettili in la cassa delli panni e mai non si guasteranno di nissun vermi, e fara la vestimenta

263 Aside from these, though, indications of insects and other unwelcome guests appear more in the context of spaces rather than specific materials.

As Lucinda Cole points out in the introduction to her 2016 Imperfect Creatures, vermin were associated with nearly all aspects of premodern life, from health to agriculture.171 The number of words that authors use to describe these unwelcome guests speaks to both their frequency as well as the amount of attention writers gave to getting rid of them. Among these invaders were Pulesi / pulci (flea), zinzale (mosquito), mosche

(fly), cimesi (lice), lendene (nits), tarmei (moth), ratti (rat or mouse), ragni (spider), and scorpioni (scorpion). Apparently fleas, mosquitos, flies, and lice (and their nits) were all of concern in bedrooms since one recipe calls for a mixture of salvia, oil, vinegar, and sulfur to be placed in a corner near the bed – when the bugs go to this mixture, they are thus killed.172 As with the recipe above for preserving clothing from moths, another recipe to kill lice calls for wormwood with white hellebore. It is questionable whether a recipe that called for burning the feathers of a hoopoe actually managed to prevent mice or rats, spiders, and scorpions from entering a room.173 Since hoopoes eat a diet of

odorifere. Ancora metti lo assenso in la cassa e niuno animale ti potrà guastare li panni dentro." Rimedi Curiosi, Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, Spec. Ms. 271: 10r. 171 Cole, Lucinda, Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1740, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 172 “A caccia via pulesi, zinzale, mosche, cimesi, e lendene. Piglia salvia pesta e messed con oglio e aceto e onzi. Ancora piglia plover di solfero e fa bollir con aqua, e gittela dove sone le cimesi e tutti morirano e se di quest’aqua ne metti in una cantone appresso al letto tutti li cimesi andranno la a morire.” Rimedi Curiosi. Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, Spec. Ms. 271: 10r. 173 "A mandar via mosche, ragni, scorpioni, et altri animali di casa. Piglia penne d'upupa, e brusiale nella camera, e come questi animali sentono p.to odore, se ne va.no e no. tornano piu, et e provato." Cortese, Secreti Diversi...., Wellcome Library, Ms. 215, 59.

264 insects, it is possible that the author had heard that the pests would be afraid of the burning hoopoe feathers and avoid the room.174

Aside from the basics of ensuring a clean and tidy household, the manuscript

entries reveal other concerns that people had about maintaining an appropriate living

space. Although there is only one recipe that

mentions something about lighting, it is

interesting to consider here since it may

reveal something about the economics of the

author. By the fifteenth century, windows

were a regular feature in Italian buildings. In

the fourteenth century and onward many were

fitted with glazed windows, which were made

from round pieces of glass (occhi) held

together with lead, with the spaces between

175 Figure 24: Image of a dissection featuring a the rounds filled in with more glass. Even window made of occhi. Johannes Ketham, Fasiculus Medicie, 1522. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, University of with abundant windows, lighting in was Minnesota. households was, of course, subject entirely to

the sun, candles or fires, and reflective surfaces. When the sun went down, reflective

174 "Hoopoe," The New Encyclopedia of Birds, edited by Christopher Perrins (2007). Accessed 1 March 2018, http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198525066.001.0001/acref- 9780198525066-e-70?rskey=qPXykT&result=1 175 Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600, 27. One of the few references to glass in the manuscripts is a recipe to make it hard, but says nothing about what the glass might be for. ("Vetro a farlo duro," Secreti Utili e Curiosi. Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 34.)

265 surfaces did important work to increase the amount of light in living spaces. This is one reason why gilding was so popular in early modern spaces, as well as mirrors of highly polished metal and, eventually, glass. It is perhaps for this reason that the monk- author of Wellcome ms. 690 included a recipe “for making windows of luminous paper.”

The recipe featured clear flax oil, clear Greek pitch, and clear alum rock. Combining the ingredients over a fire and covering the paper with the mixture apparently would transform a piece of paper into a kind of reflective “window.” The recipe adds that, if you happen to want to do this with cloth, you can add “seno di castrato. You can also use clear nut oil.”176

Another relatively small group of household-type recipe that may be surprising to the modern reader is related to the maintenance of armor, weapons, and irons.

Considering that we have little to no information about the economic or social status of the authors of these volumes, it is difficult to say whether they would have been wealthy enough to own armor. Recent scholarship on armor in Italy, however, has argued that armor was accessible to a large range of the population, and given the fact that these authors were obviously literate, it is reasonable to assume that armor would not have been an uncommon item to own for those who were writing and reading these manuscripts. Although none of the armor or weapon recipes reach a level of complexity to indicate that the authors themselves were making armor (there are, for example, no recipes on how to shape breastplates or to make filigree decorations for sword hilts), the

176 "Per far Finestre di Carta Lustre... seno di castrato. Si puol anco adoprare l’oglio di noce, qual sia chiaro." da Rimino. Manuscript Recipe Book. Wellcome Library, Ms. 690: 18r.

266 entries are useful for considering how those who owned armor cared for and

reinvigorated it.

In Wellcome ms 739, for example, recipes for armor and weapons include two

entries for “weapons that stay lustrous,” “impenetrable armor,” and “weapons that do not

rust.”177 The recipe for Armatura impenitrabile” reads: “You can temper arms with a

mixture of 4 ounces of fish glue and 1 ounce of mastic distemper.”178 Interestingly, there

is also a recipe for “secret gunpowder” in this manuscript, as well as an entry for how to

“How to shoot a gun without a sign: "[take] iron sulfate and boil it in water in a copper

caldaretta. Make it froth and then mix in mercury. And with that [you can] make a bullet

that when [shot] from a gun will go right through a human without signaling anyone,

neither will it make a sign on cloth nor on flesh." 179 Another manuscript has a recipe "to corrode iron" that promises to take iron and "corrode it and make it into pieces in 15 or

20 days with miraculous experience."180

Weapons and armor are not the only aspects of metal working that appear in lay

manuscript recipe books. Recipes for a “tempering for iron that works porphido,” and

“miraculous temper for iron,” suggest that early moderns occasionally tried to re-

177 Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: "Armi che stiano lustri," 3, "Armi che stiano lustri," 16, "Armatura impenetrabile," 6, and "Armi che non irruginiscano," 17. 178 "On. 4 di colla di pesce, on. 1. di mastic distemperata insieme con questa componitione tempera l’armi," Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: 6. 179 Secreti Utili e Curiosi, Wellcome Library, Ms. 739: "Polve d'Arcobuggio secreta," 9 & “A tirare un Arcobuggiata senza segno. Vitriolo romano et fallo boillire in una caldaretta di rame in acqua et farai schiuma nella quale inforporerai dentro mercurio, et ne farai una palla he posta nell’ arcobuggio pallera un huomo a traverse senza segno nesuno ne anco nelli panni non che nella carne.” 37. 180 "Per Corodere il Ferro... la quale gli corode et spezza in xv o xx di con mirabile esperienza." Ricettario, Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Ms. It. III = alfa.s.6.6: 11.

267 invigorate the protective abilities of armor and / or strength of metals without the

help of trained armorers or blacksmiths.181 Porphyry, a very hard, purple, igneous stone

with strong classical connotations, was an important and valuable material that was

incorporated into early modern monuments across Italy. In 1567, the book L’architettura

di Pietro Catano senese described porphyry as follows:

There is also the marble Porphirirri, as it was called by the ancients, and today we use the name Porphido since it is perfidious [and] resists iron, since it is harder than every other stone: This we also call Leucostyco: and it is red, spotted, or splattered very lightly with white.182

Because of the difficulty of working porphyry, Butters notes that “Renaissance craftsmen

who tried to carve porphyry with steel tools were working at the very limits of what was

physically possible,” sculptors experimented with new methods of tempering steel so that

their tools would stand up to the hard stone better and so they would be able to make

finer carvings.183 Giorgio Vasari wrote in the mid-sixteenth century about the new method of tempering steel developed in Cosimo de Medici’s workshop:184

181 Secreti di Varie Sorti, Wellcome Library, Ms. 738: 52v. 182 "Ci sono ancora i marmi Porphirirri, cosi detti da gli antichi: & hoggi ancora si riservano il nome di Porphido, come perfidioso di resistere al ferro, per essere d’ogn’altra pietra piu duro: il quale ancora fu chiamato Leucostyco: & è ross, punteggiato, o schizzato mutissimamente di bianco." Pietro Cataneo Manuzio. I Quattro Primi Libri di Architettura di Pietro Catano Senese…(Vinegia: In casa de' figliuoli di Aldo, 1567): Libro Secondo, Cap. II. 183 Suzanne Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors’ Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996: 161. 184 Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose, ed. G. Baldwin Brown. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960): 26-23. See also G. Baldwin Brown, "Notes on 'Introduction' to Architecture," in Vasari on Technique, 101-102, 110-115; Suzanne Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors’ Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996: 149.

268 In the year 1555 Duke Cosimo, wishing to erect a fountain of remarkable beauty in the court of his principal palace in Florence... ordered a basin with its pedestal to be made for the said fountain from some large pieces of porphyry found among broken fragments. To make the working of it more easy to the master, he caused an extract to be distilled from an herb... and this extract had such virtue, that red-hot tools when plunged into it acquired the hardest possible temper.185'

Before the new porphyry tool temper, early modern sculptors could only “saw drums of

columns into slices, and cut other pieces to be arranged in patterns for floors.”186 The

discovery of this new temper allowed artists to make finer pieces, like Tadda’s portrait of

Duke Cosimo. Given the popularity of porphyry and the excitement of being able to

sculpt it with more precision, it is not surprising that the new temper was advertised

around the peninsula, prompting other writers to record how it came into being.187 The recipe in Wellcome ms. 738 says,

Temper for iron for working porphyry

Rx. Make juice from vermi [worms or vermin] that hide in nets: Make juice [also] from radish roots: and make juice from leek hairs: and mix everything together, and in this liquid temper the iron and it will be very strong. 188

According to Butters, Cardano, Aldrovandi, and Cesalpinus all refer to tempering steel

with a combination of “ground earthworms and radish juice” with dates ranging from

1550 to 1605.189 Although this recipe is not the infamous formula developed in the

185 Vasari, Vasari on Technique, 32. 186 Vasari, Vasari on Technique, 29. 187 Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan, 150-1. 188 "Tempera per ferro che lavori porphido. di vermi che naschano intrambe neti e trane sugo: radice di raffano: e barbe de pori e trane sugo: e messeda ogni cossa insieme: et in tale liquore tempera il ferro: & sera fortissimo." Secreti di Varie Sorti. Wellcome Library, Ms. 738: 52v. 189 Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan, 167.

269 Medici workshop, its presence in a general manuscript recipe volume reflects the

wide-ranging interest that sixteenth-century writers had in solving the problem of working with porphyry.

In addition to strengthening iron of various sorts for various purposes, the recipes above are followed by recipes to “make an aqua forte to break a large ferro” and “to

temper iron that cuts another [iron].”190 As Suzanne Butters explains, “the smith observed

that… the same steel, heated to the same colour, assumed quite different properties

depending on whether it was plunged into rainwater, olive oil, a mixture of ground

earthworms and radish juice, mercury, ‘the distilled water of a Turd’ or the white liquid

byproduct of soapy water mixed with the dung of an herbivorous ox.”191

Recipes for tempering metals in the manuscripts under investigation here present

a problem, however, for this secondary literature. Butters asserts that “The Florentine

Ricettari demonstrate by omission… that ‘tempering’ was not a service expected of the

apothecary.”192 These manuscript recipe books included recipes for items and problems

that the medical community was not officially expected to deal with, including tempering

metals for various and unspecified reasons, again emphasizing the assortment of subjects

that early modern lay authors considered alongside their medical cures.

Who would have had armor in this period? According to Thornton, “By and

large… Italians did not spend much money on what one modern authority has called

190 Secreti di Varie Sorti. Manuscript. c. 1500. From the Wellcome Library, Ms. 738: 53r- v. Florio translates “ferro” as “the mettal iron. Also any iron toole. Also a horse shooe.” (Florio, "Ferro," Queen Anna's New World of Words, 185) 191 Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan, 167. 192 Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan, 222.

270 ‘ostentatious military gear’ and references to arms and armour do not loom large in

Italian domestic inventories of the period.”193 Aside from military purposes, weapons and

armor were used in ceremonial, recreational (e.g. jousting) or hunting situations.194 As

Thornton points out, however, the majority of these inventories under study have been

from very wealthy households, so it is not clear whether more basic armor would have

been present in other kinds of households. These armor recipes could also be an example

of a case where an author wanted to have a recipe for something that was interesting

rather than overtly useful. Although, as Amanda Taylor points out, "the average reader in

the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would likely have a working knowledge of

armor," the average reader may not have regularly taken on the task of fixing or

amending his or her armor.195 The recipes for tempering what would essentially have

been sculptors tools in Wellcome ms. 738 are somewhat more confusing in this context since sculpture was not only a specialized vocation, but working with materials like porphyry would likely have been only accessible to specialists. Probably written in the early sixteenth century, this manuscript covers topics that range from medicines and cosmetics to varnishes and inks, once again emphasizing how specialized practices very often existed alongside each other within this manuscript genre.

Conclusions

193 Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 269. 194 Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 269. 195 Amanda Taylor, Fabricating the Martial Body: Anatomy, Affect, and Armor in Early Modern England and Italy (Ph.D. Diss, University of Minnesota, 2017): 189-190.

271 Exploring the diversity of topics addressed in manuscript recipe books

contributes to the contextualization of the way early modern people moved through life

attempting to make their lives easier and more efficient. Understanding the kinds of

problems that early moderns encountered, wanted to solve, and thought they could solve

reveals the atmosphere of their lives. These manuscripts make it clear that from dealing

with bodily ailments and controlling diets, to curing their animals and keeping their

homes clean, the act of making was integral to the everyday lived experience of

sixteenth-century Italians.

I also consider recipe books as evidence of the tenuous nature of early

professionalization efforts of various professions, such as physicians, veterinarians, and

artists, all of whom could have been part of the guild structure that drove the economy

and controlled the quality of goods and services provided in early Italian communities.

Manuscripts like these are further evidence that people did not have a single profession in

this period. More importantly, it also shows that amateurism was widespread and that

self-sufficiency was a necessary and expected part of everyday life. Although individuals

may have identified with a profession, they performed many tasks that belonged to other professions. A small manuscript in the Modena state archives is a good example of this.

Dated in the mid-16th century, the author titled the work "Miniere Diverse." Filled primarily with alchemical recipes - such as "To draw gold from copper. Work from a

Figure of Courage in the year 1574"196 - instructions for making paints and other colors, and medical recipes, the author also included recipes to make "Castagnole d'amandole,

196 "Per cavare oro da rame. Opera d' un figura di coreggio l'anno 1574." Miniere Diverse, Manuscript recipe book in "Medici e Medicina 13," Archivio di Stato di Modena: 16r.

272 like they have in Brescia." and instructions for "a way to make the susamelli dough

like the R. monks of the Corporazioni divini of Bologna."197 Tucked between practical

and highly technical recipes, these recipe for pastries represent the diversity of

information contained in these volumes.

This type of study is useful because it allows us to recognize that the clean lines

of advancement described in intellectual histories of medicine and science were much

more messy on the ground, that there was a constant mixing of information and goods

and people and a fermentation of practices that operated regardless of the strictures put in

place by governments and recommended by professionals. As textual representations of

the ways that early modern writers made diverse products, manuscript recipe books

highlight the ways medical, veterinary, culinary, artistic, and household knowledge was

embodied knowledge that overlapped and interacted in fundamental ways.

197 "Modo di fare le castagnole d'amandole, come usano in Brescia," and "Modo di fare la pasta di susamelli, come facino le R. monache dell corp.nii Dni di Bologna." Miniere Diverse, Manuscript recipe book in "Medici e Medicina 13," Archivio di Stato di Modena: 174r; 176v.

273

Conclusion

In thinking about his researches in microhistory, Carlo Ginzburg stated that "the

impetus toward this type of narration (and more generally for occupying myself with

history) came to me from further off: from War and Peace, from Tolstoy's conviction that

a historical phenomenon can become comprehensible only by reconstructing the activities

of all the persons who participated in it."1 As with any kind of historical scholarship,

there are difficulties with telling stories about every participant in the medical

marketplace. Archival practices have privileged certain types of authors; consequently

many documents that may have once existed were never preserved in library and archival

collections. Literacy itself has always been a privilege of the elite, so most people simply

were incapable of writing down the details of their practices. Plus, oral traditions likely

provided enough continuity of practice for many communities of healers, negating the

impetus that drove many other kinds of practitioners to write and publish a multitude of

documents about medicine. Additionally, the mundane activities that occupy people's

time are understandably rarely the kinds of details that are deemed important enough to

expend effort on recording for posterity. Inequalities in what was recorded and has been

preserved obstruct the historian's grasp of microhistory, and yet it is crucial that scholars maintain the drive to work on the communal effort to amplify more diverse voices in the medical marketplace in histories of medicine.

1 Carlo Ginzburg, "Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It," Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 24 (10-35).

274 The analyses of manuscript medical recipe books I have presented here are examples of the ways in which scholars can use this source type to add depth to our collective understanding of who participated in medical practices, how knowledge circulated within and between different groups, and the ways that the production of medicines as a material practice crossed intellectual boundaries and occupied space alongside a multitude of other kinds of material culture. Recipe books were written by a wide variety of literate people, from noblewomen and clerics to surgeons and physicians, and this diversity complicates the typical narrative that places specific kinds of practitioners and practices in categories. Focusing on the diversity within the recipe book genre itself is an important contribution to the historiography of medicine because the miscellaneous nature of recipe books is emblematic of the diversity of medicine in the early modern period.

Recipe books demonstrate the fluidity of theories, authority figures, materials, and knowledge systems between different kinds of healers in the early modern Italian medical marketplace. The long-standing intellectual linkages between disparate practices, like making food, making medicines, and caring for horses, meant that even though professionals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were attempting to untangle themselves and define their boundaries of expertise, laypeople saw little reason to, or, out of convenience, simply did not, untangle the same kinds of practices in their own lives.

As Monica Green noted, "the higher levels of literate medicine never eclipsed or made obsolete the more humble forms, as is amply attested by the continued traditions of

275 more or less random collections of recipes, free of all theoretical trappings."2 As I

have emphasized above, however, manuscript recipe books were not always free of

theoretical trappings. Indeed, the Capuchin monk's manuscripts and the Florentine recipe

books in the Biblioteca Riccardiana show that some lay practitioners were in an open

dialogue with "the higher levels of literate medicine." In thinking about all of the

manuscripts in this study together, I suggest that the deviations between official and lay

healers were, in some ways, related to the flexibility of their practices. Lay practitioners had goals that were not predicated on the development of a legal hierarchy, unlike, for example, those of the Florentine College of Physicians. Thus, the authorities to whom they turned and the topics they addressed came from a broader array of traditions. Rather than focusing entirely on canonical remedies and theories of illness, lay healers' practical concerns led them on more wandering, diverse paths that included human medicine, veterinary care, cleaning agents, and food.

Early modern, anonymous manuscript recipe books are recalcitrant sources, concealing their authors, patients, and contexts from easy inclusion in broader histories of medicine. However, they are important markers of the complexity of health and healthcare in early modern Europe. This and other studies of recipe books challenge categories like "domestic medicine" and question gender, economic, and vocational boundaries that scholars have perceived as critical in early modern society. Analyzing recipe books in different geographic contexts adds to this complexity, showing that

2 Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine, 13.

276 regional differences had significant impacts on the way different people practiced and experienced healthcare.

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Wellcome Library, catalogue record for Isabella Cortese (& Others), Secreti diversi... Ms. 215. Accessed 3 December 2017. https://search.wellcomelibrary.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1968969?lang=eng.

Wilkinson, Lise. Animals and Disease: An Introduction to the History of Comparative Medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Whaley, Leigh. Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

298

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Wheeler, Jo. Renaissance Secrets, Recipes & Formulas. London: V&A Publishing, 2009.

Woodward, Walter W. Prospero’s America: John Winthrop Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2010.

299 Appendices

I. Symbols for weights and measures and common abbreviations

The following are the common symbols found in the volumes consulted in this dissertation. Examples are taken from "Apothecaries' symbols commonly found in medical recipes," Text Creation Partnership, http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/docs/dox/medical.html. Accessed 2 March 2017.

Ounce

Drachm

Scruple

Pound (weight or money)

Recipe

"ana" Either / both of them

II. Prohemeo, Olimpia Fittipaldi, Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino (1498) Testo e Lingua, 18.

“Considerando noi doctori dell’arte et di medicina del famosissimo Collegio Fiorentino, Spectabili S. Consoli, in quanti pericoli gl’infermi nel ciptà nostra incorrono, et quanti errori e nostril spetiali, sì nella ciptà nostra, sì nel contado existenti, per la diversità delli receptarii commettino, li quali fino al presente di circha la preparatione, et electione, et conservatione, et compositione di tutti e lactovarii, semplici et composti a decti spetiali necessarii, hanno usati, onde molta infamia ne seguita alli medici in quella practicanti; volendo adunque a tali inconvenienti et pericoli di infermi, et infamia a' medici falsamente data, iuxta el potere nostro con più honorevole et più laudabile et miglior modo riparare et obviare; essendo coadunati tutti insieme nella nostra solita residentia, sì per conforto delle S. V., sì ancora per la utilità comune et publica, la quale più è degna della private sperando nondimeno el decto di Platone doversi verificare , cioè non essere

300 libro alcuno possa schifare di non essere ripreso, o per essere troppo breve et obschuro, o per essere troppo lungho et fastidioso; pur, servando la via del mezo , ci è paruto a tutti di uno volere essere necessario componere uno nuovo riceptario, non passando, né aggiugnendo, immo seguendo l'ordine di Mesue, Niccholao, Avicenna, Galeno, l' Almansore, et tutti gli auctori li quali hanno scripto sotto brevità, non per questo lasciando le chose necessarie, ma le cose superllue resecando, et ponendo in epso tutte le ricepte emendate dalli errori, et così tutte le cose dalli medici in decta ciptà familiarmente et canonicamente practicanti solite ordinarsi, secondo el quale e vostri spetiali non solamente in decta ciptà, ma in tutto el contado et distrecto vostro habbino le loro preparatione , electione, compositione et preservatione fare et observare. Le quali cose, se con fede, amore, studio et diligentia dalli decti spetiali saranno observate, non solamente gli spetiali senza alcuno errore l' opera loro, ma ancora e medici el magisterio indubitantemente exercitare potranno, et appresso a Dio premio et retributione grande ne conseguiteranno. Valete.

Divideremo adunque questa nostra opera in tre libri. Nel primo porremo tutte le cose necessarie circha la electione, preparatione, et conservatione di tutti li semplici. Nel secondo porremo tutti e lactovari amari et dolci, sciroppi , pillole, trocisci, etc. et le loro compositioni. Ne l terzo porremo alcuni canoni circha la preparatione, compositione, electione , et preservatione necessarii.

Et nel primo libro porremo dodici doctrine.

Nel secondo libro porremo distinctioni xviii.

Nel terzo libro saranno più preparation, incineratione, trituratione, et lavatione.”

301

III. Recipe author references in the 1498 and 1567 editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino Comparison of the authors with multiple references in the 1498 and 1567 editions of the Ricettario Fiorentino. 1498 edition 1567 edition 274 - Mesue 183 - Mesue 73 - Niccholao 90 - Galen 21 - Avicenna 31 - Niccholao 17 - Rhazes / Almansore 18 - Niccolao Alessandrino 16 - Galen 13 - Paulo 8 - Gentile da Fuligno 12 - Avicenna 6 - Alexandro 10 - Andromaco 5 - Guglielmo Piacentino 7 - Rhazes / Almansore 3 - Andromaco; Serapione 5 - Giovanni da Vico 2 - Azaranio Albuchasi; Christofano di 4 - Aezio; Damocrate; Carpi Giorgio; Figliuolo di Zaccheria; Niccholo Falucci 3 - Carpi 2 - Gentile da Fuligno; Alessandro; Asclepiade; Lucio Cathagate; Montagna

Fig. 1: Recipe authors with multiple references in the Ricettario Fiorentino

302 IV. Recipe authors with multiple references in manuscript volumes featured in chapter 2. Ms. Ricc. 2376 Ricc. Ricc. 3049 Ricc 3057 Ricc. 3059 3044

303 # of 45 - A.M.S. in 2 – 4 – 2 – Galen references S[anta].M[aria].N[ovella]. Maestro Niccholao & author Anselmo da Genova 23 - Piu persone 3 – Rhazes / 2 – Maestro Almansore Bonino

21 - Ben[edet]to mio Zio 3 – Dino / Dyno [del Garbo] di Firenze

19 – m.o Fabio Moriconi 2 – Mesue d’Amelia 18 – Giuliano Cerusio in Pisa

15 – Marcho C.M. Agostino Dottori in S[an]ta M[ari]a N[ovell]a

10 – Maggio Barranti da Monte Varchi Medico Fisco e Cerus[ic]o

4 – S.A.S.

3 – M.o Maggio in S[an].ta M.[ri]a N.[ovell]a 2 – m. Tommaso ligniani, cerusio a’ Citta di Castello; Mattiolo; Troncone

Fig. 2: Recipe authors with multiple references in manuscript volumes.

304 V. Glossery

Aloe epatico / aloe pathico - More modern definitions identify this as hepatic aloe, the thickened aloe juice of an aloe native to Barbados (Enciclopedia Italiana: Dizionario della Conversazione, vol. 1. (Venezia: Girolamo Tasso, 1838): 854- 855). The temporal restriction of this definition does not make sense in the context of these Florentine sources, so it is likely that it refers to another kind of aloe that was used for liver treatments.

Appio - “smallarge” or parsley

Ammi - "a kind of cummin, called theroial cummin, called theroial cummin, or as som say the hearb Ammie, Ameos, hearb William, Bullwort, or Bishops weed" (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 25)

Assentio – wormwood

Bachera - see Nardo Indica

Cassia lignea, Casia - Cassia wood

Carpobalsimo / Carpobalsamo - Fruit of the balsam tree

Cinamomo / Cenamomo– cinnamon

Cymino [Cimino] - Cumin, "Also a kind of corne or wheate in Greece," (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 102)

Calomento - Calamintha

Cardamomo - Grains of paradise or cardamom.

Citrino - Citron

Coloquintida, / Coloquinthida - "A kinde of Wild-gourde purging [phlegm]." (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 109)

Diagridii - "A gum of Scamony, vehement to purge choller." (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 143)

Diarodon - “Medicine or sirrup to mitigate paine and griefe.” (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 144)

305 Epittimo, / Epithimo - "Dodder growing upon the hearbe Tythimale, it beareth a flowre like Time, and is used to purge melancholy." (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 170)

Finochio - Fennel

Gherofani – Carnations

Galange – Cyperus Longus; Galingale; Sweet Cyperus

Gengiovo - Ginger

Giempigra / yerapigra / Hiera picra – All are likely “Hierapicra”, “a bitter confection to purge choller.” (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 228)

Levitico - perhaps "Levitistico" - "An herbe growing in fens,"

Levistico - "A privet-bush. Also alisanders, or lovage" (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 282)

Macro piperi - see Pepe Lungo

Mirabolani Citrine – “a Nut of Egypt called a Ben. Also a kind of dainty plumb. Also a kind of precious sweet ointment. Also the setlings of grounds of oyntments.” (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 316)

Melano piperi - Black pepper

Nardo indica / Nardo - This likely refers to Spikenard, which was found in northern India (Norri, Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English, 1375-1550, 346)

Noce moscada - Nutmeg

Pepe Lungo - Long pepper

Pepe Nero - Black pepper

Reubarbero / Raued – Rhubarb

Regolita / Logorizia – Liquorice wood

Rose rosse - Red roses

306 Spigaceltica - Valerian (Ottaviano Targioni-Tozzetti, "Valeriana," Dizionario Botanico Italiano: Che Comprende I Nomi Volgari Italiani, Specialmente Toscani, E Vernacoli Delle Piante... Vol. 2 (Firenze: Guglielmo Piatti, 1809): 102).

Squinanti - see Galange (Antonio Giordano, Farmacologia ossia trattato di farmacia teorico e pratico (Torino, Zecchi e Rona, 1844): 350).

Scamonea - Scammony

Spigo nardi - see Nardo Indica

Santoreggia - "Winter or garden Saverie," (Florio)

Turbiti - Morning glory root

Torcisci diarodon – Torcisci, according to Shaw and Welch, were “dried tablets of drugs, larger than pills, which enabled ingredients to be stored for a long time.” (Making and Marketing Medicine, 276)

Theriaca - "Treacle, a remedy against poisons," (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 562)

Viuole - Violets

Xilobalsamo / Silobalsamo - "The wood of the balme-tree," (Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, 617)

Zafferano, croco - Saffron

Zinziberi - Ginger