¹On the general influence of Rösslin's work, the major studies are E Ingerslev, ‘Rösslin's Rosegarten: its relation to the past (the Muscio manuscripts and Soranos), particularly with regard to podalic version', (in two parts), Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the British Empire, Jan. 1909, 15 (1): 1–25; and Feb. 1909, 15 (2): 73–92; G Klein, ‘Zur Bio- und Bibliographie Rösslins und seines Rosengartens’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1910, 3: 304–34; Gundolf Keil, ‘Rößlin, Eucharius, d[er] Ä[lte] (Rhodion)’, in Kurt Ruh (ed.), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, rev. ed., Berlin, De Gruyter, 1971–, (hereafter VL), Bd. 8, coll. 244–8; and Gundolf Keil, ‘Nachwort’, in Helmut H Hess (ed.), ‘Gynaecia Mustionis’: the midwives’ catechism of Mustio (englisch und lateinisch) & Eucharius Rösslin's ‘Rosegarden', vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, Haag und Herchen, 1998, pp. 263–78. This latter essay offers a useful summary of the traditional line of thinking on Rösslin, modified by Keil's newer interpretation that the Hamburg manuscript (see below) shows the Rosegarten's place in a tradition of medical work characteristic of apothecaries.

²Klein, op. cit., note 1 above, provides the most extensive survey of the multiple editions and translations of the Rosegarten. His data can now be supplemented for extant copies of the German editions in German libraries by Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts (VD 16), http://www.vd16.de/, accessed 23 July 2008. There is no need to repeat all that information here, other than to provide some updated information on the various translations. First, regarding the Danish translation which was first described by Ingerslev, op. cit., note 1 above, a description of Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 3487 8°, can be found in C Borchling, Mittelniederdeutsche Handschriften in Skandinavien, Copenhagen, 1900, pp. 58–60, available online at http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/717/, accessed 31 July 2007 (my thanks to Iolanda Ventura for this information). Regarding the 1519 Czech edition, neither Ingerslev nor Klein provided a precise citation; the reference department at the National Library of the Czech Republic informs me (12 Nov. 2007) that this is Eucharius Roeslin, Zprawa a naucˇzenie zienam tiehotnym: a Babam pupkorzeznym Netoliko prospiessna alc[!] take potrzebna, Tlacženo a dokonano w Boleslawi mladem nad Gizerau, u Mikuláše Klaudiána, 1519. On the editions of the French translation, see now Valérie Worth-Stylianou, Les Traités d'obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité. Bibliographie critique des ‘Divers Travaulx’ d'Euchaire Rosslin (1536) à l''Apologie de Louyse Bourgeois sage-femme' (1627), Geneva, Droz, 2006, pp. 89–117, who identifies two different translations: an anonymous one published in Paris by Jean Foucher in 1536 and reprinted in 1539; and a second translation by Paul Bienassis, first published by Foucher in Paris in 1563 and reprinted seven times thereafter in Paris, Lyons, and Rouen. On the Dutch tradition, see Neeltje de Jong, ‘“Den Roseghaert vanden Bevruchten Vrouwen”: Een onderzoek naar de Middelnederlandse Roseghaert gedrukt in 1528 waarin een vertaling van Der Rosengarten (Eucharius Rösslin, 1513) is uitgebreid met toevoegingen van een Antwerpse bewerker', MA thesis, Universiteit Utrecht, 2006. As for the Spanish translation, Klein claims this was published in Zaragossa in 1538 even though he admitted that the one exemplar he had to hand was missing its title-page and date. I can find no evidence of a Spanish translation prior to Francisco Nun˜ez de Oria (fl. 1560–c.1586), Libro intitulado del parto humano, en el qual se contienen remedios muy utiles y usuales para el parto difficultoso de las mugeres, con otros muchos secretos a ello pertenescientes, Alcalá, Juan Gracián, 1580. True, in his 1545 English translation, The byrth of mankynde, Thomas Raynalde says that Rösslin's text “hath been long sith tought to speke dutche, frenche, spanissh, and diuers other langages”, London, T Raynalde, 1545, f. C viii recto. But it seems to me possible that this reference to a Spanish translation might reflect a mistaken understanding of Damian Carbón's Libro del arte de las comadres o madrinas, y del regimiento de las preñadas y paridas y de los niños, [Majorca City, Hernando de Cansoles,] 1541, which is an original composition, not a translation of Rösslin. Regarding the much studied publishing history of the English translation (first published in 1540, with a revised version in 1545), see now Thomas Raynalde, et al., The birth of mankind (1540–1654), ed. Elaine Hobby, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2009. Finally, although Klein believed that no Italian translation of the work was ever made, I have identified the following: Eucharius Rösslin, Libro nel qual si tratta del parto delhuomo e de tutte quelle cfose, che cerca esso parto accadeno, e delle infermita che po[sso]no accadere a i fanciulli, con tutti i suoi rimedii posti particolarmente, Venice, Giovanni Andrea Vavassore, 1538.

³The last of a series of ancient and late ancient works addressed to midwives (among others) was the Gynaecia of Muscio, probably a North African of the fifth or sixth century, who translated major parts of Soranus's Greek Gynaikeia into Latin; see Valentin Rose (ed.), Sorani Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina, Leipzig, Teubner, 1882. Although some medieval texts were addressed to women generically, Michele Savonarola (c.1385–c.1466) was the next to address midwives specifically; Luigi Belloni (ed.), Il trattato ginecologico-pediatrico in volgare ‘Ad mulieres ferrarienses de regimine pregnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium', Milan, Società Italiana di ostetricia e ginecologia, 1952. The Frauenbüchlein, Augsburg, c.1495, often erroneously attributed to Ortolf von Bayerland, was addressed to pregnant women, not midwives.

⁴Georg Burckhard, Die deutschen Hebammen-ordnungen von ihren ersten Anfängen bis auf die Neuzeit, Leipzig, W Engelmann, 1912, pp. 109 and 124, edits undated documents from Nuremberg and Heilbronn, respectively, that refer to midwives using “professional books” (“ihrem nothwendigen Unterricht gehörigen Bücher” and “ihrer profession Bücher”). Burckhard suggested that they came from the late fifteenth century, before the Rosegarten was published. However, Sibylla Flügge, Hebammen und heilkundige Frauen: Recht und Rechtswirklichkeit im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main, Stroemfeld, 2000, p. 501, argues that the Nuremberg ordinance dates from the eighteenth century. The Heilbronn ordinance was destroyed in 1944 and cannot not be restudied; my thanks to the Stadtarchivrätin at Heilbronn for this information (personal communication, 8 July 1998). The earliest dated ordinances which mention midwifery books are the 1549 ordinance of Württemberg (which explicitly mentions the Rosegarten) and the 1557 one of Freiburg which simply mentions “a printed midwife book”; see Flügge, pp. 364 and 375, who thinks it unlikely that most midwives could have afforded these books. Two adaptations of the Rosegarten incorporated the local midwifery ordinances drafted by their physician authors; see Adam Lonitzer (1528–1586, city physician of Frankfurt-am-Main) (ed.), Hebammenbüchlin: Von der Menschen Empfengnus und Geburt, und der schwangern Frawen allerhand zufelligen Gebrechen . . ., Frankfurt, Christian Egenolff, 1562, with five reprints through 1594; and Joannes Hiltprandus, Ordnung und Nutzliche Vnderweysung fuer die Hebammen vnd Schwangeren Frawen, Passau, M Henninger, 1595. Pernille Arenfeldt (History, American University of Sharjah) has discovered that the Electress Anna of Saxony (1532–1585) had in her personal possession a copy of Lonitzer's book and may have used it and other books on midwifery in the electoral library in her systematic efforts to improve Saxon midwifery (personal communication, 12 July 2008).

⁵Britta-Juliane Kruse, ‘Neufundeiner handschriftlichen Vorstufe von Eucharius Rößlins Hebammenlehrbuch Der schwangeren Frauen und Hebammen Rosengarten und des Frauenbüchleins Ps.-Ortolfs', Sudhoffs Archiv, 1994, 78: 220–36. The manuscript in question is Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, cod. med. 801, an. 1494 (hereafter Hamburg, cod. med. 801), pp. 9–130.

⁶Francesco da Piedemonte was court physician to Robert the Wise (1309–1343) in the kingdom of Naples and taught at the University of Naples c.1302 until his death. His obstetrical chapters can be found in Franciscus de Pedemontium, Supplementum in secundum librum secretorum remediorum Ioannis Mesuae, quae vocant De appropriatis, in Supplementum in secundum librum Compendii secretorum medicinae Ioannis Mesues medici celeberrimi tum Petria Apponi Patavini, tum Francisci de Pedemontium medicorum illustrium, Venice, Iunta, 1589, f. 101r. Savonarola's debt to Francesco da Piedemonte was first noted by Ingerslev, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 77, 79. Ingerslev also noted some parallels between Rösslin's work and Savonarola's (pp. 86, 88, and 90), but never went so far as to say that Savonarola was Rösslin's source. Eduard Caspar Jakob von Siebold, Versuch einer Geschichte der Geburtshilfe, 2nd ed., 3 vols, Tübingen, Franz Pietzschen, 1901–4, vol. 2, p. 4, noted in passing Rösslin's debt to Savonarola, but he also listed Aëtius of Amida and Bernard de Gordon, thus muddying the waters again.

⁷See Gundolf Keil and Friedrich Lenhardt, ‘Metlinger, Bartholomeus', in VL, vol. 6, coll. 460–7.

⁸Compare [Joannes] Michael Savonarola, Practica de egritudinibus a capite vsque ad pedes, Venice, Andreas de Bonetis, 1486 (cited here from the copy in Boston, Countway Library of Medicine, Rare Books f Ballard 787), Tractatus VI, cap. xxi, rubr. 32, De difficultate partus, esp. ff. 244rb–245vb, with Eucharius Rösslin, Der Swangern Frauwen und hebammen Rosegarten, facsimile reproduction of the 1513 Strasbourg edition, ed. Huldrych M Koelbing, Zürich, Verlag Bibliophile Drucke von J Stocker, 1976, ff. Fi recto to Fij verso. I have confirmed these readings against the 1513 Hagenau edition [VD16 R 2849], available online at the Munich, Staatsbibliothek website, http://mdz10.bib-bvb.de/∼db/bsb00004811/images/, accessed 23 July 2008. All translations here are my own, as is the punctuation of the German. Two modern English translations of the Rosegarten are now available: Eucharius Rösslin, When midwifery became the male physician's province: the sixteenth century handbook ‘The rose garden for pregnant women and midwives,’ newly Englished, trans. Wendy Arons, Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 1994; and ‘Eucharius Rösslin's Rosegarden: first translation into modern English, January 1, 1995', trans. Sibylle Plassmann, in Gynaecia Mustionis, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 93–166. The introductory material to both these translations should be used with caution.

⁹See the Appendix to Monica H Green, Women's healthcare in the medieval west: texts and contexts, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, for a comprehensive list of texts.

¹⁰Monica H Green (ed. and trans.), The ‘Trotula': a medieval compendium of women's medicine, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, ¶ 93. Because the hardcover and paperback (2002) versions of this edition have different pagination, I cite the text by paragraph numbers. In the Women's conditions section of the Trotula ensemble, for example, it was simply asserted: “When the time of birth arrives, let the woman prepare herself as is customary, and likewise the midwife should do the same with great care” (The ‘Trotula', ed. Green 2001, ¶116).

¹¹Two other late antique texts were Latin translations or adaptations of Soranus's Gynaikeia: the Gynaecia of Theodorus Priscianus and that of Caelius Aurelianus, both of which date from the late fourth or early fifth century. Theodorus's text was a very spare summary with little obstetric content, while Caelius's, though apparently originally a full and faithful translation, survived into the High Middle Ages in only one fragmentary copy.

¹²See Monica H Green, Making women's medicine masculine: the rise of male authority in pre- modern gynaecology, Oxford University Press, 2008.

¹³Guy de Chauliac, Inventarium sive chirurgia magna, ed. Michael R McVaugh, with Margaret S Ogden, 2 vols, Leiden and New York, E J Brill, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 388–9. Guy sees the surgeon as giving instruction to the midwife.

¹⁴There are five extant manuscripts where Albucasis's surgical text (in Latin translation) and the Muscian images are linked: Budapest, University Library (Egyetemi Konyvtar), MS lat. 15, s. xiii ex., with sixteen of the figures plus their accompanying text; London, Sotheby's, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures: Sale LN 7736, Auction: Tuesday, 2 December 1997, London, Sotheby's, 1997, 4^o, 152 p., co., ill. N^o 98 (current whereabouts unknown), c.1300 (Italy), with seven figures; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 161, s. xiii/xiv (Italy), with sixteen figures plus text; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 724, s. xv in. (England), with sixteen figures, here found with Albucasis and other surgical writings, including the surgical books of Celsus's De medicina; and Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. Z 320 (1937), s. xiv (Italy), with six figures.

¹⁵On the medieval circulation of Muscio's text, see Ann Ellis Hanson and Monica H Green, ‘Soranus of Ephesus: Methodicorum princeps', in Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Teilband II, Band 37.2, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1994, pp. 968–1075, a study that was not included in Keil's overview of Muscio scholarship (‘Nachwort', op. cit., note 1 above). On Cantimpré, see Green, op. cit., note 12 above, pp. 147–9. On the Wellcome Apocalypse (London, Wellcome Library, MS 49 (5000), c.1420), see also Almuth Seebohm, Apokalypse, Ars moriendi, medizinische Traktate, Tugend- und Lasterlehren: die erbaulich-didaktische Sammelhandschrift, London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Ms. 49, Munich, H Lengenfelder, 1995. For a reproduction of a copy of the sequence of foetus-in-utero figures from an early fifteenth-century Venetian manuscript, together with a transcription of the accompanying text, see Pierre Pansier, ‘Un manuel d'accouchements du XV^e sie`cle', Janus, 1909, 14: 217–20 (plates precede).

¹⁶In about the eleventh century, two different abbreviations of his work were made: De passionibus mulierum B (On the illnesses of women, Version B) and the Non omnes quidem (the opening words of the text). These two texts are now extant in twelve and eight copies, respectively. See Hanson and Green, op. cit., note 15 above.

¹⁷These are the Pomum aureum (The Golden Apple), a Latin treatise on fertility and childbirth composed c.1444 by Pierre Andrieu in Foix; and the Sickness of women 2, an anonymous Middle English text from the middle of the fifteenth century. Andrieu's work has not yet been published; it is found uniquely in Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, MS lat. 6992, s. xv, ff. 79r–90v, and is described briefly in Green, op. cit., note 12 above, p. 261. The images are not found in this copy, but their intended presence was clearly signalled in the text. On the Middle English text, see Monica H Green and Linne R Mooney, ‘The Sickness of women', in M Teresa Tavormina (ed.), Sex, aging, and death in a medieval medical compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, its texts, language, and scribe, 2 vols, Tempe, AZ, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006, vol. 2, pp. 455–568. The images were also appended to, but not incorporated in, a chapter on difficult birth apparently extracted from a Hebrew medical compendium in the fourteenth century, to which the images were attached; Ron Barkai¨, ‘A medieval Hebrew treatise on obstetrics', Med. Hist., 1989, 33: 96–119, at pp. 115–19.

¹⁸The catalogue was made during the priorate of Burchard (1112–1147); the copy is, unusually, called Liber Mustionis de purgamentis mulierum. In the 1483 catalogue, it bore the title Geneziam Mustionis cum contentis. See Max and Karl Manitius, Handschriften antiker Autoren in mittelalterlichen Bibliothekskatalogen, Leipzig, Otto Harrassowitz, 1935; reptd. Wiesbaden, O Harrassowitz, 1968, p. 252; and Florence Eliza Glaze, ‘The perforated wall: the ownership and circulation of medical books in medieval Europe, c.800–1200', PhD diss., Duke University, 1999, pp. 193 and 281. While there is still a copy of an abbreviated form of Muscio in a Bamberg library (Staatsbibliothek, cod. med. 3 [L. III.11], s. xii, ff. 150r–156r, a copy of De passionibus mulierum B), this manuscript attributes the text to Theodorus Priscianus, not Muscio.

¹⁹Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1304, ss. xii & xiii (Italy). This large composite manuscript comprising not only Muscio but also the Trotula was owned by a fifteenth-century German doctor of medicine and theology named Johannes Spenlin. In both these texts, he annotated only passages dealing with obstetrics and neonatal childcare. This is the only medical manuscript that Spenlin is known to have owned; see Green, op. cit., note 12 above, p. 336.

²⁰Besides Spenlin's copy that entered the Palatine library in Heidelberg (see previous note), these extant manuscripts include Munich, Bayerische Staats-bibliothek, Cgm 597, c.1485, which was copied by Bavarian scribes and which contains the full sixteen-figure sequence on ff. 260r–261v, here with accompanying text; and Erlangen, Universitäts-bibliothek, MS B 33 (olim Irm. 1492), s. xv ex.(S. Germany), ff. 93v–95r, here with sixteen coloured foetus-in-utero pictures, labelled A-Q, but without the text, drawn into a woman in the classic “disease woman” posture; it immediately follows the south German translation of the pseudo-Albertus De secretis mulierum. In addition, the Nuremberg physician Hartmann Schedel (1440–1516) may have been responsible for bringing a thirteenth-century Italian copy of the images, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 161 (see note 14 above), back from his studies at Padua in 1463–66. The physician Hermann Heyms (fl. 1427–1472), who copied out Dresden, Sächsiche Landesbibliothek—Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, cod. lat. P.34 (N. 78), s. xv², was personal physician to the Holy Roman Empress, Eleanor of Portugal (1434–1467), and seems to have spent most of his career in Rothenburg ob der Tauber (in Bavaria), where he was city-physician, and also in Graz. Copies of the images circulating in northern Germany include a copy that entered the university library in Erfurt at some point between 1407 and 1493, where we find in the catalogue a gynaecological work with “locationes infantis in matrice", a description that would only apply to Muscio's Gynaecia (Paul Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, 2. Band: Bistum, Mainz, Erfurt, Munich, C H Beck, 1928, p. 154); and a copy that migrated to Germany at the end of the century when Conrad Boseian, a German from Brunswick, master of arts and bachelor of medicine from Paris and Montpellier, respectively, purchased a copy in Toulouse in 1483 (now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C.671, s. xiii¹, France), containing the full Gynaecia but lacking the images. Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 1192, an. 1434–40 (eastern Germany), with sixteen foetus-in-utero pictures on ff. 263v–264v and 277r, uniquely has the accompanying text in German. At least two late-fifteenth-century copies of the famous Florentine codex containing Celsus, Muscio, and other late antique works (now Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 73, cod. 1) came to Germany from Italy after the discovery of that manuscript in 1427, but neither had the illustrations.

²¹Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS lat. qu. 373, c.1470 (south Germany), ff. 154r–159v. The manuscript was owned by Master Hildebrandus Brandenburg, who then donated it to the Carthusian house of Buxheim.

²²On the phenomenon of “women's secrets”, see Margaret Schleissner, ‘Pseudo-Albertus Magnus: Secreta mulierum cum commento, Deutsch critical text and commentary', PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1987; and Green, op. cit., note 12 above, chap. 5.

²³See Monica H Green, ‘The possibilities of literacy and the limits of reading: women and the gendering of medical literacy', in Green, op. cit., note 9 above, essay VII; and Green, op. cit., note 12 above, chap. 4.

²⁴Kristian Bosselmann-Cyran (ed.), ‘Secreta mulierum’ mit Glosse in der deutschen Bearbeitung von Johann Hartlieb, Pattensen/Hannover, Horst Wellm, 1985, pp. 209–10: “Das selb buch Müscio ist ain sollicher schatz den hebammen, das wunder ist, das es so lang ungetewscht beliben ist, und doch jn kain dingen grosser und schedlicher jrrung geschicht dan jn der geburt und genyst armen und reichenn frawben”. As was typical of the period, Hartlieb only recognizes Muscio's utility as a resource on obstetrics; the work's gynaecological content is never mentioned.

²⁵These were paired translations of the pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Secreta mulierum, and the Trotula ensemble. They were dedicated to Siegmund, Duke of Bavaria-Munich, Count-palatine of the Rhine, with a later version being prepared for Emperor Frederick III.

²⁶See note 20 above.

²⁷Some cases of reordering can, I think, be attributed to the confusion of copyists, as we find in the Munich manuscript shown in figure 1 above. There is, however, one branch of the tradition that adapts the sequence to incorporate the image of a foetus with a large head (image 10A in Table 1). See Green and Mooney, op. cit., note 17 above, at pp. 463 and 561–62.

²⁸Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. C ii verso. A W Bates, Emblematic monsters: unnatural conceptions and deformed births in early modern Europe, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005, does not include Rösslin's account in his appendix listing descriptions of monstrous births from 1500–1700, even though it is likely that the Rosegarten was a major early contributor to this growing fascination.

²⁹Muscio, Gynaecia, in Rose (ed.), op. cit., note 3 above, p. 86.

³⁰Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Diiii verso.

³¹Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, Tractatus VI, cap. XXI, rubr. 32, f. 245ra: “si oportebit quia super alterum pedem egrediatur, oportet ut non sedeat, sed iaceat cruribus elevatis, et erecto capite, obstetrixque manu sua reponat suaviter pedes suos; deinde revolvat se paciens revolutionibus pluribus, donec embrio revolvendo se, caput inclinet inferius ad portam egressionis, et ex tunc sedeat.” In this and all subsequent citations, I have standardized the punctuation.

³²I find no correspondence between the German Muscio in Leipzig MS 1192 (see note 20 above) and the text accompanying the foetal figures in the Rosegarten.

³³Tiziana Pesenti Marangon, ‘Michele Savonarola a Padova: l'ambiente, le opere, la cultura medica', Quaderni per la Storia dell'Università di Padova, 1976–77, 9–10: 45–102, plus genealogical tables; Tiziana Pesenti, Professori e promotori di medicina nello studio di Padova dal 1405 al 1509: Repertorio bio-bibliografico, Padua, Edizioni LINT, 1984, pp. 187–96; and Chiara Crisciani, ‘Michele Savonarola, medico: tra università e corte, tra latino e volgare', in Filosofia in volgare nel medioevo. Atti del Convegno della Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medievale (S.I.S.P.M.), Lecce, 27–29 settembre 2002, Textes et études du Moyen Age, Louvain-la-Neuve, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Etudes Médiévales, 2003, 21: 433–49.

³⁴Savonarola, Regimen, in Belloni (ed.), op. cit., note 3 above. Belloni knew of the Vatican and Venice copies and used both for his edition; a third copy of the text is Reggio Emilia, Biblioteca Municipale, MS Turri C 12, s. xv². On Savonarola's vernacular texts in general and their pronounced didactic intent, see Chiara Crisciani, ‘Histories, stories, exempla, and anecdotes: Michele Savonarola from Latin to vernacular', in Gianna Pomata and Nancy G Siraisi (eds), Historia: empiricism and erudition in early modern Europe, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2005, pp. 297–324.

³⁵Savonarola, Regimen, in Belloni (ed.), op. cit., note 3 above, p. 4, translation by Martin Marafioti. (My thanks to Prof. Marafioti for permission to cite this.)

³⁶Kruse, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 231.

³⁷Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, f. 227ra: “ut omnino dominabus succurramus, que sunt medicorum tube”. Savonarola repeats the phrase in the Regimen, in Belloni (ed.), op. cit., note 3 above, p. 4.

³⁸Hartlieb's promoters for his medical degree in 1439 were Antonio Cermisone and Bartolomeo Montagnana, both colleagues of Savonarola.

³⁹This manuscript is now Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 12. In Clm 13, Hermann Schedel's younger cousin, Hartmann (1440–1516) who also studied in Padua, wrote out notes for distinguishing between a mola vera and pregnancy. Between them, the two also owned four copies of the Salernitan Trotula texts on women's medicine.

⁴⁰Arnold C Klebs, ‘Incunabula scientifica et medica', Osiris, 1938, 4: 1–359, item 882.1–3, p. 292, identifies the first edition as coming from Colle di Valdelsa (Tuscany), Bonus Gallus, 13 Aug. 1479, with editions from Venice in 1486 and 1497. Although the first edition seems to have had a limited circulation (I have found no extant copies in German libraries), the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich has the 1486 and 1497 editions, as do many other libraries in Germany.

⁴¹Von Kranckheiten, Siechtagen und zu val der Swangern und geberenden frowen und ihrer neugebornen Kinderen, Hamburg, cod. med. 801, p. 22: “wie sich ain yede fraw, in, vor, und nach der gepurt halten solle vnd wiemann ir in harter gepurt zu hilffe komenn sol”. Cf. Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Ciiii recto.

⁴²Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, f. 244va: “Primum attendendum est maxime pro dominabus magnis, nam pro pauperculis non multum laborat medicus”.

⁴³Hamburg, cod. med. 801, p. 25; cf. Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Di verso.

⁴⁴On the development of illustrations of the birth chair in the 1547 and 1559 printed editions of Savonarola's Practica, see E A Rauws and J E Rauws, ‘De baarstoel van Michele Savonarola', Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, 2005, 10 (6): 46–53.

⁴⁵Muscio described it as follows: “What is an obstetrical chair? It is like a barber's chair, in which [the woman] is seated so that she has below her seat a hole cut out in the likeness of a moon where the infant can fall out”; Rose (ed.), op. cit., note 3 above, p. 21: “Qualis est obstetricalis sella? sicuti est sella tonsoris, in qua sedetur ita ut habeat sub sessu similitudine lunae foramen praecissum, ut illuc infans cadere possit”. Cf. Owsei Temkin (trans.), Soranus’ Gynecology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956, pp. 70–2.

⁴⁶Albucasis, Chirurgia, Book II, cap. lxv, here citing from Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. Z 320, f. 98va.

⁴⁷Avicenna, Liber canonis, Venice, 1507; repr. Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1964, f. 169vb: “Et melius super quod sedetur apud partum est scamnum posito pulvinari post ipsum”.

⁴⁸Hamburg, cod. med. 801, p. 28: “sol sy sitzen auff ein banck und sol hinder iren zuchen mit einem kussen underlegen”.

⁴⁹Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Dii verso.

⁵⁰Kruse, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 232. Cf. her complete edition of the manuscript version of the Frauenbüchlein in Britta-Juliane Kruse, Verborgene Heilkünste: Geschichte der Frauenmedizin im Spätmittelalter, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1996, pp. 307–13.

⁵¹I have not had the opportunity to examine manuscript copies of the Practica to determine if there was a medieval tradition of illustrating this chair. It does not appear in either the 1486 or the 1561 printed editions I consulted, but cf. Rauws and Rauws, op. cit., note 44 above.

⁵²Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, ff. 244vb–245ra: “Primo itaque debet obstetrix preparare sedem, super quam stare debet parturiens, aut modum secundum quem parturiens debet se aptare, ut facilis fiat partus, et in diversis regionibus et civitatibus diversa habent ingenia mulieres ipse, que a me enumerare non esset possibile: modum saltem tangam communem, et abilem omnibus. Cum autem est in actu sic parturiendi, obstetrix iubeat pregnantem sedere per spatium hore, uel circa. dico circa quoniam alique sunt ita habilitate ex se ad partum, ut in una hora parturiant. si itaque non est primus partus, debet se informare obstetrix de primo ut sciat, quomodo se regulare [correcting from regulariter] debet circa pregnantem. Deinde faciat ipsam ambulare saltando modo super uno pede, modo super alio, est iuvativum valde, et quod aut fortiter clamet, aut ut potest anhelitum teneat ad hoc, ut inferius comprimat. Item faciat ilia sua fricare, et premere ad expellendum foetum. Cumque sentit mulier foetum descendere, et os matricis aperiri ex fortificatis doloribus, et quia humiditates incipiunt in maiori quantitate emanare; tunc precipiat obstetrix ut pregnans stet super sedem altam in extremitate eius super puluinare. Retro autem ponatur pulvinar, et mulier alia cui adhereat: aut, si potest, stet suis pedibus, et se suspendat collo unius fortis mulieris, que etiam sustineat. Autem stet super genua sua in lecto ab aliis substentata mulieribus, et quedam mulieres, ut grece habent sedem hoc modo factam, ut hic. [A small space appears here.]

Nam super primam extremitatem semirotundam stat parturiens, retro eam stat, que ipsam substinet, et tenet cum pulvinari, et retro ipsam est aliter una, que ut iam est eleuata, ad quam se apodiat mulier, eam substinens et gubernans; et est modus bonus, quamuis non ubique fiat. Sed certe, ut ab eis habui, non valet aliquis modus singularum, quoniam oportet mutare secundum dolores, et causas impedientes exitum foetus.”

⁵³The Zurich surgeon, Jakob Ruf (1500–1558), writing about forty years after Rösslin, described a tri-valve screw speculum, as well as several foetal extractors, in his obstetrical work, Ein schön lustig Trostbüchle von den Empfengknussen und Geburten der Menschen, Zurich, Christoph Froschauer, 1554. This also appeared in Latin as De conceptu et generatione hominis: De matrice et eius partibus, nec non de conditione infantis in utero, et gravidarum cura et officio: … libri sex …, trans. Wolfgang Haller with a new preface probably by Ruf himself, Zurich, Christoph Froschauer, 1554.

⁵⁴Savonarola, in fact, is closely echoing Avicenna here.

⁵⁵Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, f. 244rb–va.

⁵⁶Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, Tract VI, cap. XXI, rubric 34, De regimine multi sanguinis post partum, f. 246rb: “Unde est verum, quod cura huius aperta est ex dictis supra de fluxu menstruorum”.

⁵⁷Savonarola, op. cit., note 8 above, Tract VI, cap. XXI, rubr. 7, f. 230va: “et ideo solicitus esto. ¶ Postremo scito, quod raro medici consequuntur honorem de cura eius, quia domine verecundantur detegere [text: detegre] hanc passionem, et ideo ut plurimum non nisi inveterata ad manus pervenit medicorum, et ideo considera”.

⁵⁸Hamburg, cod. med. 801, p. 49: “So nun mangerley ursach sind uberiger frowen fluß ist vast not, das sich die frowen in noten nit zu vil scham haben sunder sich gegen den artzet entplossen und im ir einligen noch not durfft erzellen der auß sinem fragen und auß ir antwurt wol mag underricht werden, von was sach wegen, ir solicher uberiger fluß komen siey, dem nach er ir wol raten kan”. Cf. Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Giii recto.

⁵⁹The references to Albertus Magnus are found in the Hamburg, cod. med. 801, pp. 14, 15, and 16. Cf. Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, ff. Biii verso, Ci recto, and Ci verso.

⁶⁰Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, fols. Giiii verso–Hi recto.

⁶¹The ‘Trotula', Green (ed.), op. cit., note 10 above, ¶ 149; cf. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium medicine Gilberti Anglici tam morborum universalium quam particularium nondum medicis sed et cyrurgis utilissimum, Lyons, 1510, Book VII, chapter De exitu matricis & secundine, f. 307va. Although the Trotula was available in two different German translations (including one by Johannes Hartlieb), neither one included this section of Trota's Treatments for women.

⁶²Hamburg, cod. med. 801, p. 58: “Also dan die scherer wissen sollen, so gend die lefftzen des bruchs zu samen”. Cf. Rösslin, op. cit., note 8 above, f. Hii recto, where we find “wundartzat” instead of “scherer”. In the Trotula, surgical repair for ano-vaginal fistula is described in ¶ 149 (Green (ed.), op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 124–6). A second remedy from the Trotula for perineal rupture (¶ 228, cf. Green (ed.), p. 158) follows this description of surgical repair in the German.

⁶³The Frauenbüchlein is made up of three chapters: the first corresponds directly to chapter 4 in the Rosegarten, focusing on regimen and preparations for birth. The second section is a regimen for the woman during her lying-in after birth; while there are many headings on post-partum conditions in Savonarola's Practica (including a chapter specifically on the regimen for the enixa), it offers no direct parallel. The same is true of the Frauenbüchlein's third chapter, which is a listing intended to warn the recent parturient of other diseases that might befall her; it reads as if it were a table of contents of Savonarola's entire gynaecological section, Tract VI, Chapter XXI. In other words, the Frauenbüchlein seems, in my opinion, really to be a “women's little book”: an adaptation of the fuller translation of Savonarola's obstetrical chapters for a lay female audience. Like Savonarola's own Italian text for women, it is long on advice for behaviour and diet, and short on anything more technical or theoretically demanding.

⁶⁴Kruse, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 232, offers a comparison of parallel passages describing the obstetrical chair corresponding to Rosegarten, chapter 4, from the Hamburg manuscript, the Rosegarten, and the Frauenbüchlein. The reading from the manuscript version of the Frauenbüchlein which she also discovered (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2967, c.1500) can be found in Kruse, op. cit., note 50 above, p. 309.

⁶⁵Cf. Kruse, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 233, which compares all four German texts. In the corresponding passage of the Latin, Savonarola says nothing about baked apples.

⁶⁶Ibid., p. 230.

⁶⁷Ibid., pp. 234–35. Kruse suggests the manuscript was in Eucharius the elder's hands throughout his life, then passed immediately to his son, Eucharius the younger. It then passed to another apothecary named Johan Wessen.

⁶⁸Although his date of death is not known, we do know that he was still the city physician of Augsburg in 1488. See Ludwig Schuba, Die medizinischen Handschriften der Codices Palatini Latini in der Vatikanischen Bibliothek. Kataloge der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Band I, Wiesbaden, Ludwig Reichert, 1981, p. 279.

⁶⁹Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1248, an. 1470–1488, ff. 159r–173r, De egritudinibus matricis. I have compared the incipit of this text (the beginning of the chapter on uterine suffocation) with a variety of Latin compendia and have not yet been able to identify its source.

⁷⁰See Gundolf Keil, ‘Scherrenmüller, Bartholomäus (B. Scherrenmuller de Aula)', VL 8, coll. 652–54; I have not been able to consult Wolfram Schmitt, ‘Bartholomäus Scherrenmüllers Gesundheitsregimen (1493) für Graf Eberhard im Bart’, diss. Heidelberg, Inst. Gesch. Med., 1970.

⁷¹I examine this larger phenomenon of the functions of literate medicine in the field of women's health in Green, op. cit., note 12 above.