Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 46148
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Savonarola , Michele,
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: A Mother's Manual for the Women of Ferrara: A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics
  • Source: A Mother's Manual for the Women of Ferrara: A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics. Martin Marafioti, translator.  Edited by Gabriella Zuccolin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 89.  Iter Press, 2022.  Pages 57 - 217.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Translation
  • Subject (See Also): Childbirth Children Dedicatees and Dedications Gynecology Medicine Pregnancy Savonarola, Michele, Physician
  • Award Note: Feminae Translation of the Month, July 2023
  • Geographic Area: Italy
  • Century: 15
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: Around 1460, Michele Savonarola — incidentally the grandfather of the even more famous Savonarola, the Florentine prophet Girolamo — produced the extraordinary Mother's Manual for the Women of Ferrara. This gynecological, obstetrical, and pediatric treatise is the first of its kind written in a European vernacular, so that it could be potentially read not only by the learned, who communicated in Latin, but also by pregnant and nursing mothers and the midwives and wet nurses who presided over childbirth. Yet Savonarola's work is no trivial set of instructions but the work of a learned scholar who draws on, among others, the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, and Avicenna's Canon of Medicine. —[Reproduced from the publisher’s website: https://www.itergateway.org/resources/A-Mothers-Manual-for-the-Women-of-Ferrara]
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: Pace University [Marafioti] ; University of Pavia [Zuccolin]
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2022.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 9781649590305 (print- pbk); 9781649590329 (online)