The Trotula: a Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine

The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine Edited and Translated by Monica H. Green University of Pennsylvania The Trotula 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 1 of 319 Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 2 of 319 Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 The Trotula A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 3 of 319 Edited and Translated by Monica H. Green PENN University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 Copyright © University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 4 of 319 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Trotula : a medieval compendium of women’s medicine / edited and translated by Monica H. Green. p. cm. — (The Middle Ages series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN --- (alk. paper) . Gynecology—Early works to . Obstetrics—Early works to . Medicine—Italy—Salerno—History. Women— Health and hygiene—Early works to . Medicine, Medieval. I. Green, Monica Helen. II. Series. RG .T '.'—dc - Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 Ilā bintayya al-‘azīzatayn Malaika wa Kanza 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 5 of 319 Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations ix 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 7 of 319 Preface xi Introduction Salerno Women’s Medicine TheFateoftheTrotula Notes on This Edition and Translation Edition and Translation of the Standardized Trotula Ensemble Liber de Sinthomatibus Mulierum/Book on the Conditions of Women De Curis Mulierum/On Treatments for Women De Ornatu Mulierum/On Women’s Cosmetics Appendix: Compound Medicines Employed in the Trotula Ensemble Notes Notes to the Latin Version Notes to the English Translation Bibliography Index Nominum et Locorum Index Verborum General Index Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations Figure . Map of southern Italy and north Africa facing page 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 9 of 319 Figure . The city of Salerno as depicted in an eighteenth- century engraving Figures and . A case of uterine suffocation from a late thirteenth-century English manuscript – Figures and . Fumigation pots and pessaries from a fifteenth-century Dutch translation of the Trotula – Figure . A charm from a fifteenth-century medical amulet Figure . A private bath for a woman; from a late twelfth-century copy of the Salernitan Antidotarium magnum Figure . The development of the Trotula ensemble Figure . Opening page of the standardized Trotula ensemble Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 This page intentionally left blank Preface I as in histories of medicine, readers often find a 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 11 of 319 passing reference to a mysterious person called Trotula of Salerno. ‘‘Trotula,’’ for whom no substantive historical evidence has ever been brought forth, is said by some to have lived in the eleventh or twelfth century and is alleged to have written the most important book on women’s medicine in medieval Europe, On the Diseases of Women (De passionibus mulierum). She is also alleged to have been the first female professor of medicine, teaching in the southern Italian town of Salerno, which was at that time the most important center of medical learning in Europe. Other sources, however, assert that ‘‘Trotula’’ did not exist and that the work attributed to her was written by a man. Any figure who could generate such diametrically opposed opinions about her work and her very existence must surely be a mystery. Yet the mystery of ‘‘Trotula’’ is inevitably bound up with the text ‘‘she’’ is alleged to have written. The Trotula (for the word was originally a title, not an author’s name) was indeed the most popular assembly of materials on women’s medicine from the late twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.Written in Latin and so able to circulate throughout western Europe where Latin served as the lingua franca of the educated elites, the Trotula had also by the fifteenth century been translated into most of the western European vernacular languages, in which form 1 it reached an even wider audience. Surprisingly, for all its historical importance this work exists in no printed form that can reliably be used by students and scholars. The Latin Trotula was edited for publication only once, in the sixteenth century, under the title The Unique Book of Trotula on the Treatment of the Diseases of Women Before, Dur- 2 ing, and After Birth, and the only modern translations available are based 3 on this same Renaissance edition. While these modern translations have had some utility in keeping alive the ‘‘Trotula question,’’ they have in another sense perpetuated the confusion, since they have passed on to new generations of readers the historical distortions of the Renaissance edition, a work which is in fundamental respects a humanist fabrication. The Renaissance editor, undoubtedly with the best of intentions, added what was to be the last of many layers of editorial ‘‘improvements.’’ These Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 xii Preface intrusions had, over the course of the four-hundred-year life of the Trotula, almost thoroughly obliterated all indications that this was not one text but three. True, they were all probably of twelfth-century Salernitan origin, but they reflected the work of at least three authors with distinct perspectives on women’s diseases and cosmetic concerns. The first and third of these texts, On the Conditions of Women and On Women’s Cosmetics, were anonymous. The second, On Treatments for Women, was attributed even in the earliest manuscripts to a Salernitan woman healer named Trota (or Trocta). Each of the texts went 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 12 of 319 through several stages of revision and each circulated independently throughout Europe through the end of the fifteenth century, when manuscript culture began to give way to the printed book. But the texts also had a second, parallel fate. By the end of the twelfth century, an anonymous compiler had brought the three texts together into a single ensemble, slightly revising the wording, adding new material, and rearranging a few chapters. This ensemble was called the Summa que dicitur ‘‘Trotula’’ (The Compendium Which Is Called the ‘‘Tro- tula’’), forming the title Trotula (literally ‘‘little Trota’’ or perhaps ‘‘the abbre- viated Trota’’) out of the name associated with the middle text, On Treatments for Women. The appellation was perhaps intended to distinguish the ensemble from a general, much longer medical compilation, Practical Medicine, com- posed by the historical woman Trota. The Trotula ensemble soon became the leading work on women’s medicine, and it continued to be the object of ma- nipulation by subsequent medieval editors and scribes, most of whom under- 4 stood ‘‘Trotula’’ not as a title but as an author’s name. By , when the ensemble came into the hands of the Renaissance editor, Georg Kraut, generations of scribes and readers had come to believe that they were dealing with a single text or, at most, two texts on the same subject 5 by a single author. It is, then, quite understandable that Kraut saw his task as merely to clean up a messy, badly organized text. He rewrote certain passages, suppressed some material and, in his most thorough editorial act, reorganized all the chapters so as to eliminate the text’s many redundancies and inconsis- tencies (due, we know now, to the fact that several authors were addressing the same topics differently). There is no way that a reader of this emended printed text could, without reference to the manuscripts, discern the presence of the three discrete component parts. Hence when some twenty years later a debate over the author’s gender and identity was initiated (and it has continued to the 6 present day), it was assumed that there was only one author involved. Medieval readers were coming to the Trotula texts with urgent questions about how to treat women’s diseases or address cosmetic concerns, or perhaps with more speculative questions about the workings of the female body Tseng 2001.1.26 15:13 DST:103 Preface xiii or the processes of generation. For them, the texts were a vital fund of infor- mation. Questions of authorship or textual development were of minimal im- 7 portance. For modern students of medical history or the history of women, however, it is imperative to understand the processes by which the Trotula ensemble was compiled if we are to answer such questions as: What do these texts show us about the development of medieval medical theories concerning the workings of the female body? What can they reveal about the impact of the new Arabic medicine that began to infiltrate Europe in the late eleventh 6244 Green / THE “TROTULA” / sheet 13 of 319 century? Is there, in fact, a female author behind any of the texts and, if so, what can she tell us about medieval women’s own views of their bodies and the social circumstances of women’s healthcare either in Salerno or elsewhere in Europe? Answering these questions calls for close textual analysis that pulls apart, layer by layer, decades of accretion and alteration. Such analysis shows us not simply that there are three core texts at the heart of the Trotula but also that the ensemble became a magnet for bits and pieces of material from entirely unrelated sources.

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