The Captain’s Concubine. Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany by Donald Weinstein (review)

REVIEWS 240 which he uses the terms “quack” and “charlatan” to refer to unlicensed healers, both Spanish and indigenous. Tepaske gives much credence to European medical degrees and licenses, even though, as he himself points out, the efficacy of cures recommended by licensed physicians is questionable (SSN 61), and in spite of the fact that they were established in part to prohibit women, Jews, and Muslims from practicing medicine.36 Tepaske reveals his lack of regard for midwives and “the omnipresent native healers ... who pervaded the land ...,” which is odd given that King Philip understood the value of “indigenous doctors , medicine men, herbalists, Indians ...” and instructed Hernández to consult with these specialists (MT 46). In his will Hernández requested that Philip II compensate the indigenous doctors, herbalists, and all others who worked with him on his chef d’oeuvre. Interestingly, he names the three artists by name, specifying that to each, or their heirs, should be given thirty ducats “to compensate for lack of payment to them” (MT 62). It is in his will that Hernández recognizes the enormous debt to those Native Americans, without whose knowledge and expertise he would not have been able to execute the Natural History of New Spain. Taken as a whole, The Mexican Treasury and Searching for the Secrets of Nature is a wonderful resource; the reader uninitiated into the world of Francisco Hernández will find these companion volumes very user-friendly, and the Hernández scholar will no doubt appreciate the meticulous research that went into assembling the vast majority of this in-depth study. All in all, these companion volumes constitute an important contribution to some four centuries of studies of Francisco Hernández’s life works, and are impressive as a study of the subject as well as a fascinating study of historiography. ELISA MANDELL, Art History, UCLA Donald Weinstein, The Captain’s Concubine. Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press 2000) 219 pp. On 21 March 1578, Holy Thursday, blood covered a dark street in the Tuscan town of Pistoia following a skirmish between cavalier Fabrizio Bracciolini and fellow cavalier Mariotto Cellesi. The matter came to the attention of local officials when Fabrizio charged that Mariotto and four accomplices had “traitorously ” ambushed him from the rear. The five men, he claimed, beat him, badly 36 Jean Dangler, Mediating Fictions: Literature, Women Healers, and the Go-Between in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (London 2001) 35. Dangler cites Myriam Greilsammer ’s study of midwifery in the Low Countries where she argues that women were excluded from medicine and midwifery because they threatened the authority of male medical professionals (47). Myriam Greilsammer, “The Midwife, the Priest, and the Physician: The Subjugation of Midwives in the Low Countries at the End of the Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21.2 (Fall 1991) 285–329. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich makes the same argument in her Pulitzer prize-winning study of midwifery in the Colonial United States: “To allow women to continue to practice midwifery, or, by extension, any other form of independent healing, deprived male doctors of the experience they needed and at the same time perpetuated the notion that uneducated people could safely care for the sick.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York 1990) 254. REVIEWS 241 slashed his face, and then disappeared. According to Fabrizio, the violent attack by Mariotto was unprovoked and had jeopardized his life as well as his honor. Donald Weinstein stumbled across the charges made against Mariotto while researching the subject of dueling in sixteenth-century Tuscany. Impressed by the richness of the documentation contained in the Bracciolini-Cellesi dossier, Weinstein decided to focus upon the conflict between the two cavaliers rather than produce the study of dueling in early modern Italy he had originally intended . Weinstein’s restricted focus firmly locates his narrative in the genre of historical writing known as microhistory. Skilled historians such as Carlo Ginzburg and Natalie Davis have demonstrated microhistory’s viability, but the genre has not been without its critics. One of the difficulties with...