Frozen in Ferrara
The other night I switched on a book review programme on the telly, not because I review books but out of curiosity. The “Sunday Times” had forewarned that it was awful beyond anyone’s powers of imagination. Given the standard of what the medium churns out on an average day, this was clearly going to be a feat worth watching. Even so I probably wouldn’t have bothered had I not been tipped off that the literary victim of the week was Sarah Dunant’s latest about a reluctant nun in Ferrara. I haven’t read the book myself but suspect that it deserves a better fate than to be reviewed by a panel of nonentities, perhaps borrowed from the “Chav factor” and which included a woman whose voice embodied such an irritating combination of superciliousness and stupidity that I slashed my finger instead of the mushrooms I was preparing for supper. On the other hand, I do have a passing knowledge of the city in the early sixteenth century as does anyone connected with the history of food. It was there that Messisbugo prepared for Lucrezia Borgia some of the most spectacular banquets seen since ancient Rome and whose recipe for a white fish timbale, I still use. The much-maligned Lucrezia herself became a Franciscan tertiary and founded inter al, the convent of San Bernardino in the city. None of this emerged during the inane programme through which the “guest” Emilia Fox sat looking distinctly uncomfortable (like most men, I am a fan of hers and it was with a mixture of horror and pleasure I found that she had been coerced into taking part). Professional actress that she is, she cheered up a bit when they got on to figwort, (without explaining its part in the book) not so much discussing it as unanimously admitting that they had no idea what it is. I suppose alighting upon figwort with which display their utter cluelessness was a random choice since they were so abysmally uninformed about every other aspect of Ferrara, its history and herbalism. In fact Scrophularia is a particularly interesting subject, for although knocking around in the materia medica since Rufinus wrote of it in around 1287 as the fourth of five varieties of nettles “Quarta species eius est urtica mata et dicitur scrofolaria nec ferret et aliqui dicunt eam marubium”, and probably long before that, its precise identity still hadn’t been clarified as late as 1557 when Mattioli was no less vague about the plant in his great herbal. At least however Mattioli picked up on its traditional attribute of clearing up scrofula aka “The King’s Evil” which is more than either Rufinus or the dumbed-down panel managed. Normally of course, victims tried to get touched by the king, but to do so was inclined to be more hazardous than the original disease, many sufferers for example, being trampled to death in 1682. Perhaps if they couldn’t lay their hands on some figwort or a conveniently passing sovereign, they should have stuck with Macer’s remedy of smearing their diseased bits with a pepper and pitch plaster. Then again, perhaps not, given where Macer’s “kernals” were frequently located. Hopefully you will agree that this is much more informative than the inane programme and best of all, unlike the unfortunate film crew, none of you has had to stand around in the Ferrarese snow for a momentary shot of some cloisters. God knows what that cost the production team in money and Lemsip, and if they ever found out the name of the cloister, they didn’t tell us….or perhaps they did when I was nursing my damaged finger. Lest I be accused of intellectual snobbery, I should say that I enjoy “Ice Road Truckers” as much as the next man and I too whiten my knuckles and restrain myself from stamping on the imaginary brakes as “Polar Bear” slithers his vast arti through a snow drift and down a nigh vertical slope with a thousand foot drop inches from his near-side wheels. And while on artis and since this is supposed to be a subjective blog I suppose I must mention that my personal abiding memory of Ferrara was watching a cyclist pedalling head-on into an arti, being sucked into the works and finally coming out the far end in a manner not dissimilar to a sausage emerging from the mincer without its skin. The natives treated the whole incident with a nonchalance born of living in a city where the D’Este family held sway throughout the Renaissance. Great patrons but not too hot on human rights, one might say.
Again, subjectively, was there ever a female character in the whole of history more attractive than Beatrice D’Este? Aunt by marriage of the great herbalist and politician Caterina Sforza, Beatrice was feisty, loyal, intelligent and possessed of a great sense of humour almost unique amongst Renaissance women. Not surprisingly, her husband fell apart when she died aged twenty-two in 1497 changing European history as a result. On the other hand, there are those who would argue that all the Sforzeschi were congenitally insane anyway and the death of the divine Beatrice made no difference.. Well, hell, they were amateur herbalists, what do you expect?
