Showing posts with label Hildegard of Bingen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hildegard of Bingen. Show all posts

Saturday, March 25, 2023

Medieval Hygiene

Now that we've talked about rushes on the floors in the Middle Ages and whether they were sanitary, what about attitudes to cleanliness in other parts of day-to-day living? There is an unfortunate tendency to think of our medieval forebears as dirty, which was simply not true.

For example, the Goodman of Paris, a text written in the early 1390s about managing a household (and mentioned in my post on the hourglass), offers this about hand washing:

To make Water for washing hands at table: Boil sage, then strain the water and cool until it is a little more than lukewarm. Or use chamomile, marjoram or rosemary boiled with orange peel. Bay leaves are also good.

A bowl with water was available for washing your hands and face when you awoke, before meals, when arriving home after a long day's work or a long journey (washing the "dust of the road" from you sounds like a quaint saying today, but centuries ago you arrived home likely covered in dust).

Besides the Goodman, another popular text in Western Europe was the Tacuinum sanitatis ("Maintenance of Health"), a Latin work translated from an 11th century Arabic medical treatise. Numerous versions were produced in the 14th and 15th centuries. It discussed the virtues of bathing with Water of A Pleasurable Warmth:

Nature: Warm and humid in the second degree.
Optimum: The kind that opens the pores with moderate heat or with a fever.
Usefulness: For bodies with open pores; furthermore, it lowers the temperature.

There are also many depictions of people in bathing tubs, such as the one above. Of course, not everyone could afford a tub, or to heat water. Lower classes took advantage of streams and ponds or lakes. No one wanted a build-up of grime on their hands or bodies.

Our old friend Hildegard of Bingen offered a recipe for washing:

...one whose face has hard and rough skin, made harsh from the wind, should cook barley in water and, having strained that water through a cloth, should bathe his face gently with the moderately warm water. The skin will become soft and smooth, and will have a beautiful color.

This is a face conditioner; did they have a face cleanser? Grime could be more easily removed if you had soap. Did they have soap? Let's figure that out tomorrow.

Monday, March 7, 2016

The Forgotten Vegetable

In The Forme of Cury cookbook from Richard II's court, there is a recipe for "Rapes in Potage," "rapes" meaning turnips. Let me offer my translation of the recipe:
Take turnips and wash them, cut them into squares, parboil them. Take them out of the water, put them into broth and continue cooking. Mince onions and toss them with saffron and salt; add them to the pot. Sprinkle with sweet powder and serve. You can also do this [the author adds] with parsnips and skirrets.
From an 1885 German book
Turnips and parsnips we understand, but "skirrets" are mostly a mystery to modern cooks, despite a few attempts to create a revival.

The plant itself came from China, but traveled westward via trade to Europe. It became known in Germany as Zuckerwurzel ["sugar root"], and Hildegard of Bingen addressed its effects and medicinal properties in her treatise, Physica. The Dutch and Danish also call it "sugar root."

The Forme of Cury not only mentions them as a substitute for turnips, but also has a recipe for skirret fritters. In England, it was called skirwhit or skirwort which mean "white root." The whiteness and sweetness of the roots seem to be their chief attribute, praised by cooks through the ages.

The plant itself is hardy, resistant to cold and pests, and prefers moist soil—making it ideal for the English climate. The roots are best if dug up and eaten when the plant goes dormant in winter, making them a good source of food during the coldest months.

Modern attempts to work with skirret seem to disagree with the cooks of Richard II. The gardeners of Hampton Court have added this forgotten vegetable to their stock, and find that it is delicate enough that even parboiling ruins the flavor. Food historian Marc Meltonville says "Celebrate it on its own. Eat it raw or cube it up and fry it in butter with a little garlic, in an iron pan if possible." [link]

If you wish to try your hand at a long-lost root vegetable, you can order from here or here.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Skincare for Women

Madonna of the Recommended,
Lippo Memmi (c.1291 - 1356)
Cosmetics were known as far back as early Egyptian culture, so it is no surprise that ways to maintain good skin were known through the Medieval Era. The materials needed for cosmetics were derived from some of the same sources as medicines—such as lily root or white lead—so much cosmetic advice came from physicians.

An example of ideal skin was the 1350 painting by Lippo Memmi, "Madonna of the Recommended." Trotula of Salerno offered recipes for fair skin. "Fair skin" was not necessarily light-colored skin, but referred to smoothness  and a lack of blemishes. A woman could be considered "fair-skinned" if she were a pale Englishwoman or an olive-complexioned Mediterranean. Frequent smallpox epidemics made fair skin a rarity.

There were several ways to treat a less-than-perfect complexion. Rubbing a saliva-coated amethyst over pimples to remove them was one method, or just hold the amethyst over a pot of boiling water and use the moisture that gathers on it.

Hildegard of Bingen (c.1098 - 1179) is known today largely for her devotional musical compositions, but as this blog has noted in the past, she also gave medical advice for, among other things, clear skin:
Pulverize ginger with twice as much galingale* and a half portion of zedoary.** Place in a tied cloth in vinegar and then in wine so it doesn't become too dark. Smear the skin where eruptions are, and he will be cured.
Rosemary, also mentioned previously in this blog, could be mixed with white wine and applied to the face as a beauty treatment. And if you wanted to get rid of freckles, the Liber de Diversis Medicinis ["Book of Diverse Medicines"] from 14th century England (found in the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript in Lincoln Cathedral) suggested the blood of a hare or bull.

I feel compelled to add the caveat: Don't try these at home!

*Galingale was a plant from the ginger family.
**Zedoary is a perennial herb native to India. Also called "white turmeric," it has largely been replaced in western cuisine by ginger.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Hildegard of Bingen, MD

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179) has been discussed here before, and many know her as a nun and composer of devotional music. Her compositions have been adapted by numerous musical and spiritual groups. Among her writings, however, were also works about the natural world and medicine.

Two works in particular date to the 1150s. Physica ["Physics," or "The Physical World"] is her attempt to explain the whole world from the elements (the four: earth, air, fire, water) to all animals and plants, and even metals and stones, both ordinary and precious gems. One theme that runs through this work is the Genesis-based idea that Man has been given dominion over all the Earth. Everything on Earth has been put there by God, and therefore everything has value, and therefore Man can benefit from everything God put on Earth, from nourishment found in plants and animals to the material value of gems.

The other book was Causæ et Curæ ["Causes and Cures"]. In it, she lists 47 different diseases. Whereas in Physica she listed 200 herbs and other plants, in Causæ et Curæ she describes over 300 plants that are useful for medical use. She might not have had personal experience of all these, since she would have had access to standard texts from such as Pliny and Galen and Isidore of Seville. She wouldn't be the first or last to borrow from Pliny and the others.

She would not, however, give medicines the final say in the treatment of illness:
Hildegard gave physical events, moral truths, and spiritual experiences equal weight. Healing was both medical and miraculous, and God’s will was an important element in her remedies. “These remedies come from God and will either heal people or they must die, for God does not wish them to be healed,” she wrote. [source]
It wasn't just up to God and the herbals. She also believed in using rituals bordering on the magical as part of the healing process. She claimed betony leaves placed next to the bed would reduce bad dreams. Sadness could be countered by mandrake: mandrake she believed was made from the same earth that made Adam. If a sad man dug up a mandrake root, washed it in a fountain for 24 hours, then took it to bed, he could alleviate his depression after reciting: “God, who madest man from the dust of the earth without grief, I now place next me that earth which has never transgressed in order that my clay may feel that peace just as Thou didst create it.” [source] And marshmallow (the plant, not the sweet confection made from it) could counteract evil magic!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen shown with a psaltery.
One of the oldest known composers of liturgical music—and perhaps the earliest medieval dramatist—was a nun who lived in Germany in the 12th century known as Hildegard of Bingen (c.1098-1179).

What little we know of her early years tells us that she was the youngest of several children born to a lower-class family in Sponheim, Germany. Whether because she was sickly, or because she was very young and not likely to be able to inherit much, or because she was said to have mystic visions at an early age, she was given to the church while still very young (between the age of eight and 14).

Although cloistered, she was exposed to some education, learning enough rhetoric to be a forceful and compelling speaker and enough music to play the psaltery (a dulcimer-like instrument, shown above). She used a Latin in her writing that was very simple (she devised her own letters and made words up). There is some debate regarding whether this was due to a lack of formal education or the deliberate need to create her own form of expressing herself. Her writings on theological matters and on her visions led to attempts to canonize her. The canonization process stretched over centuries, until two recent popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) started referring to her as a saint; Benedict XVI declared her officially a saint in 2012. Her feast day is 17 September.

Outside of the church, she is mostly known for her music. Sixty-nine musical compositions are known to have been produced by Hildegard, and many modern recordings of them are available. They are monophonic, possessing a single melody, and are often closely related to the text with which she accompanies each musical piece. Because she does not use musical notation as we know it today, there is much room for interpretation of her work.

Here is a sample: