by Adams, Max;
If a woman has performed incantations or diabolical divinations, let her do penance for one year. About which it says in the canon: those who observe auguries or auspices or dreams or any kind of divinations according to the customs of the heathens, or introduce men of this kind into their homes in investigating a device of the magicians – if these repent, if they are of the clergy let them be cast out, but if they are truly secular people let them do penance for five years.6
Professional cunning-women, or female shamans, might have been vilified by history. But the evidence of their burials and their appearances in sagas tell us that they were also valued, revered and, quite likely, feared.
Trota, the medic of Salerno
Folk remedies are as old as humankind, as old as speculation on how our bodies and minds function, stay healthy, fail and heal. At times, concentrations of expertise and interest in medicine and philosophy have propelled the study and treatment of human diseases onto a new plane. In eleventh- and twelfth-century Italy, specifically in the city of Salerno, southeast of Naples, such a concentration produced a famous medical treatise called Trotula. Trota, the local woman’s name from whom the Latin title derives, was a celebrated practitioner of medicine.
Salerno was a magnificent city, founded by incoming Lombards from the north in the eighth century, taken and expanded by Normans in the eleventh: a mélange of Christian, Jew and Muslim and of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic learning; rich in produce, architecture and intellect. Like Córdoba, it enjoyed access to the riches of Europe, Africa and Arabia: precious herbs and spices; the bounteous wheat harvests of Sicily; the words of the ancients. Its many bath houses were fed by aqueducts from the surrounding hills. Of its nine monasteries, three were convents for women. In the late eleventh century its archbishop, Alfanus, claimed that in his youth
Salerno then flourished to such an extent in the art of medicine that no illness was able to settle there.
We know nothing of the life of Trota herself except for the texts that bear her name: Practica secundum Trotam (Practical Medicine According to Trota)§ and Trotula, of which the central third, seemingly dictated to a scribe, contains De curis mulierum (On Treatments for Women), now directly ascribed to Trota. Two much better-known writers of the twelfth century, Orderic Vitalis and Marie de France, tell the story of a Norman or French visitor to Salerno who found a woman there ‘very learned in medicine’.
Trota’s medicine was free of much of the philosophical and moral dead weight informing many other classical treatises, which pictured diseases as functions of character or of fundamental human types after the second-century Greek physician Galen’s theory of humours. Her treatments were largely empirical, the practices of what we would nowadays call frontline medics: women who visited, consulted and treated women – and sometimes men, too. The majority of the city’s physicians were male, and there is a strong sense that they were reluctant to confront many of the more intimate ailments so commonly suffered by women: that is to say, infertility and obstetric, gynaecological and urogenital conditions. Trota’s work addresses all these; it also includes advice on skin conditions, the whitening of teeth and anti-ageing creams – some of them containing toxic substances like lead, which is deleterious in the long term, if effective in the short term.
Despite her freedom from the encumbrance of classical theory, Trota believed that women conformed to one of two essential physiological types, which guided treatment on the basis of contraries – that is to say, by correcting perceived imbalances…
In order that we might make a concise summary of the treatment of women, it ought to be noted that certain women are hot, while some are cold. In order to determine which, one should perform this test…7
The test in question involved the insertion of a cloth, anointed in certain oils and herbs, into the vagina and observation of the results. To that extent, it might be called diagnostic; but it’s not something to try at home. More practical – and Treatments for Women is nothing if not practical – is this advice ‘On those giving birth with difficulty’:
We should prepare a bath and we put [the woman] in it, and after she leaves [the bath] let there be a fumigation of spikenard [an essential oil derived from the highly aromatic Nardostachys jatamansi] and similar aromatic substances. For strengthening and for opening [the birth canal], let there be sternutatives…8
Sternutatives – in this case, an extract of the plant white hellebore (Veratrum album) – are substances that induce sneezing. Now, as it happens – and the clinical evidence comes from the effects of white hellebore used in the early twentieth century as a sneezing powder – this plant’s root contains a toxin that, in large doses, paralyses the nervous system with potentially fatal consequences. The idea of sneezing and then having the muscles relaxed sounds alarmingly risky, if possibly effective, in easing the physiological pain of birth.
Straightforward, uncomplicated delivery is not covered in the treatise. Monica Green, the scholar who has produced the definitive text and analysis of the Trotula manuscripts, argues that this is an indication of her audience’s – that is, female medics’ – familiarity with midwifery. Trota reserves her advice for interventions in what she calls the ‘dangerous things’ that happen when women give birth – perineal tearing, for example: to be sewn up with silk thread and smeared with pitch. There is, then, an empirical understanding here of the danger of infection.
Only once are Trota’s readers offered clinical, if anecdotal, evidence of her personal success. It concerns the case of a woman suffering pain, as if from a uterine rupture
Whence it happened that Trota was called in as a master of this operation when a certain young woman was about to be operated on for a windiness# of this kind as if she suffered from rupture, and she was thoroughly astonished. Therefore, she made her come to her own house so that in secret she might determine the cause of the disease. Whereupon, she recognised that the pain was not from rupture or inflation of the womb but from windiness. And so she saw to it that there be made for her a bath in which marsh-mallow [Althaea officinalis] and pellitory-of-the-wall [Parietaria officinalis] were cooked, and she put her into it. And she massaged her limbs frequently and smoothly, softening them, and for a long time she made her remain in the bath. And after her exit, she made for her a plaster of the juice of wild radish and barley flour, and she applied to her the whole thing somewhat warm in order to consume the windiness. And again she made her sit in the above-mentioned bath, and thus she remained cured.9
It is striking, in this unique passage, that Trota’s skills were not confined to diagnosis and treatment. There is a substantial element of nursing care – not to mention humanity and compassion – in the account. Trota’s career cannot have been unique: it must stand for the thousands of women who, unacknowledged by history, practised midwifery and nursing care in all cultures.∫
A Mochica stirrup vessel
Early Arabic versions of Trota’s text contain drawings – caricatures, really – of women undergoing treatment. Otherwise, depictions of women in Early Medieval European art are rare, and when they do grace the margins of manuscripts the images are overwhelmingly dominated by stock figures of saintly virgins. During the same period, in South America, an exuberant ceramic tradition among the MocheΩ has left a dazzling and suggestive collection of clues to the role of women in a society actively contemplating and experimenting with social relations: an anthropologist’s candy store. Using two-piece press moulds to allow replication, and employing a very high level of skill in portraiture and caricature of both human and animal form, Mochica potters indulged in the manufacture of all sorts of fancy drinking or pouring vessels, often in the form of a jug with one or more stirrup spouts, clever and technically demanding.
More than five hundred surviving objects display a sexual theme: sex in bed, sex standing, anal sex, oral sex and masturbation are all graphically depicted. Whether these were the indulgences of a decadent elite, like the erotic murals of Pompeii, or magical c
harms designed to arouse, is not clear. What seems unarguable is that such objects must have initiated or reflected conversations about the physical relations between men and women: sex was no conversational taboo and there is no suggestion that, like the grisly sins of the flesh depicted by medieval European artists, sex was in itself ‘sinful’ or corrupting. Fertility and the cycles of birth, life, reproduction and death were recurring and vital motifs in South American society, as they were in Europe; but depictions of masturbation, of anal and oral sex are hardly encouragements to pregnancy and multiplication; quite the opposite. There is no prudery: this is sex for the hell of it.
I am particularly intrigued by a series of designs that show the pivotal event in the ever-renewing cycle of life: a woman at the moment of giving birth.≈ In each example, the mother, sitting on a low stool or chair, is braced against and held from behind by another woman, while the baby emerges from her womb. Sometimes she is naked; occasionally she is clothed in a loose garment. On other vessels she is assisted by a second woman: a midwife, who is supporting or pulling the baby’s head as it emerges. Although many of these vessels are superficially similar, each one is individually crafted with a distinct and expressive range of individual artistic flair on show.
Three obvious questions come to mind: for whom were these ceramics made? What set of meanings or functions, if any, did they fulfil? And what liquid did the jugs hold? One might see the gift of such an item as a congratulatory present to an expectant mother – to wish her luck. That seems a little like offering a hostage to fortune, though. Or were such vessels commissioned and owned by professional midwives, to advertise their skills or to reassure their prospective clients? They might have held soothing oils or essences, to be burned in a dish to induce relaxation (reminding one of Trota the Salernitan medic). They could have contained magic potions or alcohol or, indeed, some herbal antiseptic.
Blurred vocational lines between midwives, women healers and shamans are an intercultural feature of pre-industrial societies. Whatever the individual case, these depictions tap into a preoccupation with the cycles of life, death and rebirth in whose wonders, mysteries, creativity and dangers women played central roles. Like the stirrup pots depicting sexual activity, the birthing vessels may also self-consciously relate these cycles to the transfer of fluids between bodies, symbolically replicated in drinking rituals or the pouring of the contents, magic or otherwise, from their spouts. The Mochica stirrup vessels remain one of art’s most intriguing mysteries.
Peace-weavers, war-spinners
For Early Medieval poets, lawmakers and hagiographers, women fulfilled conflicting roles, not just in idealised reality but in dreams, fantasies and psycho-religious dramas. Holy virgins and fecund mothers alike were celebrated; soothsayers and seeresses welcomed, feared and vilified; mead-goddesses eulogised and blamed. In their many conventional roles women were sometimes seen as passive and submissive, but often as inciters of incident, adventure and trouble – trouble for men, that is. Their counsel could be wise; their skills with needle and weaving batten admired and prized. In power, as queens or landowners, they were actors on the grand stage. In death, for the archaeologist, their existence is as tangible as men’s.
A handful of poems shed light on the sorts of stories that women inspired in the late Anglo-Saxon period. In Beowulf, a tale of the Heroic Age on the cusp of prehistory, the women we meet (aside from the mother of the monster Grendel) are high-born queens. Hygd is the wife of Beowulf’s uncle and patron, King Hygelac of the Geats: her noble character is revealed in generosity towards her countrymen:
Great in his hall, Hygd very young was,
Fine-mooded, clever, though few were the winters
That the daughter of Hæreth had dwelt in the borough;
But she nowise was cringing nor niggard of presents,
Of ornaments rare, to the race of the Geatmen.10
In the country of the Danes, King Hrothgar’s daughter is a
…highly-famed queen,
Peace-tie of peoples, [who] oft passed through the building,
Cheered the young troopers; she oft tendered a hero
A beautiful ring-band, ere she went to her sitting.
Oft the daughter of Hrothgar in view of the courtiers
To the earls at the end the ale-vessel carried,
Whom Freaware I heard the hall-sitters title,
When nail-adorned jewels she gave to the heroes:
Gold-bedecked, youthful, to the glad son of Froda
Her faith has been plighted; the friend of the Scyldings,
The guard of the kingdom, hath given his sanction,
And counts it a vantage, for a part of the quarrels,
A portion of hatred, to pay with the woman.
Freawaru – a name meaning, literally, ‘peace-weaver’ – is explicitly sacrificed to a political marriage alliance, in order to end a blood feud. Her mother, Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s queen, is the first lady of the mead hall, Heorot. She fulfils the role of hostess and cup-bearer, plying warriors with praise and ale. But she also plays the part of the goad, inciting Beowulf to fight the monster Grendel. Wealhtheow
…graciously circled
’Mid all the liegemen lesser and greater:
Treasure-cups tendered, till time was afforded
That the decorous-mooded, diademed folk-queen
Might bear to Beowulf the bumper o’errunning;
She greeted the Geat-prince, God she did thank,
Most wise in her words, that her wish was accomplished…
…He accepted the beaker,
Battle-bold warrior, at Wealhtheow’s giving,
Then equipped for combat quoth he in measures,
Beowulf spake, offspring of Ecgtheow:
‘I purposed in spirit when I mounted the ocean,
When I boarded my boat with a band of my liegemen,
I would work to the fullest the will of your people
Or in foe’s-clutches fastened fall in the battle.
Deeds I shall do of daring and prowess,
Or the last of my life-days live in this mead-hall.’
These words to the lady were welcome and pleasing…
It is the explicit duty of the hero to respond to her challenge, to defeat the bane of her people, the dread monster Grendel. After his death at Beowulf’s hands, the queen honours the hero with praise and gifts, including a famed necklace…
Wealhtheow discoursed, the war-troop addressed she:
‘This collar enjoy thou, Beowulf, worthy
Young man, in safety, and use thou this armour,
Gems of the people, and prosper thou fully,
Show thyself sturdy and be to these liegemen
Mild with instruction! I’ll mind thy requital.
Thou hast brought it to pass that far and near
Forever and ever earthmen shall honour thee,
Even so widely as ocean surroundeth
The blustering bluffs. Be, while thou livest,
A wealth-blessèd atheling. I wish thee most truly
Jewels and treasure…’
The idea that women might incite men to war, or to fight for their honour, finds an early expression even in Bede’s History of the English People. Before his reign as king, the exiled Northumbrian atheling Edwin∂ was offered sanctuary by King Rædwald of East Anglia, generally considered to be the occupant of the seventh-century ship burial discovered in the 1930s in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The king was bribed by Edwin’s brother-in-law to hand him over to his enemies and Rædwald was about to betray the prince until his un-named queen
…dissuaded him from it, warning him that it was in no way fitting for so great a king to sell his best friend for gold when he was in such trouble, still less to sacrifice his own honour, which is more precious than any ornament, for the love of money.11
In the language of the warrior age, this was metaphorically known as placing a sword in a man’s lap. The king, chastened, took his
queen’s counsel, stood by his friend and helped Edwin win back his kingdom: the queen acted as both goad and moral counsellor to her correspondingly weak husband. In later centuries, Anglo-Scottish border narratives tell of wives who, eager to send their husbands out a-reiving (raiding across the border for cattle and portable booty), would serve them a plate of spurs for their supper.
The ninth-century poet Cynewulf extended the repertoire of heroic queens with Elene (St Helena), none other than the mother of the Emperor Constantine who was in large part responsible for the biblical archaeo-tourism of Jerusalem experienced by the wide-eyed Egeria.π Elene, leading a military expedition to the Holy Land, forced the elders of Jerusalem to reveal to her the hiding place of the True Cross; constructed a church on the site; and directly manifested God’s power in converting the doubting heathens. The same poet also versified a life of Juliana, a martyr of the fourth-century persecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian. Refusing to marry a pagan, she was whipped, beaten, imprisoned and executed by her suitor with the approval of her humiliated father. If Elene stands for the strength and wisdom of the institutional church, Juliana is one of its foot soldiers.
A more vengeful and insouciant character is portrayed in a retelling of the Old Testament story of Judith and Holofernes, contained in the same manuscript as the Beowulf epic. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s general, Holofernes, might be Grendel personified, the vile heathen persecutor of her people, the Israelites; she is the cool-handed bedroom executioner, champion of the oppressed, both holy and wise.∆ These poetic images of women during the Viking Age, when Christianity’s fragile triumph among the Anglo-Saxons was beset on all sides by the threat of pagan Scandinavian conquest, surely reflect men’s need to be inspired by their women or face losing country, honour and faith.
Njál’s Saga, an thirteenth-century Norse tale of a long-running blood feud, contains a grisly story, supposedly set in eleventh-century Caithness, which taps into a much darker allegory of women’s power to shape martial events. A man named Dorrud saw twelve valkyries – supernatural females whose role in Norse myth was to choose the best warriors from the slain of the battlefield and escort them to Valhalla – entering what he calls a ‘women’s room’, which we understand to be a weaving hall. Peering in through a window, he sees that the women have set up a loom on which the warp-weights are the heads of men and the threads of warp and weft are their intestines, while a sword is being used as a batten and an arrow as a pin beater. The women are singing a verse (just as the women weavers of the Northern Isles sang work songs right up until the twentieth century), to be understood as an allegory of the battle of Clontarf in 1014 between the Irish Christian King Brian Boru and the pagan Sigtrygg Silkbeard, king of the Dublin Norse. The weavers manipulate the action, as an act of divination…