ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Local knowledge and the gendered attribution of collective expertise: the cosmetic practices of medieval women

• In Event: Beauty matters. Contested arts, contested sciences in the premodern world

English Abstract

This paper is concerned with analyzing gendered forms of attributing expertise in medieval medical Latin sources from the late 11th to mid-14th century, using cosmetic knowledge as a case in point. Pre-modern texts containing cosmetic recipes are filled with individual female names recurrently associated with women’s authority in beauty matters- from the ever-present Cleopatra to names such as Metrodora, Trotula or Isabella Cortese.
My aim in this paper is to show how, by shifting the historiographical focus from named individual figures to less visible forms of acknowledging skill, traces of women’s collective expertise on cosmetics emerge in the medical and pharmacological record. In particular, I will center my attention on the recognitions of women’s knowledge linked to communal practices of knowledge-sharing, suggesting the existence of locally sourced networks of female practitioners of cosmetics that were developing and maintaining idiosyncratic cultures of beauty. More concretely, I will refer to the hair dyes and other cosmetic treatments that were distinctively attributed to the mulieres salernitanae, the mulieres bononienses, the mulieres parisienses, and the mulieres montispessulani. I will contend that these forms of acknowledgement attest to the gendered character of the historical forms of attributing expertise.

Author

• Montserrat Cabré, Universidad de Cantabria