Caterina Sforza: The Alchemy and Power of a Renaissance Icon

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Imagine you are the ruler of an Italian city in the Renaissance; your husband has been murdered and your children were taken hostage by your political enemies, who hope to take control of your fortress. Yet the people inside are still loyal to you and are not surrendering. So, leaving your children with your enemies, you go inside the castle, having promised them you will persuade those inside to surrender. Otherwise, your children will die. Once inside the fortress, though, you start shouting threats at your enemies, promising violent revenge. People are confused. What about your children? What kind of mother would risk their lives like this? And then you decide to lift up your skirts, exposing your genitals to your enemies… and you say that they can do whatever they want with your children, as you have the means to make more of them anyway.

According to Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), who was representing Florence in the negotiations, this is what Caterina Sforza (1463-1509), the Countess of Imola and Forlì, in Italy’s Romagna, did. And yes, his retelling of the story in his book The Discourses is very likely an exaggeration of what really happened, but it does hint at her character. As you can tell, her contemporaries saw Caterina as a brave and fierce woman. She occupied Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome after the death of Pope Sixtus IV, and she bravely resisted military attacks by Cesare Borgia. She was even later accused of having poisoned his father, Pope Alexander VI, and was imprisoned for a while. This was not an implausible accusation: like many noblewomen of her time (including her descendant Catherine de’ Medici), Caterina knew a thing or two about poisons. In fact, according to many contemporary sources, she was one of the most accomplished alchemists of her time. So, let’s talk about Renaissance women, alchemy, and medicine, through one of the most interesting characters of this period: Caterina Sforza, ‘the tigress of Forli’.

Women and ‘Household Alchemy’

Before we talk about her recipe for a 60-year-old woman to look like a 20-year-old girl, let’s first set the scene. Caterina was the daughter of Duke Galeazzo Sforza and his mistress, Lucrezia Landriani, and, despite being illegitimate, she was raised and educated in the Milanese court. Caterina was good friends with her father’s second wife, Bona Maria di Savoia and it may have been through her stepmother – and her apothecary, Cristoforo de Brugora – that Caterina was first introduced to the world of scientific experimentation. Like many apothecaries of his day, Cristoforo had a medicinal garden, and so did Caterina when she was older. She cultivated medicinal herbs in Imola and Forli, besides raising wild animals of all sorts. At just 14 years old, Caterina was married to Girolamo Riario, the nephew of the then Pope Sixtus IV. It was probably during the time between her arrival in Forli in 1484 and Girolamo’s assassination in 1488 that she really started experimenting seriously and focusing on alchemy. Together, the couple seem to have worked towards creating an image of themselves as great, magnificent princes, and their court one to rival even the Medici. And, as we’ll see, alchemy was a big part of that.

Her contemporaries described Caterina as an example of ideal feminine beauty. Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, her biographer, described her in 1497 ‘one of the most beautiful women of our century, of elegant appearance and blessed with a marvellous figure’ – which is particularly impressive after having children. You can see in this depiction of her by Lorenzo Credi how she also had the fashionable strawberry-blonde hair favoured at the time. (And if you’re interested in learning about hair in this period, I have a video about that which you might find interesting.) Although she was admired for her beauty, Caterina was even more renowned for her political leadership and for just being a strong, fearless, badass – that’s my description, by the way, not Machiavelli’s. Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) another powerful woman and an alchemist herself, wrote that

Although Macchiavelli also admired her character and audacity, the story he told also hints at her being a sort of ‘unnatural’ mother; someone who preferred losing her children to giving up her power. But, although there are many period dramas showing her political leadership, like the Medici and the Borgias, this is only one of the things that made her such a remarkable character. As I mentioned, like many aristocratic women of her time, Caterina was very interested in scientific experimentation, and she was happy to learn from all kinds of sources, from learned texts, the accounts of her friends and family, from popular tradition and, of course, from her direct, practical experience. And, for her, this was very much not just what we would call a ‘hobby’. She wasn’t just experimenting for fun, even though it must have been intellectually satisfying.

There are so many examples of noble and royal women who were interested in alchemy in the Renaissance, not to mention cosmetics and medicine, such as Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), queen and regent of France, who, according to many, was particularly knowledgeable about poisons. Other examples include Isabella d’Este, the marchioness of Mantua I just mentioned, who was famous for making her own perfumes and giving them out as gifts, and Marie de’ Medici (1575-1642), another queen of France and a relative of Caterina Sforza, whose alchemical lab was famous. This may sound like a coincidence, like all these women just shared the same weird past-time or something. Indeed, collecting recipes – or secrets, as they were sometimes called, was a distraction for both men and women, although noblewomen were known as particularly interested in beauty formulas. But this was not just a hobby. To understand why alchemy – and female alchemists – were so important, we have to think of what these women were responsible for in their homes.

So. One of the things that, whenever there are discussions about women and work, I tend to find annoying, is the implication that women have only recently joined the workforce. There are, of course, many layers here, in terms of time and place, considering race and class, and the differences between work inside and outside the home, and between paid and unpaid work, which I won’t get into. But. My point is that women have, throughout history and with few exceptions, pretty much always worked, even if the definition of what that work means has changed. Let me explain. Someone like Caterina Sforza, or any of the noblewomen I mentioned, was expected to work and be responsible for lots of different things. She had political and diplomatic roles representing Forli and Imola, but she also had much to do within the court. Usually, women managed the household: raising children and taking care of domestic animals, making cosmetics and hygiene products, such as soap, brewing ale, cooking, cleaning and washing – which involved making stain removers for instance, plus managing accounts, taking care of the health of those living with them – preventing and treating illness, for instance; women were the first port of call when someone was in bad health. Of course, I’m not saying Caterina Sforza was scrubbing floors! Someone like her would have plenty of servants; whom she was also responsible for; if a maid unexpectedly fell pregnant, if someone had a fever or a rash… They would resort to her, the lady of the house, to care for them. Domestic medicine in this period goes beyond a peasant woman helping her neighbour who was giving birth. Women of higher social status and wealth were expected to take care of those beneath them in the social hierarchy. There was an element of charity here, as well. For instance, many religious institutions, run by both men and women, would be involved in taking care of the health of those in their communities, including lay people. There were ‘apothecary nuns’, nuns who made their own medicines in their convents and who acted as community healers – and these nuns really do deserve their own video. But, you see, if you expand the concept of ‘household’ and ‘domestic’ to see convents and courts as great houses, then you can easily see how women, by virtue of caring for those around them and the household, were central to this world of experimentation.

Noble households were like communities where knowledge of all kinds was shared. Italian courts of course varied in size; they could be made up of dozens but sometimes even hundreds of people, who would have many different concerns. With so many women as part of the household, it’s easy to see why recipes about the female body, such as dealing with menstrual problems, would be useful. Practical knowledge about reproduction, such as dealing with infertility, would be important for securing an heir, for instance. But this medical knowledge would also enable people to circulate medical advice within their circles, which would be helpful when dealing with medical practitioners, be they surgeons, physicians, or midwives. Some of this knowledge could be considered problematic, though. Besides magic, recipes connected to deception weren’t always considered acceptable. I’m thinking of ways to make a woman who isn’t a virgin seem like one – there were lots of recipes for that. But women running large households had to be prepared for anything that might come their way, from the plague to dealing with digestive and respiratory issues, sciatica, or melancholy.

So, it’s not surprising that someone like Caterina would be interested in medical and cosmetic recipes, many of which relied on alchemy and were born from the everyday lives of women, from the household economy. This was the time of ‘domestic alchemy’ and ‘kitchen physic’. Remember, household medicine was the main way of caring for those who were ill until the 19th century. And, until the Industrial Revolution, most cosmetics, cleaning products, and everyday household items, such as ink, would have been made at home. This is why so many of these recipe collections are organised in eclectic ways: you have recipes for preserving strawberries and curing meat next to recipes for making soap, hair dyes, facial creams, stain removers, not to mention remedies for the plague and formulas to enhance milk supply if you were breastfeeding. It’s a mix of household management, healing, cosmetics, and cooking. In a sophisticated household, alchemy would have an important place. Its two main goals – turning base metals into gold and creating an elixir to prolong youth and restore health – were not only the pursuit of learned men, especially since the printing press had come along. Also, this kind of knowledge had practical application; the recipes about metals could be used in jewellery making, or to make silver or gold threads for embroidery, or even to make fake pearls if your budget didn’t allow you to buy real ones. So, for a Renaissance lady like Caterina, complex skills were needed to run a household. These practical needs, from healing a horse who had worms to helping a maid terminate an unwanted pregnancy, were combined in Caterina’s recipes with her intellectual interest in experimentation. Even when she had a recipe that already worked for whatever goal she hoped to achieve, she would try it out to try to improve it, to make a hair dye last longer, to make a remedy taste or smell better, to make a face cream’s texture smoother. 

She would also try out different versions of the recipe using other ingredients, for when something wasn’t available. It’s not too different from a baker today experimenting with a cake recipe to make it vegan or gluten-free. In this process, Caterina would try out many recipes on herself, her friends and family, testing their efficacy but also relying on people’s feedback. And, helpfully for historians, she would track these changes, and we can see how this experimentation was one of the main ways through which people could understand nature and the world around them at the time, not to mention their own bodies. This is why recipe books are probably my favourite kind of primary source for studying gender history and the history of medicine. Women -and men- used them to track and record experiments, annotating recipes – they might scribble something like ‘tested and proven by myself’ or even ‘not true’ to indicate something ddidn’t work, for instance. So recipes are a source into the world of empirical knowledge and experimentation of the time, and often of women’s engagement with early modern science, medicine, and empiricism. Household recipe books like Caterina Sforza’s have been described as the most prevalent form of women’s authoritative writing in Renaissance Europe. They were the most common way for women to write about medicine, cosmetics, and alchemy, and these texts were the basis for female authority in these areas. Besides having familiar and personal utility, Caterina’s interest in scientific experimentation also had a political component; these recipes could be useful for maintaining and expanding her political power and influence, which I will talk about in a bit. But let’s talk about her experiments.

Caterina Sforza’s Experimenti

One of the most remarkable manuscript collections of recipes from the Renaissance is without a doubt Caterina Sforza’s. Throughout her life, Caterina never stopped developing her collection of recipes, which survives in a single copy, simply titled Experimenti, or ‘experiments’. There are over 450 eclectic formulas compiled during her lifetime, the majority of them medicinal, but many of them cosmetic and alchemical, and lots of them about veterinary medicine. This mix of recipes was presented as a toolbox from which readers, and Caterina herself, could pick and choose, finding the ideal tool for solving everyday life and problems, which is why you can find everything from taking care of your personal appearance, making the domestic environment nice and pleasant, and those around you, and yourself, healthy. In terms of beauty, we’re talking about skin lotions, colours for the face, which is what we would call make-up, beauty waters and hair dyes. Caterina’s cosmetic recipes even included ways of modifying the body shape –  there’s a recipe for keeping breasts small, following the beauty standards of the time, called ‘to make the breasts small and hard so that they do not grow any larger’. It goes like this – and again, please don’t try this at home, regardless of what your breasts may look like!

In terms of medicine, there are recipes for the mundane – such as dealing with lice – to the more complicated, like gout, epilepsy, and even tumours. Caterina had remedies for all of those and, although many of them wouldn’t have worked, especially those for cancer, some of them would definitely have helped, at least with symptoms. Plus, there was a recipe for an opium-based anesthetic to make patients sleep for surgeries, which must have been helpful. Still, the most valuable and renowned of her recipes were probably the philosopher’s stone, one of the most important alchemical quests, and a quintessence, an elixir to protect against illness, cure all diseases, and prolong youth. Her panaceas included this elisir vitae, or vital elixir, which was made by distilling herbs in a sealed glass alembic. It was believed to be so powerful that it could raise the dead, allegedly. She wrote: ‘it causes a person to regain his youth and brings the dead back to life, and if someone were so ill as to have been abandoned by his physicians as an incurable case, it will restore him to health.’ So you can see how there’s an element of the miraculous, an element of magic, in some of her medical recipes, especially the ones connected to alchemy. These recipes were linked to her political concerns, too. This was a turbulent time, and there was always intrigue at court. It might be useful to have invisible ink for secret letters, for instance. Plus, poisons, along with their antidotes, were always good to have at hand, and Caterina wasn’t the only one to think so. One of the formulas in her collection was attributed to Pope Paul II (1464-1471), and it was made with distilled scorpions. Naturally, many of these were dangerous and perhaps best kept secret – which is why they were written fully or partially in Latin rather than Italian, or written in cypher, to keep their secrecy.

Caterina’s collection indicates her experimental methodology and her intellectual curiosity, and it’s also representative of how highly educated people at the time engaged and created knowledge. We know she personally tested them multiple times (well, except for the ones like the scorpion recipe I just mentioned!) to be sure of the desired results; she would make marginal annotations next to her formulas saying things like ‘truly tested and proven’, ‘proven and certain’, or ‘proven remedy’. Caterina Sforza was still working on her collection when she died, in 1509. Throughout her life, she was known to keep a notebook with her at all times to make notes, including of recipes, at all times. She never stopped experimenting. After her first husband had been murdered, she married Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, called ‘il Popolano’, and they had a son, who would become the renowned condottiere Giovanni de’ Medici (1498-1526). Her recipes were then passed on to him, her youngest son, also called dalle Bande Nere, who was a condottiere and the father of the first Medici grand duke, Cosimo I. It was a trusted lieutenant serving under Giovanni, Lucantonio Cuppano, who transcribed Caterina’s recipes around 1525 as a sort of useful pastime while he was stationed, calling them these ‘most treasured things’. Cuppano wrote: ‘one must assume [the recipes] to be effective, for they have been proven so by this great lady’.

The manuscript is over 500 pages long, and bound in leather. Luckily, it also comes with a code, since, as I mentioned, some of the recipes were encrypted, especially those dealing with alchemy and poisons. Apparently, Lucantonio copied this from the original as well. In the 19th century, the collection was published for the first time, by Caterina’s biographer, Pier Desiderio Pasolini, who called it ‘the most complete and important known document on medicine and perfumes’ of the Renaissance, and ‘a foundational text in the history of pharmacology’. But that’s not the end of the story. And that’s the coolest thing about studying history; you never know when a new document will be found, when a new primary source will appear, found by an archivist or librarian, and making our work possible. Two manuscripts have recently been discovered at the National Library in Florence, an index referencing another collection of recipes by Caterina, possibly over a thousand of them, and a further 400-something extra transcribed recipes, so, a second volume of her experiments. Plus, there are some recipes in the index that don’t appear in any of the two volumes of recipes, so, who knows, there might even be a third collection hiding somewhere. So, this indicates that Caterina may have collected and developed thousands of recipes throughout her life.

These new documents showcase how experiential knowledge was authoritative – not just in the domestic world, but beyond it, too – and how Caterina was an alchemical and medical experimenter as well as an author, and a political leader. Someone like her was exceptional, of course, but, although not all Renaissance women had her talent – not to mention the time and resources to experiment – Caterina’s case highlights one of the main ways in which women engaged with the scientific and medical culture at the time, right before what would later be called the ‘Scientific Revolution’. As I said, women used recipes to manage their health and appearance, as well as that of those around them, and manage their families and households. This is why this kind of collection tended to be so eclectic, reflecting the empirical and experimental character of early modern scientific culture based on the domestic world and everyday life. This is particularly true for women. If you were a Renaissance woman who, like Caterina, was curious about the world around you, what else could you do but experiment at home, dedicating yourself to ‘household alchemy’ and ‘kitchen physic’? You couldn’t participate in most professional guilds; you weren’t welcome at universities. Plus, this was a useful occupation for women, as it would make them better at managing their households. Focusing on your recipe book could be a way of developing an investigative practice and intellectual inquiry. They were a way for women to cement their authority as healers and enable them to take part in discussions about natural philosophy and science. In Caterina’s case, this involved her political and ceremonial duties at court, too. Her collection is very much at the origins of a long involvement of the Medici family with experimentation in alchemy, medicine, and cosmetics, and it continued to be consulted for decades, with new readers adapting the recipes to new times. 

Caterina’s recipes were united by their pragmatic nature; the thing they had in common was that they were useful. Her managerial and political duties were complex and so was her collection of recipes – it may seem weird to have recipes for making vinegar and artillery weapons in the same book, but it would have made sense for someone like her. Most of the recipe titles indicated the recipe’s function, with a note sometimes mentioning whether it had been given to Caterina by an acquaintance, especially if it was someone with a prominent reputation. This random method of collecting recipes was common at the time, both for manuscript and printed recipe books. Roughly, half of these recipes had to do with medicine; a quarter were alchemical, around 10% were for cosmetics and a further 10% involved magic. The remaining 5% of recipes dealt mostly with veterinary medicine and equine remedies. Horses were, of course, crucial for transport and agriculture, but also, for warfare. And, in the 15th century, their ceremonial role in the world of courtly spectacle and splendour was crucial for Renaissance culture. So, it was very important to take care of your horses, which is why Caterina listed formulas ‘to make a horse’s hooves perfect’ and to harden ‘bad, glass-like hooves’, plus how to treat worms in horses and to fatten sick animals. Interestingly, Caterina wrote down that some of these remedies would work on people too; presumably, in different doses! 

Many of these recipes were based on distilling herbs. Distillation was used both in traditional, Galenic medicine and in alchemy, too. It required specialised but not necessarily expensive equipment, and Caterina made sure to list all the essential tools and items you would need. Alchemy and distillation were increasingly popular at the time, especially in medicine, and, if you’re interested in that, you might want to watch my video on Paracelsus. Distillation involved specific methods, processes and techniques, often using chemical ingredients and, although there could be elements from esotericism and arcana, much of alchemy was ‘household alchemy’ and its cousin, ‘kitchen physic’, both of which were practised by women. And so, although Caterina Sforza is probably one of the most remarkable alchemists of her time, she was by no means the only one. So let’s talk about how this knowledge circulated. 

Renaissance Courts and Experimentation Networks 

Caterina Sforza has been described as an avid prince-practitioner, as she developed a public persona as a practitioner and purveyor of secrets, as someone who was fascinated with secrets; with useful recipes for everyday life and valuable ways of getting ahead politically. But, while some recipes were indeed kept secret, and secrecy was an important element in the perceived value of a recipe, remember that some of them were even encrypted, these recipes were also frequently on the move. As I mentioned earlier, these collections were often passed from one generation to the next, like a family heirloom; they circulated within family and friends circles, and the local community; recipe collections were a part of the dowry for the daughters of artisans in Italy, containing useful trade secrets, which makes sense as many people would marry within their guild or circle of craftsmen. Brides from the nobility also often brought familial recipe books with them when they married. And this makes me think of when one of my cousins was getting married in Brazil a few years ago and we were all asked to bring a recipe when we came to her bridal shower, so that all of these contributions essentially became her own recipe collection, the basis for her own experimentation. Of course, there is some sexism involved, and most of us had brought recipes for cake, not the philosopher’s stone, but it just goes to show how, throughout history, recipes have been one of the key ways for knowledge to circulate, but also, for people to bond, expanding and consolidating social networks. So, there were many ways in which recipes would be shared and medical knowledge would be disseminated, across linguistic, political, social, and gender boundaries.  

But recipes were also a form of currency, and they circulated through a wide and intricate epistolary network. Caterina Sforza even sent out people to seek out new recipes for her, visiting other courts and especially other noblewomen who were also interested in experimentation. People would write down recipes in their letters, whether they were aristocrats, medical practitioners such as apothecaries, or political agents like diplomats. They could be sent as reciprocal gifts, as a mark of favour to establish goodwill or cement alliances. Recipes served to maintain and expand these networks, bolstering the authority and reputation of those who shared the most valuable recipes. If you shared a recipe with someone above your social rank, it could help make your case in asking for patronage or receiving a financial reward. Caterina frequently corresponded with her apothecary in Forli, with the Dominican nuns of Annalena, and the Benedictine convent of Le Murate where she had been a boarder and where, later, she would be buried. Her correspondence with the nuns included the exchange of recipes, especially about medicine. Hundreds of letters were exchanged, and some of her correspondents included Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Isabella d’Este in Mantua, Lodovico Sforza, her uncle, in Milan, and Federico Gonzaga in Ferrara. So, recipes acted as currency in political alliances, they represented counsel and intelligence, and appeared often in Caterina Sforza’s political letters, as she promised recipes as a part of political negotiations. So, you can see how this crafting of her persona, or ‘self-fashioning’ as some historians call it, deeply involved her recipes. Caterina crafted her political authority by intertwining it with her scientific authority; she carefully blended both and fashioned herself as a ‘prince-practitioner’.

And part of that aura had to do with secrecy; Caterina was very discreet in her experimental practice, as the encoded formulas indicate, and so were many of her contemporaries. For instance, in a letter sent to Caterina, only signed ‘that faithful servant’, it is mentioned that two recipes were going to be exchanged between Caterina Sforza and possibly Isabella d’Este, following some previous arrangement. Caterina would receive a special facial lotion and would reciprocate this with a formula for making 19-carat gold. (Yes, it’s implied that these had a similar value, so this goes to show how valuable cosmetic formulas could be.) That’s not surprising; aristocratic Italian women were renowned for their knowledge of cosmetics and perfumes. Isabella described herself as ‘unsurpassed by any perfumer in the world’, and these gifts had a high value in European courts of the time. Unfortunately though, we don’t know anything about this servant – and the fact that they signed the letter this way further indicates the importance of discretion.

Although many of her correspondents were from the nobility like herself, Caterina’s interest in experimentation transcended class and status. We know she exchanged cosmetic recipes with an unlicensed practitioner, called Anna Hebrea, or ‘Jewish Anna’, who sent Caterina a recipe for softening the skin and removing spots, similar to a face mask. (And if you’re intrigued about Anna, remember that Jews had been expelled from many kingdoms by then, including Castille, and many of them had relocated to Italian cities. Many Jewish women were known for their knowledge of medicine and cosmetics. In some cases, this was a way in, this opened up opportunities for marginalised people at court, becoming well-known in this ‘marketplace of secrets’.) Plus, this interest in cosmetics transcended social class. While many noblewomen developed their own creams and beauty products, their recipes were diffused in great part through elite women, like the wives of merchants, who were keen to copy them, from hairstyles to make-up. So, by exchanging recipes and buying these products at the apothecary, these women gained access to higher levels of society, but also to a world of experimentation. Another way this knowledge circulated was when elite women wanted to reward servants and didn’t have money on hand. Cosmetic recipes or products were often used for that purpose, and were happily received. They were symbols of social capital, and they consolidated hierarchies and networks.

Through these connections, Caterina’s collection grew; and we know that she prescribed recipes for others. Her daughter, for instance, wrote to her asking for advice about respiratory problems. In return for one of her mother’s recipes, she would send her some fruit. Besides that, Caterina swapped alchemical formulas with Maximilian I, who had married her sister, Bianca Maria Sforza, and would be the Holy Roman Emperor from 1508. So, Caterina had extensive contacts across Europe, especially at courts, to whom she would send her recipes. And she would receive many others in exchange to expand her own colelction, in what historians have called ‘court experimentalism’ and in which Caterina’s descendants, the Medici, excelled. So, Renaissance recipes had a rich social life, and these books could always be annotated by current users, with new recipes being added and older ones being corrected or improved.

Caterina’s formulas are similar to many of her contemporaries, from fellow alchemists at court to what apothecaries would prepare in their workshops, relying on many different intellectual frameworks, from the alchemical to the magical, the divine, the occult, to the humoral theory so prevalent in her day, which was the case for many Renaissance healers. We know there was much communication happening between the world of female experimenters like Sforza and the more formal world of medical and scientific experimentation. One of the main differences though, is that for people like Caterina, the dozens of recipes dealing with metals could have a clear political and economic use. For instance, one of her recipes was meant to ‘add greater weight to a scudo or golden ducat’, increasing its value, and it was attributed to Cosimo the Elder. Alchemical recipes like this indicate how she thought of the practical application of alchemy to her political needs. The need for money to maintain a courtly household was a constant worry, and so Caterina’s interest in alchemy could potentially create extra resources for her court, and she discussed this in letters with those in her inner circle. Besides adding to the weight of coins, changing the colour of metals and making fake jewellery would definitely come in handy. And, of course, recipes for making steel weapons and metalworking in general would be useful for warfare.

I find it so interesting to think that alchemical methods were behind both these kinds of needs and formulas for beauty products and hygiene. It just goes to show the real and complex demands of life at a Renaissance court in all its diversity. Even amidst political turmoil and personal tragedy, Caterina continued to experiment and to exchange letters and recipes with her networks. Recipes cemented relationships, they circulated through networks by word of mouth, letters, manuscript collections, and printed books. And through these recipes we can map how practical and empirical knowledge flowed between courts and cities. Plus, we can see how women were a big part of the world of experimentation. From a gendered perspective, though, things weren’t always straightforward. Let’s talk about censorship.

Censoring Caterina

As I mentioned, after Caterina’s death, her recipes were handed down to her son, Giovanni de’ Medici and, later, to his son, Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Medici grand duke. Francesco I and Don Antonio de’ Medici inherited the collection after that, and they put lots of effort – and resources – into expanding Caterina’s legacy. They created large laboratories; Cosimo’s foundry at the Palazzo Vecchio was a place where recipes were tested and perfected, and new scientific endeavours were pursued. These labs and workshops were scientific and technological hubs; they produced porcelain and glass, and investigated all kinds of pyrotechniques and alchemical formulas. But not everything was going smoothly for Caterina Sforza’s collection of recipes. Like I said earlier, we can read eclectic mix of recipes with a household economy in mind, but also with the need to serve both the health and the political goals of a Renaissance court, in which her authority – political and scientific – was largely based on her experiential, bodily knowledge. However, these manuscripts, even though they weren’t meant for a large readership, but for familial use, were not immune to criticism and censorship. Recipes in printed books were much more heavily censored, of course, especially where magic and the occult were concerned. The best example is perhaps the polemic around Giambattista Della Porta’s ‘witches’ ointment’, which deserves its own video – and I’ll make it soon, I promise!

Still, some of Caterina’s recipes were later considered unacceptable, especially the ones dealing with magic. Whether it was symbolic, ritual, demonic, or natural magic, magic was one of the operative principles behind many of her recipes – and the same can be said for many of her contemporaries. Some kinds of magic were considered ok and others weren’t, and what exactly constituted each changed according to time and place, but it was a very fine line. This was also a gendered question, with knowledge coming from women being more problematic, too. Yet, for a long time, it was believed that natural phenomena could be sometimes explained by spirits and the invisible properties of things, such as the force of magnets which, if you don’t understand the science behind them, can seem marvelous and, who knows, connected with other elements of the occult. Manipulating and operating using these invisible forces was considered magic, and it had been for a while. But things were changing in the 16th century. The Reformation had made discussions about heresy and demonology a central concern of the Church and, let’s not forget, it’s no coincidence that the early modern period was when the witch craze took Europe by storm. In this context, magic was increasingly defined in a broader sense, encompassing even more practices than it had before. So, the line between what kind of knowledge was forbidden and what was acceptable was being redrawn. And that is very likely why, in the second collection of recipes recently uncovered, some recipes were considered unorthodox, especially the ones for charms or using spells and incantations. (And we know this in large part because of the index, which lists the recipes’ titles.) 

Some of her recipes were deliberately censored in two different ways, through excision – which is when you literally cut out parts of the text – and obliteration – which is when you paint or scribble over the offending parts of the text, making it illegible. This was done after Cuppano’s first transcription of the recipes, which had been faithful to the original, possibly at the time of Cosimo de’ Medici. The Pope at the time, Paul III, was an enemy of the Medici. Times were tense; the Pope had even started to authorise that private homes be searched by the Inquisition. This meant that a manuscript, family collection of recipes, made the Medici vulnerable to possible accusations of heresy. Who knows, maybe the family thought that some of the experimental aspects of her collection which dealt with magic could be understood as demonic; they could be a threat to the Medici. So, it’s likely that this was a voluntary self-censorship of sorts; maybe they just wanted to protect themselves by removing anything problematic from the collection. Crucially, the new recipe books that were created from then on within the Medici court tended not to include any magic. Of course, it’s always a shame for historians when something like this happens, but we have to accept that we almost never get to know the whole story. Still, the partial censorship of Caterina Sforza’s collection and her intellectual legacy hints at big changes happening at the time, especially of what was considered acceptable and forbidden, not only in terms of religion, but also medicine and science.

Final Thoughts

Caterina Sforza was a remarkable Renaissance prince – in the sense of a political leader. Her military and diplomatic strategies are well known, and her ways of developing her authority and persona have been discussed by historians and depicted in novels, films, and art for a long time. And rightly so. But her alchemical life is just as interesting, if not more so. Her recipes give us a unique insight into the lives of early modern women and their involvement with experimentation and scientific inquiry. Caterina was fascinated with ‘secrets’, with recipes that were useful or valuable for the running of a large household. Because she was responsible for the health of her family, guests, and servants, and because of the needs of a Renaissance court, from the well-being of horses to the weight of coins, she crafted a long collection of recipes covering everything from medicine, cosmetics, perfumes, alchemy, magic, and metallurgy. She was clearly enthralled with these experiments, but they were also a part of her domestic duties. And recipes like these fascinated people at court, but they were also starting to appear in print – and soon, the market would be flooded with them.

When Caterina Sforza died of quartan fever in 1509, it was said that her apothecary was distraught. And no wonder. Caterina had become such a central figure in the world of Renaissance experimentation; she was a matriarch, the founding figure of the long history of scientific experimentation at the Medici court and beyond. She was an ‘alchemical mother’ of sorts. Many of her recipes survived, luckily for us, and they were amended, transcribed, and used by her descendants and admirers. Although Caterina’s eclectic collection of recipes was born from the everyday management of a household and the domestic world, it soon expanded to cover new ground, connected to her political role and making her a pioneer of a kind of ‘new science’ and empiricism, without which it is debatable whether we would have had a ‘scientific revolution’. So, the combination of domestic needs, like taking care of your family’s health, with the practical demands of running a household, especially a great household at court, made Caterina Sforza’s collection particularly rich, as it combined what was expected of a wife – taking care of her family, guests, and servants – with what was expected of a political leader. Caterina’s many overlapping roles – wife, mother, duchess, and regent from 1484 to 1499 – shaped her recipe collection, making it a window into th everyday life of a Renaissance court. Plus, she was just incredibly intelligent and resourceful. If you’re still with me, thank you!  Also, if you enjoy my ramblings on history, please consider becoming a patron over at Patreon. It really does make a difference. Thank you and see you next time!

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References

Caterina Sforza, Experimenti de la Ex.ma S.r Caterina da Furli Matre de lo Illux.mo S.r Giovanni de Medici, ed. by P. D. Pasolini, 3 vols. (1894).

Caterina Sforza. Experimenti de la ex.ma s.ra Caterina da Furlj, ed. by P. A. Rossi (2018).

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magliabechiana XV 14.

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Palatino 1021.

Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, De plurimus claris selectisque mulieribus (1497).

Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (1531) and The Prince (1532).

Further Reading

Sheila Barker and Sharon Strocchia, ‘Household Medicine for a Renaissance Court’, in S. Strocchia and S. Ritchey, pp. 139-165.

Sheila Barker, ‘The Contributions of Medici Women to Medicine in Grand Ducal Tuscany and Beyond’, in The Grand Ducal Medici and Their Archive (1537-1743), ed. by A. Assonitis and B. Sandberg (2016), pp. 101-116.

Fabrizia Fiumi and Giovanna Tempesta, ‘Gli experimenti di Caterina Sforza’, in Caterina Sforza: Una Donna del Cinquecento (2000), pp. 139-146.

Natale Graziani and Gabriella Venturelli, Caterina Sforza (2001).

Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin, ‘Testing Drugs and Trying Cures: Experiment and Medicine in Medieval and early Modern Europe’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 91 (2017), pp. 157-182.

Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Corageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici (2011).

Julia Martins, ‘Caterina Sforza: Using All the Weapons in Her Arsenal’, Living History (2022).

Bruce Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (2005).

Meredith Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (2015).

Sharon Strocchia, Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy (2019).

Antonio Torresi, Il ricettario Medici: alchimia, farmacopea, cosmesi e tecnica atistica nella Firenze medicea (2004).

Joyce de Vries, Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art and Culture in Early Modern Italy (2010).