Forgotten Healers

Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy

Sharon T. Strocchia

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780674243453
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Renaissance History
• Index: History

Winner of the Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize A new history uncovers the crucial role women played in the great transformations of medical science and health care that accompanied the Italian Renaissance. In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life—from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries—drove the Italian medical economy. In convent pharmacies, pox hospitals, girls' shelters, and homes, women were practitioners and purveyors of knowledge about health and healing, making significant contributions to early modern medicine.Sharon Strocchia offers a wealth of new evidence about how illness was diagnosed and treated, whether by noblewomen living at court or poor nurses living in hospitals. She finds that women expanded on their roles as health care providers by participating in empirical work and the development of scientific knowledge. Nuns, in particular, were among the most prominent manufacturers and vendors of pharmaceutical products. Their experiments with materials and techniques added greatly to the era's understanding of medical care. Thanks to their excellence in medicine urban Italian women had greater access to commerce than perhaps any other women in Europe. Forgotten Healers provides a more accurate picture of the pursuit of health in Renaissance Italy. More broadly, by emphasizing that the frontlines of medical care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Strocchia encourages us to rethink the history of medicine.

CHAPTER ONE

The Politics of Health at the Early Medici Court

NOTHING HAS DONE MORE to transform our understanding of early modern medical practice in recent years than the study of household medicine. Home-based healing remained the “first port of call” for most Europeans until the nineteenth century, despite the proliferation of hospitals and medical licensing throughout the early modern period.¹ In Renaissance Europe, it was expected that women from all walks of life would know how to make remedies and treat family members for common ailments. Some household practitioners served a wider clientele as a way to supplement their livelihood, or simply out of charity. As one of many options available in a pluralistic medical environment, home-based medicine remained firmly entrenched in the hierarchy of resort. Even affluent Europeans who could afford expensive treatment by learned practitioners utilized domestic care as an alternative or adjunct to other therapeutic measures.² In contrast to the theoretical expertise claimed by academic physicians, household practitioners amassed a body of knowledge that was largely “orally transmitted, experience-based, concrete and bodily oriented.”³ Moreover, the renewed interest in healthy living in late Renaissance Italy assigned householders a prominent role in health promotion. As domestic interiors became the principal locus for managing the six “non-naturals” affecting health—air, sleep, diet, exercise, evacuation, and the passions—early modern women assumed particular responsibilities as guardians of healthy living.⁴

Domestic care had unusual political significance in Renaissance princely households, where health concerns affected both dynastic interests and the stability of the state. In a world where political power devolved vertically through birth, the health of the prince and his family became inextricably tied to affairs of state.⁵ Even the appearance of health—whether a smooth complexion or the exaggerated swagger of virility—could be politicized to suggest reproductive promise and fitness for office. Keeping Renaissance rulers healthy required a consortium of practitioners ranging from court physicians to astrologers, cooks, and wet nurses. Despite the importance of household care to Renaissance health and healing, its place within court settings has only begun to attract critical attention. Recent studies have shown that European noblewomen displayed high levels of health literacy, which often grew out of hands-on practice and experimentation.⁶ Yet we know little about how these women participated in everyday care practices and medical decision-making at court. Understanding their involvement as practitioners reveals the sometimes contentious relationship between experience-based medicine and learned professional practice that gave rise to a local politics of health. Without taking the health interventions of these medically informed women into account, we risk misconstruing the practice of Renaissance court medicine and the ways in which courts operated as sites of knowledge exchange.

The early Medici court in mid-sixteenth-century Tuscany offers a rich point of entry into these questions for several reasons. Its very newness as a political structure showcases the evolution of a distinctive medical court culture. In 1532, the centuries-old Florentine republic was replaced by a dynastic principate, led by Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. Although Florence quickly became one of the principal courts of Renaissance Europe, the Medici were still newcomers to the dynastic stage when seventeen-year-old Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519–1574) assumed the ducal throne following the assassination of his predecessor in 1537. Cosimo’s immediate hire of Andrea Pasquali as court physician showed his ability to build a regime that was both separate from the republican past yet continuous with it. The doctor’s long service at the Florentine civic hospital of Santa Maria Nuova gave him strong republican credentials, while his more recent attendance on the murdered duke indicated his openness to new political loyalties.⁷ Regular medical staff remained limited throughout most of Cosimo’s reign, especially by comparison with more established Italian courts.⁸

Facilitating this fraught political transition were two Medici women: Cosimo’s mother, Maria Salviati (1499–1543), and his Spanish-born wife, Eleonora of Toledo (1522–1562). Much has been written about them as political figures and cultural patrons, but their medical agency has barely been explored. Both women exercised enormous influence over daily care routines and critical decision-making processes, which brought them into frequent interaction with court physicians and other practitioners. Yet their personalities were a study in contrasts. Granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Salviati was renowned for her piety, modesty, and sharp political instincts. In 1516, at the age of seventeen, she married the popular military captain Giovanni de’ Medici (later called delle Bande Nere). Widowed ten years later, Maria began grooming her only child, Cosimo, as the rightful heir to Medici political ambitions. Contemporaries described Salviati as an exemplary widow fiercely protective of her son’s interests, who nevertheless exercised her political skills behind the scenes. Cosimo revered her as a “mortal goddess” utterly devoted to advancing his personal and dynastic fortunes.⁹ Strong bonds of affection between mother and son undoubtedly magnified her influence in health matters, although she held no formal position at court.¹⁰

Unlike her mother-in-law, Eleonora was born and bred to court life. In 1534, when she was twelve years old, the future duchess moved from her birthplace in León to Naples, where her father, Don Pedro, had recently become viceroy. Steeped in Spanish court ways, Eleonora was raised with the assumption that female political authority could—and perhaps should—be highly visible. This expectation flew in the face of Florentine republican conventions, which for centuries had denied women a public political voice. The young duke supposedly welcomed this choice of bride in the hope that she could instill habits adopted from the fashionable Spanish and Neapolitan courts.¹¹ Among her many competencies was the preparation of standard medical remedies, as well as luxury products like perfumes and cosmetics; she also quickly became acquainted with new medicinals flowing into Europe from Asia and the Americas. Unlike later Medici consorts, however, the teenage duchess did not bring a personal physician in her entourage when she married Cosimo in 1539—a practice that both facilitated the circulation of medical knowledge and positioned Medici wives as cultural mediators.¹² Still, Eleonora, her father, and the young duke frequently exchanged medical advice in private correspondence.¹³ An astute businesswoman, the duchess amassed a considerable fortune from her financial interests in mining, the grain market, and productive estate management.¹⁴

This medical pluralism—lay and learned, courtly and domestic, Italian and Spanish—made the early Medici court a micro-contact zone for the production and circulation of medical knowledge. Consequently, the pursuit of health in this new court setting became a negotiated, politicized process. Despite inherent frictions, household and learned medical practice generally worked together as adjunctive frameworks whose different approaches to health and healing were mediated by considerations of power. Tracking both these tensions and their resolution are the voluminous letters generated by the Medici court. Routine correspondence normally included health updates about members of the ruling family. When illness struck, however, Medici relatives and staff penned several letters a day, with the hour clearly marked, in order to keep recipients abreast of developments.¹⁵ Recent studies have highlighted the importance of letters and epistolary networks to early modern women, who frequently exchanged healing remedies and advice within “trusted communities of knowers.”¹⁶ Extant letters written by and to Medici court women give them exceptional voice as medical agents, while shedding new light on everyday court practice. Whether discussing ordinary ailments or crisis situations, their detailed correspondence reveals the centrality of women’s practical knowledge to the establishment of care routines as well as medical decision-making at the early Medici court.

The discussion begins by exploring Maria Salviati’s activities as household healer in the 1530s and 1540s, focusing on her familiarity with remedies and health regimens. Salviati left a lasting imprint on medical court culture through her knowledge of pharmacy, pediatrics, and local healing networks. This patrician widow stands out from other household practitioners of her day largely because of the exceptional resources she could access as the duke’s mother. I then situate Salviati’s expertise in relation to the emergence of pediatrics as a distinct body of knowledge and practice in Renaissance Europe. Although the subject of infant care had deep roots in the Western medical tradition, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marked a watershed in vernacular medical thinking about the health needs of children as a group. Then follows an analysis of her complex interactions with court physicians like Andrea Pasquali, both in her capacity as household practitioner and in her role as patient. The closing discussion shows how Duchess Eleonora took the practice of household medicine in new directions when orienting medical court culture along more hierarchical lines in the 1540s and 1550s. Eleonora not only used medical charity as a vehicle for self-fashioning, but also put healthcare to direct political uses when extending favors within and beyond the court. Despite their different styles, both women stood at the center of medical exchanges as the Medici court took shape.

Remedies and Regimens: Maria Salviati as Household Healer

Renaissance women like Maria Salviati (Fig. 1.1) had a wealth of textual information at their disposal that fostered health literacy. Manuscripts circulating widely across Italy included vernacular health regimens like the thirteenth-century Tesoro dei poveri, which enjoyed enormous popularity as a handbook for home-based care. Written in Latin by Pietro Ispano (Pope John XXI) and translated into numerous vernaculars, this old standby traversed the body from head to toe, offering remedies for an impressive range of health issues such as fevers, hair loss, and reproductive problems.¹⁷ The staying power of this work is documented by its incorporation into the 1515 recipe book compiled by the Florentine civic hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Other practical healthcare information circulating in manuscript around 1500 included numerous herbals, plague treatises, astrological materials, and calendars noting appropriate times for bloodletting.¹⁸

Supplementing manuscript works was a torrent of medical print rolling off Italian presses as early as the 1470s. These materials ranged from cheap pamphlets to the first official civic formulary printed in Europe, issued in Florence in 1499. Especially plentiful were vernacular health regimens that increasingly catered to a lay reading public. Building on medieval antecedents, printed health regimens exposed readers not only to symptoms and cures but also to principles of healthy living embodied in the non-naturals. Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey have argued that the burgeoning popularity of these texts by 1550 promoted a vibrant culture of prevention in late Renaissance Italy. Despite continuities in medical thinking, Renaissance health manuals differed from earlier works like the Tesoro dei poveri by taking a more explanatory approach to the body and health maintenance. Many successful health manuals printed in sixteenth-century Italy were authored by physicians, who refashioned themselves as professional health advisers marketing information rather than cures. Consequently, late Renaissance health regimens written in the vernacular both expanded the health literacy of the reading public and amplified the material culture of healthy living.¹⁹

Fig. 1.1. Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of Maria Salviati de’ Medici with Giulia de’ Medici, circa 1539. Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Among the key texts shaping the practice of household medicine were handwritten recipe books. These compilations were the most common form of women’s medical writing in Renaissance Europe, often providing the textual basis for female medical authority.²⁰ Recipe books offered a way for literate women to navigate everyday problems while perfecting their practical pharmaceutical skills. Often organized in eclectic ways, these valuable guides to household management bundled the culinary arts with instructions for making medicaments and ordinary products like ink, soap, and stain removers. As embodiments of household wisdom and proprietary craft techniques, recipe books were often transmitted as family heirlooms or included in artisan women’s dowries throughout the early modern period. As they passed from one generation to the next, these texts acquired new layers of knowledge in the form of additional recipes and practical tips. Some of these volumes were further customized by the addition of para-textual aids like indices or marginal notations. Still others bridged the gap between manuscript and print by incorporating handwritten extracts copied from published works.²¹

One of the most significant Italian recipe books produced around 1500 was compiled by Salviati’s mother-in-law, Caterina Sforza (1463–1509), regent of Forlì and Imola. The paternal grandmother of Cosimo I, Sforza was an avid prince-practitioner who sustained keen interests in medicine and alchemy while shuttling among residences in Milan, Rome, Florence, and her own dominion. Like other early modern noblewomen, she used recipes and remedies as a form of currency within a broad epistolary network. Her medical correspondents encompassed noble relations, local apothecaries, political agents, and irregular practitioners. Sforza’s massive compendium of 454 recipes, the so-called Experiments, integrated the fruits of hands-on experimentation with secrets procured from extensive court contacts across Europe.²² The vast majority of recipes in her collection were me...