The Secrets of Women may seem indecent judged by modern standards, but so do many discussions of sexual matters by monastic recluses, theologians, and church fathers of the distant past. Peter of Prussia, Albert’s fifteenth century biographer, although concerned to establish the saintly character of his hero, did not question the authenticity of the De secretis mulierum on grounds of indecency but thought it “useful and necessary to know the facts of nature, even if indecent.”[2376] In the thirteenth century itself we find a number of Latin works which are very similar to The Secrets of Women. There is The Secrets of Nature by Michael Scot and The Adornment of Women[2377] by Arnald of Villanova, a physician of the closing thirteenth century who also wrote on Antichrist, advocated religious reform, and gave moral and religious exhortation as well as medical care to his royal patients in Sicily and Aragon. This De ornatu mulierum was described by the Histoire Littéraire de la France as “one of Arnald’s most curious treatises, containing very informing details concerning the arts by which medieval women corrected the faults of nature or repaired the ravages of age. But we say no more on this point. We would not venture the vaguest allusion to the contents of some paragraphs. They taught publicly in the middle ages things which respectable persons do not know and do not wish to know.”[2378] Those who are offended at the idea of the blessed Albert’s discussing such matters in the thirteenth century should read the highly vivid, realistic, and matter-of-fact account of male sexual passion in the Causae et curae of St. Hildegard,[2379] the mystic and ascetic, the abbess and prophetess, in the twelfth century, in which work it follows a long and circumstantial account of the process of conception and generation.[2380] Or they might note in a sixteenth century manuscript at Paris that an oration by John Antony Alatus, doctor of physic, royal and apostolic knight, delivered when he was chosen orator to Pope Innocent, is immediately followed by a Book of the Secrets of Women by the same author.[2381] Of another thirteenth century work which attained extraordinary popularity in almost every European language and which was most appropriately entitled, De omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis—“Of everything knowable and then some,” the Histoire Littéraire says,[2382] “The mysteries of generation engage its attention more than anything else; like Timeo it is very detailed upon this point and often borders upon obscenity.” A fourth work, The Secret of Philosophers, written in French by someone who at least pretends to be a priest and doctor of theology, is also full of unprintable passages upon sex and generation, and yet shows also, according to the Histoire Littéraire,[2383] the spirit of scientific philosophy.
Some superstitious recipes.
Our treatise contains some superstitious recipes akin to those of the Liber aggregationis and De mirabilibus mundi. To prevent conception for a year women are advised to drink salvia cooked with wine for three days; or to eat a bee, “and she will never conceive.” If hairs of menstruating women are buried in rich soil where ordure lies in winter time, the sun’s heat will generate a long and strong serpent there the following spring or summer. To tell if the child will be male or female one should pour a drop of the mother’s milk or blood into pure water from a clear spring. If the drop goes to the bottom, the child will be a boy; if it floats on the surface, a girl.
Astrology.
Astrology, however, is more prominent in this treatise than such magical modes of divination. We are told that “all the virtues which the soul comprehends in the body it draws from the supercelestial spheres and bodies.”[2384] From the farthest sphere come the powers of being and moving. From the sphere of the fixed stars the foetus receives its individual personality. From the sphere of Saturn, the virtue of discerning and reasoning; from that of Jupiter, magnanimity; from that of Mars, animosity and irascibility; from the sun, the power of learning and memorizing; and so on. We are also told how each planet, starting with Saturn, rules for a month the formation of the various physical members of the child in the womb, and the fact that the heart is formed during the fourth month under the rule of the sun is regarded as disproving Aristotle’s assertion that the heart is generated first of all the members. The influence of each planet at birth is also recorded, and we hear of “the influences of the planets, whom the ancients called gods of nature, over man’s body and soul.”[2385] Also that man’s intellectual power is not from matter but from the sky. Saturn’s child is dark, hairy, well bearded, false, malicious, wrathful, gloomy, wears unkempt clothing, and so forth. The influences of the twelve signs are also considered, and the magnus annus with its repetition of history and Socrates reliving his life in the same old Athens. The author also declares that divine sacrifice, immolation of beasts, and the like cannot be removed from the action of the celestial bodies which mete out life and death, which perhaps suggests that even religion and prayer are under the stars. Monstrous births, such as twins with separate heads and hands but one trunk and pair of feet, are ascribed to some special constellation.
Citations of Albert and Avicenna.
Albert is cited, perhaps by the commentator, concerning twins of whom one had such virtue in his right side that all bolts and locks on that side of him were opened, while the virtue of the other’s left side closed all open doors. This was due not only to a special constellation but to a special disposition of matter to receive its influence. Peter of Prussia (Cap. 12) cites the same passage from Albert’s De motibus animalium. Other citations of Albert in the De secretis mulierum are one from a treatise on the sun and moon and the assertion that a child was born with organs of either sex ita quod potuit succumbere. Avicenna is credited with having stated in a book on deluges that a flood might come and drown all living creatures, but that the virtue of the sky would generate others.
[2335] I have examined at the British Museum four incunabula editions containing both treatises and numbered (at the time of my reading) as follows: IA.6829 (Impressum Auguste per Johannem schauren feria secunda post Bartholomei, 1496); IA.46455; IA.55455 (per me Wilhelmum de Mechlina Impressus in opulentissima civitate Londoniarum iuxta pontem qui vulgariter dicitur Flete brigge); 547 b. 1. (Imprime pour Thomas Laione Libraire Demourant a Rouen). The text in these editions is nearly identical except for some divergencies in the one printed at Rouen. The edition printed at London is perhaps the most accurate of the four.
I have not seen the following edition: Liber aggregationum sive secretorum de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum, et animalium, Naples, 1493-1494: nor an edition printed at Antwerp, 1485, in which the Liber aggregationis is bound with the Quaestiones naturales of Adelard of Bath. The Liber aggregationis was published with the De mirabilibus mundi at Frankfurt in 1614, and with the De secretis mulierum at Amsterdam in 1643 and again in 1662, but I have not seen these three editions.
I have seen an edition of sixteen leaves containing both Liber secretorum and Liber de mirabilibus mundi, Venetiis per Marchio Sessa, 1509. Also an edition of both these treatises preceded by the De secretis mulierum and followed by the De secretis naturae of Michael Scot, Strasburg, 1607, per Lazarum Zetzerum; an edition of Amsterdam, 1740, containing the same four treatises; and an edition of Lyons, 1615, where the Speculum astronomiae replaced the work by Michael Scot.