Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
- 2 Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
- 3 The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health
- 4 Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
- 5 The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
- 6 The Legacy of the Trotula
- 7 Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty
- 8 Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
- 9 Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
- 2 Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
- 3 The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health
- 4 Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
- 5 The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
- 6 The Legacy of the Trotula
- 7 Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty
- 8 Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
- 9 Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Two thirteenth century works on medicine attributed to women are examined for what they tell us about those writing inside and outside the medical tradition, and what the authors might have known about folk medicine. The Trotula is traditionally attributed to a female author (Trota) who was a teacher in the medical school at Salerno. While only part of the book, if any, was written by Trota, the text was a mainstay of gynaecological treatment through the sixteenth century. Hildegard of Bingen was a prolific author and abbess who wrote two works addressing health: Causae et curae and Physica. All three texts are examined and compared for their take on humoral theory and influence of folk medicine.
Keywords: Trotula, Hildegard of Bingen, humoral theory, gynaecology, dietetics, folk medicine
In this chapter, I look more closely at three works attributed to women writing in the twelfth century. One work, the Trotula, was probably not written by a woman, at least not in its entirety. It was set firmly in the written theoretical tradition of Galen, and was copied and disseminated in various forms throughout the sixteenth century. The others are attributed to and most likely written by an abbess named Hildegard of Bingen. Her works are less firmly rooted in the Greek theoretical tradition, instead being a combination of her own view of natural philosophy and medicine informed by her own take on Christian theology. Each of these works are examined for their comments on food and diet for women, with an eye towards discovering what can be determined about their relationship to folk medicine and regional variation in food consumption patterns in terms of their treatment recommendations.
These two authors, Trota and Hildegard, might seem an odd choice for comparison, simply because there is a well-documented history of the works attributed to Trota being used extensively in the Western written medical tradition, while the same is not true of Hildegard. I have chosen the Trotula here specifically because it is one of the most accessible and widely used gynaecological texts of the time period. In searching for evidence of dietary recommendations for women's health in the medical tradition, this is a likely candidate.
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- Information
- Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle AgesBalancing the Humours, pp. 111 - 134Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020