Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A.S.G.
Edwards. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984,
pp. 133–46.
Fowler, David C. John Trevisa. Aldershot: Variorum, 1993.
A.S.G. Edwards
TROTULA OF SALERNO
Trotula is the name given to a number of medical treatis-
es on the diseases of women, most of which seem to have
come from the medical university of Salerno. Whethier
a twelfth-century Trotula of Salerno actually existed,
whether Trotula was a woman, and what and for whom
Trotula wrote have been a subject of scholarly debate
for many years. Benton (1985) suggested that a female
physician named Trota wrote a Practica (Practice of
Medicine) containing obstetrical and gynecological
material while teaching at Salerno. Unlike many other
universities in the Latin west, Salerno was formed by a
community of medical practitioners who were not nec-
essarily clerics; this anomaly would probably account
for the remarkable presence of a woman teacher. The
TROTULA OF SALERNOPractica, in Latin, was not copied after c. 1200; it was
supplanted by other Latin works on gynecology and
cosmetics taken from various male writers. The name
Trotula (probably a diminutive of Trota) was attached to
these later writings, which were in turn translated into
a number of European vernaculars. Benton held that
the genuine writings of Trota were more practical in
character than those of her fellow Salernitan physicians,
but this conclusion is diffi cult to support.Further Reading
Benton, John F. “Trotula, Women’s Problems, and the Profes-
sionalization of Medicine in the Middle Ages.” Bulletin of
the History of Medicine, 59, 1985, pp. 30–53.
Green, Monica H. “Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in
Medieval Europe.” Signs, 14, 1989, pp. 434–473. (Reprinted
in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. Judith Ben-
nett, et al. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1989,
pp. 39–78.)
The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine,
ed. and trans. Monica H. Green. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Faye Marie Getz