From a Master to a Laywoman: A Feminine Manual of Self-Help

Abstract

This article analyzes master Joan’s Tròtula, a late fourteenth-century Catalan text on women’s health addressed to an infanta of Aragon which survives in one late fourteenth-century manuscript. It presents a hypothesis regarding its genre, its composition and use at the Catalan-Aragonese Court, and its later fortuna. It considers how Master Joan inscribed in the text a conception of women’s medical needs, while also defining lay women’s involvement in maintaining their health.