In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Michele Savonarola: Medicina e cultura di corte
  • Joseph Ziegler
Chiara Crisciani and Gabriella Zuccolin, eds. Michele Savonarola: Medicina e cultura di corte. Micrologus Library 37. Florence: Sismel, 2011. xxii + 299 pp. €48.00 (978-88-8450-400-5).

The grand narrative of premodern medicine draws a clear line between learned medicine (scholastic in style and nature, theory oriented, Latin, bookish, university based, an agent assimilating a substantial body of ancient and Islamic sources, and inventor of refined technical vocabulary) and practical medicine (vernacular, experimental, empirical, patient oriented, lacking an institutional base, often related to astrology and other auxiliary sciences). Courts (royal, princely, or papal) were responsible for a significant output of medical texts before 1500 in the Latin [End Page 123] West. The role of courts in patronage of medical knowledge and professionals is well known, but was the medicine that emerged from these courts different from the medicine emerging from other centers of knowledge? Michele Savonarola: Medicina e cultura di corte is a collection of eleven essays originating from a similarly titled 2005 conference in Pavia and centering on the activity and medical writings of Michele Savonarola, who from the 1440s was linked to the Este court in Ferrara. For the editors of this volume the complex figure of Michele Savonarola provides a typical case study that allows us to draw the distinctive characteristics of court medicine in Quattrocento Italy.

Chiara Crisciani’s useful and heavily annotated introductory chapter supplies a detailed survey of the vast secondary literature on premodern court medicine in general and Michele Savonarola in particular. His career displays themes typical of court medicine: political patronage, a strong empirical orientation and attention to particulars, and recourse to descriptive heuristics expressed by specific case histories. The fluid, open, varied, and often changing situation of the court physician facilitated alliances between medicine and other bodies of knowledge: astrology, physiognomy, alchemy, and magic as well as ethics, history, pedagogy, and politics.

Monica Ferrari supplies a historiographic survey of court culture with particular reference to the important role of the physician in the formation and education of the new prince, in regulating life and defining well-being at court, and in furnishing political advice.

The general scientific culture in fifteenth-century Ferrara is covered by Silvia Nagel (the contribution of the Jewish community to the local culture, in particular the presence of prominent Jewish physicians such as Amato Lusitano and Moses Alatino); Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti (the scientific books in the Este library, which faithfully reflects the intellectual interests of the Ferrara ducal family); and Stefano Cracolici, who elegantly examines the physiological and psychological meanings of the term bizzarria (eccentricity, oddity) and their implications in some of Savonarola’s works, thereby illuminating his moralistic view of courtly life and courtly behavior. Cracolici thus enables us to better understand Savonarola’s place within his contemporary intellectual setting and uncovers his subtle critique of the courtiers, tainted by a capricious mood and thus prone to anger, which potentially undermines the state’s well-being.

But the heart of the collection is dedicated to the study of medical practice through the reading of Savonarola’s writings. Danielle Jacquart explores Savonarola’s Practica maior to sketch the complex medical and intellectual profile of this court physician. This Latin text, which often was the source for his later vernacular practical treatises, reveals the author’s piety and his belief in the direct link between successful cure and the physician’s religious gestures and behavior. His dietetic advice is dictated by essential norms of courtly art de vivre and etiquette, not just by physiological principles and needs (e.g., a detailed excursus on the proper way to slice meat at a nobleman’s table is inserted into the chapter on meat). Jacquart examines the place of astrological considerations in Savonarola’s practice, his pharmacological strategy and attitudes to surgery as alternative ways [End Page 124] to treat patients, as well as the incursion of theoretical considerations into his medical practice.

Riccardo Gualdo formulates guidelines for the vast project of a critical edition of Savonarola’s vernacular medical works, which are studied by four of the contributors to the volume. Marilyn Nicoud carefully examines a specific...

pdf

Share