Exotic materials and treasured knowledge: the valuable legacy of noblewomen's remedies in early modern Germany

Exotic materials and treasured knowledge: thevaluable legacy of noblewomen’s remedies in early

modern Germany

Alisha Rankin

Shortly before her death in 1585, Electress Anna of Saxony made a handwrit-ten inventory of ‘all of the distilled waters that are currently on hand’ in theroom that stored her medical supplies at the palace of Annaburg, nearDresden.1 Although Anna was a prodigious letter writer and author of medici-nal recipes, this inventory is one of the few surviving documents written in herown hand rather than that of a scribe. It was soon followed by an inventory ofher entire estate at Annaburg, taken after her death in October 1585, whichitemized all of the medical ingredients and equipment in the palace and inher garden distilling house. Similarly, after Duchess Sibylla of Württembergpassed away in 1614, the inventory of her possessions at her widow’s estate ofLeonberg included extensive lists of clothing, gemstones, silver, and furs, butalso of all the items ‘still left in the palace apothecary’.2

These inventories provide rich evidence of the materiality of noblewomen’sinvolvement in healing. Both of these women gained reputations as talentedmedical practitioners in their lifetimes, as evidenced by letters, medicinalremedy collections, and other archival references. The presence of pharma-ceutical equipment and materia medica on the lists of their movable goodsindicates that their medical interests continued to be seen as valuable aftertheir deaths. The inventories extensively document the material remnants ofboth women’s pharmacies: the equipment used for making medicine, such aspestles and mortars, distillation vessels, ovens, and scales; the vessels in whichmedicines were held; medical books; the materia medica remaining in theapothecary’s stores; and, finally, the various oils, waters, salves, pills, andplasters on hand. Although less extensive, a similar inventory exists forDuchess Elisabeth of Rochlitz (d. 1557) and once existed for LandgravineEleonora of Württemberg (d. 1618), cementing the notion that pharmacy

1 Sächsische Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (hereafter SHStA Dresden), Geheimer Rat (Geheimes Archiv), Loc.8032–2, fol. 22r.

2 Inuentarium Was in der Hauapothek zw Lawenberg noch zugegen’, 22 February 1615, LandesarchivBaden-Württemberg, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (hereafter HStA Stuttgart), Bestand 60.8.C, fol. 1r.

Renaissance Studies Vol. 28 No. 4 DOI: 10.1111/rest.12078

© 2014 The Society for Renaissance Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

could be an integral part of a German noblewoman’s legacy.3 Pharmaceuticalequipment was also considered part of eighteenth-century EnglishwomanElizabeth Freke’s estate, suggesting that the inclusion of aristocratic women’spharmaceutical items as part of their movable goods was not uncommon inEuropean inventory practices.4 As has been well established by scholars, noble-women across Europe became known for their talents in making medicines.5

Beyond merely providing a testament of noblewomen’s pharmaceuticalactivities, inventories help underscore the value of these activities to theirsurviving family, at least as perceived by the bureaucrat taking each inventory.Cultural historian Ulrike Langbein has conceived of inheritance as a ‘complexcultural technology of preservation’ that reveals wider societal orders andnorms.6 By locating the ‘ideal in the material’ through a ‘microscopic analysis’of individual cases, historians can start to grasp ideas and ideals encapsulatedin the bare materials left for posterity.7 Noblewomen’s apothecary inventorieswould seem useful tools to help us reconstruct the outlines of each woman’spractice of pharmacy – the ingredients and equipment she used – as well asprovide clues to the value of those materials as a legacy of their practice.Indeed, both inventories give a sense of what that value encompassed: frombeautiful containers and exotic materia medica to equipment and books.

Yet a closer look at the inventories raises doubts as to how well they didrepresent the value of each woman’s medical practice to her surviving family.As documents compiled by state secretaries, they were not representations ofthe women’s own view of their pharmacies, but rather of the view of a strangerwith an eye on monetary worth. These apothecary itemizations were notinheritance in the vein that Langbein has studied it, since it is not notedwhether any of the items were designated for specific heirs. Nevertheless, theyprovided a material accounting of things that could be of worth to eachwoman’s surviving children. If one reads these inventories next to otherdocuments that reference the legacy of noblewomen’s healing, it becomesclear that children did indeed find great worth in their mothers’ medicinalheirlooms. The family treasures they considered most precious, however,

3 Elisabeth of Rochlitz’s three inventories can be found in Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg (hereafter HStAMarburg), Bestand 3, No. 62, fols. 49r–60r and 104r–131v and No. 77, fols. 302r–307v. Eleonore of Württemburg’sapothecary inventory is mentioned but no longer present in Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Abt, IV, D4, 33/3.

4 Elaine Leong, ‘Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82(2008), 145–68.

5 See especially Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2013); Rankin, ‘The Housewife’s Apothecary in Early Modern Austria: WolfgangHelmhard von Hohberg’s Georgica curiosa (1682)’, Medicina e Storia 8 (2009), 55–76; Elaine Leong, ‘MakingMedicines’; Montserrat Cabré, ‘Women or Healers? Household Practice and the Categories of Health Care inLate Medieval Iberia’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008), 18–53; Jennifer Stine, ‘Opening Closets: TheDiscovery of Household Medicine in Early Modern England’, Ph. D. diss. (Stanford University, 1996).

6 Ulrike Langbein, ‘Vom ideellen im Materiellen: Plädoyer für einen mikroskopischen Blick auf das Erbe’, inStefan Brakensiek, Michael Stolleis, und Heide Wunder (eds.) Generationengerechtigkeit? Normen und Praxis im Erb-und Ehegüterrecht, 1500–1800 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2006), 283–99 (at 289). See also Langbein, GeerbteDinge: Soziale Praxis und symbolische Bedeutung des Erbens (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002).

7 Langbein, ‘Vom ideellen im Materiallen’, 284.

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differed quite significantly from the items highlighted in the inventories.While the authors of the inventories focused on exotic materials and usefulequipment, noblewomen’s children were most interested in being able toreplicate their mothers’ medicines, for which they needed written recipes.8

This article argues that noblewomen’s remedies possessed value as familyinheritance through a potent combination of their material existence and theknowledge inherent within that materiality. While medical ingredients andequipment presumably would have been welcomed by pharmaceuticallyinclined heirs, it was noblewomen’s remedies that their progeny depicted as atrue family treasure, often explicitly referring to it as a Schatz. Through a closereading of these two extensive apothecary inventories alongside additionalarchival documents, I hope to use a ‘microscopic’ approach to project abroader picture of the valuable legacy of noblewomen’s remedies. As we willsee, inventories shed light on the outlines of noblewomen’s practice, but whattheir authors did not record was often more important than what they did.

ANNA OF SAXONY AND SIBYLLA OF WÜRTTEMBERG: STUDIES IN CONTRAST

The apothecary inventories of Anna of Saxony (1532–85) and Sibylla ofWürttemberg (1564–1614) document noblewomen whose healing activitiesfollowed divergent paths from similar origins. Both women were princesses bybirth: Anna the daughter of King Christian III of Denmark and Sibylla ofPrince Joachim Ernst of Anhalt. It seems quite likely that their medical inter-ests were awakened by maternal figures. Anna’s mother, Dorothea of Saxony-Lauenburg, had an interest in healing, and Sibylla’s upbringing was stronglyinfluenced by her stepmother, Eleonora of Württemberg, who became widelyknown for her remedies and her medical skill.9 Both women were highlyeducated and devout Lutherans, and both were married at the age of sixteento talented but mercurial German princes: Anna to Duke August of Saxonyand Sibylla to Count Friedrich of Mömpelgard. Both women’s husbands laterbecame powerful rulers, anointed Elector August I of Saxony and DukeFriedrich I of Württemberg.10 Finally, both women spent much of theirmarried lives pregnant or in childbed – Anna had sixteen children and Sibylla

8 Elaine Leong has shown that collecting recipes was an interest of both men and women. Leong, ‘CollectingKnowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender, and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household’,Centaurus 55 (2013), 81–103.

9 Eleonora also published the first medical work by a German woman in 1600, a book of recipes called SechsBücher Ausserlesener Arztney (Six Books of Exquisite Medicine). See Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 204–07; andPeter Assion, ‘Das Arzneibuch der Landgräfin Eleonore von Hessen-Darmstadt’, Medizinhistorisches Journal 17(1982), 317–38.

10 Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, Chap. 4; and Katrin Keller, Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen, 1532–1585(Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2010), esp. 72–115 and 149–71; On Sibylla of Württemberg, see MargotDongus, ‘Sibylla von Anhalt: Profil einer vielseitigen Persönlichkeit’, in Renate Dürr (ed.), Nonne, Magd oderRatsfrau: Frauenleben in Leonberg aus vier Jahrhunderten (Leonberg: Drückerei Julius Reichert, 1998), 43–52; andHansmartin Decker-Hauff, Frauen im Hause Württemberg (Leinfeldern-Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 1997), 59–70.

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fifteen – which may go partway to explain why they both died in their fifties,Anna at age fifty-three and Sibylla at fifty.

In the progression of the two women’s marriages, however, the similaritiesended. Anna and August of Saxony led a famously harmonious partnership, asevidenced by the affectionate nicknames ‘Father August’ and ‘Mother Anna’given to them by the people of Saxony. Anna evinced a strong interest inmedicine early in her marriage: by the late 1550s, she engaged in a vibrantcorrespondence about the intricacies of making medicines with CountessDorothea of Mansfeld (1493–1578), a widow whom she viewed as her mentor.This inclination appears to have been acknowledged and supported byAugust, who also participated in hands-on scientific inquiry and erected analchemical laboratory at the Dresden palace.11 In 1572, he built a palace forAnna, called Annaburg, at the site of an old princely hunting lodge in Lochau.Anna’s medical interests appear to have been one major motivation for therenovations, which included a distilling house for her medical work (Fig. 1).

11 The relationship between Anna’s and August’s scientific activities is further outlined in Rankin, Panaceia’sDaughters, Chap. 4 and Rankin, ‘Becoming an Expert Practitioner: Court Experimentalism and the MedicalSkills of Anna of Saxony’, Isis 98 (2007), 23–53.

Fig. 1 Annaburg Palace, site of the former hunting lodge at Lochau. The small building in the back rightcorner, denoted with a small ‘e,’ is listed as Anna of Saxony’s distilling house or laboratory. Pen and ink drawingby Wilhelm Dillich, c. 1626–29 (courtesy of Widener Library, Harvard University)

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With the advice of Dorothea of Mansfeld and the support of her husband,Anna proceeded to establish herself as a widely known and respected sourcefor medicinal remedies. Her most famous cures were the white and yellowaqua vitae she sent out every year as New Year’s gifts, as well as a children’sremedy (Kinderbalsam) and a poison antidote (Giftpulver). Her extensive cor-respondence with family members, unrelated aristocrats and commonersattests to the impressive dimensions of her medical practice, and the record ofher distilled waters from 1585 indicates that she was still actively at work untilshortly before her death. She carried out all of these activities as the belovedconsort of August of Saxony, who outlived her by a year.12

Sibylla’s case was quite different. Her marriage to Friedrich did not progresssmoothly, although it appears to have been full of some optimism at first;Friedrich allegedly chose her ‘above many other princesses’ because he wascaptivated by her intelligence.13 In her early letters to her husband, whotravelled often, Sibylla frequently embellished the rather formulaic signature,‘Your Dearest’s obedient and faithful spouse in your heart until death’, bydrawing a small heart in place of the word.14 The reference to fidelity becamesomething of a reproach as their marriage wore on and Friedrich wentthrough a string of mistresses. His frequent travels, his warmongering toexpand Württemberg’s borders, and his continual betrayal of their maritalvows were all points of contention between the pair, whose letters haddevolved into insults and name-calling by the 1590s. It has been posited thatSibylla used medicine as a means to escape the misery of her marriage.15

Whatever the truth of that idea, she certainly seems to have begun to makemedicines at the Stuttgart court, if she had not already done so inMömpelgard. One testy letter from Friedrich warned her to avoid gossip withher maids and to ‘pay attention to the court pharmacy’.16 Like August ofSaxony, Friedrich himself had an avid interest in alchemy, establishing analchemical laboratory at the Stuttgart palace and investing money in severalalchemists who claimed the secrets to making gold.17 His admonition thatSibylla see to the apothecary suggests he expected her to be knowledgeable inpharmacy, and it is likely that Sibylla had a space to make medicines among

12 Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, Chap. 4; Keller, Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen, 149–71.13 Christian Friedrich Sattler, Geschichte des Herzogthums Würtenberg, cited in Gerhard Raff, Hie gut Wirtemberg

allewege, Vol. II: Das Haus Württemberg von Herzog Friedrich I bis Herzog Eberhard III (Waiblingen: BBW, 1993), 62.Decker-Hauff argues that Friedrich’s true preference would have been his cousin Eleonora of Württemberg, achildhood companion and Sibylla’s stepmother, and that he took the stepdaughter as a consolation prizebrokered by Eleonora; he provides no evidence for this story, however. See Decker-Hauff, Frauen im HauseWürttemberg, 73.

14 HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60.9, bundle 1 (unpaginated).15 E.g. Decker-Hauff, Frauen im Hause Württemberg, 75–7.16 Friedrich I of Württemberg to Sibylla of Württemberg, 28 September 1606, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60.9,

bundle 1 (unpaginated).17 Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2007), esp. 122–33.


the buildings of the Stuttgart palace gardens.18 Two different women helpedSibylla with her pharmacy: Helena Ruckher, daughter of the famousNuremberg physician Johannes Magenbuch, and Maria Andreä, mother ofthe theologian Johann Valentin Andreä.19 A funeral oration for Maria Andreäby Johann Valentin claimed that the main purpose of the Stuttgart apothecarywas to provide medicines for the poor.20 Whatever the truth of that statement,Sibylla’s operations in Stuttgart appear to have been somewhat limited.Friedrich did not support Sibylla’s pharmaceutical endeavours in the sameway August of Saxony encouraged Anna, nor does it seem that Sibylla’sremedies were known beyond her local setting or close family.21

It was as a widow, instead, that Sibylla’s medical practice blossomed. AfterFriedrich’s death in 1608, her son Johann Friedrich granted her a widow’sestate at Leonberg, a pretty town ten miles west of Stuttgart. Using the talents offamed local architect Heinrich Schickhardt, Sibylla expanded the Leonbergpalace to include an expansive apothecary, an impressive late Renaissancegarden with several plots of medicinal herbs, and facilities for caring for thesick.22 Maria Andreä accompanied her and appears to have been a trustedfriend as well as a medical partner; she spent a total of eight years with Sibyllaand remained in Leonberg until the duchess died.23 Sibylla became known as acomfort for the local population, ‘so that no one was denied care, help, andcure’ and handed out daily alms to the poor of ‘all sorts of healing and exquisitemedicines, which Her Princely Grace made with her own hands’.24 As we shallsee, her apothecary inventory suggests an extensive practice, even though shedied just over five years after her move to Leonberg. Once again, the mainpurpose of the apothecary appears to have been charitable.

Anna of Saxony and Sibylla of Anhalt, then, had two very different relation-ships to the pharmacy supplies that were inventoried at the end of their lives.

18 Friedrich had several laboratories scattered throughout the gardens. Nummedal, Alchemy andAuthority, 129.

19 There was no official court pharmacy in Stuttgart until 1640; the three women helped Sibylla with herprivate medical supplies. Otto Borst, ‘Maria Andreae, die Hofapothekerin’, in Otto Borst (ed.), Frauen bei Hof(Tübingen: Silberberg-Verlag, 1998), 57–71 (at 67–9). On Maria Andreä, see, in addition to Borst, RomanJanssen, ‘“Eine Frau wie ein Mann” – Maria Andraea geborene Moser (1550–1631)’, in Roman Janssen andOliver Auge (eds.), Herrenberger Persönlichkeiten aus acht Jahrhunderten (Herrenberg: Stadt Herrenberg, 1999),195–204; Friedrich Bran, Maria Andreä geb. Moser, 1550–1632: Das vorbildliche Leben von der J.V. Andreäs Mutter(Bad Liebenzell: Verlag Bernhard Gengenbach, 1989), esp. 8–10 and 14–15. On Helena Ruckher, see PeterAssion and Joachim Telle, ‘Der Nürnberger Stadtarzt Johannes Magenbuch’, Südhoffs Archiv 56 (1972), 372–3.

20 This funeral oration, presented by Andreä as ‘the maternal merits of Maria Andrëa, described by her son’,is the main source of information of about Maria Andreä’s life; it has the obvious problem of being an extremelylaudatory portrait written fifteen years after the time she spent working for Sibylla. Johan Valentin Andreä,Mariae Andreanae Merita Materna [1632], in Frank Böhling, Roland Edighoffer, Wilhelm Kühlman, and WernerStraube (eds. and trans.), Johann Valentin Andreae Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:Frommann-Holzboog, 1995), 65.

21 There are few extant letters from Sibylla addressed to anyone besides Friedrich, so this impression may beslightly skewed. On local networks and broader exchanges, see Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 28–32.

22 Dongus, ‘Sibylla von Anhalt’, 51–2.23 Andreä, Mariae Andreanae, 65–7.24 Theodor Thumm, funeral oration, excerpted in Raff, Hie gut Wirtemberg allewege, 59.

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As a beloved princely consort who was known for her medical skills, Annaplaced particular emphasis on the production of the medicines she sent out asgifts to other aristocrats and as charity, especially the aqua vitae and otherwaters that emerged from her distilling house. Her pharmaceutical practicewas a large-scale and well-known operation, but also one that existed alongsideAnna’s many other activities as part of a ruling princely couple; the womenwho ran the Annaburg distilling house took care of most of the day-to-daymedical work.25 Sibylla appears to have had a longstanding medical interestthat became a chief hobby in her widowed years at Leonberg and was focusedparticularly on charitable engagement with the poor.26 The apothecary inven-tories underscore these differing situations.

ANNA OF SAXONY’S INVENTORY (1585)

The main inventories of Anna of Saxony’s possessions at the palaces ofAnnaburg, Augustusburg and the estate of Lichtenberg (intended as Anna’swidow’s estate) were completed by August of Saxony’s servant AbrahamThumbehirn of Frankenhausen on 10–11 October, 1585. Thumbehirn gen-erally referred to his actions in the plural, suggesting he had at least oneassistant. While the inventories of Augustusburg and Lichtenberg contain onlya few hints of Anna’s medical practice, the palace of Annaburg, where Annaand August spent much of their time in their later years, provides extensivedocumentation of Anna’s medical work.27 Appended to it is the list of distilledwaters compiled by Anna herself in the spring of 1585 and given toThumbehirn by a female servant.28 As we shall see, Thumbehirn and hishelper appear to have had limited medical knowledge. Through these inven-tories of Annaburg, we can see a proliferation of medical items, medications,books, and equipment in Anna’s possession.

The medical stores at Annaburg were concentrated in two places: firstly, aseries of rooms on the upper floor of the main palace, and secondly thedistillation house that stood in the Annaburg gardens (Fig. 1). One vaultedroom on the upper floor of the main building contained a desk with writingmaterials, a pair of glasses, keys, various wooden knick-knacks, small deer

25 Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 153–8.26 As I have noted elsewhere, it is impossible to gauge the exact poverty level of the recipients of noblewom-

en’s charitable medical care; of foremost importance is the characterization of it as charitable. Rankin,Panaceia’s Daughters, 113. On the vagaries of the word ‘poor’ in early modern Europe, see Robert Jütte, Povertyand Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 9.

27 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fols. 3r–21v (Annaburg), 30r–35v (Lichtenberg), and36r–37v (Augustusburg).

28 Thumbehirn noted that the list was handed to him by ‘die Magisterin’, indicating the wife of a mastercraftsman. It is possible that the person in question was either Ursula Strang or Agnes Loserin, both widows ofbarber surgeons, who helped in the distillery and were often designated by that title. Inventarium, SHStADresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 19r. The inventory of waters can be found at fols. 22r–28v. Although theinventory is dated only with the year, it was almost certainly compiled in the spring, when Anna experienced arespite from the illness that had plagued her since 1584 and was briefly able to work once again. See Keller,Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen, 176–7.


antlers, crystals, pieces of fabric, and buttons. A portrait of Anna of Saxony’sdaughter Elisabeth and a painting of the Danish coat of arms sat on the desk,strongly suggesting that Anna herself used it. The desk also held severalsweet-smelling items, including wooden boxes of soaps, a rectangular boxcontaining sage, and a castor gland ‘that no longer smells’, wrapped in a whitecloth.29 A ‘little room’ next to the room with the desk contained a ‘woodenbookshelf with five compartments, in front of which three black silk curtains arehung’. Behind the silk curtains were 352 books, ‘printed and handwritten, largeand small’. Thumbehirn was careful to note that among the books werethirteen bound in black satin and studded with gold-gilded silver clasps, twostudded with white silver clasps, and three bound into gold and silver boards,although he gave no indication of any of the books’ content. The proximity ofthese books to Anna’s writing desk once again hints that they were situatedthere in part for her use.30

Underneath the bookshelf were four little cabinets or chests, three of whichcontained supplies that had definite or potential medical uses. The first chestcontained ‘a little sack with . . . all sorts of pieces of white wax’, a jar filled with‘goat butter’, a number of vessels of Schmalz, or lard, and a little red boxcontaining flower blossoms. All of these things were ingredients that could beused to make salves and ointments, and indeed, the chest also contained alittle ‘Waldenburg’ container full of a salve.31 In contrast, the second littlecabinet contained mainly exotic and expensive items, among them ‘Oleumsanctum from the Indies’; balsam of Peru; liquid amber; ‘the best theriac’; a‘balsam from India’; a box containing highly prized aromatic substances suchas sweet ambergris, mastix, musk, storax, and calamita; and a little envelopefilled with tempered gold. All of these substances came from afar and wouldhave had to been bought from a drug trader. The same cabinet also containedteeth from a wolf, a little gourd full of what Thumbehirn vaguely termed ‘allsorts of herbs’, and a large jar containing ‘an oil that is unknown to us’.32

The third little chest contained a variety of things, including ‘a sealed jar ofoil[;] two little silver-gilded salt cellars[;] . . . a box of nice-smelling roses[;] . . .twelve pieces of nice-smelling soap[;] a box of yellow amber[;] many strandsof what we think is Pomembra[;] . . . four little boxes of gold and silver leaf[;]a box within which are all sorts of things made of glass’. All three chests alsocontained vessels and instruments that could have been used to administermedicines, including an unspecified ‘instrument covered in satin’ in the firstchest, a wooden measuring cup and four ‘Venetian’ bowls in the second, and

29 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fols. 6r–v.30 A later inventory of Anna’s books, begun in August 1588, lists 438 books rather than 352, although it is

possible that books in addition to those in this bookshelf were included in it. Sächsische Landes- undUniversitätsbibliothek (hereafter SLUB) Dresden, IB vol. 24a, Nr. 62, 1.

31 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fols.7r–v. The Waldenburg container (Walldennburgusch Puchslein) likely refers to the counts of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg in Swabia.

32 Ibid., 7v.

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‘a box full of bowls’ in the third.33 It seems likely that some remedies weredispensed directly from this small collection.

Additional medical items were found near the bookcase in a large boxcontaining ‘all sorts of flowers and roots’ and in a ‘tall, narrow, open shelf withsix compartments’ with a black silk curtain hanging in front of it. Thumbehirndoes not appear to have examined the contents of the herb box closely, butthe tall shelf’s compartments were numbered, and small pieces of paper gavethe contents of each compartment. The shelf contained almost exclusivelymateria medica, many of them animal products. Some were body parts, includ-ing hake teeth, dried partridge foot, rabbit bones, snakeskins, hart’s horn,elk’s foot, unicorn (narwhal) horn, ‘carp-stone’ (a triangular bone), castorglands, and the stomachs of two different kinds of hens. Added to these itemswere dog lard, human lard, and a jar full of bone marrow from an unspecifiedanimal. The compartments also contained a few plant-based materials: elderblossom, hartwort, rhubarb, ‘a small nutmeg’, quince pits, two different kindsof myrrh (a tree resin), calamus root that was ‘found under mugwort on StJohn’s Eve [June 24]’, and ‘moss from the legs and bones of the dead’. Manyof these items were fairly exotic, which may explain why they were kept in thecompartments rather than in the big box of herbal materials. There were alsoa few mineral products, including terra sigillata and Armenian bolus (twokinds of clay used as poison antidotes), and ‘jet for making oil’. Finally, thecompartments contained rock sugar, several little boxes of Giftpulver (a poisonantidote powder), mithridate (a compound medicine used as a poison anti-dote and a cure-all), and ‘six little boxes, we do not know what it is’.34

This list of medical substances suggests that the cabinets and shelves by thebookcase functioned as a small apothecary that contained favoured ingredi-ents. Although the number of materials listed in the little room was fairlyextensive, it was also quite particular and unusually weighted towards animalingredients and exotic resins, balsams, oils, and poison antidotes. Theunitemized box full of flowers and roots skews that impression, but it is hardto know how far. In any case, the presence of this storeroom/library indicatesthat Anna compounded some medicines in the main Annaburg palace. Someof the items could have functioned as remedies on their own, but most wereraw ingredients that would have required some mixing. There are some hintsthat Anna and/or her servants indeed did some compounding nearby.Outside the ‘electress’s little room’ stood five copper kettles and a brasssyringe, while ‘the kitchen attached to it’ contained various pots and pans,‘four little brass mortars’, six iron graters, nine sieves, two scales, sevenwooden casks, and iron tongs. Because medicines and foods were often madeusing the same equipment, it is difficult to determine whether this kitchenwould have been used for medicinal purposes; however, its relative proximity

33 Ibid., fols. 7v–8r.34 Ibid., fols. 8r–v.


to the room full of materia medica and the presence of weights, sieves, mortars,and graters strongly suggests that it could have been used for that purpose.35

Nonetheless, Anna’s palace store of medical ingredients did not resemble afull-fledged apothecary’s shop. The number of ingredients, their particulardistribution, and the informal and haphazard manner of storage were all tooidiosyncratic to mirror apothecary shelves neatly lined with labelled storagejars, as seen in a fanciful seventeenth-century depiction of a noblewoman’sapothecary (Fig. 2). What this particular setup does suggest, though, is Anna’sdirect involvement. Because the small store of ingredients did not appear tohave been set up with professional guidance, and because it was situated nearher books and her writing desk, we can assume that it reflects Anna’s ownproclivities in terms of ingredients. Who the lucky recipients of the resultingremedies would have been remains unclear, although it is rather doubtful thatthe large number of exotic ingredients went into the ‘medicines for the poorsick people’ stored in a hallway cabinet nearby.36

Anna’s distilling house represented the other main space in which pharma-ceutical activities took place, and here there is little doubt of the scale of theoperation. As already mentioned, the building was listed in other places as a‘Probierhaus’ or laboratory (Fig. 1); it was created specifically for the purposeof making medicines. The house consisted of two main rooms and several siderooms, which were used for different tasks. The first main room contained

35 On the blurring of kitchens for medicine and kitchens for food, see Leong, ‘Making Medicines’, 158–65.36 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 9r.

Fig. 2 A fanciful depiction of a noblewoman’s apothecary, in Wolfgang Helmhard von Hohbeg, GeorgicaCuriosa, Georgica curiosa aucta, 1717, originally published 1672 (courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)

542 Alisha Rankin

items for general distillation purposes, including thirty-seven tin distillationalembics (Kolben); three round, copper stills with tops; four small copperdistilling tubs; several kettles; ‘a prettily painted press’ for fruits and herbs; andan iron stamper for crushing herbs. The other large room was specificallydesignated for making aqua vitae, the complex white and yellow liquors thatwere Anna’s most widely known remedies. That room contained seventeencopper stands, of which only one was empty; in all the others were ‘thingsbelonging to aqua vitae’. Twenty-two jars of brandy stood nearby; these wouldhave been poured on top of the items in the copper stands during one stage ofthe process.37 There were also four copper pots ‘belonging to the aqua vitae’,four copper kettles, four tin funnels, and four ovens used for ‘preserving’. Inthe vault next to the aqua vitae room were ‘forty lead pipes for distilling aquavitae’, five copper stills for making the brandy, ‘a large number of glassdistillation alembics and tops’, a cask and five copper stands of brandy, twocopper stands full of evaporating brandy, a variety of copper tubs, kettles, andtubes, a spice mill, two copper mortars with pestles, a wooden wax press, andnine casks filled with old fats, used for one of the stages of the aqua vitae. Twosmaller rooms were filled with ‘a large number of all sorts of glass vessels usedfor the distilled waters’. Finally, a storage room contained ‘a large number ofdistilled waters’.38

The distillates in this storage area, mentioned only briefly by Thumbehirn,were the focus of Anna’s own supplementary inventory, one of the few existingdocuments in her own hand. In a carefully numbered list, organized alpha-betically, she recorded one hundred and eighty-one different kinds of distilledwaters, as well as the amounts on hand. Quite in contrast to the ingredients onthe little shelves in the main house, nearly all of the items in this inventorywere herbal. For example, the letters L and M, listed waters distilled from:

L86. Lavender, from the little leaves 1 jar (Glas)87. Lavender flower 1 alembic (Kolben)88. Lavender herb 1 alembic89. Linden flower 1 alembic90. Lovage, herb and roots 3 alembicsM91. Marjoram 1 alembic92. Melissa 1 alembic93. Melissa with wine 2 jars94. St. Mary’s pepper, [picked] when the sun is in Cancer 1 alembic95. Melon 2 alembics96. Mother-wort (Feverfew) 1∕2 alembic97. Milk thistle 2 jars39

37 Anna of Saxony’s process of making the aqua vitae was described in a letter to Anna’s daughter Elizabethby another noblewoman who had learned from Anna, the Countess Anna of Hohenlohe, in 1584. SHStADresden, 8535–4, fol. 258r. See Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 140.

38 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 19r.39 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 25r.


Most of the distillates were present in quantities ranging from a glass to analembic, while there were larger amounts of quince, quince-lemon, and rosewaters.40 In addition to these distilled waters, Anna also listed thirty-two essen-tial oils, six infused vinegars, and two glasses of rose honey. Aside from thehoney, the only non-herbal item on the list was a water made from goat’s milk,although the casks full of animal fats in the aqua vitae room demonstrate thatanimal products were certainly used in the laboratory as well. Interestingly, theaqua vitae itself –which contained a combination of animal, vegetable, andmineral ingredients – was not listed, despite its obviously central importanceto the distilling house. As Anna’s prized medication, it may have been keptseparately – perhaps in the locked ‘long white cabinet’ that stood in the firstroom. In the 1580s, Anna frequently complained of being low in her suppliesof aqua vitae, so it is possible that there simply was little on hand, althoughthere was clearly production in process.

Overall, then, Annaburg’s inventory reveals an extensive number of medicalitems in two distinct places: the materia medica cabinets in the main buildingand the supplies in the distillation house. These distinctions appear to relateto the different kinds of medical production: small-scale in the first case, andexpansive in the second. The items in the main palace were likely to have beenused more frequently by Anna herself, given their proximity to her writingdesk and her books. We know from the other documents compiled in herlifetime that her distilling house was run by a variety of servants, althoughAnna worked alongside them at times.41 The distilling house was clearlyengaged in the large-scale production of hundreds of different varieties ofdistilled medicines and in particular Anna’s famed aqua vitae. In both cases,the medical practice Anna was known for in her lifetime was impressivelyreinforced after her death.

What was the legacy of this practice? Can we find clues in the inventory thatindicate the perceived value of these materials? I would argue that it is possibleto read two different narratives of valuation: one in Thumbehirn’s inventoryand the other in Anna’s list of distilled waters. In his capacity as a notary,Thumbehirn was mainly responsible for establishing a list of what existed atthe estate so that they could be divided among Anna’s heirs. He was particu-larly interested in items with obvious outer material value: hence the notationof books with precious bindings and clasps, but no mention of what any of thebooks were (although that choice may merely have been a timesaving deci-sion, since the inventory was completed very quickly; the books were notinventoried until 1588). He also described in detail the objects in Anna’smedical chest that might have monetary value, such as the silver-gilded saltcellars and the Venetian bowls. While Thumbehirn clearly also ascribedenough importance to the medical ingredients themselves to carefully write

40 Quince water is listed as ‘a great quantity’ (ein grosse notturff) and quince-lemon and rose waters as ‘a goodquantity’ (ein gutte notturff). Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 25v.

41 Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, Chap. 4.

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down all of the contents of the little medicine chests and shelves, he seemedparticularly interested in the more unusual, exotic, or expensive items; thusthe contents of the little box full of mastix and other aromatic resins werelisted, while the contents of the various boxes and gourds full of herbalingredients were not. Unsurprisingly given his enterprise, he appears to haveprivileged the ingredients that had an obvious monetary worth or were diffi-cult to find (like the moss from old bones). This approach stands in contrastto the medicinal recipes we have from Anna’s lifetime, the vast majority ofwhich call for mainly herbal ingredients.

In the distilling house, a similar pattern can be noted. Thumbehirn lists, inparticular, the copper, tin, and lead distillation equipment, while passing overthe two rooms containing glass distillation equipment without itemizing it.This emphasis suggests that Thumbehirn viewed the metals as more notewor-thy, a focus on the material worth that stands in contrast to the medical signifi-cance. In her lifetime, Anna consistently made clear her preference for glassdistillation vessels, as underscored by the far greater amount of glass equip-ment remaining. Thumbehirn’s categorization of Anna’s stills merely as‘Brennzeug’, a general word indicating distilling apparatus, reinforces his lackof interest in the distillation process. Stills came in a variety of types, and hegave no indication of which kind Anna used – his emphasis instead was on thecopper out of which they were made. Later descriptions of Anna’s distillinghouse also mention numerous smaller ovens in addition to the larger onesThumbehirn described; it is possible that Thumbehirn either did not noticethese or did not think them worthy of mention.42

In her only itemization of her distilling house, in contrast, Anna chose tofocus on the remedies produced there. She completed her inventory at a timewhen she suspected she would not live much longer: a severe and nearlydeadly bout of illness had left her bedridden for the second half of 1584, andwhen she experienced a respite in the spring of 1585, she used it to get heraffairs in order for the eventual end.43 Indeed, she noted at the end of herinventory that fifteen jars of a liquid described as ‘Zancken with wine’ were tobe used for making ‘the water for stroke and the golden water. An apothecarycould now find this water useful because it is still good.’44 Anna herself clearlydid not expect to make further use of it. We can assume, then, that her list wasmade for posterity, to provide a catalogue for her heirs or servants to use afterher death. Unlike Thumbehirn’s focus on exotic ingredients and valuableequipment, Anna’s emphasis was on her remedies. Nevertheless, it is clear thatboth Thumbehirn and Anna viewed her medical items as an important part ofthe legacy of her estate. As we shall see, the idea of medical materials as a

42 Johann Kunckel von Löwenstern describes Anna’s laboratory after it had fallen into such disrepair that oaktrees were growing inside it; nevertheless, the ovens were still visible. Kunckel von Löwenstern, CollegiumPhysico-Chemicum Experimentale (Hamburg, 1722), 592.

43 Keller, Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen, 176–7.44 Inventarium, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8032–2, fol. 27r.


valuable part of a noblewoman’s possessions was reinforced by the inventoryof Sibylla of Württemberg’s apothecary.

SIBYLLA OF WÜRTTEMBERG’S INVENTORY (1615)

The main inventory of Sibylla of Württemberg’s Leonberg estate, detailing herfurniture, clothing, and jewels, was completed by secretary ChristophSchmidlin from 22–27 February 1615, three months after Sibylla’s death inNovember 1614 – a much greater gap than the inventory of Annaburg, takenonly ten days after Anna of Saxony’s death. The Leonberg pharmacy inven-tory, dated 22 February 1615, was included as a supplement to the maindocument, alongside supplements listing the silver, the wall hangings, thekitchens, the stables, and the dresses belonging to Sibylla’s daughters.45

Whether Schmidlin completed all of the inventories is unclear; given that hewas at Leonberg for less than a week, it is likely that he too had assistants.

Much like Anna of Saxony’s distilling house, the apothecary appears to havebeen a distinct room or set of rooms. All evidence suggests that it was situatedwithin the palace itself rather than in a separate building, although thespecific part of the palace and number of rooms remains unclear. In contrastto Abraham Thumbehirn’s careful attention to location in the inventory ofAnna’s estate, Schmidlin (or an assistant) listed the items without notingwhether they sat on a shelf or in some other place. The inventory also appearsto have been completed in two stages, as a second list, titled ‘What additionallywas found in the apothecary, which [should be] included in the Inventario’,immediately follows the first. Where exactly those items fit in with the objectsin the main inventory is unclear, although for the most part materials seemgrouped thematically. For example, most of the sugars and pills are all listedin one place, and the equipment for making medicines is mostly listed in thesupplementary inventory, so that it is likely (but not certain) that the itemslisted next to each other were located near each other. In addition to thesetwo inventories, a small quarto booklet, bound with string, was tucked into themain inventory, titled ‘What is in the Country Apothecary’.46 This inventorylists medicaments by hallway; however, it was written in a different hand andappears to describe an entirely different building, the location and nature ofwhich is unclear.47

In contemporary descriptions, Sibylla and Maria Andreä used the apoth-ecary primarily to dispense drugs to the local population, especially the poor.Although the main sources for this information are laudatory funeral orationsand should be taken with a grain of salt, there is enough agreement to assumethat charitable healing was an important function, if perhaps not the only

45 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8.46 ‘Waß Jn der Land Apodeckh ist.’ Ibid.47 Bernadette Gramm of the Stadtarchiv Leonberg noted that the second inventory has long puzzled

researchers. Private email correspondence, 3 May 2013.

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one.48 The apothecary inventory claimed to list ‘all the things still present inthe apothecary’; the phrase still present leaves open the possibility that thepharmacy continued to dispense drugs after Sibylla’s death.49 Indeed, MariaAndreä was reportedly offered (but declined) an apartment and a ‘salary thatwas not to be scoffed at’ to stay on at Leonberg for an additional year, whichsuggests an interest in keeping the apothecary running.50 In any case, oneprimary function of the Leonberg apothecary was as a pharmacy open to thepublic, as compared to the more private functions of the Annaburg medicalsetup.

Another immediate contrast with the inventory of Anna of Saxony’s medicalsupplies is the emphasis on the vessels in which the materials were kept: largeand small boxes (Schachtell and Schachtelin); small chests (Ladlin); large andsmall coffers (Truchen and Trüchlin); canisters (Büchsen); bottles (Flesche);flasks (Kholben); and jars (Glaß). In most cases, the author also noted thematerial out of which the receptacle was made: wood, tin, glass, copper,pottery, a brass alloy called halbmessing, and, in a few cases, silver. The shapesof the containers are frequently described as well – in most cases round orsquare, aside from one ‘octagonal tin canister’.51 This emphasis highlights theimportance of the vessels to the author as objects in and of themselves. Insome cases, he listed additional specifics about the containers. Thus he noteda ‘green box’ containing hart’s horn; ‘a little Indian chest’ containing fourlittle flasks; a ‘square tin flask with the Württemberg and Anhalt coats of arms’;and ‘a braided glass flask of oil, name unknown’.52

The unknown oil points to a recurring problem in Sibylla’s inventory: manyof the medical substances were unidentifiable to the person itemizing them,for one reason or another. One section of items in the list is particularlyilluminating:

1 sealed canister; unknown what is inside1 little sealed canister; unknown what is inside1 wooden canister; inside is a striped jar, empty1 little wooden canister without a lid; inside is a jar of water, name unknown1 wooden canister; inside is a jar of rose oil1 wooden canister; inside is a little jar of oil, name unknown53

48 A collection of funeral orations for Sibylla was compiled and published as Neun Christliche Predigten Uber derLeich/ Weylund der Durchleuchtigen Hochgebornen Fürstin und Frawen Sibylle, Hertzogin zu Würtemberg (Stuttgart,1615). As has already been mentioned, Johann Valentin Andreä published a memorial of his mother, MariaAndreä, in 1632.

49 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fol. 1r.50 Maria Andreä instead chose to take a lump payment ‘that was large enough to support her for the rest of

her life’ and move to the city of Calw, where her son Johann Valentin lived. Johan Valentin Andreä, MariaeAndreanae Merita Materna, 67.

51 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fol. 3v.52 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fols. 1r–v and 3v.53 Ibid., fol. 2v.


Between the items that were unable to be examined because their containerswere sealed, the vessels that were empty, and the substances unfamiliar to theauthor, a fair number of the medical ingredients were not able to be properlyidentified. Their containers, on the other hand, were far more accessible. Insome cases, containers were listed without reference to whether or not some-thing was inside, such as the entries listing sixteen oil jars, five large flasks, four‘square, tin electuary canisters with lids’, seventeen ‘round tin containers withlids, stacked inside one another’, sixteen ‘painted canisters’, and the octago-nal tin canister and the tin flask with the coats of arms mentioned above.54 Theauthor did not note what any of these canisters held – or might once haveheld. All in all, a significant percentage of the materia medica was not specifi-cally identified, as exemplified by the entry for ‘twenty-five small chests, inwhich are all sorts of foul things (schlechte sachen) to use for medicine’.55

Even more than in the case of Anna of Saxony, a disproportionate percent-age of the items that were identified were exotic, expensive, or hard-to-come-by, and as in Anna’s case, there was little attention paid to herbal ingredients.In fact, only two plant-based ingredients appear in Sibylla’s inventory at all: abox with eight pieces of carrot root, and a box containing ‘all sorts of piecesof wood to use for medicine’.56 The most common medicinal wood in the earlyseventeenth century was guaiac wood from the New World, a cure for syphilis,although it could have referred to another exotic wood such as sassafras; inany case, wood was not a particularly common herbal ingredient. A few of theremedies listed do show herbal contents – in addition to the candied fruits andthe rose oil already mentioned, there was a little jar of ‘the good essence ofsaffron’ – but even these are rare.57 This low number of herbal ingredients andremedies represents a significant discrepancy with the medicine Sibylla wasknown to practice. She famously started an herb garden in Leonberg, and twoof the books she kept in her apothecary were herbals, as shall be discussedpresently. One can only assume that the flowers, roots, and seeds one wouldexpect to find in any early modern apothecary were kept in the many con-tainers with unidentified contents and that they were not deemed worthy ofmention by the author of the inventory.

One major category found in Sibylla’s inventory but not in Anna’s wassugar, a key ingredient in making sweet electuaries, drinks, and other ingest-ible medicines. Sibylla’s apothecary contained sugar of several varieties: therewere two sugar cones (Zeltten), the most common shape in which sugar cameat the time, as well as five boxes containing coloured sugar tablets (büstenZucker), four marzipan rounds, a box of crystalized sugar, and ‘a little cask

54 Ibid., fols. 2v and 3v.55 Ibid., fol. 1v.56 Ibid., fol. 1v. The word I am translating as carrot is listed as Mühren, likely indicating Möhren, a word for

carrots and other root vegetables; however, given the tendency of the author to substitute ü for ie, it could alsomean Mieren, or scarlet pimpernel.

57 Ibid., fol. 3r.

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containing a good quantity of small sugar tablets . . . brought from England’.58

The apothecary also contained a small selection of items preserved in sugar,such as bitter orange and quince, which would have been used both thera-peutically and prophylactically. A ‘honey press’, another important way to addsweetness to medicines, was also listed among the apothecary’s equipment.59

By the early seventeenth century, sugar was no longer the expensive commod-ity it had once been; neither, however, did it come cheap.60 Its mention inSibylla’s inventory suggests that it remained a noteworthy item (or at least aneasily recognizable one to the notary).

In contrast to the dearth of herbs, quite a number of mineral and animalingredients are listed. Some were parts of animals, such as a round little box‘with all sorts of things taken from wolves’, two little boxes of ‘little carp-stones’, and the green box of hart’s horn that had been ‘collected at theproper time’.61 Others had been treated, such as the three small boxes of‘snake-powder’, possibly a poison antidote; there was also a small glass pot fullof dog lard, a four-part little glass full of wolf lard, and a wooden canisterhalf-full of human lard.62 As the last item indicates, Sibylla had human ingre-dients in her apothecary – in even greater number than Anna of Saxony. Inaddition to the human lard, there was a box containing two dried humanskins, ‘a box containing two human hearts’, and a small chest containing asmall sack, ‘in which are seven pieces of a skull’.63 The use of human ingre-dients was a tradition dating back at least to ancient Egypt. Mummia, derivedfrom mummies, was thought to be a powerful remedy from the time of theancient Egyptians through the nineteenth century.64 A more expansive list ofhuman materials became highly sought after in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, in part due to Paracelsus’ idea of the healing powers inherent in thecorpse of a healthy person who had died a violent death, such as an executedcriminal.65 The variety of human ingredients in Sibylla’s apothecary suggests acommitment to the idea of a residual power in the human corpse – a point ofview particularly common in Germany, as Katharine Park has argued, and onethat was reinforced by Paracelsus, among others.66 In any case, these ingredi-ents certainly would have been valuable and noteworthy.

58 Ibid., fols. 1r–v and 5r. The term büsten or büzen is likely a dialect form of bietzen, which denotes sucking; i.e.,sugar to suck on.

59 Ibid., fol. 5v.60 Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500–1760 (London: Continuum, 2007),

49–51 and 80–81.61 Inuentarium, HSta Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fols. 1v, 5v.62 Ibid., fols. 1v, 5r.63 Ibid., fols. 2r and 5r–v.64 Karl H. Dannenfeldt, ‘Egyptian Mumia: The Sixteenth-Century Experience and Debate’, The Sixteenth-

Century Journal, 16 (1985), 163–80.65 Ibid., 173. See also Kathy Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern

Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 157–60; Louise Noble, Medical Cannibalism in EarlyModern English Literature and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

66 Katharine Park, ‘The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in the Late Middle Ages’, Journal of theHistory of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995), 111–33.


Finally, the apothecary inventory also listed a number of mineral ingredi-ents. It noted the presence of ‘a piece of jet’, a ‘blood-stone’, and a boxcontaining ‘a little canister of gold’ and ‘powdered gold’.67 There was also abox containing camphor, lime, and iron ore, a little box full of ashes, and atablet of saltpetre (potassium nitrate).68 The presence of the last few itemssuggests potential alchemical interests that went beyond medical distillation:saltpetre was used for making acids used in alchemical processes.69 Among theapothecary’s equipment could be found a ‘brass form into which one pourssaltpetre tablets’, suggesting that saltpetre was in fact prepared there, and thelast page of the inventory makes reference to a Laboratorio.70 As has alreadybeen mentioned, Sibylla’s husband, Duke Friedrich I, had several alchemicallaboratories in the Stuttgart palace gardens in his lifetime, and the husband ofSibylla’s helper Maria Andreä had also been very interested in alchemy in hislifetime, so it is almost certain that Sibylla and Andreä both came into contactwith alchemical experiments.71 In 1610, Sibylla co-signed a letter with her sonJohann Friedrich demanding that several Stuttgart court alchemists demon-strate the veracity of their claims.72 It therefore seems plausible that Sibyllaand Maria undertook alchemical work aimed at transmutation in Leonberg,but there are far too few potential alchemical items to draw any firm conclu-sions; saltpetre was seen as having medicinal virtues as well, particularly inParacelsian medicine.73 Nevertheless, the presence of even potentially non-medicinal alchemical ingredients presents a stark contrast with the inventoryof Anna of Saxony.

Curious in Sibylla’s inventory is the lack of the prepared medicines that onewould expect to find in a working apothecary – salves, distilled waters, oils,electuaries, balsams, pills, and the ubiquitous theriac. A few remedies werelisted: a wooden canister containing a jar of ‘heart, breast, and face water’; theglass of rose oil mentioned above; a little jar of a liquid medicine calledTridentenum primum, and four large, old Lebkuchen, the Christmas gingerbreadthat were both holiday treats and medicinal preservatives. No other specificmedications were listed, but as with the ingredients, the contents of manycontainers were not identified. As already mentioned, a number of unknownoils were cited, as was a box full of fourteen flasks ‘with all sorts of balsams, thenames not known’ and a square jar of some kind of water.74 In addition therewere a large number of jars specifically listed as empty: fifty-five in all, plusthirteen empty sugar jars.75 If one adds in the sixty canisters and chests for

67 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fol. 1v.68 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fols. 2r–v.69 Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority, 140.70 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fols. 3r and 6r.71 Borst, ‘Maria Andreae’, 62.72 HStA Stuttgart, A 47 Bü 5, #6.73 David Cressy, Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 13–14.74 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C, fol. 2r.75 Ibid., fol. 2r.

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which the existence and nature of the contents was not specified, the totalnumber of empty or unlabelled vessels reaches one hundred and fifteen, faroutnumbering the containers with identifiable contents. In light of thesenumbers, the opening description of the inventory as a list of the items ‘stillleft’ in the apothecary takes on greater meaning. The apothecary’s stores mayhave been depleted when Sibylla died, or it may have kept dispensing theexisting medicines after her death without replenishing them, given theuncertain future of the palace.

That the Leonberg apothecary indeed made a varied slate of medicinesserving a substantial clientele can be gleaned from the equipment listed. Theapothecary contained two scales and a set of weights; two mortars and pestles;an iron oil press; two wooden presses likely used for oils and/or juices; thehoney press already mentioned; and sixteen tin containers for making juices.76

There were two small copper stills with tops, a third still ‘that Her PrincelyGrace, dearly departed, received from Prince Christian’ (but was stored in achest, so may not have been used), a water bath, three copper kettles, a sievewith handles, a copper ‘pepper pan’, six copper buckets with handles, and,significantly, a ‘pot in which My Gracious Lady seethed her restorative broth’.The inventory also included a few items that give a sense of life in an apoth-ecary: two mosquito swatters made out of horse tails, thirty-six decorativelights, a large brass candlestick, a box of toothpicks, and, somewhat anoma-lously, ‘four little gold buttons that belong on a bedspread’.77 While this list ofitems does not come close to replicating the impressive medical operation inthe Annaburg distilling house, it does relate a significant amount of medicalequipment.

Overall, Sibylla’s apothecary inventory is something of a mystery. Why werevirtually no herbal ingredients listed? Why were so many vessels empty? Wherewere all the remedies? The picture presented by the inventory is that of amostly empty set of containers as well as supplies of exotic ingredients, manyof them from animal and human remains. The books Sibylla kept in herapothecary contravene this view, however. The inventory lists ten books: acopy of the Old Testament; two herbals, ‘of which one belongs to the gar-dener’, four handwritten books of medicinal recipes, and three small medi-cine books, of unspecified nature. Of the manuscript recipe books, there wasone folio bound in boards, ‘belonging to the old deceased Princess in Anhalt’;one bound in parchment, presumably also a folio; and two in quarto, boundin boards.

Although none of the titles of these books were listed, the handwrittenbooks of recipes would likely have been similar to the many other suchvolumes compiled at the courts of early modern Germany.78 Most courtlyrecipe books used a mixture of animal, vegetable, and mineral materia medica,

76 Ibid., fols. 3v, 5v–6r.77 Ibid., fols. 2r, 5r/v.78 Rankin, Panacea’s Daughters, Chap. 2.


with the overwhelming weight on herbal ingredients. There is thus a gapbetween the medicine we can be reasonably assured Sibylla practiced and theitems the inventory relates. Significantly, the inventory booklet describing theholdings of the ‘Country Apothecary’, tucked into the main inventory, listsshelf after shelf laden with (mostly herbal) oils, waters, and salves, similar toAnna of Saxony’s handwritten inventory; however, the provenance of thisinventory is too uncertain to tie it definitively to Sibylla.79 To a far great extentthan the inventory of Anna of Saxony’s estate, we can assume that the inven-tory of the Leonberg pharmacy’s stores after Sibylla’s death did not entirelymatch its primary holdings during her five years at Leonberg.

EXOTIC REMEDIES VERSUS TREASURED KNOWLEDGE

What can we learn from the apothecary inventories of Anna of Saxony andSibylla of Württemberg? While we certainly do not learn exactly the kind ofpharmacy each woman practiced in her lifetime (witness Sibylla’s emptyshelves), I would argue that two main points can be gleaned from the side-by-side analysis of these documents. First, both women counted an impressiveamount of medical items among their possessions. Assuming that Sibylla’sempty jars were once filled, each woman oversaw pharmacies containinghundreds of ingredients and medications. Certain clear differences betweenthe two setups can be seen: Sibylla’s apothecary at Leonberg was far moreorganized and substantial than Anna’s medical chest in the main palace ofAnnaburg, but it was dwarfed by the expansive setup at Anna’s distilling housein the palace gardens. Nevertheless, both women clearly oversaw extensivemedical operations that required a large number of ingredients. Second, adisjuncture can be read between the interests of the person taking the inven-tory and the interests of each noblewoman in her lifetime. Each inventoryfocused on containers (whether the cabinets at Anna’s estate or the jars,canisters, and chests at Sibylla’s) and exotic or unusual ingredients. This biasis more pronounced in Sibylla’s inventory; Anna’s does mention a number ofherbs, flowers, and roots, even though it does not itemize them. In contrast,both women seem to have been focused on their remedies rather than theindividual ingredients, as evidenced by Anna’s own inventory of her distilledwaters, oils, and vinegars, and (somewhat less conclusively) Sibylla’s books ofmedicinal recipes.

Evidence from noblewomen’s letters about their remedies confirms theimportance of the latter view. Shortly before Anna of Saxony’s death, in 1584,her daughter Elisabeth attempted to ascertain the proper recipe for Anna’sfamous aqua vitae, her most important remedy. Elisabeth was very concernedthat she had not written down the long recipe properly:

79 Inuentarium, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand 60, Bü 8, C(a), fols. 2r–8v.

552 Alisha Rankin

Most beloved lady mother, Your Grace showed me in Mainz how Your Gracemakes the aqua vitae, and how Your Grace makes the yellow (aqua vitae) and thewater for the face. Now God knows that I am forgetful, that I cannot holdanything in my head for long, but I wrote it down as I had it in my head. I am nowthinking I did not write it down correctly, so I am sending it to Your Grace, andin case I did not write it down correctly, I ask Your Grace most filially andheartfelt that Your Grace have it written down correctly.

Elisabeth added, ‘I want to assure Your Grace that I will not teach it to anyone,unless the dear Lord gives me children, and then I will leave it to them as atreasure (Schatz).’80 For Elisabeth, the important legacy of Anna’s medicineswas not the ingredients that went into them (although they would have takensome time and effort to acquire), but rather a written account of the hands-onknowledge that went into making them. Similarly, Anna herself once charac-terized medical remedy books as treasured items: when requesting recipes tocompile her into own collection, she promised that she would share them withno one else, ‘but keep [the book] for ourselves as a Schatz’.81

One medicinal manuscript from the County of Hohenlohe explicitly andpointedly laid out the concept of noblewomen’s remedies as a family treasureto be handed down through the generations. Compiled in 1619 by the Coun-tess Magdalena of Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, the folio-sized manuscript beganwith an elaborate title page describing the ancestry of its recipes. It purportedto contain a wide variety of recipes that Magdalena had used over the past fiftyyears ‘in the princely court and household’. Many of these remedies, the titlepage continued, originally came from Magdalena’s ‘dearly loved’ mother,Countess Anna of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein, wife of Wolfgang II of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein. Magdalena had added to them and organized them with theintention of handing them down to ‘her dearly loved progeny as a memory’.The present volume was a copy intended for Magdalena’s daughter, DorotheaWalpurga of Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, ‘with motherly affection’.82 Presum-ably other copies were made as well, although only this one has survived – inpart because the volume indeed appears to have become a beloved familytreasure. The signature of Magdalena’s great-granddaughter, DorotheaElisabetha of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg shows that it must have been passed onto Dorothea Walpurga’s daughter-in-law before coming to rest with DorotheaElisabetha. Hence a remedy book originally conceived in the sixteenthcentury was passed on to future generations at least through the eighteenth.It was noblewomen’s remedies that were their true family heirlooms.

80 Elisabeth of Saxony to Anna of Saxony, 4 November 1584, SHStA Dresden, GR(GA), Loc. 8535–2, fol.257r/v.

81 Anna of Saxony to Cornelius van den Hansfort, 5 January 1562, SHStA Dresden, Kop. 511, fols. 2v–3r.82 Hohenlohe Zentralarchiv Neuenstein, GA 75, bd. U1.


CONCLUSION

The value of noblewomen’s pharmacy depended on the eye of the beholder.Bureaucrats looking for items of value in each estate saw canisters, gemstones,gold leaf, and human remains. Family members looking for favoured rem-edies, on the other hand, saw written recipes, especially those compiled intoorganized books. The divide between the focus of bureaucrats taking estateinventories and the interests of noblewomen and their heirs is unsurprisinggiven their divergent purposes. After all, Thumbehirn and Schmidlin weremerely trying to compile a record of estate property, and neither appears tohave had any great familiarity with pharmacy. The crux of the differencerevolved around the material value of property as opposed to the immaterialvalue of noblewomen’s knowledge.

It is important to note that both Sibylla’s and Anna’s remedies operatedoutside of the commercialized ‘medical marketplace’ in early modernEurope, as neither woman charged for her cures.83 Both women handed outmedicines to the local poor without cost, and indeed, charity was the mainfocus of Sibylla’s medicine. In their complete lack of participation in mon-etary exchange, they were farther from the commercial marketplace thanother female charitable healers, such as the Florentine nun apothecarieswhom Sharon Strocchia has studied.84 Although Anna shared her remedieswidely and in many cases provided medical advice to her aristocratic contacts,she did not sell her cures or aim to supplant the role of a physician. For bothwomen, then, the basic monetary value of their remedies was not a centralconsideration in their own lifetimes, although Anna of Saxony unquestionablyused the gift of her remedies to curry favour.85 Concern about the cost ofmateria medica and the expense of medications does surface occasionally innoblewomen’s documents, and occasional reports of stolen medicines suggesta tangible value.86 Nevertheless, the inventories’ focus on material worth

83 On the medical marketplace, see especially Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, andScience in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Cook, The Decline of the Old Medical Regimein Stuart London (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), Chap. 1; Katharine Park, Doctors and Medicine in EarlyRenaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), Chap. 3; David Gentilcore, Healers and Healingin Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in EarlyModern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Colin Jones and Laurence Brockliss, The Medical World ofEarly Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Margaret Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early ModernLondon: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners, 1550–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003); MaryLindemann, Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996);Mark S. R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis (eds.), Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c.1450–c.1850(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

84 Sharon Strocchia, ‘The Nun Apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: Marketing Medicines in the Convent’,Renaissance Studies 25 (2011), 627–47.

85 Rankin, ‘Becoming an Expert Practitioner’, 28–30; Katrin Keller, ‘Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen: VonMöglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Landesmutter’, in Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini (eds.), DasFrauenzimmer: Die Frau bei Hofe im Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000),263–85.

86 Elisabeth of Rochlitz, for example, had a supply of medicines stolen from one of her storerooms by amaidservant in 1552, as detailed in a letter from Peter Beinberg, Steward of Friedewald, written 17 June 1552.

554 Alisha Rankin

represented a significant departure from the understanding of noblewomen’sremedies in their lifetimes. Ulrike Langbein’s concept of the ‘ideal in thematerial’, which she has used to piece together a rich cultural history ofinherited items, is only partially useful in understanding the value of women’spharmacy. By recognizing the ‘ideal in the immaterial’, we can gain a picture ofthe very real value of noblewomen’s medical knowledge.

Tufts University

HStA Marburg, Bestand 3, No. 73, fol. 90r. Anna of Saxony was very careful to let only her most trusted servantsaccess her medical storeroom. Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 157. Similarly, Elaine Leong has noted thatEnglishwoman Elizabeth Freke kept her medicines under lock and key and clearly considered them a valuablecommodity. Leong, ‘Making Medicines’, 165–7.


Documents

Exotic materials and treasured knowledge: the valuable legacy of noblewomen's remedies in early modern Germany