Maternal Materialities Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval & Early Modern Childbirth

OBJECTS, RITUALS AND MATERIAL EVIDENCE OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN CHILDBIRTH

Although little is known of the process surrounding early modern childbirth, the lack of written testimonials and technical descriptions does not preclude the possibility of reconstructing the reality of this elusive space: drawing on the evidence of clothing, food, rites and customs, this collection of essays seeks to give tangible form to the experience of childbirth through the analysis of physical objects and rituals.

An important addition to the literature of material culture and ‘wordly goods’, this collection of twentythree essays from international scholars offers a novel approach to the study of pre- and early modern birth by extending its reach beyond the birthing event to include issues concerning the management of pregnancy and post-partum healing.

Grouped into six broad areas, the essays explore the iconography of maternity, the food and objects present in the birthing room, the evidence and memorialization of death in childbirth, attitudes towards the pregnant body, the material culture of healing and the ritual items used during childbirth.

COVER: Birth of the Virgin.

Workshop of Pedro García de Benabarre, ca. 1475.

Tempera, stucco reliefs and gold leaf on wood.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Edited by

Costanza Gislon Dopfel

Generation Bodies and Gender in History

Volume 2 Series Editors Yasmine Foehr-Janssens, Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci, Véronique Dasen, Francesca Arena Editorial Board Francesca Arena, Lydie Boudiou, Andrea Carlino, Véronique Dasen, Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Francesca Prescendi, Philip A. Rieder, Brigitte Roux, Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci

Maternal Materialities Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth

Edited by Costanza Gislon Dopfel

F

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

17

Introduction

19

Part I The Iconography of Birth Too Real to Behold Vandalizing Childbirth Images in Sacred Texts Mati Meyer

35

Pregnancy and Pilgrimage in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa María Emilie L. Bergmann

51

Reality and Imagination in the Iconography of the Lying-in Room Costanza Gislon Dopfel

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Part II Pregnant and Parturient Bodies A Dress for the Mother in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy Elisa Tosi Brandi

91

Feeding the New Mother Rules and Exceptions Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli

107

Gifts for the Mother Medieval and Early Modern Trays and Ceramics Celebrating Childbirth Costanza Gislon Dopfel

125

Ten Privileges for Pregnant Women in Early Modern Spain Nina Kremmel

145

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ta b l e of con ten ts

The Economics of Fertility Female Slaves and their Children in Italy and in the Venetian Colonies Antonella Parmeggiani and Costanza Gislon Dopfel

155

Part III Inside the Birthing Room ‘My best shete’ Linen and Childbirth in England, 1450–1650 Róisín Donohoe

175

The Materials of Midwifery in Early Modern England in Five Groups of Objects Sara Read

187

The Material Culture of the Birthing Room in Seventeenth-Century France The Hand and Other Instruments Alison Klairmont Lingo

201

Part IV Childbirth’s Ritual Objects Obstetrics Shaped by Ritual Water and Emergency Baptism in Spanish Birthing Scenarios, 1500–1800 Wolfram Aichinger and Alice Dulmovits

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Nuestra vida una tela Threads, Cloth, and the Fabrication of Life in Early Modern Spain Sabrina Grohsebner

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The Use of Saints’ Clothing in High Medieval Childbirth Fiona Harris-Stoertz

253

Birth Girdles as Metric Relics of the Virgin and Christ in Late Medieval England Mary Morse

263

Part V Death in Childbirth Foetal Death in High Medieval Pregnancy Fiona Harris-Stoertz

291

ta ble of contents

Twin Births and Emergency Baptisms in Northern Italy from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century Mirko Traversari and Giorgio Gruppioni

301

Double Burials: Are They Always Mother–Child Couples?

A Multidisciplinary Study from an Early Modern Hospital Cemetery Gaia Gabanini, Elisabetta Cilli, and Mirko Traversari

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Part VI Childbirth and Fertility Rituals across the Millennia From Prehistory to the Postmodern Era The Frog, the Toad, and the Womb Luigi Canetti

323

Rituals of the Afterbirth Postmodern and Biomedical Health Models in Placentophagy Svea Vikander

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Index

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9

Mati Meyer

Too Real to Behold Vandalizing Childbirth Images in Sacred Texts* ‘Barbarism’ or intentional defacement of art in Byzantium is a well-known phenomenon.1 Broadly speaking, the defacement of images in all visual media can be categorized according to the different kinds of damage, each kind with its own purpose and characteristics. Moreover, the damage may be either unintentional or intentional.

To unintentional effacement belong sacred images that have been marred by repeated touching or kissing over a long period of time.2 To the latter category belong images that were blemished deliberately. Intentional damage to images might have derived from positive emotions and/or have been acts of devotion. The incised graffiti found on the wall paintings representing St Anna in the chapel bearing the same name, in the Church of Hagios Stephanos, Kastoria, provide one example. The damage, caused by rubbing and graffiti, was most likely inflicted by women devotees inscribing names on the image as a sort of prayer, and can certainly be ascribed to belief in St Anna as a personal intercessor against infertility and infant mortality.3 However, intentional damage might also have been the product of negative emotions. Byzantine works of art, especially psalters with marginal illuminations, show copious evidence of the erasure or effacement of historical and religious figures such as iconoclasts, heretics, and demons.4 I argue that both positive and negative emotions might have motivated the obvious barbarism inflicted on a series of birthing images that appeared in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, especially in the books known as the Octateuchs.5 The present essay is distinguished from other studies on barbarism in illuminated books by the specific analyses of female characters and thus moves beyond prevailing scholarship that primarily addresses

* This essay is excerpted from my work in progress that investigates gendered aspects in the portrayal of the female body in Byzantine illuminated books. The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation between 2013 and 2017.

1 The term ‘barbarism’ indicating the defacement of sacred art in Byzantium was coined by Marinis, ‘Piety, Barbarism, and the Senses’, p. 321.

2 See, for example, the badly flaked Christ’s face and hand in contrast to the condition of the rest of the image in an eleventh-century manuscript now at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington (MS 3, fol. 71r); Nelson, ‘The Discourse of Icons Then and Now’, pp. 150–51, fig. 3.

3 Gerstel, ‘Painted Sources for Female Piety in Medieval Byzantium’, pp. 96–99, figs 11–12.

4 Marinis, ‘Piety, Barbarism, and the Senses’, p. 321.

5 For a useful introduction, see Lowden, ‘Illustrated Octateuch Manuscripts’, pp. 107–52. Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, is a published edition of the six surviving Octateuchs.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 35-49 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133771

too rea l to behold

Figure 1.1. Rebecca giving birth to Esau and Jacob. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, gr. 746 (Olim 478), Octateuch, Constantinople, c. 1139–52, fol. 89v. <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.746.pt.1>

The colour in the illumination representing Rachel giving birth to Benjamin (Gen. 35. 16–18) in the Seraglio Octateuch (c. 1139–52) is badly flaked, but we can also see some scraping on the lower part of the young mother’s stomach (Figure 1.2).23 Lastly, in Vat. gr. 747 and in Vat. gr. 746 (Figure 1.3), two out of the five images depicting Tamar giving birth to the twins Phares and Zara (Gen. 38. 29–30) bear traces of damage.24 In the image in Vat. gr. 747, both infants are damaged, but the mother’s figure is intact. Notably, traces of red colour designate the lochia, thus enhancing the reality of the birth. In the image in Vat. gr. 746, an intentional rubbing is discernible on the lower part of the parturient woman’s body at the level of her genitalia. In fact, the erasure in this scene is similar to the damage 23 Istanbul, Library of Topkapi Sarayi, cod. G.I.8 (Gayri Islâmi 8), fol. 119r; Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, p. 112, fig. 448. I thank Necla Kaplan for sharing further information on this image with me; Kaplan, ‘Byzantine Period Pictorial Octateuch Manuscript’, pp. 200–01. Isaak Komnenos (1081–1118), sebastokrator and ktetor of the Chora monastery in Constantinople, commissioned the manuscript. He had been forced to flee the city, possibly in 1139, and died in or after 1152, before the book was completed. Thus he could not have had the opportunity to use it; see Lowden, ‘Illustrated Octateuch Manuscripts’, pp. 21–26.

Until an edition was published in 1907, the Komnenos book was unknown, including its previous history; Uspenskij, L’Octateuque de la Bibliothèque du Sérail à Constantinople. In 1939 the parchment was restored page by page, but not the miniatures; Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, pp. 334–37. For further bibliography on the patronage of Isaak Komnenos, see Linardou, ‘Imperial Impersonations’, pp. 155–58.

24 Vat. gr. 747, fol. 59v, the image can be accessed through the following link: <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/ MSS_Vat.gr.747>; and Vat. gr. 746, fol. 119v; Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, pp. 119–20, figs 479 and 482, respectively. Scraping of a small area below Tamar’s belly is visible in the same scene in the twelfth-century Smyrna Octateuch (now destroyed); Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, fig. 481.

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Figure 1.2. Rachel giving birth to Benjamin. Istanbul, Library of Topkapi Sarayi, cod. G.I.8 (Gayri Islâmi 8), Octateuch, Constantinople, c. 1139–52, fol. 119r.

perpetrated on the figures of Rebecca (Figure 1.3) and Hagar (Figure 1.2) in Vat. gr. 746, so that one wonders if they were all done by the same hand. Damage to birthing scenes is not restricted to the Octateuchs. For example, signs of barbarism can be discerned in Hannah’s lower body where she is shown giving birth to Samuel (i Kings 1. 19–21) in the eleventh-century illuminated Book of Kings.25 Are all the damages in the manuscripts discussed here sites of barbarism? As explained previously, we can see evidence of slight or extended damage in all of them owing to colour flaking and parchment wear. In other instances, the damage is clearly intentional and bears the stamp of an intense emotional reaction. Another good example is the heavy rubbing inflicted upon the miniature relating to the story of the golden calf (Exod.

32. 3–20) in Vat. gr. 746, fol. 249v.26 An otherwise anonymous viewer might have been offended by the idea of the adoration of idols conveyed in that episode, whereas images of overt femininity that might have been considered offensive do not necessarily bear signs of vandalism. One such image would be the daughters of Israel dancing after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod. 15. 20) in Vat. gr. 747, fol. 90v. In spite of the fact that one

25 Vat. gr. 333, fol. 5v; Lassus, L’illustration byzantine du Livre des rois, p. 33, fig. 3b. The image can be accessed at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.333>.

26 The image can be accessed at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.746.pt.1> Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, pp. 182–83, fig. 797.

too rea l to behold

Figure 1.3. Tamar giving birth to Phares and Zara. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, gr. 746 (Olim 478), Octateuch, Constantinople, c. 1139–52, fol. 119v. <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.746.pt.1>

of the dancers is bare-breasted, her figure is intact.27 However, in the same scene in the later Vat. gr. 746, fol. 194v — the same manuscript where three images of birthing show signs of vandalism — the head of one of the female dancers has been rubbed out.28 The rubbings imply that the reader(s) or viewer(s) of Vat. gr. 746 became more emotionally involved in the content of the images than those of the other two Octateuchs discussed here.

I suggest that the damage inflicted to varying degrees in scenes of the realistic birth type was likely motivated by the sexual, erotic, and moral perceptions associated with the female body in general and with parturition in particular that prevailed in Byzantium. One example that the Suda gives for ekíssisen (became pregnant) is ‘meth’ idonís synélaben’ (conceived with pleasure).29 According to Plato’s Timaeus, a work that was widely known in the Byzantine world, women are actually a second life embodiment of men who failed to attain the higher life in their first existence. The gods then created a new creature, sexual desire, which resides in both men and women. Its manifestation in men takes the form 27 The image can be accessed at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.747> Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, pp. 165–66, fig. 708.

28 The image can be accessed at <https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.746.pt.1> Weitzmann and Bernabò, The Byzantine Octateuchs, pp. 166, fig. 711.

29 Suda: epsilon, 440.

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Emilie L. Bergm ann

Pregnancy and Pilgrimage in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa María

The profound anguish of the mother depicted in the miniature of Cantiga 21 (Figure 2.1) is unmistakable, despite its small scale: she raises her hands to her face to tear at her cheeks, matching the narrative in the manuscript that the image illustrates. The painter has added several expressive details: her dishevelled hair bristles around her face, and her eyebrows are twisted into minuscule hooks, in contrast to the smooth arcs on the faces of the women friends who stand beside her, their hair neatly confined by nets or veils. One reaches out to comfort her, and the child’s father has hidden his face in his hands, with sorrow too deep for the artist to depict. This is the third of six panels (Figure 2.2) illustrating one of the miracle tales that comprise the twelfth-century Cantigas de Santa María from the court of Alfonso X, ‘El sabio’ (the Wise or Learned), King of Castile and León (1221–84).1 The added details of hair, eyebrows, friends, and grieving husband in the dramatic image of the mother’s grief deepen the emotional effect of the text, which tells how an infertile woman prayed to the Mother of God, and her prayer was answered with the birth of a son.

The child died of a fever soon afterwards, and the mother ‘per poucas ensandeceu | por el, e sas faces fillou-ss’ a carpir’ (almost lost her mind over his loss and tore her cheeks in grief). She asked Mary why she gave her a son, only to take him away: ‘polo prazer que do teu ouveste | Fillo, dam’ este meu que veja riir’ (For the sake of the pleasure you had from your own Son, give me mine so that I may see him smile).2 Appealing once again to the Virgin’s maternal empathy, the distraught mother was rewarded for her faith with an even greater miracle, in which her child was returned to life. Among the miracles recounted in 356 songs in Escorial Codex B.1.2, thirty-eight of them benefit mothers and children, and seventeen of these feature Mary’s resuscitation or healing of infants or young children.3 The images that accompany the verse narratives of Marian miracles involving infertility, pregnancy, difficult births, and the fragility of infants’ and children’s lives depict emotions ranging from supplication and maternal tenderness to horror and desperation, but this image of a mother nearly driven mad by the loss of a child is unique.

1 My references to specific cantigas use the numbering in Alfonso X, Cantigas, ed. by Mettmann.

2 Transcriptions from Alfonso X, Cantigas, ed. by Mettmann, vol. 1, pp. 111–12; Alfonso X, Songs, trans. by Kulp-Hill, p. 30.

3 Mettmann identifies 420 compositions in the Cantigas, but the number of miracle tales is lower, since there are some repetitions in the collection, and every tenth poem is a cantiga de loor (song of praise). Alfonso X, Cantigas, ed. by Mettmann, p. 24.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 51-66 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133772

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Figure 2.1. Cantiga 21, ‘The Virgin resuscitates the son of a woman whom she cured of infertility’. Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, MS T.1.1. Photo © Alamy.

The Cantigas de Santa María is a collection of Marian miracles in Galician-Portuguese verse produced between 1257 and 1279 at the Alfonsine court.4 The best-known miracle on behalf of a pregnant woman is Cantiga 7, the miracle of the pregnant abbess, a narrative of sexual transgression that exemplifies the Virgin Mary’s compassion for human frailty.

She salvages the abbess’s appearance of celibacy, delivers the baby before the woman’s condition can be verified by male clerics, and spirits him off to be raised by a hermit. Not 4 The Cantigas de Santa María survive in four major codices: T, E, To, and F. The first two are in the Real Biblioteca del Escorial: T, the ‘Rich Codex’, Escorial T.1.1, with 193 poems, illuminations, and musical notation; and E, the ‘Musicians’ Codex’, Escorial B.1.2, with 420 poems, musical notation, and miniatures of musicians. The Toledo Codex, MS 10.069, designated ‘To’, is Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10069, with 130 poems and musical notation. F is Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 20, with 111 cantigas and staves but no musical notation, and some incomplete illuminations. Numerous musicological studies, performances, and recordings have been based on the musical notation in the Toledo Codex.

p r eg n a ncy an d p ilgr image in alfo nso x’s ca ntig a s de sa nta ma ría

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Figure 2.2. Cantiga 21, panel 3, ‘The Virgin resuscitates the son of a woman whom she cured of infertility’. Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, MS T.1.1. Photo © Alamy.

Costanz a Gislon Dopfel

Reality and Imagination in the Iconography of the Lying-in Room

Of all the tangible items connected to childbirth, the most elusive is possibly its own physical space, the lying-in room. Detailed accounts of royal lying-in rooms, which involved a specific set of dedicated chambers, still exist, but they concern only the highest aristocracy.

In most households these were provisional areas, temporarily set up and then reconverted to their traditional functions until the next birth event. Because of their impermanent nature, their historical proof is tenuous, escaping most substantiation except in what we see in the iconography of Mary’s nativity, which may or may not provide reliable material evidence.

Although these images have been accepted by most scholarship as a visual source attesting both childbirth and postpartum rituals, their link to reality can be less than obvious. One problem regards the source of the imagery: painted by male artists, who, like all men, were excluded from accessing the birthing environment (i.e. seeing first hand a lying-in room), this iconography is as likely to represent an accepted artistic convention as to constitute true material evidence. This paper explores the reliability of such depictions, starting from an often-disregarded source of evidence for historical living spaces: dolls’ houses.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, four great dolls’ houses were commissioned by four Dutch housewives, three of whom were named Petronella. These dolls’ houses were exclusively for adult use, and they have been viewed as the female equivalent of a man’s cabinet of curiosities, the Wunder- or Kunstkammern (literally a wonder or art cabinet), which was fashionable in that period.1 Petronella Oortman’s miniature house, commissioned in 1686, would become one of the most famous dolls’ houses in history (Figure 3.1).

Petronella was following a tradition initially established in northern Europe not by housewives, but by two German dukes, Albrecht V of Bavaria and Philip II of Pomerania, who custom-built miniaturized versions of their own estates. Albrecht’s 1558 Puppenhaus, created for his daughter and widely known as the ‘Munich baby house’, is the first recorded doll’s house.2 Sixteenth-century inventories of Albrecht’s doll’s house, which was destroyed by fire a century later, reveal that it was more of a palace than a house, filled with hundreds of items and fitting its owner’s taste for unique objects, but also lacking basic spaces that, though essential, were unknown to the Duke — such as a kitchen. By the seventeenth 1 Moseley-Christian, ‘Consuming Excess’, pp. 66–67; see also Darlington, ‘Modernism’s Miniatures’, pp. 27–28.

2 Broomhall, ‘Imagining Domesticity’, pp. 106–09.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2 (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 67-87 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133773

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Figure 3.1. Petronella Oortman’s dolls’ house, 1686. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

century the German ‘baby house’ tradition would no longer be the exclusive domain of male aristocrats, but raise the interest of upper middle-class female owners, who would curate them with a higher degree of attention to realism. A 1631 pamphlet describing a now lost grand doll’s house built for the childless widow Anna Koferlein publicizes the item as an educational tool for young girls, who, for a fee, could be instructed on how to run a grand home.3 The primary object of this new ‘baby house’ was to represent a miniaturized world strongly rooted in the reality of its full-sized inspiration. The opportunity to imitate an actual house and to organize it exactly according to personal preferences must have offered a sense of ultimate control, the idea of an ordered world that, as Koferlein taught, references an ordered mind.4 The expense for building any of these miniature houses was very high: the cost of the Dutch dolls’ houses rivalled that of a canal house in Amsterdam. To a degree, the comparable cost made the dolls’ houses even more real, since their owners were investing

3 Jacobs, A History of Dolls’ Houses, p. 26.

4 ‘Therefore, dear little children, study everything carefully, how all is well ordered, so that it will provide a good lesson, and when finally you have your own house and God gives you your own hearth, which will become the work of your life and love, you will be able to organize everything in your household in a proper way. Then you will understand what your beloved parents have tried to tell you: that a house that is in disorder reflects the disorder of its housekeeper’s mind’; quoted in Broomhall, ‘Imagining Domesticity’, p. 107.

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Figure 3.2. Jacob Appel, Dolls’ House of Petronella Oortman, oil on canvas, c. 1710. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

r ea l i t y a n d imagin ation in the iconog ra phy of the lying - in room

Figure 3.3. Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, detail of lying-in room.

linen cupboard inside a doll’s house inside a linen cupboard.8 The tiny cupboards are generally to be found within or adjacent to a unique space not visible in any of the earlier German ‘baby houses’: the lying-in room (Figure 3.3).

The presence of a lying-in chamber is surprising, not only because even upper-class merchant homes in Amsterdam rarely contained a separate lying-in room (a suitable bedroom would be transformed into one for the occasion), but also because two of the female doll’s house owners never had children. Still, since the power of miniaturization relies on the wonder of presenting real, flawlessly accurate objects reduced to scale, one is tempted to assume that the lying-in rooms commissioned by the four Dutch women are a unique historical document, true contemporary representations of the ritual and environment of childbirth. This is possible because these dolls’ houses chose to frame the period surrounding a birth, providing the temporary establishment of a lying-in room within the household space with timeless permanence. If we therefore accept that the miniaturized lying-in rooms are a mirror of their full-size counterparts, we finally have a way of evaluating whether the ancient and rich iconographic tradition representing lying-in 8 Petronella Dunois’s doll’s house from 1676 contains a linen cupboard with bun feet, while Petronella de la Court’s doll’s house has a cupboard standing on a base supported by six twisting legs. See Baarsen, Furniture in Holland’s Golden Age, p. 178; von Wilckens, The Dolls’ House, p. 52.

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r ea l i t y a n d imagin ation in the iconog ra phy of the lying - in room

Figure 3.4.A Simeone da Spoleto, Virgin Enthroned with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, tempera on wood, 1275; the scenes include the birth of Mary (top left) and the birth of Christ (bottom right). Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, inv. no. MMB. 0195. © Museum Mayer van den Bergh.1275.

colour scheme, the same position of the mother in bed, and two midwives bathing the baby. The similarities in the representation of the two births would be preserved in Western art until the end of the fourteenth century, when a new type of Christ’s nativity began to prevail. At the same time, the two births could not be more different: one is human, the other miraculous. As the wondrous nature of Christ’s birth would increasingly discourage any association with truly human births, the birth of the Virgin would become the locus of communion between holy and real mothers.

Lying-in in Imperial Byzantium As Antonella Parmeggiani explains, in Byzantine iconography Mary’s birth reminds the viewer of the birth of a princess, who will later become Queen of Heaven — a convention encouraged both by art and by sacred writings.11 In John of Damascus’s homily the image of the child Mary presented at the temple evokes that of the king’s daughter of Psalm 45.12 If Mary is a princess of heaven, her birth should be displayed 11 Parmeggiani, ‘Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras’, pp. 286–88.

12 Psalm 45. 13–15 (Authorized Version): ‘The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace.’

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r ea l i t y a n d imagin ation in the iconog ra phy of the lying - in room

Figure 3.4.C Simeone da Spoleto, Virgin Enthroned with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, details of the birth of Christ (bottom). Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, inv. no. MMB. 0195. © Museum Mayer van den Bergh.1275.

dedicated to Mary, the church of the Theotokos of the Pharos, to be built next to the Porphyry Chamber, bringing the presence of the Virgin close to the imperial birthing site.15 Nothing remains of Leo’s Purple Porphýra except for Princess Anna Komnena’s description of the birthing pavilion as a room standing on one of the imperial palace terraces overlooking the sea. It apparently was in the shape of a square, with the roof rising into a pyramid.

Some of the buildings in Byzantine scenes of Mary’s nativity look rather unique, being purple in colour and with a pyramidal construction on top (Figures 3.5 and 3.6).

This distinctive structure appears again and again, as does another simpler edifice with a triangular roof. These unusual shapes and colours, rather than being absurd inventions, probably pointed to recognizable buildings. The repeated presence of a red edifice may indeed indicate the Purple Porphýra, where empresses staged their lyings-in. From this perspective, St Anne no longer appears to be in the middle of a plaza, but rather on a terrace 15 Pentcheva, Icons and Power, p. 28.

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Figure 3.7. Francisco de Zurbaran, Nascimiento de la Virgen, oil on canvas, 1629. Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, USA. <https://www.wikiart.org/en/francisco-de-zurbaran/birth-of-the-virgin-1629>

Elisa Tosi Brandi

A Dress for the Mother in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy*

This study examines pregnancy and confinement garments worn in Italy between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the very period when fashion first began to evolve, as a way to better understand contemporary concerns regarding pregnant and parturient bodies.1 Evidence shows that a particular dress for parturient mothers did not exist in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. This was a time of transition, when the comfortable and functional garments of earlier times slowly gave way to much more constraining clothing. The focus of this paper is on the peculiarities of dresses designed in the late medieval period when, for the first time in the history of the Western world, new Italian sartorial strategies developed clothes that were very tight-fitting but at the same time extremely versatile and adaptable to a woman’s changing body during her gestation.2 These garments reflect the environment and culture of the time and shed light on the material culture of the society that created them. At the same time, they indicate contemporary aesthetic ideals, highlighting fashion’s power to initially exalt fertility’s primordial importance, only to reject it in later periods.

Corsets and Parturition Gowns Considering that a woman’s social life started with her marriage and that her role in the community was enhanced and secured through the repeated begetting of children, it is not surprising that even her regular clothes would fit the requirements of ongoing pregnancies.3 It was only during the first half of the sixteenth century that fashion, possibly influenced

by Counter-Reformation tenets, introduced corset and gown substructures that modified a woman’s silhouette, converting her body into the incongruous and unnatural shape of two cones converging at the waistline.4 The discomfort of these new garments from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is confirmed by the almost simultaneous appearance of so-called vesti da parto (pregnancy clothes). The presence of these specialized clothes * Translated by Mary Buckwell Gislon.

1 Muzzarelli, ‘Nuovo, moderno e moda tra Medioevo e Rinascimento’, pp. 17–38.

2 Tosi Brandi, L’arte del sarto nel Medioevo, pp. 186–95.

3 Vecchio, ‘La buona moglie’, pp. 129–65.

4 Mioc, ‘Tra Barocco e Moderno: gli abiti dipinti’, pp. 155–66.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 91-106 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133774

a dr e ss for the mother in late medieva l a nd rena issa nce ita ly

Figure 4.1. Jacopo Bellini, Birth of the Virgin, tempera on canvas, mid-fifteenth century. Galleria Sabauda, Turin. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacopo_Bellini_Nascita_della_Vergine_Galleria_Sabauda_22072015.jpg>

other women such as relatives and neighbours (Figure 4.1). Upper-class families celebrated the birth of a child, especially if male, with the offering of presents to the mother and by inviting female relatives and friends to share in the happy event. The room where the mother rested in bed would be fittingly arranged to receive guests by adding significant pieces of furniture and objects that suggested the family’s social standing.11 The novelty of da parto clothes and corsets falls within the scope of this ritual because, when the new mothers resting in bed welcomed their relatives and friends, only the top part of the comfortable garments they were wearing would be visible.12 The widespread custom of offering presents to the new mother dates to the end of the fourteenth century in Tuscany, when the first deschi da parto appear, well-wishing trays on which food was brought to the parturient.13 The existence of parturient-specific garments is first confirmed in the fifteenth century, when property inventories start mentioning dresses and over-garments in women’s wardrobes that are named in diminutive form (cioppetta, gamurrino, gonnellino).14 As with Eleonora’s gown, the diminutive suffix implies that they were garments tailored with a reduced amount of material. It is interesting to note that the cioppette, gamurrini, and gonnellini mentioned in the Florentine lists are also commonly mentioned in other inventories without being specifically classified as da parto, a label that Tuscans usually attached to every present offered to the new mother, indicating both the function of the object within the ritual of childbirth, and

11 See Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth; Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family; Dopfel, ‘Holy Mothers and Vanished Nativities’, pp. 309–41.

12 Orsi Landini and Niccoli, Moda a Firenze, p. 104.

13 De Carli, I deschi da parto; Musacchio, ‘The Medici–Tornabuoni desco da parto in Context’.

14 Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth, pp. xi–xiv.

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Figure 4.3. Leonardo da Vinci (attributed), Madonna Litta, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, 1490. The Hermitage, St Petersburg. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_Litta#/media/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_attributed_-_Madonna_Litta.jpg> (Public Domain)

a dr e ss for the mother in late medieva l a nd rena issa nce ita ly

Figure 4.4. Tino da Camaino, Carità, marble, c. 1320. Museo Bardini, Florence. Image also available here: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carit%C3%A0_di_Tino_ di_Camaino2.JPG>

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Figure 4.5. Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto, fresco, c. 1455. Monterchi Museum, Italy. Image also available here: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madonna_del_parto_piero_della_Francesca.jpg>

set limits to excessive expenditure on clothes and jewels, allowing the bridegroom alone to present girdles to his future bride.37 These girdles could be true jewels in themselves, made of gold or silver, adorned with pearls, precious stones, and enamels.38 They might also be made of fabric, woven on a loom or manufactured with the technique of cardboard or tablet weaving; they were nevertheless as valuable as those in precious metals, especially when silk or gold threads were used to inscribe auspicious maxims, monograms, and heraldic symbols. In 37 Muzzarelli, Le regole del lusso, pp. 117–20.

38 In 1391 Rengarda Alidosi’s dowry for her marriage to Andrea Malatesta, lord of Cesena, included a Parisian red velvet girdle made up of fifteen pieces with buckle and strap, embroidered with figures of mermaids on each piece; it weighed 78 ounces and was valued at 140 ducats (Galli, ‘L’inventario nuziale di Rengarda Alidosi’, p. 262).

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feeding the new mother

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Figure 5.1. ‘Salvia’, in Tacuinum sanitatis, 1380–99, fol. 37v. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. series nova 2644, fol. 37v.

Sara Read

The Materials of Midwifery in Early Modern England in Five Groups of Objects

As the time for birth approached, a late seventeenth-century midwifery guide instructed: Let all Things be ordered, and every Mean used for Her happy Delivery, by an apt Posture, opportune Travail, the prudent Guidance of an Expert Midwife, who must have ready a Stool or Chair, Scizars, Spung, Tyes [padded pillow cases], and warm Lilly Oyl, or such like thing: And be assisted with other Women skilled in this Mystery.1 With the introduction of these objects and a midwife an ordinary chamber was transformed into a birthing chamber. While historians have focused on the people in the chamber — from the labouring mother and the midwives to the gossips (female acquaintances) and others — women’s experiences of birth were equally shaped by the objects that surrounded them in the parturition space.2 Early modern birthing chambers could be crowded, hot, and smelly places in which the family dog or other animals were free to roam. Until the widespread practice of men assuming obstetric duties from the late seventeenth century onwards, the birthing chamber was an almost exclusively female space. As Linda Pollock has noted, childbirth was a time of ‘heavy material needs’.3 One of the reasons for this is that giving birth is an inherently physical process in which the body sits upon, is anointed with, or is probed by physical artefacts. Understanding the material culture of midwifery adds much to our perception of what it might have felt like to occupy this space, and to experience childbirth in this era.

As the opening quotation attests, the range of objects that a midwife brought into the birth chamber extended from large items like stools to jars of oils or ‘such like things’, and ably demonstrates the importance not just of the midwife’s expertise but also of the equipment she would need for the delivery. This chapter will explore five groups of material objects that midwives brought into the early modern birthing chamber. These include various designs of birthing chairs or stools; natural artefacts like eaglestones which were used as aids to birth; the oils and ointments that midwives carried to help them examine women in labour; the various cloths, rags, sponges, pillows, and animal skins; the hooks 1 MacMath, The Expert Mid-Wife, p. 154. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Tye’ 4: ‘The stuffed case forming a mattress or pillow’. Ties might refer to the thread used to tie off the umbilical cord.

2 Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London; Gowing, Common Bodies; Marland, The Art of Midwifery; Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery.

3 Pollock, ‘Childbearing and Female Bonding’, p. 289.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 187-200 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133780

the materials of midwifery in early modern england in five groups of objects

Figure 10.1. ‘A woman seated on an obstetrical chair giving birth aided by a midwife who works beneath her skirts’, woodcut, 1513. From Eucharius Rösslin, Rosengarten. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

made soo compase wyse and caue or holowe in the myddes that that maye be receaued from undernethe whiche is loked for: and the backe of the stoole lenyng backewarde receauethe the backe of the woman.9 The midwife would then typically kneel or sit on a low stool in front of the labouring mother (Figure 10.1).

9 Rösslin, The Byrth of Mankynde, p. xx.

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the materials of midwifery in early modern england in five groups of objects

Figure 10.2. [Heinrich Steiner], Birthing chair, woodcut, [1529]. From [Eucharius Rösslin], Der schwanngeren Frawen und Hebammen Rosengarte. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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the material culture of the birthing room in seventeenth-century france

Figure 11.2. ‘Three Women Attending a Woman in Labour’, woodcut. From Jakob Rüff, Ein schön lustig Trostbüchle von den Empfeng-Knussen und Geburten der menschen … und eigentlichem bericht der Hebamen (Zurich: Froschover, 1554). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Santé, Paris. <https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:(Three_midwives_attending_to_a_pregnant_woman)_(4647710114).jpg>

was a stipulation found in the 1560 Statuts and in many midwifery and surgical texts for this very practical reason. However, Duval does not find it necessary to extol a midwife’s manual dexterity or her presence in the birthing chamber — rather, he assumes it.

Scissors More threatening than a hand but, we might assume, still relatively benign, were common domestic instruments also used in the birthing room, such as scissors. Every midwife needed

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and expertise of physicians and surgeons on both gynaecological and obstetrical matters, they might have been more willing to risk potentially compromising their modesty for the sake of their health and that of their unborn child.43 The gradual accession of the physician (or surgeon) into the birthing room was by no means smooth or unidirectional, nor did most women’s attitudes toward their presence change abruptly. In contrast to Joubert’s assertion, an administrator’s report that appears a century later in the deliberations at the Hôtel-Dieu of Paris in 1660 claimed that permitting surgeons to be present at deliveries was ‘very prejudicial to the health, and even to the life, of women in labour who want to die at the horror of being seen in that state by men’.44 The fraught emotions Figure 11.3. ‘Speculum matricis, apertorium’. From that, for any number of reasons, surrounded Jakob Rueff, De conceptu et generatione hominis, et the mere appearance of a male surgeon at a iis quae circa haec potissimum consyderantur libri birth indicate that most women wanted their sex (Tiguri [Zürich]: Christophorus Froschoverus, modesty, chastity, and health protected by 1554). Courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London. not involving a physician or a surgeon, and <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Specleast of all their tools.45 ulum_matricis,_apertorium_Wellcome_L0023211.

Another type of speculum that was jpg>. Creative Commons Attribution only licence apparently used for the same purpose as CC BY 4.0 the one about which Duval wrote emerged in the sixteenth century. This second type is described by the surgeon Pierre Franco (c. 1500–1575) as a two-branched instrument that he employed to extract living foetuses.

Nineteenth-century historians described it as a primitive kind of forceps, but its use never spread widely in France, though it became popular for a time in Paris.46 Monsieur Honoré was known to have specialized in difficult births and to have used a speculum in many of his documented cases.47 Whether he employed the instrument to dilate the birth canal or 43 See Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 246–87. Since the fifteenth century, certain physicians in France and Italy had begun to take a professional interest in treating women for gynaecological problems.

Green states that, as early as the medieval period, ‘gynaecology (and even what we might call advisory obstetrics) had become a fairly normative part of many male physicians’ practice’; Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, p. 23, also pp. 85–92.

44 Collection de documents, pp. 143–45.

45 See Gélis, La Sage-femme ou le médecin, p. 49, who reports that, until the mid-eighteenth century, women protested more against having a physician perform a gynaecological examination than having a surgeon perform an emergency intervention at a delivery.

46 Franco, Chirurgie de Pierre Franco, pp. lxxix, 238–39.

47 These sources do not specify which type(s) of specula he used. See also Worth-Stylianou, Pregnancy and Birth, p. 288 nn. 136, 143.

Mary Morse

Birth Girdles as Metric Relics of the Virgin and Christ in Late Medieval England

As devotion to the Virgin Mary peaked during the late medieval period, the Mother of God assumed supremacy in matters of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Pilgrims venerated her girdle relics at sites throughout Europe, with major shrines at London’s Westminster Abbey and the Tuscan city of Prato.1 Westminster loaned its girdle to Eleanor of Provence (wife of Henry III) in 1242, Philippa of Hainault (wife of Edward III) in 1338 and 1355, and possibly Elizabeth of York (wife of Henry VII) in 1502.2 Veneration of the Westminster relic, said to have been handmade by the Virgin herself, rewarded an eleven-year indulgence; excavated mini-strap-ends may be remnants of its pilgrim badges.3 Prato legends attest that threads or simulations that had touched its Sacra cintola, a goldthreaded green wool girdle with tasselled ends, saved noblewomen and their newborns.4 Class and expense excluded most Englishwomen from borrowing such precious relics, but they could purchase birth girdles, long and usually narrow rolls that virtually transferred the powers of the Virgin’s girdles to the more affordable and accessible mediums of parchment and paper.5 Words and images subsumed magical practices within deeply orthodox messages, increasing the efficacy of these rolls that parturient women could wrap around their waists during pregnancy and childbirth. Peter Murray and Lea Olsan include birth girdle purchases among ‘the customary practices of childbirth’, but the few survivors imply that Reformation zeal destroyed most birth girdles, along with the Virgin’s girdle

1 French claimants included Le Puy, Chartres, and Paris; Siena and Assisi competed with Prato; and English Dissolution inventories recorded other Virgin’s girdle relics at Bruton, Dale, Haltemprise, and Bromholm.

See L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 61; Warner, Alone of All her Sex, pp. 278–79; Cassidy, ‘A Relic’, pp. 93–94, 97; Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 16–18; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 384–85; Visitation Articles, vol. 2, p. 58; Three Chapters of Letters, pp. 48–49.

2 Eleanor died at sixty-eight (1291) and Philippa died at fifty-six (1369). Elizabeth of York died of post-childbirth complications on her thirty-seventh birthday, 11 February 1503; her daughter Catherine had been baptized and flannel swaddling bands were ordered for her after Elizabeth’s death, but she died soon after her birth. See Morse, ‘“Girde hyr wythe thys mesure”’, pp. 136–37; Weir, Elizabeth of York, pp. 423–26; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 107; Dilling, ‘Girdle’, p. 421; Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 72.

3 Flete, The History of Westminster Abbey, pp. 69–70, 74; Harvey, ‘The Monks of Westminster’, pp. 11–12, 12 n. 31; Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 149.

4 Maniura, Art and Miracle in Renaissance Tuscany, pp. 86–87; Cassidy, ‘A Relic’, pp. 93–94, 97.

5 Morse, ‘“Thys moche more”’, pp. 200–01; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle’, p. 53 n. 2; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 193–94, 276 n. 30, 276 n. 34; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 107.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 263-287 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133785

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Figure 15.1. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya Deposit, Takamiya MS 56, c. 1435–50. The precise measurement of the fourth membrane in Takamiya 56 extends its length to the Virgin’s height. Photo courtesy of Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University, Dwight B. Waldo Library, used with permission of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya.

Metric Relic of the Cross in the SS Quiricus and Julitta Childbirth Unit The earliest birth girdle, Esopus, set the precedent for including the vernacular childbirth prayer invoking protections granted by SS Quiricus and Julitta. This second defining text for the birth girdles, along with its accompanying metric relic of the cross, appears in all except Takamiya 56. Many of its protections, several also repeated in the Wellcome measure of the Virgin, are drawn from variants of the popular ‘heavenly letter’ and its associated Charlemagne charm.40 Attached to a red-flourished border on the dorse of Esopus, the marginal tau cross-measure with a green and red shaft may have been designed to resemble the embroidered edge of Sir Gawain’s green girdle or fashionable border mounts (Figure 15.2). The positioning of the cross alongside the English childbirth prayer and the two Latin texts dedicated to Quiricus and Julitta creates a textual unit witnessed in seven

40 Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts, p. 492, describes the dorse text as ‘an epitome of the very largely illegible passages in the main text [childbirth prayer to Quiricus and Julitta, not fully transcribed] following the first Figure, in which are set out the Blessings and Protections given by the pious use of the Scroll’. For the complex history of the Charlemagne charm and other heavenly letter texts, see Hebing, ‘“Allmyghti God thys lettyr sent”’, pp. 723–74; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 96–105. For additional sources, see Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle’, p. 40 n. 10.

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Figure 15.2. Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives, olim Esopus c. 1390, dorse, showing the metric relic of the cross and its accompanying childbirth texts. Image used with permission of the Redemptorist Archives.

Fiona Harris-Stoertz

Foetal Death in High Medieval Pregnancy

The issue of foetal death in utero during late pregnancy loomed large in works circulating in England and northern France between approximately 1000 and 1330. Medical, hagiographical, legal, and encyclopaedic texts all presented infant death in utero as a relatively common problem, sometimes resulting from the injury or illness of the mother, but often arising from childbirth complications such as prolonged or obstructed labour.1 The death of a foetus in utero was considered an urgent issue, potentially fatal to the mother and requiring intervention by caregivers. Intervention might include prayer, herbal remedies, the application of amulets and relics, physical manipulation, and, in extreme cases, surgical intervention. While sources focus first and foremost on the survival of the mother, issues of inheritance and Christian burial were likewise of concern. What follows is a preliminary investigation into high medieval ideas and practices relating to foetal death in utero.

Perceived Causes of Foetal Death High medieval ideas about the causes of foetal death in late pregnancy can be grouped into several large categories: maternal carelessness, assault, maternal illness, and, the largest category, labour complications. Maternal carelessness was not a major theme in most of the sources I consulted, although some authors believed that injudicious behaviour during pregnancy might result in the death of the foetus. For example, Book III of Bald’s Leechbook, which survives in a mid-tenth-century copy, warned women to avoid long travel and vigorous riding during pregnancy, as well as sweet, salty, or fatty foods, beer, excessive alcohol, and pork.2 Similarly, a miracle attributed to St Louis of Toulouse blamed the death of a twin in utero to the mother’s fall while riding.3 Such activities would have been difficult to avoid for many women and may have inspired considerable guilt in the case of foetal death.

1 I use the common medical understanding of the word ‘foetus’ to refer to an infant not yet born but in the later stages of development (third month or later). It should be noted, however, that many bioarchaeologists do not use the term to refer to infants past thirty-seven weeks of gestation. See Halcrow, ‘Fetuses in Bioarchaeology’.

2 ‘Bald’s Leechbook’, pp. 388–89.

3 Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, p. 31.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 291-@@ © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133786

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Figure 17.1. Church interior, after floor removal. The crypt is visible on the left. Photograph © Mirko Traversari.

Figure 17.2. Two examples of the Roccapelago natural mummification process. The bodies still preserve traces of soft tissue and clothing. Photograph © Mirko Traversari.

Twin Births an d Emerg ency Ba ptisms in Northern Ita ly

Figure 17.3. Sex ratio index for Roccapelago, as determined from the church registers.

the bio-demographic profile of the population studied, such as seasonality of death, birth, and conception; the population’s natural balance; the sex ratio index (SRI, the ratio of male to female births); paleopathology (studies of past diseases in human remains); and social habits connected to birth and burial phases. The digitized registries include two libri dei morti (burial registers), three registri dei nati (baptism registers), and two libri dei matrimoni (marriage registers), for a total of 2,590 pages of invaluable documentation to be applied to genetic and archaeological examinations.

The register entries span from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth (two centuries past the end of the burials inside the subterranean chamber).5 The demographic indicators derived from these records, such as SRI, showed values fully in accord with those expected in a well-balanced community (Figure 17.3).6 In addition, the demographic natural balance, mainly positive, demonstrates the vital rates of birth and death that distinguish a dynamic population.7 Among the numerous aspects emerging from this documentary survey, the high percentage of infant deaths was of particular interest.8 The evidence offered by the registers substantiates factors already noticed in the osteological sample previously studied upon the discovery of the burial site.9 This heartbreaking trend, expected among ancient populations, shows that the main mortality peak in Roccapelago fell in the first year of life.10 The analysis of these human remains points to a number of pregnant and post-birth female skeletons from the thirty-sixth week of pregnancy up to twelve months after birth, focusing on the fortieth week, which corresponds to perinatal age. The death distribution obtained from a postcranial skeleton, such as the maturation degree of some bones, like the femur, tibia, humerus, and ulna, reaches a mortality peak within a foetus age group of no more than forty weeks, with an average between the thirty-sixth and thirty-eighth 5 Death entries date between 1599 and 1891, births between 1593 and 1916, and marriages between 1575 and 1929.

6 The SRI is generally normalized at 100. The standard value is 1.05. SRI at birth was calculated for the Roccapelago sample, and was determined as matching the expected standard value.

7 This value is calculated from the difference between the number of live births and the number of deaths over a defined time period — in this case one year — in a specific area. The formula Sn = N − M expresses this value. A positive net value of births over deaths, such as at Roccapelago, is evidence of a dynamic population with high reproductive values.

8 Traversari and Gruppioni, ‘Il “venire alla luce”’, pp. 115–25.

9 Figus and others, ‘The Study of Commingled Non-Adult Human Remains’, pp. 382–91.

10 The death curve in historical populations generally presents a three-peak model: the first, fairly consistent, corresponds to the first years of life (often the first months); the second, less evident, occurs at the onset of adult life and corresponds to women’s fertile age and to men’s productive years; the third peak, considered absolute, occurs in old age and generally corresponds to the median life expectancy of the sample analysed.

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Luigi Canetti

The Frog, the Toad, and the Womb*

Physical objects connected to fertility and childbirth rituals are as ancient as humankind and offer material evidence of the pervasive concern regarding childbirth. Throughout history women facing sterility, a high-risk pregnancy, a difficult parturition, or a potential miscarriage would pray to a divinity for protection and help, and would offer thanks in the form of a gift. Surviving written testimonies of this practice from Late Antiquity are not only generally understandable to us, but also constitute a tradition we have inherited. However, artefacts belonging to prehistory, protohistory, and some ancient cultures sometimes do not easily reveal the purpose of the donors, the awareness of the observers, or the aims of the users, because of the ambiguity or lack of written clues in terms of what they represent. Modern and contemporary votive tablets are more explicit in their meaning and easier to classify as offerings for pregnancy and parturition. Even so, they embody more than mere documentation of clinical events and of customary or well-known technical practices, as in the ex-voto for a difficult pregnancy resolved through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, depicted with her son and squashing the serpent with her foot (Figure 19.1). Votive images — even those that narrate a story — are mainly material expressions of religious and therapeutic imagination; they are snapshots of the sudden intrusion of the invisible world into the visible, and highly complex symbols of their possible physical representation. This may be the case of the Madonna of Pompeii’s miraculous intervention during a relatively recent birth: the attending physician’s testimony, written on the margin of the photograph showing mother and child in bed and a faithful observer praying to the Madonna’s image above the bed, assures that only a miracle could have saved the child (Figure 19.2).

As in many ex-voto stories, the intervention of faith cannot be medically explained.

After all, even written sources on the history of the body (both medical high-culture texts and myths or transcriptions of ritual practices) can never be translated in the exact terms of our vocabulary and biomedical categories representing clinical and pathological evidence. The mystery of the female reproductive system and the link between desire, fertility, and pregnancy — and the inevitable fear, pain, and danger associated with childbirth — have always eluded a purely mechanistic/scientific answer and have consistently merged with images and beliefs rooted in prehistory. As the biological process of pregnancy and childbirth has persisted, unchanged, since the dawn of humanity, so have * Translated by Mary Buckwell Gislon.

Maternal Materialities, Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, GEN, 2, (Turnhout, 2023) pp. 323-342 © BREPOLSHPUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.GEN-EB.5.133789

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Figure 19.1. A difficult childbirth, Rimini, 1875. From Meldini and others, Figura, culto, cultura, p. 141.

the fears and the wonder associated with it, as well as the personal experience that has linked mother to mother into an unending chain of ancestresses. This exclusive female understanding, together with the power to reproduce and to seduce men for this very purpose, is at the root of the ambiguous and often contradictory perception of fertility and of its symbolic representations, and just as inevitably connected to the conflicting vision of woman’s nature.

This chapter presents the synthesis of my recent research inspired by a hagiographic source, which included the image of what looked like a frog, as frogs and toads have long been associated with women’s fertility.1 The many ways in which batrachians have been symbolically connected to female sexuality and reproduction offer a path of enquiry, a tool for understanding and discussing the complex and contradictory historical approach to women’s capacity to procreate. From prehistory to modern times, animal symbols have conveyed a plethora of meanings concerning fertility and pregnancy, as well as their connected risks. Small figures representing frogs or toads, generally assumed to be connected with women’s internal organs, have been common in Europe and the Middle East for about eight thousand years.2

1 It is important to keep in mind that before Linnaeus the bufonidae and ranadae families were not clearly differentiated within the anuran amphibian order and even now the matter is under discussion among specialists.

2 See the Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe.

the frog , the toa d, a nd the womb

Figure 19.2. Praying to the Madonna of Pompeii, 1954. From Caggiano, Rak, and Turchini, La Madre Bella, p. 186.

Toads, Frogs, and Disorders of the Female Body In his collection of the Miracles of Cyrus and John, Sophronius the Sophist, the future patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 638), relates hearing the croaking of a frog coming out of the belly of a young woman, called Theodora. While drinking water, she had inadvertently swallowed a small batrachian. Growing in her belly just as it would in a pond, the frog (or toad) initially caused only minor colics, but later ‘the woman, pregnant with that strange and fastidious embryo’, suffered an unbearable discomfort without respite. Sophronius explains that according to the most esteemed doctors, who were unable to formulate any other diagnosis and efficient cure, the pain was demonic in origin rather than being due to bodily affliction. It was therefore decided to take Theodora, as if she were possessed, to the sanctuary near Alexandria dedicated to the martyrs Cyrus and John, who appeared to the woman in a dream and prescribed a drink of warm water before meals.3 The resulting cure is predictable, but Sophronius’s remark is worth noticing: the two heavenly doctors utilized the therapy of opposites: that is, drinking some water would eliminate the deadly

3 The original Greek text and the critical edition of the complete work can be found in Sophronius, Los Thaumata de Sofronio, pp. 290–91; see also the French version in Sophronius, Miracles des saints Cyr et Jean, pp. 89–90 §26.

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Figure 19.12. Frau Welt, front and back, south portal, Worms Cathedral, c. 1298. <https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Frau_Welt_Wormser_Dom_von_vorne_und_hinten.jpg>

OBJECTS, RITUALS AND MATERIAL EVIDENCE OF MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN CHILDBIRTH

Although little is known of the process surrounding early modern childbirth, the lack of written testimonials and technical descriptions does not preclude the possibility of reconstructing the reality of this elusive space: drawing on the evidence of clothing, food, rites and customs, this collection of essays seeks to give tangible form to the experience of childbirth through the analysis of physical objects and rituals.

An important addition to the literature of material culture and ‘wordly goods’, this collection of twentythree essays from international scholars offers a novel approach to the study of pre- and early modern birth by extending its reach beyond the birthing event to include issues concerning the management of pregnancy and post-partum healing.

Grouped into six broad areas, the essays explore the iconography of maternity, the food and objects present in the birthing room, the evidence and memorialization of death in childbirth, attitudes towards the pregnant body, the material culture of healing and the ritual items used during childbirth.

COVER: Birth of the Virgin.

Workshop of Pedro García de Benabarre, ca. 1475.

Tempera, stucco reliefs and gold leaf on wood.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Edited by

Costanza Gislon Dopfel