The care of women's health and beauty

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge. Her constructive criticism and her comments on my work have greatly contributed to this article. I am also grateful to Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, who is a constant source of inspiration, and to whom I dedicate this article. Parts of earlier versions of this essay were presented for discussion at the international conference ‘Recipes in Early Medicine: The Production of Medicine, Food and Knowledge’, held in Oxford in 2004, and at the III Jornadas de Cultura Judía de la Asociación Española de Estudios Hebreos y Judíos (AEEHJ), held in Segovia (Spain) in 2005. I have developed my research for this article within the framework and with the support of the research project ‘Lengua y literatura del judaismo clásico: rabínico y medieval’ (BFF2003-08590), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education. Notes 1 Monica Green, Women's healthcare in the medieval west: texts and contexts (Aldershot, 2000); Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘“Como una madre, como una hija”: las mujeres y los cuidados de salud en la Baja Edad Media’, in: Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina: de la prehistoria a la Edad Media, ed. I. Morant and E. Cantarino (Madrid, 2005), 637–57; Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Femmes médecins au moyen âge. Témoignages sur leurs pratiques (1250–1359)’, in: Histoire et société. Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, Vol. I (Aix-en-Provence, 1992), 167–75 and, Jews, medicine and medieval society (Berkeley and London, 1994), especially at 108–12. 2 Instances of attribution of authorship to anonymous women have been documented by Monserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘Autoras sin nombre, autoridad femenina (s. XIII)’, in: Las sabias mujeres II (siglos III–XVI). Homenaje a Lola Luna, ed. M.M. Graña (Madrid, 1995), 59–73; Monica Green, The Trotula. A medieval compendium of women's medicine (Philadelphia, 2001), 48–51; and Carmen Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love and Jewish medieval medical literature on women. Sefer ahavat nashim (London, 2004), 35 and 40. 3 Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘Como una madre, como una hija’, especially 638. 4 See Elka Klein, Jews, Christian society, and royal power in medieval Barcelona (Ann Arbor, 2006); David Nirenberg, Communities of violence. Persecution of minorities in the middle ages (Princeton, 1996) and ‘Conversion, sex, and segregation. Jews and Christians in medieval Spain’, American Historical Review, 107:4 (2002), 1065–93. 5 See Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish law. The essential texts, their history, and their relevance for today, rev. edn (New York, 1995). 6 See Shatzmiller, Jews, medicine. For an update of the state-of-the-art see Carmen Caballero-Navas, ‘Medicine among medieval Jews: the science, the art, and the practice’, in: Science in medieval Jewish cultures, ed. G. Freudenthal (Leiden, forthcoming). 7 See Antonio Cardoner Planas, ‘Seis mujeres hebreas practicando la medicina en el Reino de Aragón’, Sefarad, 9 (1949), 441–5; Harry Friedenwald, ‘Jewish doctoresses in the middle ages’, in: The Jews and medicine (Baltimore, 1944; repr. from Medical Pickwick, 6, (1920), 217–20); Ladislao Münster, ‘Medichesse italiane dal XIII al XV secolo’, Lo Smeraldo (Milan, 1952), 1–11; Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Femmes médecins’ and Jews, medicine, 108–12; Elisheva Baumgarten, ‘“Thus sayeth the wise midwives”: midwives and midwifery in thirteenth century Ashkenaz’ [Hebrew], Zion, 65:1 (2000), 45–74; and Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and children. Jewish family life in medieval Europe (Princeton and Oxford, 2004). 8 See Luis García-Ballester, Michael McVaugh and Augustín Rubio-Vela, ‘Medical licensing and learning in fourteenth-century Valencia’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 79:6 (1989), i–vii, 1–128 (28). The authors bring to light a 1342 document in which the king agreed with Astruga, a Jewish female surgeon from Barcelona, that she did not need to undergo an examination since she practised only amongst Jews. 9 See Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘On becoming a Jewish doctor in the high middle ages’, Sefarad, 43 (1983), 239–50 and Jews, medicine, 14–27; Caballero-Navas, ‘Medicine among medieval Jews’. 10 See Cardoner Planas, ‘Seis mujeres hebreas’, 444. 11 See Shatzmiller, ‘On becoming’, 247–8, where he describes a contract from 1326 in Marseille established between a Jewish woman, Sara de Sancto Aegidio, and her male apprentice, whom she agrees to train in the art of medicine. 12 Montserrat Cabré has contributed a very useful classification of the four different contexts in which health activities of Iberian women can be documented. See Cabré, ‘Como una madre, como una hija’, 641–7. Sporadic references to particular Jewish midwives and healers appear in a wide range of scholarly works, whose authors have found them when navigating archival sources. 13 Monica H. Green and Daniel Lord Smail, ‘The trial of Floreta d'Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and obstetrics in later medieval Marseille’, in this issue. 14 See Cardoner Planas, ‘Seis mujeres hebreas’. The women listed in this pioneering article, and the circumstances of their practice, are well-known examples, profusely quoted in scholarly bibliography since its publication. 15 See Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Médecins municipaux en Provence, Catalogne et autres régions de l'Europe méridionale (1350–1400)’, in: Les Sociétés urbaines en France méridionale et en Péninsule Ibérique au moyen âge (Paris, 1991), 329–36, at 332; and Caballero-Navas, ‘Medicine among medieval Jews’. 16 See Monica Green, ‘Documenting medieval women's medical practice’, in Practical medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. García-Ballester et al. (Cambridge, 1994), 322–52 and ‘Women's medical practice and health care in medieval Europe’, Signs, 14 (1989), 434–73. Both have been reprinted in Green, Women's healthcare, as essays I and II. See also her ‘Bodies, gender, health and disease: recent work on medieval women's medicine’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd series, 2 (2005), 1–46, at 12–17. 17 See Cabré, ‘Como una madre, como una hija’; Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine and society in later medieval England, new edn (London, 1999), 182–6; and Cynthia Ann Anderson, ‘“With her own hands”: household instructional texts and the medieval and renaissance woman’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Texas University, 2000), 175–225. 18 Quoted by Cabré, ‘Como una madre, como una hija’, 637–8. 19 Juan Luis Vives, De Institutione feminae christianae (1523) Liber secundus, 147, quoted by Anderson, ‘With her own hands’, 209–10. 20 In fact, when he explains in Book I of his manual that a woman should herself prepare the food whenever a member of the family was sick, he asserts, ‘I have personally seen here and in Spain and France those who have recovered from illness through the food cooked by their wives, daughters, or daughters-in-law [...];’ Liber primus, 25, quoted by Anderson, ‘With her own hands’, 204. 21 See above n. 19. 22 See Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘Autoras sin nombre, autoridad femenina’. 23 See above n. 2. 24 Quoted by Katherine Park, ‘Medicine and magic: the healing arts’, in: Gender and society in Renaissance Italy, ed. J.C. Brown and R.C. Davis (London and New York, 1998), 129–49, at 138. 25 See Helen Rodnite Lemay, ‘Anthonius Guainerius and medical gynecology’, in: Women of the medieval world: essays in honor of John H. Mundy, ed. J. Kirshner and S.F. Wemple (Oxford, 1985), 317–36, especially at 326–7. 26 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Oppenheim 180 (Cat. 2134), f. 43r, 48v and 51v, regarding uterine frenzy, itching in the genitalia and swelling of the breasts, respectively. 27 Patricia Skinner, ‘“The light of my eyes”: medieval motherhood in the Mediterranean’, Women's History Review, 6:3 (1997), 391–409, at 393. 28 Recent research in this field in the Latin medical tradition is certainly abundant. See especially the bibliography by Green and Cabré cited in this article, with particular attention to Green's recently published state-of-the-art, ‘Bodies, gender, health and disease’. On the production and diffusion of this kind of literature in Hebrew see Ron Barkai, A history of Jewish gynaecological texts in the middle Ages (Leiden, 1998) and Les infortunes de Dinah, ou la gynécologie juive au moyen âge (Paris, 1991, translation into French of the Hebrew text by Michel Garel); Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love and ‘Algunos ‘secretos de mujeres’ revelados. El Še'ar yašub y la recepción y transmisión del Trotula en hebreo’, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 55 (2006), 381–425 and ‘Secrets of women. Naming sexual difference in medieval Hebrew medical literature’, NASHIM, A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, 12 (2006), 39–56. 29 See Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘From a master to a laywoman: a feminine manual of self-help’, Dynamis, 20 (2000), 371–93. 30 Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love. 31 Anonymous, L'ornement des dames (Ornatus mulierum), ed. Pierre Ruelle (Brussels, 1967); Montserrat Cabré i Pairet has studied in depth the attributions to women of some of its remedies in ‘Autoras sin nombre’. 32 Cabré i Pairet, ‘Autoras sin nombre’, 66. 33 See I. Grunfeld, The Jewish dietary laws (New York, 1972). 34 For an interesting discussion on the patterns of translation into Hebrew of medical advice that was incompatible with the Jewish religion, such as the consumption of forbidden food, see Yoseph Ziegler, ‘Steinschneider (1816–1907) revised: on the translation of medical writing from Latin into Hebrew’, Medieval Encounters, 3:1 (1997), 94–102. 35 Carmen Caballero-Navas, ‘Un capítulo sobre mujeres: transmisión y recepción de nociones sobre salud femenina en la producción textual hebrea durante la Edad Media’, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 52 (2003), 133–60. 36 See Shatzmiller, Jews, medicine, 120–3. 37 Green, ‘Bodies, gender, health and disease’, 3. 38 Manual de mugeres en el qual se contienen muchas y diversas reçeutas muy buenas, ed. Alicia Martínez Crespo (Salamanca, 1996). 39 Late medieval Hebrew and Castilian satirical literatures are rich in allusions to certain personages' ‘blackness’, in an attempt to insult them and stress their low moral values. For Castilian literature, see J. Rodríguez Puertolas, Poesía crítica y satírica del s. XV (Madrid, 1981); and the fourteenth-century Juan Ruiz (Arcipreste de Hita), Libro de Buen Amor, one of whose main feminine characters is named Doña Endrina (de Calatayud), after a small dark fruit. For Hebrew examples see Arturo Prats Oliván, ‘Secciones en Prosa en el Diwan de Shelomo bar Re'uben Bonafed (s. XIV–XV)’ 2 vols (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004), vol. 1 (Spanish translation), 303, 327, 328, 390 and 430. Monica Green has also discussed the issue of the colouring of the hair in an interesting essay on documenting differences and similarities in appearance of women, based in her study of the Salernitan De ornatu mulierum, which circulated widely during the middle ages independently and as part of compilation known as Trotula. I am indebted to her for allowing me to use her unpublished manuscript, ‘Is it true blondes have more fun? The aesthetics of the twelfth-century Salernitan De ornatu mulierum’. 40 See Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love, 124–6 and ‘Algunos ‘secretos de mujeres’ revelados'. Most of the contents of the She'ar yashuv are not original, but portions from the Hebrew translation of two of the three treatises that made up the famous medieval Latin compilation Trotula: the Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum and the De ornatu mulierum. In fact, its remedies to whitening the skin are versions of recipes found in De ornatu. See the footnotes to the translation, where I compare both versions, 410–11. 41 See Sami Hamarneh, ‘The first known independent treatise on cosmetology in Spain’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 39 (1965), 309–25; Concepción Vazquez de Benito, ‘Sobre la cosmética (zīna) del siglo XIV en al-Andalus’, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historia de la Farmacia, 129 (1984), 9–47; and Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘Cosmética y perfumería en la Castilla bajomedieval,’ in: Historia de la ciencia y de la técnica en la Corona de Castilla, vol. II, Edad Media, ed. Luís García-Ballester (Valladolid, 2002), 772–9. 42 Monica Green has also documented cross-cultural interaction regarding the use of depilatories in twelfth-century southern Italy. See her ‘Is it true blondes have more fun?’. 43 Sumptuary norms were mainly aimed at social and class differentiation. However, the very wording of the decrees, and the extension devoted to regulate women's apparel, identify them as their main addressees. See José Hinojosa Montalvo, ‘La mujer en las Ordenanzas Municipales en el Reino de Valencia durante la Edad Media’, in: Las mujeres en las ciudades medievales, ed. C. Segura Graiño (Madrid, 1990), 43–55, at 45–8. Moreover, the deeper impact that sumptuary laws had upon women's lives can be measured by the responses that these decrees prompted from them. Fray Hernando de Talavera, who in 1477 wrote a moral treatise in response to the loud opposition that the enactment of sumptuary laws had aroused in Valladolid, emphasised that it was women who had expressed more intensely their disagreement. In fifteenth-century Bologna, Nicolosa Sanuti also expressed her disagreement with the sumptuary laws that Cardinal Bessario had decreed by sending him an epistle entitled Ut matronis ornamenta restituantur. See, respectively, Teresa de Castro, ‘El tratado sobre el vestir, calzar y comer del arzobispo Hernando de Talavera’, Revista Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval, 14 (2001), 11–99; and Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, ‘La cura del cos femení i la medicina medieval de tradició llatina. Els tractas De ornatu, De decorationibus mulierum atribuïts a Arnau de Vilanova, Trótula de mestre Joan, i Flos del tresor de beutat atribuït a Manuel Díeç de Calatayud’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1994, Collecció de tesis microfitxades num. 2794, 1996), 155–6. 44 Fontes iudaeorum Regni Castellae, V. De iure hispano-hebraico, las taqqanot de Valladolid de 1432. Un estatuto comunal renovador, ed. Yolanda Moreno Koch (Salamanca, 1987), 92–7. They were written in Castilian with Hebrew letters in order to be understood by all members of the Castilian Jewry. Note that the list of forbidden adornments for women is much longer than the list for men. Jacob R. Marcus included a partial English translation of the taqqanah in his The Jew in the medieval world. A source book: 315–1791, rev edn (Cincinnati, 1990), 194, from which he omitted the opening, where the reason for its issuing was expressed, as well as the section where women's clothing is regulated, without indicating his omission. 45 See Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Soins de beauté, image et image de soi: le cas des juifs du moyen âge’, in: Les soins de beauté. Moyen âge, début des temps modernes. Actes du IIIe colloque international Grasse (1985) (Nice, 1987), 51–60. I would add, however, a third goal that consists in imposing and reinforcing a model of sexuality based in heterosexual practices, as the nature of this exemption shows. For a discussion on this idea see Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love, 74-5. 46 See Jonathan Ray, ‘Beyond tolerance and persecution: reassessing our approach to medieval Convivencia’, Jewish Social Studies, 11:2 (2005), 1–18, especially at10, where he stresses that Jewish leaders denounced the assumption of Christian dress as an attempt to hide Jewish religious identity from gentiles. 47 I am indebted to Arturo Prats who called my attention to Bonafed's words and their relation to some of the attitudes of the of the Jewish discussed See Arturo Prats Oliván, ‘Secciones en Prosa en el Diwan de Shelomo bar Re'uben vol. 1 (Spanish translation), and vol. 2 See Monica Green, and her ‘Is it true blondes have more fun?’. in this have been considered a of than the of dietary laws discussed For a of Iberian medieval see Carmen y en la España de los 2 vols (Madrid, and medieval (Madrid, where she in and their See ‘La en la el del en la de y y and of medieval in: Women and the book: the visual ed. and (London and See (London, Library, MS (London, Library, MS of of Barcelona, Barcelona, (London, Library, MS 52 the Christian sources I have mainly on and for on the de See ‘La en la Edad la en el en la in: en la Edad de Estudios medievales, and en el en la 2000); el de Madrid, de el de El and The de for the of the de Oxford University, 21 Jewish are of them have which is also a of Christian in some or which also some Christian to see Shatzmiller, ‘Médecins 332; and y de las s. XIV y del en la Edad Media, 12 especially at where she a royal in to the from and a of medicine which him from the of the I. has found a from which the to a Jewish woman to of it was a very by decrees that be by of her own See in a Medieval Encounters, issue of Women in Medieval 12 (2006), at 55 Jews and in the renaissance and ‘The that de Sefarad, The and a Latin document from in which of to Jewish from to their of the Jewish to aroused by a that Christian women to the Jewish On Christian women as of consumption from Jewish women see the to this as well as the by woman and and ‘The that See Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and and sayeth the wise See above n. del Carmen Las mujeres en en el siglo XV 1990), and durante la del siglo XV en y Sefarad, (1983), at On recent research on the medieval of see Green, ‘Bodies, gender, health and disease’, of f. See Barkai, Les infortunes de The at the of the this as a Jewish woman in by two Christian See Baumgarten, sayeth the wise or in the of a they were the widely texts on women's healthcare from the to the See Green, The Trotula. I have recently some of the Hebrew translation from the Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum, and from De ornatu mulierum. See my ‘Algunos de mujeres I am indebted to Monica Green, who this information to me and shared with me her In a which her for textual sources for all the of the she regarding this that it has only similarities to which did not of the of to be See ‘The of the des 26 In a she has me that work on this has her to this textual The of this treatise is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS s. f. is very much in with that of an French translation of the Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum that not Latin but Monica Green this in the of an interesting discussion on the of evidence for midwives and the of midwifery into a for women during the middle See Green, ‘Bodies, gender, and disease’, In my the that the to identify the practice of these women be to an developed by Montserrat Cabré, who has that the and other words to the were used during the middle ages in relation to the knowledge and practices to health care and to the attention to See Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, en in: De en Las de y de la y la ed. et al. (Madrid, 2000), For in of See of de Un manual de medicina crítica de la ed. John and 1991), work was into Hebrew at by in and by of in See Lola hebreas de la de de Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, (2000), the fourteenth-century Jewish Castilian in his of that a should have and See part See Barkai, A history of Jewish gynaecological texts, and See Park, ‘Medicine and in the middle ages and New York, and and their Journal of the and See Caballero-Navas, The Book of women's love, and femenina y de la in: De en Las de y de la y la ed. et al. (Madrid, 2000), Ann and uterine medicine’, en la en de una femenina de la 29 (2005), and medicine and in the of de Social History, 19 C. for history of of ed. C. 7 vols (London, vol. cited in: The Jews of and ed. Joseph (London, and by Elka for Medieval Book 21 Barcelona, f. quoted by i i and i de de Barcelona Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, women's writing in textual of feminine A Journal of Medieval Spanish and (2003), at

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