Michele Savonarola (Padua, c. 1385 – Ferrara, c. 1466) taught medicine at Padua and was physician to the Este court at Ferrara. Around 1450 he wrote, in the vernacular and for the duke, a book on food: wheat and bread, pulses, fruit, meat, fish, wine and water, with what each does to the body and how best to prepare it. It is one of the first treatises on diet written in an Italian vernacular. In the novel, Alessandra spends a summer in his house in Padua.
We have transcribed it in full from the Venice edition of 1515, without modernising, page by page, with the image of each page beside it. There are twenty-six chapters: from wheat and bread to honey, sugar, spices and salt, ending with rules for keeping healthy and a set of questions, by way of grapes, oysters, goat’s milk, wine, and water “raw” and “cooked”, from rivers, wells and cisterns.
The transcription is free to use (CC BY 4.0), with credit to the source. Read the Libreto in the Library →
From the Library: texts from Alessandra’s time, transcribed from the original sources.