6 years ago
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When Medieval Monks Couldn’t Cure the Plague, They Launched a Luxe Skincare Line
Long before the modern deluge of organic soaps, herbal remedies, juice cleanses, and lifestyle brands like Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, the mindful crowd had a medieval-era source for all-natural panaceas: the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. Roughly translated as the “Perfume-Pharmaceutical Workshop of New Saint Mary’s Church,” this world-renowned cosmetics and pharmaceutical company began its illustrious life as a community health clinic at a 13th-century Florentine monastery.
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Their soaps are expensive but they have wonderful scents. My daughter's boyfriend turned me onto them but I had no idea of their history. I passed it on to my daughter.
At some charity B.S. a few weeks ago with Dominican monks and nuns, one of the seemed-like-Jedi-cosplayers-to-me at my table described having projects outside of divinity studies. He’s helping the priory’s tortoises successfully reproduce, which I gather had not been happening for many years. Incubators, hatchlings, all the rest of that. Oh, and he’s helping with a long-term beer making project. Humanized these fashion victims for me a great deal, hearing that. His personal project though, he said, is making beard lotion, to soften and add luster to one’s beard. Here I’d thought they were proselytizing shock troops and they go and geek out like that, ruining my perfectly good suspicions...