Liber Trotuli
A Middle English Manual on Women’s Medicine
1
Liber Trotuli
A Middle English Manual on Women’s Medicine
2
Contents
Acknowledgements 3
List of Abbreviations 4
Introduction 5
Chapter 1: The Medical Context of Liber Trotuli 9
Chapter 2: The Manuscript 23
The Text: Liber Trotuli 31
Textual Notes 67
Bibliography 69
Appendix I: Medical Substances 73
3
Acknowledgements
4
List of Abbreviations
f(f). folio(s)
l(l). line number(s)
MED Middle English Dictionary
OED Oxford English Dictionary
r recto side
v verso side
Trotula:
DCM De curis mulierum
DOM De ornatu mulierum
LSM Liber de sinthomatibuis mulierum
Shelf marks:
BL Add. London, British Library, Additional Manuscript
Bodl. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Manuscript
Bodl. Lat. misc. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Latin Miscellany, Manuscript Camb. Univ. Cambridge, University Library, Manuscript
5
Introduction
Now it is to touche the floures of woman and for to purge hem be the same floures, for ryght as tren brenggeth noght oute fruyte that bien withoute floures, ryght in the same maner wymen that bien withoute hir floures brenggeth oute no fruyt ne may noght conceiue. (Liber Trotuli ll. 19-24)
The inability to conceive children has been a worry of all times: women who lack their flowers (menstrual flow) are similar to trees without flowers in the sense that without flowers, they are unable to bear fruit (children). Liber Trotuli aims to make women become fruitful again. It does so by offering a series of medicinal recipes that facilitate restoring the menstrual cycle, plus several other remedies for diseases generally peculiar to women. These remedies and recipes are found in a compendium of medical treatises known as the Trotula. Compiled anonymously in the twelfth century and named Summa que dicitur “Trotula” (Compendium which is Called the “Trotula”), the Trotula collection includes three Latin works called Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum (Book on the Conditions of
Women), De curis mulierum (On Treatments for Women), and De ornatu mulierum (On Women’s Cosmetics).1
The second of these works, the DCM, has been identified as the ‘core’ text while the others were attached to it later, and DCM has been attributed to a Salernitan female healer called Trota (or Trocta).2 How these medical works became known under the collective name Trotula remains
obscure. John F. Benton observes:
Though the evidence is sparse and subject to dispute, it appears that the name of a real twelfth-century author, Trota, was applied to a set of texts, the Trotula major and minor, in the thirteenth, and that by a process of back formation, the diminutive Trotula was then thought to be the proper name of the author.3
A famous reference to Trotula, as an author’s name, is found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales. Although Chaucer probably knew what the Trotula was, he cites Trotula as one of the
authorities of the “book of wykked wyves”, a fictional, antifeminist collection owned by Jankyn—
1 Monica H. Green, ed., trans., The ‘Trotula’: A Medieval Companion of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2001), xi-xii. The three Latin treatises are henceforth referred to as LSM, DCM, and DOM.
2 Monica H. Green, “Trota of Salerno” (and the Trotula)”, Dictionary of Medical Biography, eds. William F. Bynum and
Helen Bynum, vol. 5 (Westport: Greenwood, 2006), 1236. Other medical works ascribed to Trota are called Practica
secundum Trotam (Practical Medicine According to Trota) and De egritudium curatione (On Treatment for Diseases); these works are
no longer extant in their original forms (see pages 1235-6).
6 the Wife of Bath’s fifth husband.4 The reason for including Trotula among this antifeminist
collection stems from the tradition of medieval misogynistic literature, in which female authorities were cast in a negative light.5
In effect, Trotula refers to a collection of texts, not to a woman’s name. The name Trotula literally means ‘little Trota’ or perhaps, as Monica Helen Green indicates, ‘the abbreviated Trota’.6
The legend of Trota can be traced back to Salerno (southern Italy) and its medical school where among male physicians, women also practiced medicine. The school at Salerno (Schola Medica Salernitana) was the first medical centre independent of the Church and was famous for admitting female medical students.7 These female practitioners were known as mulieres Salernitane (the women
of Salerno).8 According to Green, the rationale behind Trota’s fame as a practitioner opposed to
the other mulieres, who remain nameless in medical history, is that, for reasons yet unexplained, Trota crossed the boundary into the literate world of medicine.9
Over the centuries, all sorts of rumours circulated about the mysterious, Salernitan healer.10 In
1681 a Salernitan historian started a persistent rumour that Trota held a chair at the University of Salerno,11 but Green refutes this assumption on the basis that in the early twelfth century, Salerno’s
university did not yet exist.12 Another Salernitan historian, Salvatore de Renzi claimed that Trota
was the mother of Matthias Platearius (the presumed writer of a twelfth-century herbal titled Circa
instans) and wife of physician Johannes Platearius.13 This nineteenth-century allegation is still
influential since Trota is described as follows in Encylcopedia of World Scientists: “Trotula, who lived in the 11th century, hailed from nobility as a member of the di Ruggiero family. She purportedly
married the physician Johannes Platearius, a member of the faculty of the University of Salerno. Their two sons, Matthias and Johannes, followed in their mother’s footsteps as medical writers”.14
However, these claims belong to the realm of speculation. Benton supposes that the assertion of Trota belonging to the Ruggiero family is based on the fact that this family was exceedingly
4 “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Oxford: UP, 2008), 114. Reference
to Trotula: “In which book eek ther was Tertulan/ Crissipus, Trotula, and Helowys” (ll. 676-7).
5 Monica H. Green, “Who/What is “Trotula”?” (2013), PDF file. Accessible online via acedemia.edu:
https://independent.academia.edu/MonicaHGreen/Trota-and-the-‘Trotula’. Last accessed 07-06-2014.
6 Green, “Trota of Salerno”, 1236.
7 Sue Vilhauer Rosser, Women, Science, and Myth: Gender Beliefs from Antiquity to the Present (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO,
2008), 22.
8 Plinio Prioreschi, Medieval Medicine, A History of Medicine, Vol V (Omaha: Horatius Press, 2003), 229. 9 Green, “Trota of Salerno, 1236.
10 Monica H. Green, “Trotula”, Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, eds. Thomas Glick, Steven J.
Livesey, and Faith Wallis (New York: Routledge, 2005), 492-3.
11 Ibid.
12 Green, “Who/What is “Trotula”?”, 2. 13 Benton, 11.
14 Elizabeth H. Oakes, “Trotula of Salerno”, Encylopedia of World Scientists, Revised Edition (New York: Infobase
7 important in Salerno and, therefore, Trota should belong to it and did.15 In addition, Benton labels
de Renzi’s claim for Trota’s link to the Platearius family as conjecture since de Renzi bases his argument on a statement in Matthias’ Circa Instans where it says that his mother was a physician. From this account, de Renzi simply concludes that there could not have been two distinguished female practitioners at the same time, and thus Trota and the mother were probably the same person.16 Even though there is no solid evidence available concerning the historic Trota, it is clear
that the Trotula compendium became the most influential and leading work on women’s medicine, and, consequently, established Trota’s prominence as a female practitioner from Salerno.
The popularity of the Trotula is evident from the widespread dissemination of manuscripts containing the work. In her research, Green has identified 122 Latin manuscripts (representing a total of 142 text copies), plus fifty-five copies of twenty-four different vernacular translations and Latin prose and verse adaptations of the so-called Trotula texts.17 Among these texts are five
dissimilar Middle English translations that are extant in different manuscripts, and are recorded and categorised in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500 as follows:18
Trotula Treatise Manuscripts Date
Trotula A: Our Lord when He stored the World19
1. Bodl. 2062 (Bodley 483), ff. 82r-103v c. 1450
2. Bodl. 21611 (Douce 37), ff. 1r-37v 1400-25
3. Camb. Univ. Ii.6.33, Pt 2, ff. 1r-36v 15th century
4. Sloane 421A, ff. 2r-25v 1500-30
5. BL Add. 12195, ff. 157r-184v 1450-1500
Trotula B: Liber Trotuli 1. BL Add. 34111, ff. 197r-217v 1425-50
Trotula C: Boke Mad by a Woman Named Rota
1. Camb. Univ. Ii.6.33, Pt 1, ff. 1r-32v 16th century
2. Hunterian Mus. 403 (V.3.1), pp 347-363 1544 Trotula D: Secreta
Mulierum
1. Bodl. (Lat. misc. c.66), ff. 83r-86v c. 1500
2. Jesus Camb. 43 (Q.D.1), ff. 70r-75v 15th century
3. Sloane 121, ff. 100r-105v 15th century
Trotula Fragment 1. Sloane 121, ff. 106r-107v 15th century
15 Benton, 11. 16 Ibid., 12.
17 Tony Hunt, Anglo-Norman Medicine Volume II: Shorter Treatises (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 70. For a complete
overview of these treatises, see, Monica H. Green, “A Handlist of Latin and Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-called
Trotula Texts. Part II: The Vernacular Translations and Latin Re-writings”, Scriptorium 51 (1997), 137-75.
18 George R. Keiser, Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, Volume 10: Works of Science and Information
(New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998), 3861-2.
8 In this dissertation, I present a scholarly edition of Trotula B: Liber Trotuli,20 because this text
has remained unedited except for ff. 211r-212v that have been edited by Alexandra Barratt.21
Moreover, as the whole text of this particular version of the Trotula treatise is only available by ordering the manuscript for inspection at the British Library, the text is largely unavailable to the public. By making this edition, the text becomes accessible to a larger audience and can be used in several ways for further research. In addition, I aim to provide insights into medical thought, remedies to diseases, and other physical problems in the early fifteenth century, especially those peculiar to women, such as the bearing of children and menstrual difficulties. This edition is meant for scholars, students, and other interested parties who care for the subjects of the history of medicine, Middle English texts, ideas about the female body, or medical practices in premodern times. In short, the main objectives of this edition are to provide access to a relatively unknown treatise, and to enhance the understanding of women’s medicine in the fifteenth century.
These objectives have been worked out according to various lines of theory and scholarship such as transcribing, editing, annotating, and close-reading of the text. Besides offering the annotated text of Liber Trotuli, this edition includes introductory chapters to aid the interpretation of the Middle English prose work. Through the textual scholarship of close-reading of the primary text and by considering the text in light of secondary sources, Chapter One explores and elucidates the realm of premodern medical thought and practices. This chapter contains topics such as the sources of Liber Trotuli, medical theory and procedures evident in the text, and the text’s intended audience. Via the study of codicology, Chapter Two provides a description of the manuscript itself. Additionally, this chapter includes a brief study of the language, principles for editorial scholarship, and an explanation of the apothecaries’ system used in the text. Textual Notes follow the annotated text of Liber Trotuli and lists all marginalia and additional noteworthy information about the manuscript. In Appendix I, all occurrences of the medical substances used in the text are documented and accompanied by their modern English equivalents and scientific names.
In addition, due to the scope of this dissertation, I examine Liber Trotuli mainly as a stand-alone text, and, therefore, a source study has yet to be undertaken. Since this treatise, as part of the tradition of Trotula writings, requires more attention in the context of this whole corpus, I have attached a research proposal in Appendix II that outlines suggestions for further research. In this proposal, I provide ideas for a comparative study of all the other extant sources in the vernacular in order to tease out variations and correlations between the different disseminations of the Trotula treatises across Europe.
9
Chapter 1: The Medical Context of Liber Trotuli
1.1 Sources
Middle English scientific writings are seldom unique. In the premodern period, original composition was not a desired aim when imitation was a virtue and plagiarism an unknown concept.22 Generally, a writer would not formulate new concepts, but would rather uphold tradition
and remould a known text to his best abilities.23 Most scientific texts are translated from Latin or
French treatises.24 The Middle English Liber Trotuli is an abridged and rearranged translation of the
intermediate Trotula ensemble, which consist of LSM (Book on the Conditions of Women), DCM (On
Treatments for Women), and DOM (On Women’s Cosmetics) by different anonymous authors. All three
treatises are witnesses to the outburst of medical thought and writing instigated by the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance in southern Italy.25
The three treatises that constitute the Trotula compendium are compiled from different medical sources. The LSM is a compilation of (a) the Viaticum (c. 1070/1080), which is a Latin translation of Ahmed ibn al-Jazzar’s Arabic Zād al-Musāfir (c. 950) by Constantine the African, (b) Constantine’s
Pantegni (c. 1086), a compendium that draws heavily from Alī ibn Abbās Majūsī’s Kitāb al-Malakī (c. 980), and (c) additional Latin remedies that had been available in Europe for several
centuries. As stated in the Introduction, the DCM is attributed to the Salernitan practitioner, Trota of Salerno, and this is the only treatise out of the Trotula ensemble that is actually credited to her. However, according to Green, Trota cannot be the author of the DCM because she is consistently referred to in the third person; nevertheless, “selections from Trota’s Practica and perhaps Trota’s own oral dictation make up the core of the DCM”.26 The DCM includes a random collection of
empirical cures, and there are hardly any signs of novel therapeutics or theoretical overlay. Similar to DCM, DOM (a treatise that teaches how to preserve and improve women’s beauty) is a disorganised collection, which only offers experimental remedies without any explanation.27 Thus,
the Trotula collection provides an interesting mixture of remedies for restoring women’s health and beauty. In addition, the Trotula compendium is steeped in southern Italian culture, and as a result
22 Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta, “Vernacularisation of Scientific and Medical Writing in its Sociohistorical
Context”, Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English (Cambridge: UP, 2004), 14.
23 Martti Mäkinen, “Herbal Recipes and Recipes in Herbals”, Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, eds.
Irma Taavitsainen and Pävi Pahta (Cambridge: UP, 2004), 152.
24 Taavitsainen and Pahta, 13.
25 Green, Trotula, 2. The Twelfth-Century Renaissance took place between 1050 and 1225 in which a rapid development
of western European society occurred. See also Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction
to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: UP, 1990), 13-6.
10 embraces the Islamic culture by including references to Saracen women and practitioners.28
Similar to the Latin Trotula treatises, Liber Trotuli makes allusions to authorities in the field of medicine in order to enhance the text with legitimacy and prestige. Cited authorities in Liber Trotuli are Galen, Hippocrates, Justinus, Oribasius,29 and several unidentified ‘leches’ (physicians)
including a ‘leche’ who cured “the Quene of Fraunce” (l. 112). Such references to authoritative sources are not necessarily genuine, and are easily fabricated in premodern writings. A different method to establish veracity happens through labelling the remedies as being ‘proven’, for example, “For the festre (an experiment proued)” (l. 557) or “This was sometyme proued a nobil medicine that helpyd many a man and many a woman” (ll. 792-3).
Of the four named authorities in Liber Trotuli, Justinus is the most obscure. In Tractatus de
egritudinibus mulierum (Treatise on the Diseases of Women), the “rough draft” of the LSM, the name
appears as ‘Justus’ while LSM reads ‘Justinus’ and Liber Trotuli ‘Justyne’.30 All references go back to
the historical figure Justus, who is a contemporary of Galen and author of a Gynaecia (a treatise on gynaecology).31 Less ambiguous are the identities of Oribasius, Hippocrates, and Galen. Oribasius
(c. 325 - c. 400) was a Greek medical writer during the Later Roman Empire, personal physician to the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate, and a follower of Galen’s approach to medicine.32
Hippocrates was known as the father of medicine and lived from approximately 460 BC to 370 BC. His name was used apocryphally for a vast collection of Greek medical texts called the Hippocratic Corpus, which date from the last decades of the fifth century BC and the first half of the fourth century BC. This corpus includes relevant works on embryology, gynaecology, and obstetrics.33 As this collection of medical treatises was written by several authors, it is problematic
to determine which parts (if any) were actually written by Hippocrates himself. While Hippocrates is only mentioned once in Liber Trotuli, his medical ideas, such as his thoughts about the concept of balance, echo through the text. In the prologue of Liber Trotuli, the pagan Galen and Hippocrates are evoked as the great authorities—the inspiration for the book:
For grete mescheff and disese of man and woman, Galyen and Ypocras, thorow the might of the Holy Gost, han shewed alle the sekenes that ben fallen to hem. And han descryued diuers medicines for hem in boke, and the tokenyngges of alle maner sekenes of them, and also thei han exponyd euery seknesse itself, and the cures that fallen to hem. (ll. 12-8)
28 Though less evident in this translation of the Trotula, see recipe to line 799 for its only allusion to Saracens. 29 For references in the text: “Galyen” (l. 13), (l. 41), (l. 207), and “Galien” (l. 50), (l. 201), (l. 308); “Ypocras” (l. 13);
“Justyne” (l. 226); “Orribasius” (l. 229).
30 Green, Trotula, xv and 233 note 24. 31 Benton, 39.
11 The last of the four, Galen of Pergamon (c. 130 - c. 200 AD) was a prominent Greek physician from Asia Minor who undertook his training at several medical centres in the eastern Mediterranean. Galen had a great appreciation for Hippocratic medicine, evident in, for example, the Aphorisms, a set of dicta on a wide variety of medical subjects, which was transmitted to Western Europe and embellished with annotations by Galen.34 After Hippocrates’ death, Greek medicine
fragmented into various medical sects, such as the Methodists, Dogmatists, and Empiricists. In short, Methodists believed that disease was the result of abnormal states of pores due to a surplus of tension or relaxation; therefore, remedies relaxed or tightened pores as needed.35 Dogmatists
valued the importance of the study of anatomy and the importance of theoretical reasoning as the foundation of medical knowledge, while Empiricists relied on practical experience based on accepted medical knowledge.36 As Galen’s work, in Joan Cadden’s words, “is rich in observation,
both general and clinical, and it is often structured by analytical categories and deductive logic”,37
it is evident that Galen shared the view of both the Dogmatists and Empiricists.38
1.2 Medical Theory
Bodily Humours
Hippocratic practitioners explored the medical concept of balance by trying to secure a moderate position between a set of polarities. Hence, means were sought to acquire a moderate, as opposed to an excessive or inadequate, menstrual flow. This is evident in Liber Trotuli, for instance in a recipe titled “For woman that deliuereth litel mater and that it greueth wonder muche” (ll. 82-3) or “Now it is to touche for to restreyne the floures of wymen” (l. 128). The polar principles that cause this form of imbalance were hot and cold, moist and dry, which were presented in Hippocratic works in more precise terms of the four humours: choler, phlegm, black bile, and blood.39 Just as it was
believed that the universe was comprised of four basic elements, namely water (cold and wet), earth (cold and dry), fire (hot and dry), and air (hot and wet), the body depended on four humours.40
34 Cadden, 18.
35 Lois N. Magner, A History of Medicine (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992), 85. 36 Cadden, 31.
37 Ibid.
38 Galen also shared diverse medical views with Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) and Plato
(427-347 BC), yet due to limited space in the dissertation, a complete overview of medical history has been left out. For a useful overview of Greek medicine and Hippocratic notions in Galenic thought, see: Jacques Jouanna, Greek Medicine
from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers, ed. Philip van der Eijk, Trans. Neil Allies (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Also, for more
information concerning Galenic thought in the premodern period, see: Faith Wallis ed., Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: UP, 2010).
39 Cadden, 17.
40 Carol Rawcliffe, ed., Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute
12 Constituting the foundation of premodern science, Galen developed a system that established the correlation between the four humours of the Hippocratic School and the four elements and their qualities.41 An overview of the elements and their assigned humours combined with Galenic
temperaments:
Element Qualities Humour Temperament
water cold and wet phlegm (or mucus) phlegmatic
earth cold and dry black bile melancholic
fire hot and dry choler (or yellow bile) choleric
air hot and wet blood sanguine
If the humours were in harmony, it meant that the person was healthy. An imbalance or excess of one of these fluids affected physical health, personality, and complexion. In order to keep the correct balance, regular evacuations of bodily fluids, such as bloodletting (see 1.3 Medical Practices, page 16), purging, or vomiting, were required to prevent blockages. Moreover, men were considered to be hot and dry in nature, and were able to burn of excess humour within their bodies through a vigorous activity level and thus upheld a proper humoural balance.42 Women, however,
were deemed cold and moist and could not efficiently shed the superfluous humours generated by their body. As a consequence, female bodies purged themselves by menstruation, which was a vital process for maintaining a healthy physique.43 If the menses fail to occur, the superfluous humours
need to leave the body via a different route, resulting in nosebleeds or vomit: “ikest oute be other membres, as be mouthe and the nose, as be spittyng of blode and emeraudes” (ll. 27-9).
Besides recipes that concern too little or too much menstrual flow, Liber Trotuli includes “An experiment for to proue yif a woman trauail colde or moist cause” (ll. 903-4), in which it can be tested if a woman suffers from an excess of phlegm or blood: “yif that she trauaile of hete” (ll. 912-3). Signs of sanguine or choleric temperaments include torn lips, red spots, great thirst, and loss of hair (ll. 862-4), while a phlegmatic temperament is signalled by weeping eyes (l. 881). As explained in the LSM, the brain was believed to be tied to the womb, and, therefore, great humidity in the womb will cause the flow of tears involuntarily.44 This excess of humours complicates conceiving
41 Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, Trans. Matthew Adamson
(Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 48.
42 Brenda Gardenour, “Gender in Medicine and Natural History”, Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, eds. Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis (New York: Routledge, 2005), 182.
43 Ibid.
13 a child as a superfluity of cold or heat will prevent pregnancy: “the marice ne may noght withholde the sede that is kest in, because of the grete hete and thorow the grete moistnes aquencheth the seede” (ll. 854-7).
Other bodily problems that were affected by a surplus of humours are external eruptions on the skin. Ulcers, boils, tumours, “apostemes” (l. 293), and other afflictions accompanied by seepage of pus, discolouration, and swelling are results of the body’s inability to absorb the humoural matter.45
Opposed to diagnosing internal disorders, the cause of morbid swellings is rather straightforward to determine. If the affected area is pale and soft, it will be diagnosed as phlegmatic; when the sore appears hard and dark it means that it is melancholic, a yellowish and acutely painful sore signals choleric, and when the sore is red and throbbing it points to a sanguine temperament.46 These
afflictions can also be supplemented by other ailments, for example, “yif that the postume becomen of blode or of rede colour it betokeneth the sharp feuer and thirst” (ll. 304-5). Thus, this sanguine pustule caused by a surplus of blood is accompanied with thirst and a severe fever.
Diseases of the Womb
Besides the regularity or irregularity of menstruation, the motion and position of the uterus play a vital role in the health of women. In Hippocratic thought, the womb is liable to move in various situations, such as exhaustion, menstrual suppression, insufficient food, excessive dryness, or sexual abstinence.47 In Hippocrates’ Diseases of Women, the term ‘hysteria’ was coined for the
sickness of the wandering womb.48 Ailments that stem from hysteria are, for example, ‘suffocation’
when the womb rises, and when the womb goes downward it can cause diseases such as ‘strangury’ —a urinary obstruction.49 The extent of the womb’s movement and women’s anatomy was subject
to debate among the Greek physicians, as the womb either could move through the whole body searching for moistness or was presumed incapable of passing through the diaphragm.50
In Liber Trotuli, an incident is described in which the uterus has risen: “that whan the marice is arayside vp, and than cometh an ouertournyng and appetite, and febelnesse comyng of coldenesse of the body. And suffren otherwhile yixyng, and short brethe, and the pouce bygynneth to uaynyssh awey” (ll. 192-7). Sometimes, the woman’s body is contracted in such a manner that her head and knees are close together, and she is deprived of her voice and sight (ll. 199-200). As the pulse begins to weaken, the woman might appear dead. A cure for this affliction is scent therapy, which will cause the womb to return to its right place: “then Galyen toke wolle wonder smal and wel ytaysed,
45 Rawcliffe, 14. 46 Ibid.
47 Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998), 214. 48 Ibid., 222.
49 Cadden, 19.
14 and putte it in the nosethrilles, and be this doyng she become of lyue” (ll. 207-9). Another occurrence caused by falling of the womb is cured by both scent therapy, consisting of ingredients that are nice or foul smelling, through the nostrils and by suffumigation (see ‘suffumigation’ in 1.3 Medical Practices section on page 17): “Than do to the nosethrilles aromatikes as balsamum, muscum, ambra, storax, spica, and suche other. And than do resceiue benethe the brethe of thes that bien of grete smellyng as of brent clothe and of here, and of suche other” (ll. 241-7). The nice, sweet smell will attract the womb and, therefore, it will rise upwards, while the foul odour, administrated from below, will repel it simultaneously. Thus, the womb will return to its correct position in the body.
1.3 Medical Practices
Recurring medical practices in Liber Trotuli include the preparation and administration of recipes, remedials by means of bloodletting and suffumigation, ‘tents’ and ‘emplastres’ that promote healing, and the restoration of virginity. As it is essential to understand how these procedures work and because they require more detailed explanation than can be given in the annotation, I will explain each of these procedures in greater detail in the following sections.
Recipes
A medical recipe, as denoted by the OED, is a “formula for the composition or use of a medicine”.51
Almost all recipes in Liber Trotuli are herbal cures, which simply entails that the recipes include one or more herbal ingredient. These herbal ingredients allegedly possessed medicinal properties. Recipes come in various forms, and Martti Mäkinen proposes that divisions can be made between
receptaria, antidotaria, and experimenta recipes.52 Receptaria, a category to which most of Liber Trotuli’s
recipes belong, are short recipes, which seldom have names and are recognised by their purpose such as ailments preceded by ‘for’ or ‘another (for the same)’. Antidotaria, on the other hand, are full recipes that usually have names and numerous ingredients. Experimenta are recipes that are based on hearsay as they are written down after hearing them from someone who proved the effectiveness of the recipe in practice.53 By adopting Mäkinen’s method of classification, a fourth
category ‘recipe paraphrase’ can be added, which are recipes that use the passive voice, inanimate subjects, and conditional clauses.54 Based on the contents and complexity of recipes, a distinction
15 can also be made between ‘simples’ (one ingredient) and composita (multiple ingredients) recipes.55
Therefore, an individual recipe can be classified as an antidotaria and concurrently a composita. In his article “Rezeptliteratur as Fachliteratur”, Jerry Stannard describes the internal structure of medieval recipes as containing six classes of Fachinformation (types of information):
A: the purpose of the recipe
B: requisite ingredients and equipment C: rules of procedure
D: application and administration E: rationale
F: incidental data
The first four of these components are essential for a text to be recognised as recipe.56 ‘Rationale’
and ‘incidental data’ are usually omitted. Most of these types of information are also found in Hippocratic recipes, which generally consist of (1) a heading including information on the purpose or type of medication, (2) a list of required ingredients and occasionally their preparation, (3) rules of procedure, (4) indications for application or administration, and (5) additional information (seldom).57 Justification for the usefulness of the medication is rare in Hippocratic recipes.58
In order to illustrate the ordering information in recipes, see the following three examples:
(1) For to make man or woman haue crisp here: Tak the rote of bysshopeswort, and stamp it, and enoynte the here. And bynd the heued with the leues alle aboute. (ll. 499-502)
This recipe for making hair curly consists of six parts in an ABCDBD pattern: A (purpose) “For to make man or woman haue crip here”, B (ingredient) “rote of bysshopeswort”, C (procedure) “stamp it”, D (administration) “enoynte the here”, B “leues” (presumably the leaves of bishopswort), and D “bynd the heued ... all aboute”. Assuming that the “leues” are those from the bishopswort, this recipe can be categorised as a ‘simple’ and a receptaria type.
(2) For stenche of the mouthe that cometh of the stomac: tak the pouder of aloe and tempre this pouder with the iuse of wormode. And tak eueryday four sponful, and than tak four of hony; and use this eueryday and this shalle mak alle hole. (ll. 787-91)
55 Ibid., 145.
56 Jerry Stannard, “Rezeptliteratur as Fachliteratur”, Studies on Medieval Fachliteratur, ed. William Eamon, Scripta 6 (Brussels:
Omirel, 1982), 59.
57 Laurence M. V. Totelin, Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 48.
16 This recipe for curing bad breath has eight parts in an ABCBDBDE pattern. The order is as follows: A “For stenche of the mouthe that cometh of the stomac”, B “pouder of aloe”, C “tempre”, B “iuse of wormode”, D “tak eueryday four sponful”, B “tak four of hony”, D “use this eueryday”, and E (rationale) “this shalle mak alle hole”. As this recipe has more than one ingredient but lacks a name, the recipe is a receptaria type recipe and a composita.
(3) A nobil oynement that is clepid color compositus is made in this maner: tak an erbe that is yclepid herba marina of the whiche the Sarazines do dyen thair felles in the colour of violet. And boile it in an erthe pot that is new with white whyne to the thirdendel. And than do streine it, and whan it is ystreyned do to brasile smal ycote, and yit do boile it another tyme. And let it stond so til that it become colde. And whan it is somedel hote, do to the pouder of alum, and than do this in a vessel of glasse; and kepe it. And this oynement maketh faire the faces of wyman and gif the colour of hem ymengyd with rede and white. (ll. 799-811)
This ‘color compositus’ recipe is far more complex than the other examples. This recipe comprises ten parts in a BFCBCBCBDA pattern, excluding the recipe’s name: B “an erbe that is yclepid herba marina”, F (incidental data) “the whiche the Sarazines do dyen thair felles in the colour of violet”, C “boile it in an erthe pot that is new”, B “white whyne”, C “to the thirdendel. And than do streine it”, B “brasile”, C “smal ycote, and yit do boile it another tyme. And let it stond so til that it become colde”, B “pouder of alum”, D “do this in a vessel of glasse; and kepe it”, and A “this oynement maketh faire the faces of wyman and gif the colour of hem ymengyd with rede and white”. This is the only instance of an antidotaria type—a full recipe—in Liber Trotuli.
Bloodletting
Galenic physiology upheld that the body was continually manufacturing blood from food. The veins kept this blood and distributed it to the various organs of the body when needed.59 When the
body produced more blood than consumed caused by, for instance, “grete plente of mete and of drenk” (ll. 132-3), corrupt humours and fevers might ensue.60 These illnesses can be cured by
bloodletting (also known as phlebotomy), which is the withdrawal of blood performed in order to restore humoural equilibrium. The nature of the illness and guidance obtained through
17 interpretation of an astronomical calendar determine the location for the bloodletting.61 For
example, instruction for bloodletting to cure a disease of the womb:
Do lete blode of the veyne that is yclepid Sopheia, the whiche is the veine vnder the ankel of the fote, the first day of o fote, and the tother day of the other fote, and do lete blode as the tyme of yere and elde wille ask. (ll. 36-40)
By drawing the blood downwards through a vein in the foot, premodern medical thinkers believed that menstrual suppression would come to a halt. In his Chirurgia magna (c. 1296), the surgeon Lanfranc of Milan (c. 1250-1306) describes the veins in the feet and the diseases that will be cured by bloodletting from these veins:
In the feet, three veins in each foot are frequently bled: one under the curve of the knee, bled for illnesses of the womb and to bring on menstruation—this vein strongly evacuates the entire body; another is between the heel and the ankle, on the inner side (called the saphenous vein), which is bled for diseases of the womb in women, and for apostemes of the testicles in men—always preceded by bleeding of the basilic vein on the opposite side; and on the outside lies the sciatic vein, which is similarly bled between the heel and the ankle, on the outside, for sciatica—this will cure it, as I have said.62
Other locations are the hands, for example: “do lete blode in the honde” (l. 122). Yet, great care was required when a woman was having trouble with producing her menstrual flow: “For Galien comaundes that no man draw blode of the honde whan the woman hathe sekenes in the marice” (ll. 308-10). Reason behind this was that the letting of blood from the hand would draw the blood upwards and, thus, decrease the menstrual flow. For women who suffered from excessive menses, Galen’s reasoning took the opposite course: blood was let from the hand or elbow, on the basis that it diverted blood to the upper part of the body.63
Suffumigation
As said above in ‘Diseases of the Womb’, suffumigation (or fumigation) is a form of scent therapy that helps to relieve ailments. The MED denotes suffumigation as follows: “[t]he process of causing fumes to penetrate a part of the body, usu[ally] from below, for therapeutic purposes, suffumigation; an instance of this process; also, a mixture of herbs and other ingredients which,
61 Kate Kelly, The History of Medicine: The Middle Ages 500-1450 (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 61. Although there is
a mention of season in Liber Trotuli “tyme of yere” (l. 39), no specific instructions are given for when to let blood and when to avoid the practice.
62 Qtd. in Wallis, 285.
63 Helen King, “The Menstruating Virgin”, The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problem of Puberty
18 when burned or boiled, produces therapeutic fumes or vapors”.64 The procedure of suffumigation
can be aided by making the patient sit on a “hollowh stole” (ll. 924-5), a kind of privy seat, where the stew can be placed under and its smoke can enter the body effortlessly from below. These fumes or vapours can be foul or sweet smelling, as the stew can be made from burnt hair and cloth, or from musk oil or aromatic resins such as frankincense.
An example of instructions for the execution of suffumigation is: “do make a stew and do the seek resceyue the smok benethe, and do couer alle aboute with clothes that the smoke come noght oute, bote that this smoke alleonliche entreth to the marice” (ll. 55-9). This process will narrow the vaginal channel in order for the woman to be thought a virgin (see ‘Restoring Virginity’ on page 19). A mixture of boiled ginger, laurel, and savine will restore the menstrual flow, yet caution is called for when a woman performs this too frequently, “the woman loue to muche suche maner doyng, it is nedeful that the priue membre be enoyntyd within” (ll. 118-20), as she will become overly heated, and, therefore, she should anoint her vagina with cold substances to counter the excessive heat.65
Tent
The word tent, as a variant of ‘tempt’, derives from the Latin verb temptāre, meaning ‘to try’.66
According to MED, the noun ‘tent’ has the following connotations:
(a) Med. A roll of some soft material, usu[ally] linen or wax, sometimes medicated, placed in or near a wound to keep it open while it heals; a similar roll used as a suppository [quot. a1475]; also, a small bar of some material used to keep proud flesh from overgrowing an orifice; (b) surg. a speculum-like probe; also, fig. a penis.67
In Liber Trotuli, denotation (a) is evident. A tent serves, for example, to place medication in a wound or sore: “And yif that it [the wound] be yfestred thow shal mow know it with a tent: do mak an tent of the rote of stychewortand clens it and wete it in hony, or in oyle, and do it in the sore” (ll. 367-370). A ‘suppository’, a medicinal delivery system, is also used in the text. This tampon-like tent is described in several formats, for instance, in the likeness of a “mannes yerd” (penis) in line 78, a finger (l. 905), or an acorn (l. 885). The basic function of these tents is to provide a means to anoint the uterus internally in order to cure illnesses. However, instead of curing diseases, tents were also employed to prompt menstrual bleeding, which as Carol Rawcliffe points out, could be
64 ‘suffūmigācioun’, n. MED. 65 Green, Trotula, 79.
19 an abortion in disguise as this practice was illegal.68 Yet, there is no evidence for this usage of tents
in Liber Trotuli.69
Emplastres
The word ‘emplastre’ derives from Latin emplastrum and Anglo-Norman emplaster, enplastre, enplastur,
enplaystre.70 As defined by the MED, an ‘emplaster’ is a “salvelike [sic] preparation, usually of thick,
viscous consistency, used in the form of a plaster; a plaster”.71 The shortened form ‘plaster’ occurs
generally more frequently and is still in use today. However, in Liber Trotuli the shortened form ‘plastre’ is seen only twice in line 175 and 182. Emplastres are made from herbs combined with other substances which function as binding agents (such as honey, wax, and animal fat), and are often applied on a cloth, or some other kind of bandage, to the affected area on the body. Emplastres are also used to ‘mature’ pustules, which means that the pustules are ready to break (l. 357). Instructions for the preparation of emplastres occur nine times in Liber Trotuli.72 A case in
point is:
For ache and rednesse of eyen: tak malewn, and the violet, and dry rede roses, and verueyne, and sylermountayne. And mak an emplastre of thes herbes with the whyte of an ey and lege to the eyen. (ll. 391-5)
Here, egg white functions as a binding agent that will solidify the mixture of herbs when it dries.
Restoring Virginity
Out of all the recipes, which cure various illnesses or afflictions, remedies that restore virginity or rather renders the woman appear a virgin are the most striking. These recipes, which will make the vaginal channel narrow, are titled: “For streytnesse of womb” (l. 49) and “For to mak streyt the priue membre” (l. 697). The latter, for example, advocates “And this pouder is gode for woman that hathe han part of man and wolde beholde for a mayden” (ll. 706-7). With a hint of misogynistic sentiment, having a vagina that is too large and foul smelling was considered a vice: “Now it is to touche of some wyman that han thair priue membre so large and so euille smellyng where thorow their hosebondes forsaken hem, because of largenes and be the wykked smel ne han no wille to come nere hem” (ll. 649-52). Ingredients that cure “this vice of the woman” (l. 653) and help to
68 Rawcliffe, 99. For more information about the practice of abortion by supplying and administrating maleficia (poisons)
and the punishments for abortion, contraception, and infanticide found in early medieval penitentials, see: Marianne Jacqueline Elsakkers, “Reading between the Lines: Old Germanic and Early Christian Views on Abortion”, PhD Thesis (University of Amsterdam, 2010). Accessible online at: http://dare.uva.nl/record/337669. Last accessed 07-07-2014.
69 Most obstetrical practices, which do appear in the Trotula ensemble (in LSM), are missing from Liber Trotuli. 70 ‘emplastre’, n. and ‘plaster’, n. OED.
71 ‘emplastre’, n. MED.
20 restore the vagina to a virginal state include various gums, such as “mastik” (l. 661), “galbanum” (l. 661), and “gumma arabica” (l. 662). These gums, as Alexandra Barratt observes, presumably “served to create adhesions and make intercourse difficult”.73 Hence, these recipes did not only
function as a means to deceive a potential husband, but also to make sexual intercourse more pleasurable.
Although Liber Trotuli offers additional medical practices, for example uroscopy (urine examination) in line 34, only the most recurring and salient treatments are described in this section. For further reading on remedies and healing see: Danielle Jacquart’s “Theory, Everyday Practice, and Three Fifteenth-Century Physicians”,74 Luke Demaitre’s Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing,
from Head to Toe, Health,75 Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture by Sheila Campbell et al.,76 and see
Carole Rawcliffe’s full-length study of public health in English cities and towns for ideas about the welfare of the communal body.77 In addition, for an examination of the important role of medicinal
plants in medical thought and practice, see the collection of essays in Health and Healing from the
Medieval Garden.78
1.4 Text and Audience
As stated in the prologue of Liber Trotuli (ll. 4-11), the incentive for the compilation of this manual is essentially to aid women, who are feebler than men by nature and undergo great hardship such as the bearing of children.79 This medical text assists women in their quest to cure their health and
beauty difficulties, so that they do not have to bear the shame of telling their private diseases to a physician.80 It is clear from the prologue that the subject of the treatise is women’s medicine. This
does not mean, however, that the intended audience should also be female, since the use of the third person pronouns and the references to women as ‘the seek’ (the patient) implies that this text is not necessarily meant as a do-it-yourself manual. From the use of second person pronouns,81
which are directed at the person who carries out the remedies, it can be deduced that the intended
73 Barratt, Women’s Writing, 36.
74 Danielle Jacquart, “Theory, Everyday Practice, and Three Fifteenth-Century Physicians”, Renaissance Medical Learning: Evolution of a Tradition, eds. Michael R. McVaugh and Nancy G. Siraisi, Osiris 2.6 (1990): 140-60.
75 Luke Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013). 76 Sheila Campbell et al., eds., Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992).
77 Carol Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013). 78 Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide, eds., Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008). 79 The text also includes recipes that are not meant for women but rather for their children and husbands, for example,
“For grete greuance of children that han the cogh” (l. 377) and “For ballokes that bien yswolle” (l. 438).
80 Though the ‘shame part’ can also be interpreted differently, as the purpose of the text could be to inform the male
physician of women’s ailments beforehand, so that the woman did not have to go through an embarrassing situation in which she had to explain in detail what was paining her.
21 audience is the medical practitioner. The practitioner can be either male or female, yet it can be said that this person had to be literate (or was assisted by someone who could read the text aloud) in order to perform the treatments. In addition, for the practitioner it would be helpful to possess some medical knowledge of, for example, where the saphenous vein is located for bloodletting or the place where the womb should be in case it starts wandering. Moreover, certain skills in making ointments would also be a useful asset.
However, even though Liber Trotuli is not markedly directed at women themselves, the near-contemporary Middle English translations of the Trotula treatises, called Trotula A (The Knowing of
Woman’s Kind in Childing),82 appear to be designed for a female audience. As Barratt describes in her
edition of Trotula A, the prologue of this version is aimed directly at women, for the writer explains that he has translated this text out of French and Latin into English because “whomen of oure tonge cvnne bettyre rede & vnderstande þys langage þan eny oþer & euery whoman lettyrde [may] rede hit to oþer vnlettyrd”.83 Moreover, similar to Liber Trotuli, the text discusses women in the
third person, yet there are occasions where the mother is addressed in the second person. For example, when the mother is advised on choosing a wet-nurse: “Yiff ye take a norys to your child, se that she be yonge and in good state (C477-78)”.84 Thus, it can be said that Trotula A indeed
appears to adjust the Latin exemplar to a more female-orientated text, whereas Liber Trotuli is a more faithful translation of the Latin Trotula ensemble. According to Green’s analysis of medieval translations of the Trotula and their audiences, Knowing is written for women while Liber Trotuli targets a professional male audience;85 this might explain the logic behind the masculinisation of
Trotula’s name in the title of Liber Trotuli (The Book of Trotulus).
Furthermore, for an understanding of text and audience, it is vital to emphasise that women in premodern times did practise medicine, but lost their stance to a growing male authority. During the fourteenth century, many male intellectuals presumed it natural for women, who should know their bodies best, to provide in-depth knowledge about their own physique, maladies, and complaints.86 Therefore, as Green rightly states, it is not surprising that Trota—assumed author of
Trotula—held sway as female authority, and became the most widely read female author in
82 As categorised in Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, Volume 10: Works of Science and Information (see
Introduction, page 7).
83 Alexandra Barratt ed., The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and Other Sources, Series: Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 42, ‘Douce version’,
ll. 18-20.
84 Barratt, Knowing, 3, italics are my own.
85 Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-modern Gynaecology (Oxford: UP,
2008), 166.
86 Ibid., viii-xi. Women were also considered to be experts on how to attain and maintain beauty, see: Linda Kalof, ed.,
22 premodern Europe.87 Additionally, while some individual male practitioners might have refused to
treat female patients on the basis of a fear to touch women in private places or general ignorance of female bodies, male involvement with women’s medicine increased substantially between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.88
Literacy, of course, played a crucial part in the shift in authorities of women versus men in women’s medicine. The number of female practitioners declined at the end of the Middle Ages as a result of the inauguration of the medical licensing regulations that were designed to limit women’s activities in the medical profession, and, more importantly, most women lacked basic reading skills—at times even in the vernacular—and were excluded from book learning by learned masculine culture.89 By the time that female literacy levels had notably increased, learned medicine
had become an exclusively masculine field.90 In other words, men controlled written knowledge, as
Green illustrates, “most written knowledge about women’s bodies is to be found in texts composed
by male physicians and surgeons, for male physicians and surgeons (or if not for them, then for lay
male patrons), and incorporated into volumes owned by male medical practitioners or other male literates”.91 The fact that most medical texts were written in Latin also did not help women’s cause
in pursuing medicine, as knowledge of Latin among women was less common. Vernacularisation of medical texts, such as Liber Trotuli, potentially could counter the downward spiral of female medical practitioners as works written in the vernacular could facilitate the needs of a female audience. However, medical texts did not automatically become available when rendered in the vernacular to women only, but broadened male grasp on medical treatises in both Latin and vernacular. As Green observes, “all known thirteenth- through fifteenth-century owners of manuscripts of the vernacular translations of the Trotula (and all other vernacular gynaecological texts for that matter) were male and, ... codicological evidence often suggests audiences not far different from those text received in Latin”.92 Thus, most women were excluded from the
acquisition of knowledge about their own bodies.93
87 Ibid., ix. 88 Ibid.
89 Ibid., xiii. For more information about licensing regulations and examinations, see Siraisi’s chapter two of Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine.
90 Ibid., xiv. 91 Ibid., 19. 92 Ibid., 163
93 For further reading on female healers and knowledge of women’s bodies in premodern and early modern Europe
see: Jeanne Achterberg, Woman as Healer: A Panoramic Survey of the Healing Activities of Women from Prehistoric Times to the
23
Chapter 2: The Manuscript
2.1 Description
Liber Trotuli is extant in only one manuscript: London, British Library, Additional Manuscript
34111, on ff. 197r-217v. The manuscript is described in the following catalogues: The Catalogue of
Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1888–1893 (1894, 198-200); Dorothea
Waley Singer, Handlist of Western Scientific Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland Dating from Before the
Sixteenth Century (London, 1919: card 204); Monica Helen Green, “A Handlist of Latin and
Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-called Trotula Texts. Part II: The Vernacular Translations and Latin Re-writings” Scriptorium 51 (1977), 86; and in the British Library Archives and Manuscripts
Catalogue.94
Based on palaeographical evidence, the manuscript has been dated to the beginning of the fifteenth century (s. xv1)—according to Sue Sheldon, it was copied between 1520 and 1540.95 The
manuscript is written by a single hand throughout (excluding corrections and marginalia). Sheldon asserts that the dialect of the manuscript possesses “a significant mixture of East Midland and Kentish forms, the manuscript was probably written in the South of England, perhaps close to London, or in Surrey”.96
The provenance is difficult to establish, yet the manuscript provides some internal clues. On ff. 114r and 169r there are allusions to ‘Master William’ and on f. 174r to ‘Master William Somers’,
which suggest that the manuscript was compiled for or by him.97 However, Green claims that the
mentions of William Somers may also refer to the experimenta (practical remedies) of a thirteenth-century physician called William de Sumere.98 Another reference is found on f. 1r where the name
94 The latter is a copy of The Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1888–1893 by optical
character recognition (OCR), which unfortunately contains copying mistakes, accessible online at:
http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?docId=IAMS032-002025081&vid=IAMS_ VU2&indx=1&dym=false&dscnt=1&onCampus=false&group=ALL&institution=BL&ct=search&vl(freeText0)=0 32-002025081&vid=IAMS_VU2. (Last accessed 22-05-2014). More descriptions of the manuscript are found in: Sue Eastman Sheldon, “The Eagle: Bird of Magic and Medicine in a Middle English Translation of the Kyranides”, Tulane
Studies in English 22 (1977), 20; Monica H. Green, “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English”, Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 68; and Juulia Kirsikka Ahvensalmi,
“Reading the Manuscript Page: The Use of Supra-textual Devices in the Middle English Trotula-Manuscripts”, PhD Thesis (University of Glasgow, 2013), 84-7.
95 Sheldon, 20.
96 Qtd. in Green, “Obstetrical”, 68.
24 ‘Th. Mid’ occurs, which presumably alludes to Thomas Jones, Bishop of Meath (1584-1605).99 On
the final page of the manuscript, ‘R. Smyth’ (unidentified) is written in a sixteenth-century hand.100
In The Catalogue of Additions, the manuscript is described as a large octavo.101 All pages are
relatively the same size of c. 270 x 170 mm, and have a writing space of c. 200 x 130 mm. The material is parchment, and hair- and flesh sides are clearly distinguishable by the visible clustering of hair follicles. The sheets are arranged in such a manner that hair faces hair and flesh faces flesh. The manuscript is structured as one book containing collections of practical remedies. The ruling is done by dry point, as there are no visible lines except for the bounding lines in reddish-brown ink, and there are no signs of pricking. A folio usually has three lines (sometimes twenty-two) written in a single column with long lines. The manuscript is written throughout in an upright book hand in a slightly-rounded Anglicana Formata.102The folios containing the Liber Trotuli have
no illustrations, yet f. 36v displays a zodiac man (homo signorum) and f. 238v an amulet to ward off
arthritis.103
The manuscript has various marginalia throughout the text. The marginal notes found in Liber
Trotuli will be described in short in the Textual Notes section on page 67. The manuscript has
rubricated and slightly decorated initials, rubricated pilcrows, and underlining in red at the beginning of a new paragraph. The (modern) binding of the manuscript consists of wood covered by leather and includes paste-downs and six flyleaves in total (iii + 238 + iii leaves).104 Two leaves
are missing from the extant manuscript.105 All leaves are foliated on the recto sides. Additionally,
starting from f. 31r every bifolium is foliated twice, in ink and pencil, on the recto side. The table
of contents was not foliated in the original foliation in ink. This original foliation has been erased and replaced by a modern foliation in pencil, which includes the content list.
The manuscript is a medical miscellany and consists of twenty-one separate items that are distributed as follows:106
99 The Catalogue of Additions, 200.
100 R. Smyth is likely to be responsible for the original foliation, as the name is preceded by “The nu(m)bre of the levys
of this boke {.}”, which appears to be written in the same hand (f. 238v). 101 The Catalogue of Additions, 200.
102 The identification of the script is based on my own assessment guided by Malcolm B. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands: 1250-1500, 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) and Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Cornell: UP, 2007).
103 The page displays a drawing of a herb in a decorated circle, inscribed with the word ‘Sparagi’. The text next to the
illustration reads: “Erbyne is my name And who so bereþ me aboute þe nek he shal noght drede no maner goute” (f. 238v).
104 Because of the tightness of the modern binding, the collation formula of the quires is difficult to establish and,
therefore, left out of the description.
25 1. ff. 1r-30v list of contents: “Now it is to know þe names of þe bokes þat bien ywryte and
contyend in þis volume, þe whyche bokes Galyen and Ypocras han ymade and oþer maysters also. And ate þe first it is to begynne and to spek of þe chapetres þat bien in euery boke þat stondeþ be ordre.”
2. ff. 31r-35v Liber de medicinis et electuariis.
3. ff. 36r-37r treatise on zodiacal signs.
4. f. 37v recipes.
5. f. 38r twenty-one hexameter lines in Latin.
6. ff. 38v-39v recipes (from Johannes de Alba Landa).
7. ff. 40r-69v Speculum Medicorum (imperfect at the end).
8. ff. 70r-76v De Carminibus et aliis Experimentis (imperfect at the beginning).
9. ff. 77r-89v Experimenta Alexandri.
10. ff. 90r-114r Ponum Ambre.
11. ff. 114v-169v Experimenta Dinamidiorum Libri Galieni.
12. ff. 170r-173v Experimenta Generalia (imperfect at the beginning).
13. ff. 174r-190r Experimenta Rustici.
14. ff. 190v-195r Experimenta Párisii Abbatis Sancti Marcij.
15. ff. 195r-196v Virtutes Aquile.107
16. ff. 197r-217v Liber Trotuli.108
17. ff. 218r-230v Liber Cophonis.109
18. ff. 231r-233r Secreta Ypocratis.
19. ff. 233v-235v Experimenta Rustici.
20. ff. 235v-238v Ypocras his priuetes in a noþer manere.
21. f. 238v Liber Herbarum (unfinished).110
2.2 Language
Spelling
The language of the Liber Trotuli is Middle English, with dialect features from the South of England as well as the East Midlands.111 The spelling is characteristically unstable. The same word can be
107 Edited by Sue Eastman Sheldon, “The Eagle: Bird of Magic and Medicine in a Middle English Translation of the Kyranides”, Tulane Studies in English 22 (1977), 1–31.
108 Ff. 211r-212v are edited by Barratt, Women’s Writing, 34-6.
109 Edited by Patrick Fordyn, The “Experiments of Cophon, the Leche of Salerne”, Middle English Medical Recipes (MS. Add. 34, 111, 218r–230v), Scripta 10 (Brussels: Omirel, 1983).
110 The content overview in the beginning of the manuscript lists two additional texts, Liber Urinarum and Liber Nomina,
which are now missing.
26 spelt in various ways, for example, the noun mallow is spelt as “malewen” (l. 322), “malewn” (l. 359), and “malwen” (l. 422). The following letter pairs are used interchangeably: ‘a/e’ (agrimoyne/egrimoyne), c/k (mastic/mastik), c/s (ceruce/ceruse), and ‘i/y’ (oile/oyle). In addition, there is no clear distinction between ‘u/v’ (euery/vse), and ‘i’/‘j’ (iuse/jubarbe).
Pronouns
Personal: the patients are referred to in third person pronouns throughout the text, while second
person pronouns are quite scarce and only used to address the person who carries out the procedures, and first person pronouns are lacking entirely.
Second person: ‘thou’
singular nominative thow genitive thin
Third person: ‘he’, ‘it’, ‘she’, ‘they’
singular plural
masculine neuter feminine
nominative - hit/it she/he112 thei/they/thay
genitive - - hir/her thair(e)/their
dative hym - - hem
Demonstrative: ‘this’ is used to mark singular demonstrative and ‘thes’ is its plural form. ‘That’ is only
used in singular form.
Relative: ‘whiche’, ‘the whiche’, and ‘that’ are used to refer to both persons and things.
Indefinite: examples of indefinite pronouns are “nouther” (l. 262) for ‘neither’, ‘another’ and ‘other’
—used frequently throughout the text —, and “tother” (l. 38), which is a contraction of ‘the’ and ‘other’.
Inflections
Nouns: most uninflected forms of nouns end in a consonant “myght” (l. 2) or “manneskynd” (l. 3),
112 ‘he’ is originally found in line 95 (corrected in the text and documented as scribal error in Textual Notes on page
27 an unstressed, final –e “grace” (l. 1), “disese” (l. 12), or stressed vowel “see” (l. 155) meaning ‘sea’. Few nouns have alternate forms with or without a final –e such as “fruyte” (l. 21)/“fruyt” (l. 23) and “larde” (l. 166)/ “lard” (l. 410).
In order to denote genitive, or possessive forms, the suffix –s is added, for example in “gotes melk” (l. 508) for goat’s milk and “swynes grece” (l. 399) (swine grease).
Besides the common suffix –s to mark plural nouns, “medicines” (l. 3), “sekenes” (l. 7), “tokenyngges” (l. 16), the manuscript also has –n for plural, for example in “children” (l. 6), “eyren” (l. 430) for ‘eggs’ and “tren” (l. 20) for ‘trees’. A corrector’s hand writes ‘trees’ above “tren” (l. 20) in order to substitute an –s plural for an –n plural, which would become the regular form for this noun in modern English. For one noun of French origin, the text maintains the French spelling “oynementz” (l. 216) and adds –z in plural form.
Verbs: the suffix of second person in simple present tense is –th “telleth” (l. 41). For plurals suffix –(e)n or –e is evident in the text: “they wanten” (l. 30), “thei han” (l. 17), and “thei shalle” (l. 493).
The past tense for second person singular appears generally without –e ending, e.g. “dyd” (l. 43), but sporadically with suffix –e “had” (l. 201)/ “hadde” (l. 43). Similar to the present tense, –en suffix marks plural forms, such as “founden” (l. 579).
Present participles take –yng suffix “beryng” (l. 6) and “spittyng” (l. 29), while the past participle takes prefixes i– in “iclepid” (l. 381) or y– in “ysothe” (l. 69).
The irregular and common verb ‘to be’ has the following forms:113
present indicative
third person be/(h)is
plural be(n)/bien
present subjunctive
singular be(o)
past indicative
third person was/were
As the text concerns the preparation and execution of medical recipes, many imperatives of strong and weak verbs are used as, for example, ‘do’, ‘meng’, and ‘stamp’. Some of these imperatives tend to end with and without suffix –e, such as “take” (l. 102)/ “tak” (l. 53) and “putte” (l. 79)/ “put” (l. 280).
