Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance 9782503580555, 9782503580562

Table of contents :
Front Matter ("Contents", "List of illustrations", "Preface"), p. i
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.118183

Free Access

Introduction, p. xiii
Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117815


Part 1. Cultural Exchanges and Transmission of Knowledge


Educating the Midwife: The Role of Illustrations in Late Antique and Medieval Obstetrical Texts, p. 3
Francesca Marchetti
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117816


Pregnancy in Middle-Persian Zoroastrian Literature: The Exchange of Knowledge between India, Iran and Greece in Late Antiquity, p. 29
Paolo Delaini
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117817


Tracing the Maternal Body in Medieval Muslim Gynaecological Texts, p. 53
Kathryn Kueny
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117818


Calculating Birth: Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Role in the Creation and Diffusion of the Trutina Hermetis., p. 79
Shlomo Sela
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117819


Part 2. Birth, Death, and Magic


Mother and Child: Archaeological Evidence of Childbirth Complications in Medieval Normandy, p. 109
Cécile Chapelain de Seréville Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117820


‘Girde hyr wythe thys mesure’: Birth Girdles, the Church, and Lollards, p. 135
Mary Morse
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117821


Prayer as Obstetric Practice at Thirteenth-Century La Cambre, p. 171
Sara Ritchey
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117822


Retracing Childbirth Through Hagiographical Texts and Canonization Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, p. 195
Alessandra Foscati
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117823


Part 3. Lying-in and Holy Birth: Tradition, Iconography, and Political Statement


Lying-in in High Medieval England and France, p. 227
Fiona Harris-Stoertz
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117824


Mary and Eve: The Permanence of the First Mother in Armenian Apocryphal Infancy Gospels, p. 249
Valentina Calzolari
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117825


Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras: The Political Message in the Iconography of the Birth of Mary, p. 285
Antonella Parmeggiani
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117826


Holy Mothers and Vanished Nativities: Maternal Art as Female Visual Epic in Quattrocento Florence, p. 309
Costanza Gislon Dopfel
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117827


Back-matter ("Index"), p. 347
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.118184

Citation preview

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World

CURSOR MUNDI Cursor Mundi is produced under the auspices of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Executive Editor Heather Sottong, University of California, Los Angeles Editorial Board Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University Christopher Baswell, Columbia University and Barnard College Florin Curta, University of Florida Elizabeth Freeman, University of Tasmania Yitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Lauren Kassell, Pembroke College, Cambridge David Lines, University of Warwick Cary Nederman, Texas A&M University Teofilo Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 36

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance Edited by

Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2019/0095/7 ISBN: 978-2-503-58055-5 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-58056-2 DOI: 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.115606 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface Charles Burnett

Introduction Costanza Gislon Dopfel and Alessandra Foscati

xi xiii

Part 1. Cultural Exchanges and Transmission of Knowledge Educating the Midwife: The Role of Illustrations in Late Antique and Medi­eval Obstetrical Texts Francesca Marchetti

Pregnancy in Middle-Persian Zoroastrian Literature: The Exchange of Knowledge between India, Iran, and Greece in Late Antiquity Paolo Delaini

Tracing the Maternal Body in Medi­eval Muslim Gynaeco­logical Texts Kathryn Kueny

Calculating Birth: Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Role in the Creation and Diffusion of the Trutina Hermetis Shlomo Sela

3

29 53

79

Contents

vi

Part 2. Birth, Death, and Magic Mother and Child: Archaeo­logical Evidence of Childbirth Complications in Medi­eval Normandy Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, and Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse

‘Girde hyr wythe thys mesure’: Birth Girdles, the Church, and Lollards Mary Morse

Prayer as Obstetric Practice at Thirteenth-Century La Cambre Sara Ritchey

Retracing Childbirth through Hagio­graphical Texts and Canonization Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Alessandra Foscati

109

135 171

195

Part 3. Lying-in and Holy Birth: Tradition, Icono­graphy, and Political Statement Lying-in in High Medi­eval England and France Fiona Harris-Stoertz

Mary and Eve: The Permanence of the First Mother in Armenian Apocryphal Infancy Gospels Valentina Calzolari

Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras: The Political Message in the I­ cono­graphy of the Birth of Mary Antonella Parmeggiani

Holy Mothers and Vanished Nativities: Maternal Art as Female Visual Epic in Quattrocento Florence Costanza Gislon Dopfel

Index

227

249

285

309 347

List of Illustrations

Francesca Marchetti Figure 1.1. Mustio, Gynaecia, schematic representation of the uterus (ninth century). Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 3701–15, fol. 16v. . . . 7 Figure 1.2. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (ninth century). Brussels,  Bibliothèque Royale, MS 3701–15, fol. 27v.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Figure 1.3. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (eleventh century). Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 1653, 4°, fol. 17r. . . . . . 10 Figure 1.4. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (eleventh century). Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 1653, 4°, fol. 18r. . . . . . 13 Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, and Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse Figure 5.1. Geo­graphical localization of the sites considered. . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Figure 5.2. Courcy, burial no. 2003. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Figure 5.3. Aizier (Eure, France), Saint-Thomas d’Aizier chapel, 2008. . . . . 117 Figure 5.4. Courcy, burial no. 2006. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Figure 5.5. Burial 357, Church Saint-Julien (Calvados, France). . . . . . . . . . . 120 Figure 5.6. Burial 462. Saint-Peter, Square Darnétal (Calvados, France). . . 122 Figure 5.7. Burial 129a/b, Saint-Julien (Calvados, France). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Figure 5.8. Courcy, burial no. 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

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list of iLLUSTRATIONS

Mary Morse Figure 6.1. ‘Ẏis lyne fiftene sythes meten’ begins the childbirth prayer invoking SS Cirice and Julitte on the dorse of olim Esopus. Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, New York. 1390–1410. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Figure 6.2. The childbirth protection, the measure of the length of the Virgin, and other apotropaic content appears on the dorse of MS  Takamiya 56. 1435–50. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Figure 6.3. The vertical side wound with detached hands and feet in MS Takamiya 56 may have continental origins. The side wound image frequently appears near childbirth texts. 1435–50. . . . . . . 149 Figure 6.4. The horizontal side wound image in MS Wellcome 632 closely resembles the image in MS Takamiya 56. London, Wellcome Medical Library. 1500. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Figure 6.5. The English and Latin birth girdle prayers are placed in banderoles alongside the crucified Christ in London, British Library, MS Additional 88929. 1485–1509. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Figure 6.6. This image of Christ in a Gothic frame surrounded by the arma Christi shows the arma’s Eucharistic associations in the round wafer inscribed with I.H.C. and inserted into the steeple. 1475–1500. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Valentina Calzolari Figure 10.1. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 206, ‘Bible of Gladzor’, fol. 443r (1318). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Figure 10.2. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 212, ‘Gospel of Avag’, fols 20v–21r (1337). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Figure 10.3. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 5786, ‘Royal Gospel of Sis’, fol. 17r (1336). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Figure 10.4. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 7736, ‘Mugna Gospel’, fol. 12 (c. 1357). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

list of iLLUSTRATIONS

ix

Figure 10.5. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 316, ‘Gospel of Artsakh’, fol. 3r (fourteenth century). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Figure 10.6. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4820, ‘Gospel of Artsakh (?)’, fol. 1r (fourteenth century). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Figure 10.7. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4806, ‘Gospel of Berdak’, fol. 5v (1306). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 Figure 10.8. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 10670, ‘Gospel of Hovsian’, fol. 2 (13th–14th centuries). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Antonella Parmeggiani Figure 11.1. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth, Mystras, south nave of Agios Demetrios. Thirteenth–fourteenth century. . . . . . . . 291 Figure 11.2. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth, Mystras, Hagia Sophia. Fourteenth–fifteenth century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 Figure 11.3. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth (detail), Mystras, Hagia Sophia. Fourteenth–fifteenth century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Costanza Gislon Dopfel Figure 12.1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Annunciation of the Angel to Zachary, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Figure 12.2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of John the Baptist, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. . . . . . . . 315 Figure 12.3a. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. . . . . . . 316 Figure 12.3b. Detail: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. . . . . . . . 316 Figure 12.4. Anonymous (Simeone da Spoleto), Virgin enthroned with scenes from the life of the Virgin, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, inventory no. MMB. 0195. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

x

list of iLLUSTRATIONS

Figure 12.5. Anonymous, Throne of Maximian, Museo Arcivescovile, Ravenna. Sixth century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Figure 12.6. Anonymous (Maestro di Castelseprio), Nativity, Santa Maria Foris Partas, Castelseprio. Ninth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Figure 12.7. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza. 1489–90. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 Figure 12.8. Andrea del Verrocchio, Death of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni, Florence, Museo del Bargello. Marble Relief. 1477–80. . . . 332 Figure 12.9. Filippi Lippi, Madonna col Bambino, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 1466. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Preface Charles Burnett

T

he subject of pregnancy and childbirth embraces scientific medicine, popular beliefs, intense personal emotions, and the role of the midwife, who in metaphor and reality has always played the role of bringing potentiality into reality. Questions concern life and death: At what stage in pregnancy did the embryo became a being with a soul, after which abortion was murder? Is the life of the mother more important than that of the baby? What roles do the doctor and midwife play and who rules over whom? In Japanese Buddhist temples, row upon row of little statues of the god Jizō, dressed in red bibs, protecting the souls of aborted embryos, miscarriages, and stillborn babies, are a visible testimony to the emotions concerning the newborn. In early colonial Canada, babies were separated from their mothers because native American Indian mothers were deemed to be unfit to bring up their own children by the so-called Christian settlers of the New World. On the other hand, joy and gratitude attending the birth of a healthy baby, with a healthy mother, are a natural response. Only within a century or so in Western society have the chances of a healthy baby and a healthy mother exceeded 90 per cent. The following articles examine the Western tradition of these issues on pregnancy and childbirth, starting from the Roman Empire and its predominantly Greek medical knowledge which spread as far as Persian speaking areas, where it mingled with ideas coming from Eastern Buddhism. Neonatal lore was something that spread from one culture to another, and through shared medical literature. Thus the same calculation for the length of pregnancy is found in Arabic and Latin, and was probably spread through Hebrew texts that crossed religious boundaries. Doctors collaborated with priests and bishops to establish whether a stillborn baby was truly raised from the dead. Professional

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Preface

midwives could manipulate embryos in the womb so that they could be born naturally, and surgeons could rescue by caesarean still-living babies from dead mothers. But the whole community could participate in religious rites, in the chanting of spells and other means of bringing down divine help for the mother and child. The midwives had to physically bring the child into this world, but the priest or holy man might revive a dying or dead child through prayer, and witnesses might attest to the miraculous nature of this revival. The Christian religion had a privileged role in these issues, since its central focus was on a child born to an ordinary human mother. The most powerful is the most weak; the greatest, the smallest: as a Christmas hymn goes, ‘The incarnate Deity, Our God, contracted to a span’. On the one hand, the scene is commonplace: a baby nursed by his mother, his (supposed) father standing by, together with the ox and the ass, the gifts from well-wishers, and the thank offerings in the temple for a successful birth. On the other hand, there are kings visiting from afar (on super-swift dromedaries), Eve returning to life (in the Armenian tradition), and, according to the astro­logers, the Virgin Mary nourishing Jesus writ large in the heavens, in the zodiac sign of Virgo. And Jesus was not the only baby: his cousin John (later ‘the Baptist’) was born in miraculous circumstances, just as Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. And all Christians are born again (into the spirit) through baptism. But for a child to be part of the Christian community both in this and the next world he/she had to be baptized. The countryside of medi­eval and early modern Europe was dotted with ‘resurrection sanctuaries’ where dead babies were brought so that they could be revived just long enough to be baptized and guaranteed an entry into heaven. Pregnancy and birth are surrounded by miracles, but miracles are often based on science. Science arises out of traditional knowledge and practical experience. And theory and practice arise out of the natural desire of human beings to know and understand the world around them in all its splendour.

Introduction Costanza Gislon Dopfel and Alessandra Foscati*

T

he notion of developing a historical perspective on events connected to medi­eval and early modern pregnancy and birth has evoked great interest in general readers and scholars alike, as evinced by the several recent publications on this subject. In the last twenty years, and partly in the wake of Monica Green’s work on women’s health in the Middle Ages, the field of study concerned with the history of medicine has embraced the topic of pregnancy and birthgiving in a surprisingly energetic way. Issues regarding the reality of the birthing room, as well as the identity and gender of the people actively involved in the process of birthgiving, have come to the forefront in the history of women’s medicine. Recently published collections of essays testify to this new interest but often focus on a particular perspective, period, or geo­ graphical area. Extensive scholarship deals with medi­e val England (Wood, Women and Religion in Medi­eval England, 2003), the literary perspective of motherhood (Parsons and Wheeler, Medi­eval Mothering, 1996), or gender roles within the family (Itnyre, Medi­eval Family Roles, 1996). Some relatively recent collections of essay, such as Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medi­eval Europe, 400–1400 (ed. by Leyser and Smith, 2011), have a multidisciplinary approach and a broad  

* Thanks are due to Brepols’ Guy Carney for his constant and patient assistance, to Kathleen Ward for her knowledgeable language editing of this volume, and to Mary Gislon for her loving support, encouragement and multiple readings of the text.

Costanza Gislon Dopfel holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and Chair in the Department of Art and Art History at Saint Mary's College of California. Alessandra Foscati is research fellow at SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo studio del

Medioevo Latino) where she studies medical lexicon in medi­eval hagio­graphic sources. A large part of her research concerns the relationship between profane and religious medicine in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. xiii–xxiv BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117815

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Costanza Gislon Dopfel and Alessandra Foscati

historical method, but the focus is generally very specific: in this case, the religious and historical concept of motherhood. Outside the Anglo-Saxon world, Dasen’s Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité (2004) is a superb multidisciplinary analysis of childbirth and infancy, but it is limited to Antiquity. Monica Green spearheaded this area of study with her fundamental work on the Trotula — the famous Salernitan school medi­e val compendium on women’s medicine, named after its alleged female author. Green also opened the field to a different set of perspectives beyond gender studies. Scholars realized that scholarship on pregnancy and birth required going well beyond the traditional debate on women’s social and institutional roles. Expanding the discussions to include cultural studies, medicine, religion, icono­graphy, hagio­ graphy, and more, they accessed a new set of multidisciplinary sources. Recent mono­g raphs on childbirth have used these interdisciplinary approaches: Elizabeth L’Estrange’s Holy Motherhood (2008) uses the situational eye to examine images of childbirth but limits its focus to royal Books of Hours, while Eleanor Scott’s The Archaeo­logy of Infancy and Infant Death (1999) is centred largely on children and their social meaning. Two very recent publications, Kathryn M. Kueny’s Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medi­eval Muslim Discourse and Practice (2013) and Avner Giladi’s Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East (2015) testify to the growing interest in perceptions of motherhood, but both books are specific to the situation in Muslim lands. Clearly, no single work can provide a complete understanding of such a complex phenomenon, but it is possible for specialists and scholars alike to explore less known fields. Indeed, this collection of essays specifically attempts to extend the traditional disciplinary range to include topics and areas of study generally at the periphery of the history of women’s health. At the same time, it expands the temporal and geo­g raphical reach of such studies. Rather than focusing mostly on the Anglo-Saxon world, the contributors to this volume bring together views encompassing Europe, the Byzantine world, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The contributors offer a unique geohistorical perspective that unveils issues of international practices, beliefs, and transmission of knowledge. At the same time, each analysis deals with a specific socio-historical and religious situation on a local level. Often this circumstance is connected to a particular political need, providing an in-depth and discipline-related approach. This broad picture extends to French, Swiss, and Italian authors, inviting English readers to approach rich traditions of scholarship not always discussed or readily available in English. The originality of this collection also resides in the plurality of methodo­logies applied to the analysis of an event

Introduction

xv

that — though intrinsically natural — belongs to multiple areas of knowledge. In the essays, the epistemo­logy of birth reaches out to the fields of medicine, anthropo­logy, archaeo­logy, politics, art, and religion, constantly offering new opportunities for understanding a key element of human existence, on both a physical and a symbolic level. This new approach is much more complex than the traditional gender analysis that first explored women’s history and the experience of childbirth and yielded rather consistent interpretations. As Rebecca Johnson writes in her reflection on the scholarship trajectory dealing with the history of childbirth, the new interdisciplinary approach causes the field to be ‘fragmented, with scholars often reaching contrary conclusions depending on the sources they utilize’.1 Rather than simply observing contradictions, it is important to stress that the different viewpoints offer intersections, as they originate from diverse angles and traditions of scholarship. These intersections, these connections between disciplines, are the key to understanding a historical reality that for centuries was shrouded in silence and superstition. The prevalent perspective offered by cultural studies has often interpreted childbirth as a theatrical scene, centred on the parturient mother, crowded with actors playing precise roles. It was mostly a society of women; men were generally excluded. While valid, this approach alone does not reveal how the event was perceived and lived by the actual individuals, what hopes and fears they experienced, what tragedies and miracles were built around the often intermingled medical knowledge and superstitions connected with childbirth. Reaching out for the historical sources may be the only way to gain some understanding of the historical reality — or rather realities, as each player in this complex scene (mother, father, midwife, doctor, lawyer, neighbours, priest, and so on) had a personal perception of the event. Still, the medical, historical, juridical, icono­graphic, and religious sources do not tell the whole story, but only select parts of the whole. The very act of childbirth is not just an immutable bio­logical and ‘natural’ act that extends back into the beginning of humankind, or even of life itself: it is couched in history, in specific social realities; it is a cultural phenomenon that both determines and is determined by the way it is explained and understood in different societies. Childbirth does not stand alone as an act performed by women among women. It is deeply connected to medical/ philosophical/astro­logical theories on conception and the development of the embryo — theories developed, studied, and exchanged in a society of men. Understanding the issues of pregnancy and childbirth is therefore a complex 1 

Johnson, ‘Division of Labor’, p. 383.

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effort that supersedes gender studies or a female-centred perspective and calls for patient analysis of juridical, medical, and religious documents and archaeo­ logical remains, of icono­graphy, demo­graphics, and astro­logy, to develop crossreferentiality among disciplines traditionally kept separate. The present collection reflects this multiplicity of approaches, and the twelve contributions have been organized in three thematic sections that allow for an analysis of similarities and differences through time, discipline, and culture.

Cultural Exchanges and Transmission of Knowledge In an effort to go beyond the more traditional, discipline-conscious limitations that determine temporal and geo­g raphical scope, this book starts with an inquiry into the connective pathways of knowledge exchange that linked Europe to Central Asia and examines cultural transmissions from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Obstetrical and gynaeco­logical knowledge first emerged in the classical world in the Corpus Ippocraticum and culminated with Soranus’s treatise, spreading throughout the Latin West. After — or possibly concomitantly with — the fall of the Roman Empire, new influences originated from the East and later from the Arab world through translations of the work of Albucasis and Avicenna. Late Antiquity and the early medi­eval period saw centres of political power develop into vibrant centres of knowledge exchange, specifically in the areas connected with the philosophical approach to medicine and the understanding of conception and birth. The first article by Francesca Marchetti, ‘Educating the Midwife: The Role of Illustrations in Late Antique and Medi­e val Obstetrical Texts’, looks at the diffusion throughout the territories of the Roman Empire of illustrations that provided the basis for obstetrical science until the Renaissance. This rich icono­graphical tradition originated from the gynaeco­logical treatise written by Soranus of Ephesus (first–second centuries ce). This is a work that, paradoxically, initially contained no illustrations. The first obstetrical illustrations were created in North Africa, at least some decades after Soranus’s death. Their probable goal was to provide a visual support to a different, newer manual based on a simplified version of Soranus’s own work. This version of the gynaeco­ logical treatise was composed in question-and-answer form, pointing to the need to abridge the original text and to make its content more basic, while adding images as visual aid for a potential new group of less-educated practitioners. The figure of the midwife begins to emerge from this picture of a changing medical world, within which she will slowly become an ever-present character on the childbirth scene, the guardian of women’s secrets.

Introduction

xvii

The discussion on the importance and extent of knowledge dissemination connected with pregnancy and childbirth continues with Paolo Delaini’s ‘Pregnancy in Middle-Persian Zoroastrian Literature: The Exchange of Know­ ledge among India, Iran, and Greece in Late Antiquity’, an analysis of medical knowledge at the court of one of the last Sasanian emperors in the seventh century ce. This neo-Persian area of political influence functioned as a cultural intermediary and as a site for the fusion of physio­logical and theo­logical knowledge. This knowledge, coming both from Western and Eastern traditions, allowed contact between Christian and Buddhist views on the process of reproduction. The focus shifts from the practical understanding of the foetus’s position — as in Soranus’s treatise — to a much more complex interpretation of the mystery of impregnation and foetal development. While it may have been possible to understand the visible condition and position of a full-grown foetus, what causes the foetus itself to be created and come to life and what may influence its appearance and characteristics were indeed considered mysteries as great as the creation of the universe. This discussion, which connects the microcosm of the human body to the macrocosm of creation, leads away from the female environment of the birthing room — the final point of the foetus’s transformation into a person — towards a separate male intellectual space of inquiry. Within this speculative milieu, philosophers, doctors, and theo­logians strive to create logical order in the apparently unapproachable secrets of conception, an event that not only involves, but appears to revolve around male agency. In Kathryn Kueny’s analysis, ‘Tracing the Maternal Body in Medi­e val Muslim Gynaeco­logical Texts’, the maternal body appears to remain impenetrable to men, who must overcome their inability to experience pregnancy by having to imagine how it feels and functions, or by attempting to appropriate generative fecundity through subsidiary forms of knowledge or performance. The gynaeco­logical writings of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn Sīnā, ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīya provide insight into how medi­eval Muslim physicians both envisioned the female reproductive body and sought to harness its procreative potential through elaborate exchanges with Greek medical wisdom, Qur’anic revelation, legal discourse, theo­logical argument, natural science, and traditional folklore. These intricate exchanges produced ambiguous portrayals of a female reproductive body that was physically and morally weak and in need of male control, but also an enviable and idealized locus for divine sign, creative agency, and intimacy with nature. The investigation of the elaboration of physio­logical knowledge and the interaction of multiple cultural influences continues with Shlomo Sela’s

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‘Calculating Birth: Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Role in the Creation and Diffusion of the trutina Hermetis’. Abraham Ibn Ezra travelled from his native Spain, then under Muslim rule, through the Middle East, France, and England, establishing the trutina Hermetis (balance of Hermes) as a key element in the astro­ logical definition of an individual’s future characteristics. The trutina proposed a procedure for calculating the period of pregnancy, that is, the exact time that elapsed between conception and birth. All astro­logical predictions relate to the moment of birth, because knowing the exact time of both birth and insemination was the starting point for determining a person’s future. Under this perspective, birth itself ceases to be a woman’s physical, confidential event that takes place in an enclosed female environment, and becomes instead the connecting point between man and the stars, mediated through the knowledge of the wise, denying or correcting a piece of information that had always been under female control, a woman’s secret. Vested with the authority of the god Enoch/Hermes, Ibn Ezra claims the power to calculate the duration of pregnancy, the moment of conception, and the correct time of birth on the basis of what he proposes as a far more reliable, logic assumption than the experiencebased information offered by illiterate mothers and midwives. In so doing, he appropriates the experience of birth and gives it a different, symbolic meaning.

Birth, Death, and Magic Birth and death are antithetical moments that have always been perceived as deeply connected brackets holding the beginning and end of life. This understanding lends some semblance of logic to two events that have always been regarded as intrinsically mysterious. However, when birth and death coincide, as in the dramatically dangerous moments surrounding parturition, this logic seems to collapse, as does the separation between the two events. When the brackets encapsulating life fold upon each other, the fear of erasing the difference between birth and death closes the door to logic and infuses childbirth management with magic and religious elements expected to attenuate fear, danger, and suffering. The term ‘magic’ is used here in a general sense, because magic is always connected to its historical and cultural moment as well as to its agents, and contextualization is therefore necessary. What we may perceive as superstition may have been understood as true medicine at a specific time, and therefore can be traced back to medical texts. Magic itself is often intertwined with religion, and different times offer different insights into the hazy separation between the two. The only constant is that medical, religious, and magical practices in the context of childbirth are devices specifically aimed at fending off death.

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But how common was it historically for women and newborns to die in childbirth? Until scholars began to target this question throughout a multiplicity of sources, the answer was, at best, anecdotal. As late as the beginning of the last century everyone would have known of someone who died in childbirth, but the notion that this is a ‘natural’ occurrence — and therefore intrinsically not dangerous — still prevailed. This notion became even more established as modern medicine drastically reduced the dangers connected to childbirth while women equally reduced the number of pregnancies. These two factors alone might have buried a central human reality that lasted for millennia, had researchers not begun to inquire into the historical truth. As Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, and Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse show in ‘Mother and Child: Archaeo­logical Evidence of Childbirth Complications in Medi­e val Normandy’, one of the major problems in providing evidence to the claim that childbirth was often deadly is the lack of physical evidence itself. Funeral archaeo­logy offers a limited picture of maternal mortality, narrowing this designation to death occurring during pregnancy and delivery. The abnormal number of deaths among young women within the general archaeo­logical population sets contrasts with the low number of reported cases in most of medi­e val cemetery excavations. The bias related to the archaeo­logical context (differential bone preservation, evolution of graves, ignorance of population size) makes it impossible to estimate maternal mortality. In archaeo­logy, only simultaneous deaths of both mother and child, the skeletons of pregnant women still holding a foetus or lying-in women buried with their newborn child in the same grave, can be identified as deaths that occurred during pregnancy, childbirth, or its immediate aftermath. If the pressing issue of widespread mortality among young women, evident in cemeteries, books of the dead, and town censuses, generally contradicts the limited archaeo­logical definitions of death in childbirth, the abundance of ritualistic objects, magical remedies, enchantments, charms, as well as stories of childbirth miracles attest to the fear and danger surrounding this moment. It is among these varied sources that evidence related to the ‘real’ experience of pregnancy and childbirth begins to emerge. As discussed by Mary Morse in ‘“Girde hyr wythe thys mesure”: Birth Girdles, the Church, and Lollards’, a particularly poignant expression of this fear is represented by birth girdles, paper or parchment rolls that women used as protection during childbirth. Within this particular object, significantly present in fifteenth-century England, religion and magic seemingly coincide, as Eucharistic images and texts constitute a major proportion of the birth girdles’

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content: the birth girdles borrowed ‘magical’ content but adapted that content to match overtly orthodox purposes. By offering amuletic protection to women while supporting orthodox tenets through the birth girdles, the ecclesiastical establishment exploited the fear of the risks connected to childbirth to undermine the reforms proposed by the Lollards, a pre-Protestant group strongly averse to the church’s exploitation of superstition and fear. In ‘Prayer as Obstetric Practice at Thirteenth-Century La Cambre’, Sara Ritchey shows the connection between religion and magic in two manu­scripts produced at the Cistercian monastery of Villers in the late Middle Ages. Both of the manu­scripts under investigation were made by the monks of Villers for Cistercian women’s communities under their patrimony. One of the manu­ scripts, copied in the late thirteenth century, includes a series of four childbirth charms that follow a charm for epilepsy. The other manu­script, created in the early fourteenth century, features an illustrated indulgence and a prayer for women in labour, who contemplated the arma Christi, the visual representation of the instruments of the Passion. The interest of a group of monks in providing such material for a celibate female monastic community is most perplexing, unless it demonstrates that women took refuge in monastic communities in order to give birth, entrusting their lives to charms, religious images, and prayers. For Alessandra Foscati, the analysis of miracle tales emerging from hagio­ graphical texts (canonization processes and Libri miraculorum) from the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century — some still unpublished — confirms the deep involvement of religious faith with practices surrounding childbearing and birth. In ‘Retracing Childbirth through Hagio­graphical Texts and Canonization Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, she demonstrates how the survival of either mother or child was often viewed as miraculous. This analysis also proves that strictly medical treatises alone cannot provide full evidence of the activities, persons, and beliefs surrounding childbirth. Such evidence can surface only from the testimony surrendered from a variety of sources. Hagio­graphical sources in fact yield a better understanding not only of religious beliefs, but also of juridical and medical practices through narrative voices that, while telling of specific miracles, also mention fathers, neighbours, priests, and midwives, all sharing in the mother’s often dangerous or tragic childbirth experience.

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Lying-in and Holy Birth: Tradition, Icono­graphy, and Political Statement The final part of this volume examines both the reality and the icono­graphy of ‘lying-in’, the post-partum resting period that became the subject for celebratory images of holy as well as human births. While the first paper explores the social and ritualistic implications of ‘lying-in’ culture, the other three examine the theo­logical, historical, and political connotations revealed by icono­graphic sources. Lying-in was a time of bed rest or seclusion following childbirth, practised throughout Europe and probably the world. In ‘Lying-in in High Medi­e val England and France’, Fiona Harris-Stoertz discusses twelfth‑, thirteenth‑, and fourteenth-century customs from England and northern France and shows how the ritual of purification that concluded the lying-in period implied that parturient women were polluted by blood and lust. Such ideas, although rejected by many authorities of the time, were still very much a part of the cultural context of lying-in. Nevertheless, lying-in, as it was practised in the high Middle Ages, was also a celebration of mothers and an opportunity for gifts, visits, and special care. It reflected a substantial cultural investment in gifts, visits, special foods, new clothing, and decorations, all of which enhanced the status of both husbands and wives. Icono­graphy offers abundant information on the local traditions connected with post-partum rest, specifically with images of the ‘human’ births of Mary and John the Baptist. These are indeed holy nativities, but they are also experienced in a human way. The difference between these nativities and that of Christ is fundamental: Jesus is born of a woman, but since this woman remains a virgin, not only is his birth miraculous and untainted, but the mother herself becomes godly through the act of childbirth. Mary and John the Baptist, on the contrary, are born of real women who suffer real childbirth, and their own pregnancy is miraculous only in terms of their advanced age. Overriding the limits of their physio­logical functions makes them more, not less, human and therefore more approachable. The difference between the divine and the human nativities is particularly evident in the Armenian textual tradition, which contributes an especially interesting group of characters and perspectives to the scene of Christ’s birth. In ‘Mary and Eve: The Permanence of the First Mother in Armenian Apocryphal Infancy Gospels’, Valentina Calzolari analyses the crucial figure of the midwife, who is present at Jesus’s birth but does not play an active role in the Child’s delivery. Moreover, according to the Armenian Infancy Gospel,

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Eve, the ‘mother of mankind’, was the first to witness Jesus’s birth together with Joseph. The presence of Eve, which is attested only in the Armenian tradition, is meant to stress Mary’s importance as Eve’s antithesis. The theme of virginity is at the core of this juxtaposition: since Eve was a virgin at the time of her disobedience, it was necessary that the Redeemer of humanity be born from a virginal body. While the setting for Christ’s Nativity stresses poverty and simplicity, often situated in a grotto or under a decaying stall, that of Mary’s birth stands out for its show of elegance and sumptuousness. Although Saint Anne is the approachable mother, she is also the wife of a wealthy man and the mother of the future Queen of Heaven. Her lying-in environment is fit for the birth of a princess. In ‘Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras: The Political Message in the Icono­graphy of the Birth of Mary’, Antonella Parmeggiani maintains that this message assumes a particularly relevant political meaning within the context of the final decades of the Byzantine Empire, when the tradition was established for Western princesses to marry the last of the Paleo­logi, especially in Morea. The Despotate of the Morea was characterized by both the political importance of women and the awareness of the value of Western spouses from the point of view of international foreign policy. During the period when the Greeks and the Franks were fighting against the Turks, one of the signs of their alliance was a mixed marriage: nearly all the despots married Frankish (and later Italian) princesses. In this context the princess, the noble woman, reappraised her geopolitical role. Private and public laws mark the woman’s role in ways similar to those present in the icono­g raphic representation of Mary’s birth. Anna and Mary become reference characters within the framework of a political ideo­logy that sees the birth of a princess as the element uniting East and West and ultimately rescuing the world. Traditionally the Basilisse, wives of the Basileus, the Byzantine ruler, were especially devoted to Mary, who sits enthroned, wearing the very garb of the Basilisse, inviting both identification and emulation. While the child Mary is repeatedly hailed as saviour of the collapsing empire, the young Western princesses try to emulate the mother of God, the Theotokos, as they too want to give birth to a saviour who will deliver the world from the grasp of evil. The concluding article by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, ‘Holy Mothers and Vanished Nativities: Maternal Art as Female Visual Epic in Quattrocento Florence’, reveals how Western icono­graphy also displays women as saviours of society, customs, and the city state, but under very dissimilar conditions. The same icono­graphic tradition that unveils the last hopes of the failing Byzantine state points to different, but equally tragic, circumstances as it proliferates in Renaissance Florence at the height of the demo­g raphic disaster of the four-

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teenth and fifteenth centuries. The 1348 plague is often referred to as the main culprit for the drop in European population, but this approach is reductive and simplistic. In truth, the Black Death started an unsustainable trend towards depopulation, not because of a single event, but because of its steady recurrence. The plague that forms the background for Boccaccio’s Decameron received much attention because it was the first such event, but it was scarcely the last one: every ten or fifteen years the plague would return, taking the oldest and the youngest members of society, slowly reducing the population of Florence to less than one third of its original number. As population decline could be countered only by an increase in births, Florentines responded by enlisting their women in a fight for survival through continuous pregnancies, which often resulted in extremely painful deaths. The celebration of birth evident in the nativities of Mary and of John the Baptist, a genre that becomes extremely popular in this period, is in fact a visual epic that performs through images what traditional epic does through poetry: eulogizing heroic deeds that, in defiance of death, will save family and nation. By convincing women to accept their duty as ‘productresses’ of new citizens, the icono­graphy of holy births becomes a tool for civic survival. The diversity in the topics of these twelve articles shows that childbirth studies need to be discussed not only in a cross-disciplinary way, but also in a way that questions disciplinary boundaries at a very deep level. Such studies can give insight into the way information is transmitted, especially information that is not considered part of the established received canon. They show how archaeo­ logical evidence must be analysed in the historical context of social customs and traditions, and how medical practices can be best explained when connected to religious beliefs. They illuminate the understanding of the political and social purpose of art, and in so doing they shed light on a civilization’s deepest anxieties. Above all, this new field of studies, which may become a normative example of interdisciplinary scholarship for future disciplines, is also one of the oldest concerns of scholars, and one that touches every single human life.

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Works Cited Primary Sources The Trotula: A  Medi­eval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. by Monica Green (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Trotula: Un compendio medievale di medicina delle donne, ed. by Monica Green (Florence: SISMEL, 2009)

Secondary Studies Dasen, Véronique, ed., Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité: Actes du colloque de Fri­bourg, 28 novembre – 1er decembre 2001 (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vanden­hoeck & Ruprecht, 2004) Giladi, Avner, Muslim Midwives: The Craft of  Birthing  in the Premodern  Middle East (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2015) Itnyre, Cathy Jorgensen, ed., Medi­eval Family Roles: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1996) Johnson, Rebecca Wynne, ‘Division of Labor: Gender, Power, and Later Medi­eval Child­ birth’, History Compass, 14.9 (2016), 383–96 Kueny, Kathryn M., Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medi­eval Muslim Discourse and Practice (Albany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 2013) L’Estrange, Elizabeth, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) Leyser, Conrad, and Lesley Smith, eds, Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medi­eval Europe, 400–1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) Parsons, John Carmi, and Bonnie Wheeler, eds, Medi­eval Mothering (New York: Garland, 1996) Scott, Eleanor, The Archaeo­logy of Infancy and Infant Death (Oxford: Archeopress, 1999) Wood, Diana, ed., Women and Religion in Medi­eval England (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003)

Part 1 Cultural Exchanges and Transmission of Knowledge

Educating the Midwife: The Role of Illustrations in Late ­ val Obstetrical Texts Antique and Medie Francesca Marchetti*

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ext to the impression of potential peril and tension related to the event of childbirth, Greek and Roman literary sources also portray the variety of characters gaining entry to the birth room. Among them we find female relatives and neighbours, professional figures (as the obstetrix in Plauto’s comedies,1 and Agnodice, the protagonist of Hyginus’s fable),2 non-professional birth assistants (such as the assetrix, mentioned in a fragment  

* I am very grateful to Monica H. Green, Lesley Bolton, Irene Calà, Fabrizio Crivello, and Massimo Bernabò for their valuable suggestions and for generously sharing with me materials and ideas, and I thank the editors of this volume for their precious suggestions and assistance. 1  French, ‘Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World’, pp. 71–73; Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece, p. 67, n. 95; Bettini, Nascere, pp. 176–77. 2  Hyginus’s fabula is an important source on the perception of female professionals educated in the medical science in first-century Rome. The tale of Agnodice is part of a series of accounts of discoveries (Quis quid invenerit). It describes how Agnodice, a young Athenian woman, disguised herself as a man to learn medicine. Her intention was to assist women in labour or suffering from affliction in their lower parts (ab inferiore parte), ashamed to show themselves to male physicians: Hyginus, Fabulae, CLXXIV, ed. by Marshall, pp. 196–97. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 31–32.

Francesca Marchetti (PhD, Università di Bo­logna) is an independent researcher with a background in manu­script studies and related disciplines (codico­logy, philo­logy, palaeo­graphy, book illumination). Her main research interest is the study of medi­eval medical manu­scripts in Byzantium and in the West, with a focus on the mechanisms of transmission of knowledge, ideas, and visual representations related to medicine and the body in the Latin and Greek contexts. Her recent contributions are mainly devoted to the termino­logy, structure, and illustration of obstetrical and surgical texts from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 3–28 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117816

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of Fratiae, a drama by Lucius Afranius),3 and even astro­logers. The women portrayed, both those giving birth and those assisting them, had to face the danger of childbirth and resort not just to their knowledge and experience but also to their creativity in helping with the birth. The fear of a protracted childbirth, which could end in both the mother’s and the child’s death, is openly reflected in the myth of Heracles’ birth. In this story Heracles’ mother Alcmena could not deliver the child due to the opposition of the goddess Hera, who had sent the birth deity, Eileithyia, to halt the labour.4 In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Alcmena herself describes how the goddess (Lucina in the Roman world) impeded her labour for seven nights and days, sitting outside the birthing room with her arms and fingers intertwined, tightly holding her crossed legs. While maintaining this position, the goddess had the power to project the closed stance onto the mother, blocking the birth canal and preventing the birth of the child. Only the cunning Galanthis, a young woman described as one of the helpers (una ministrarum), found a way to help the suffering mother, forcing the goddess to unclasp her knees and arms and release the womb. Noticing the goddess sitting on the altar outside Alcmena’s room, Galanthis ran out announcing the child’s birth in front of her. The surprised Eileithyia was so shocked by this impossible event that she jumped up, releasing her arms and knees, and allowing the child to be born: dumque exit et intrat saepe fores, divam residentem vidit in ara bracchiaque in genibus digitis conexa tenentem, et: ‘Quaecumque es’, ait, ‘dominae gratare; levata est Argolis Alcmenae potiturque puerpera voto’. Exsiluit iunctasque manus pavefacta remisit diva potens uteri; vinclis levor ipsa remissis. (Metamorphoses 9, 309–15) [While frequently going in and out of the room she saw the goddess sitting on the altar holding her arms around her knees, with her fingers interlocked. Whoever you are, she said, congratulate my mistress: Alcmene of Argos has relief, she has delivered her child, her prayer is answered. The powerful goddess of the womb

3 

Bettini, Women and Weasels, pp. 176 and 315. The roman poet Lucius Afranius (fl. first half of the first century ce) wrote many comediae togatae. The term assetrix (from assidere, sitting next to someone or taking care of someone) probably here refers to a non-professional birth assistant. 4  Bettini, Women and Weasels, pp. 30–34.

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jumped up and in shock released the hands that had been clasped together; meanwhile my bonds were released and I was relieved of my burden.]5

Clever Galanthis would not go unpunished. Irate Lucina, who in this story is the goddess that prevents birth as well as the one who allows it, dragged the young woman to the ground and changed her into a long-bodied, lithesome animal: a weasel (gale), condemned to conceive through the ear and give birth through the mouth.6 Ovid’s passage from the Metamorphoses, notwithstanding its literary nature, provides an actual description of the birth scene and of the characters involved in Alcmena’s care. Ovid (m. 18 ce) describes Galanthis as a ministra, a term we could probably translate as birth assistant. The term, as Bettini points out, designates, in its masculine form (minister), a doctor’s assistant and appears in its feminine plural form ministrae in Mustio’s Gynaecia, a fifth- or sixth-century illustrated obstetrical manual, to indicate the three assistants that help the midwife during her work: Ministrae cum ostetrice quot sunt necessariae? Tres enim necessariae sunt, ex quibus duae dextra laevaque ad latera stare debent, in quas incumbere possit, tertia vero a dorso teneat, ut occurrentibus doloribus non se in lato inclinet, hortantes eam ut fortiter sustineat. [How many assistants are necessary along with the obstetrician? Three are necessary, of whom two ought to stand at the right and left-hand sides, on whom she can lean, the third, in fact, should hold her from behind so that, with the pains coming on, she does not lean herself over to the side, encouraging her so that she might bear it bravely.]7

Ovid is using here a technical term, which designates a professional figure with a specific role, who works alongside the obstetrician. The ministrae are not in charge of the birth, but their function is to help the obstetrix, sustaining and 5 

Bettini, Women and Weasels, p. 30. In Pausanias’s less fanciful version of the story, the role of goddess Lucina is taken by the Pharmacides, who in the Theban tradition were not divine creatures, but witches or herbalists who, with their potions, were able to block the birth: Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. by Jones, ix. 11. § 2. 7  All the quotations from Mustio’s Gynaecia are from the 1882 edition by Valentin Rose: Rose, Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina nunc primum edita cum additis graeci textus reliquiis. The English translation of Mustio’s passages in this article are mainly from Bolton, ‘An Edition, Translation and Commentary of Mustio’s Gynaecia’. I thank the author for allowing me to use her work. 6 

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encouraging the parturient woman. Moreover, Galanthis’s creative intervention perfectly incarnates a birth attendant’s most desirable characteristics: according to the Gynaikeia, the Greek treatise written at the beginning of the second century ce by Soranus of Ephesus (one of the sources used by Mustio for his compilation), the ability to take notice and improvise was a key element for a successful birth. Thanks to her wit, Galanthis is able to deceive the goddess and halt her witchcraft, in other words, to loosen the knots (here magical, in other circumstances psycho­logical or physical) that keep Alcmena’s uterus bound. In historical terms she would be one of the women providing semiprofessional care as support staff to the obstetrix, yet in the fable it is she alone who is responsible for ‘unknotting’ the womb, acting symbolically as midwife. The present study researches some of the texts used by obstetrices and ministrae to learn their trade and support their practice. In particular, it investigates the origin of Mustio’s illustrated manual, usually associated with the gynaeco­ logical treatise written by Soranus of Ephesus. The analysis focuses on the creation, intended purpose, and historical development of the illustrations, which include a schematic representation of the uterus and several images of foetuses in different positions. The illustrations complementing the Gynaecia, the obstetrical manual written by Mustio or Muscio (c. fifth or sixth century, probably of North African origin), are among the most captivating images we inherited from Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Showing foetuses with adult proportions inside the uterus, these images were intended to help the midwife understand how foetuses in abnormal presentations — positions other than the cephalic and breech presentations — could not pass through the birth canal, and which actions were needed to rearrange the child in a more favourable position. Both schematic and realistic, these illustrations made the invisible (a living child inside his mother’s womb) visible; they had a successful tradition during the Middle Ages and continued to appear in printed works up to the seventeenth century.8 Apart from Soranus, few other medical sources attest to late antique obstetrical practices. Hippocratic texts do not address directly the figure of the midwife and her functions; however, the Hippocratic Corpus gives evidence of the presence of female professionals, either assisted or advised by a male doctor, attending the parturient woman.9 Funeral monuments provide other informa8 

Especially in midwifery manuals; see Rösslin, Der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosengarten and Sharp, The Midwives Book. For a general view on the tradition of this set of illustrations, see Green, ‘Gynäko­logische und geburtshilflische Illustrationen in mittel­ alterlischen Manuskripten’. 9  Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece, pp. 66–67. In particular, as

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Figure 1.1. Mustio, Gynaecia, schematic representation of the uterus (ninth century). Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 3701–15, fol. 16v. Copyright Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.

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tion about the status and social perception of women practicing as midwives. The fourth-century bce stelae dedicated to Phanostrate (Athens, National Archaeo­logical Museum, NM 993) shows a woman (probably the donor of the monument) sitting in front of the deceased, surrounded by four children of different ages. The inscription identifies Phanostrate as maîa and iatrós, midwife and doctor,10 thus suggesting that she was a medical professional, whose activity was not necessarily limited to midwifery and gynaeco­logy. Later monuments from Ostia and Rome are equally informative, transmitting portraits of professional midwives often represented in a birth scene. A particularly interesting example is the funeral monument of Scribonia Attica from the Isola Sacra in Ostia, dated to around 140 ce. The tomb has two matching terracotta reliefs placed alongside its entrance: The first shows Scribonia’s husband Marcus Ulpius Amerimnus, a physician or a surgeon, portrayed in the act of medicating a man’s leg, with several surgical instruments realistically represented on the right side of the scene. The second relief portrays Scribonia sitting in front of a parturient woman, turning her look away while stretching her hands towards the opening of the birth canal. The parturient woman sits on a birthing chair, holding the handles placed on the two sides, while a standing assistant holds her from behind. Scribonia was clearly part of a family devoted to the medical profession, which might have favoured her in gaining access to a medical education. Moreover, the husband’s and wife’s nomina — Attica and Amerimnus — indicate a possible Greek origin and a status of freedmen, both very common among those involved in medical professions in imperial Rome.11 The Gynaikeia by Soranus,12 written between the first and the second century ce, is the first text to provide a detailed description of the midwife’s role, the skills she had to master, as well as her personal characteristics and her social function. Soranus was born in Ephesus probably in the second half of the first century ce; he studied in Alexandria, still a great centre of scientific medicine in his time, and practised the medical profession in Rome in the first half of the second century. Few of his works survive in the original Greek version, and Demand shows, a passage from Disease of Women (i, 34) dedicated to the treatment of cases of swelling of the uterus directly addresses the female reader, telling her not to ‘do as the [male] doctors do’, thus suggesting that women could have been auditors of medical courses or readers of this text. 10  Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece, pp. 132–33, pl. 12. 11  Montanari, ‘Presenze femminili in ambito medico-terapeutico’. 12  Soranos d’Éphèse, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. by Burguière, Gourevitch, and Malinas; Soranus, Gyneco­logy, trans. by Temkin.

Educating the Midwife

Figure 1.2. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (ninth century). Brussels,  Bibliothèque Royale, MS 3701–15, fol. 27v. Copyright Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.

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Figure 1.3. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (eleventh century). Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 1653, 4°, fol. 17r.  By permission of the Manu­script Department, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copen­hagen.

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among these, the four-volume Gynaikeia is the most important. In spite of the influence this work exerted on Greek, Arabic, and, above all, Latin medicine, the text, badly corrupted and interpolated with chapters from the medical compilation of Aetius of Amida, survives only in a fifteenth-century Byzantine manu­script, Paris, BnF, gr. 2153.13 While Soranus’s Gynaikeia is a detailed and comprehensive g ynaeco­ logical treatise that covers social, psycho­logical, as well as medical content and addresses a wide audience (male physicians, midwives, and learned readers interested in every aspect of women’s medical care), other contemporary examples of gynaeco­logical texts have a more specifically practical purpose. Papyruses from Graeco-Roman Egypt,14 dating back to the first and second centuries, attest to the existence of manuals in question-and-answer format explicitly addressed to midwives. These manuals focus on common gynaeco­logical diseases and on the parturient’s and her newborn’s care and do not attempt to reach out to Soranus’s wide audience. From the fourth century on, as the knowledge of Greek started to dwindle not only in Rome but also in the Roman Empire’s North African territories, Soranus’s views and practices partially survived thanks to the work of North African translators, abbreviators, and compilers, whose work reached the medi­e val West. Mustio’s Gynaecia (indicatively dated to the fifth or sixth century) was the main work that contributed to perpetuate Soranus’s memory in the West. Mustio’s Gynaecia survives in a few manu­script copies, some with illustrations.15 The oldest illustrated copy is Brussels, BR, MS 3701–15 (Figures 1.1 and 1.2), a Carolingian manu­script produced in the Mosan region, which includes, alongside the Gynaecia, several epistulae on bloodletting and other medical subjects and a remarkable collection of medical extracts from Hippocrates Herofilos and Galen.16 An eleventh-century manu­script in Beneventan script, Copen­hagen, KB, MS GKS 1653, 4° (Figures 1.3 and 1.4), contains a slightly different version of the text and fifteen foetal malpresentation drawings instead 13 

On Aetius’s interpolations, see Romano, ‘I capitoli della Gineco­logia di Aezio Amideno’. Marganne, ‘La Gyneco­logie dans les papyrus grecs’, p. 212, n. 47. 15  Rose, Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina nunc primum edita cum additis graeci textus reliquiis; Radicchi, La Gynaecia di Muscione (Italian translation of the text edited by Rose). On Mustio’s manu­scripts, see Beccaria, I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano, pp. 112–17, 277–81, 119–24. 16  Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, pp. 152–53, n. 708; Medert, ‘Quaestiones criticae et grammaticae ad Gynaecya Mustionis pertinentes’, pp. 11–12 passim. The manu­script is accessible online through . 14 

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of the original thirteen but does not contain the uterus image, although it appears as if the copyist had left some space for it. There are no known copies of the Brussels Gynaecia illustrations, and all later manu­scripts containing obstetrical illustrations related to Mustio’s original work derive from the Beneventan manu­script. The literature about Soranus’s Gynaikeia and its transmission tend to consider the illustrations as part of Soranus’s original work.17 The analysis of Mustio’s introduction to his work clarifies this point. Despite its corrupted and sometimes obscure Latin, this text gives us valuable information about the function of Mustio’s work and its sources. First, Mustio states that he had never met a midwife able to understand the Greek language and declares that, since he had already translated other medical works, he would now translate all the texts on gynaeco­logy into Latin, so that women could learn from this work Cum frequentius nobis in mulieribus obstetrix fuisset necessaria, nulla quae invenerimus studiosa quae litteras graecas adtigi videatur quod adtigisset omnia in latinitate sibi translata genechiae posse rationem lectionis scire. [Although an obstetrix has very often been needed by us for women, we have found no studious woman who seemed to have studied Greek letters; but if she had all women’s conditions (genechia) translated into the Latin language for her, she would be able to understand its meaning.]18

Mustio claims that he started translating from the ‘Triacontas’ (Thirty) by Soranus,19 but seeing that such a large work could strain a women’s mind, he decided to, literally, follow the brevity of the ‘cateperotiana’, where everything is said without taking too much space. This term could derive from the Greek τὰ κατ’ ἔπερώτεσιν (according to questioning) and indicates a question-andanswer style manual, a catechism, with a didactic purpose:

17 

Owsei Temkin in his introduction to the English translation of Soranus wrote that ‘there is reason to assume that the Gineco­logy was illustrated’: Soranus, Gyneco­logy, trans. by Temkin, p. xliii. Ann Ellis Hanson and Monica Green in their fundamental essay on Soranus equally suggested the existence of illustrations in his texts: ‘It is likely that illustrations of some kind graced the original Greek text of Soranus’ more therapeutically oriented works’ (‘Soranus of Ephesus’, pp. 1023–24). 18  Segoloni, ‘La dedica della traduzione latina dei Gynaecia di Sorano’; Maire, ‘Gynaecia Muscionis’. 19  Hanson and Green, ‘Soranus of Ephesus’, p. 1030.

Educating the Midwife

Figure 1.4. Mustio, Gynaecia, four foetal presentations (eleventh century). Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 1653, 4°, fol. 18r.  By permission of the Manu­script Department, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copen­hagen.

13

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Ego vero Muscio quia multa iam videor quomodocumque transtulisse, veritate rationis potius nisus quam structa oratione vel diligentius polita usus, sicut in opthalmico et chirurgumeno filiatro etiam et boethematico legisti, placuit mihi haec quoque gynaecia in latinum vertere sermonem, licet etiam maximam partem triacontados ad integrum tenorem secutus Soranum transtulerim. Sed cum vidissem grande corpus futurum et posse muliebris animos hac ratione cito prae magnitudine lassari, placuit cateperotianorum brevitatem fuisse secutus, ut omnia dicere videar et non grande corpus perfecisse. [Therefore, I, Muscio, since I am known to have already translated many things in some way or another, having relied on the accuracy of the meaning rather than using structured or carefully polished speech, as you have read in the Ophthalmicus, in the Surgery and also in the Remedies, dear to the art of medicine, I decided also to translate this Gynaecia/these women’s conditions into the Latin language, and I even translated the greater part of the Triacontas following Soranus in uncurtailed fashion. But when I saw how large the work was to be, and that women’s spirits could for this reason quickly become exhausted because of the size of it, I decided to follow the brevity of the Cateperotiana, so that I might seem to say everything and yet not compose a large work.]20

Then Mustio states that he will add chapters from the main treatise when things are too briefly explained in the catechism, in order to deliver an exhaustive work: ‘Quibusdam vero capitulis multum breviter dictis, quaedam et triacontados addidi, ut ex omnibus collectus commentarius sufficiens esse possit’ (‘However, to certain sections that were discussed very briefly, I have also added some things from the Triacontas, so that the treatise made up from all these could be adequate’). Finally, he declares that he will use a very simple language in order to be understood also by the less educated midwives: ‘His autem multo simplicius volui loqui et ut verius dicam muliebribus verbis usus sum, ut etiam imperitae obstetrices licet ab altera sibi lectam rationem facile intellegere possint’ (‘I wished, moreover, to speak much more simply in these writings and, to say the truth, I have used expressions and words from women, so that even inexperienced obstetrices would be able to easily understand the sense, albeit read to them by another woman’). The introduction clearly identifies for which kind of reader Mustio is writing: midwives unable to read Greek (or unable to read at all), or to face a very 20 

Ilberg, ‘Die Überlieferung der Gynäko­logie des Soranos von Ephesos’, pp. 74–88. See also Kind, ‘Soranus’. On the interpretation of the term ‘cateperotiana’, see Ingerslev, ‘Rösslin’s Rosegarten’, p. 15.

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long or complex text. Mustio mentions his two sources: the Thirty (books or chapters) by Soranus and the question-and-answer shorter text (cateperotiana). This text, referred to by Mustio as a work by Soranus, was in all probability a catechetic adaptation of Soranus’s work created by an anonymous author.21 It must be stressed that Mustio’s indication that he is collecting material from all available sources — ‘ex omnibus collectus commentarius’ — accurately reflects the nature of this text. Apart from the two sources mentioned before, Mustio added at the end of his manual a chapter on the use of the speculum, Qua disciplina organo aperiendae sint mulieres (‘By what method ought women be opened for examination with the implement’), and a collection of pessaria, a term that indicated pharmaco­logical preparations for gynaeco­logical use.22 An analysis of the content arrangement shows that Mustio’s text reflects Soranus’s work closely: 21 

Mustio mentions the cateperotiana as a work by Soranus at the end of the second part of the Gynaecia: ‘et haec est omnis mulierum diligentia, cui etiam necessarie adiungimus pessariorum et omnium medicaminum conpositiones quae ad valitudes earum facere possunt et ad servandam pulchritudinem ab antiquis diligenter scripta sunt, de Sorani cateperotianis et curis de gynaeciis triacontadis in latinum translata sermonem’ (Rose, Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina nunc primum edita cum additis graeci textus reliquiis, p. 119). See also Urso, ‘Procedimenti di riscrittura nei Gynaecia di Mustione’, esp. 300–301. Gourevitch, ‘Cherchez la femme’, pp. 204–05. Urso showed that another question-and-answer text, the Liber geneciae ad Soteris obsetrix, derives from the same catechetic source used by Mustio: Urso, ‘Il Liber geneciae ad Soteris obsetrix’. Bolton proposes a different interpretation of this passage, based on a different reading of the term cateperotiana, here read as catapotia (recipes for the composition of a medicament). According to this interpretation, Mustio created the question-and-answer sections of his manual, reshaping Soranus’s contents in the medical-recipe format: Bolton, ‘An Edition, Translation and Commentary of Mustio’s Gynaecia’, pp. 58–63. 22  The pessaria are not included in the two oldest manu­scripts of the Gynaecia (the illustrated ninth-century copy in Brussels, BR, MS 3701–15, and Florence, BML, MS Plut. 73.1), but have been copied in the Beneventan-script eleventh-century text (Copen­hagen, KB, MS GKS 1653 4°). They were undoubtedly part of the Gynaecia because they are mentioned by the author himself in the explicit of his manual, as something written by the ancients to promote well-being and beauty: ‘Et haec est omnis mulierum diligentia, cui etiam necessarie adiungimus pessariorum et omnium medicaminum conpositiones quae ad valitudines facere possunt et ad servandam pulchritudinem ab antiquis diligenter scripta sunt’ (And this is the entire care of women, to which of necessity we also add the compositions of pessaries and all medicaments which can produce well-being and are for preserving beauty, diligently written down by the Ancients’), Rose, Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina nunc primum edita cum additis graeci textus reliquiis, p. 119.

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Soranus Book i

Description of the midwife Anatomy of the uterus Menstruation, virginity, conception Pregnancy Signs of impending abortion, abortives

Book ii

Labour and Delivery Care of the woman after childbirth Care of the newborn, breastfeeding, wetnurse

Book iii

Diseases of the uterus

Book iv

On difficult labour Extraction of a dead foetus (embriulcia, embriotomia) Diseases of the uterus that could require surgical procedures

Mustio Part I (all in Q&A format)

Description of the midwife Anatomy of the uterus, with illustration Menstruation, virginity, conception Pregnancy How to prepare for labour (possibly with illustration) Care of the woman after childbirth Care of the newborn, breastfeeding, wetnurse

Part II

Diseases of the uterus (not Q&A format) On difficult labour (Q&A format), with illustrations Extraction of a dead foetus (embriulcia, embriotomia) (Q&A format) Diseases requiring surgical procedures (not Q&A format)

It is important to note that the chapters dedicated to patho­logy (description of the diseases that can affect the uterus and diseases requiring surgical procedures from Soranus’s third and fourth books) are not discussed in the question-and-answer format, and that all the illustrations appear in the catechistic sections. The question-and-answer format becomes a common style in third- and fourth-century works, shortly after Soranus’s lifetime, and it is likely that the rewriting of the Gynaikeia into the simpler Greek catechism that Mustio eventually translated into Latin was carried out by someone writing in the North African region at least a generation after Soranus.23 In that period a new writing support, the codex in papyrus or vellum, gradually replaced the scroll, and by the fourth century the codex had gained wide acceptance. 23 

Ieraci Bio, ‘L’ἐρωταπόκρις nella letteratura medica’; Andorlini, ‘Testi medici per la scuola’; Roselli, ‘Le Medicinales responsiones di Celio Aureliano’; Baader, ‘Early Medi­eval Latin Adaptations’, pp. 257–58.

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A few precious fragments show that papyrus manu­scripts were sometimes beautifully illustrated. The Antinoopolis Herbal, dated between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century ce, has papyrus leaves that had been made in double thickness probably for the purpose of painting on them. In fact, papyrus is a relatively thin and fragile writing medium, and the stronger support surely provided a more secure surface to receive and preserve the illustrations. At any rate, the composition of this codex was of a rare quality, and it was clearly an object of some value. By contrast, the very general content of the text and relative lack of detail in the illustrations suggest that the Antinoopolis Herbal would not have been of great practical utility from the therapeutic point of view. The special manner of composition and the beautifully and carefully rendered illustrations might also suggest that this codex had a predominantly aesthetic value for its owner, which went beyond its practical use.24 There is no direct mention of illustrations in Soranus’s treatise. One of the main arguments supporting the presence of illustrations in Soranus’s Gynaikeia regards the presence of a note in the fifteenth-century Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2153 mentioning images of foetal presentations. In the pinax (table of contents) compiled by the copyist at the beginning of the gynaeco­logical treatise, the title of Chapter 45 is accompanied by a note that states that this part of the manu­ script had illustrations showing the different positions foetuses can have in the matrix, with an explanation of every drawing. The note continues saying that the copyist could not reproduce the illustrations for lack of colours and that ‘the illustrator specialized in women’s medicine dedicates (the illustrations) to Cleopatra, queen of Egypt’.25 The corresponding pages have blank spaces left for the illustrations and contain fragments of texts about the positions of the foetus as well as a fragment of the treatise ‘On the Constitution of Man’ by Meletius.26 This part of the Parisian manu­script appears extremely heterogeneous. 27 Chapters 28–42 are all in question-and-answer format, and they address dif24  Leith, ‘The Antinoopolis Illustrated Herbal’. Images of the Johnson Papyrus are available online: . Orofino, ‘Die Illustration der Heilmittellehre des Dioskurides’. 25  Soranos d’Éphèse, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. by Burguière, Gourevitch, and Malinas, ii, pp. xvii–xx, and iv, p. vii. 26  Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2153, fols 238v–241v. Meletius’s work describes human anatomy and physio­logy from a philosophical and theo­logical perspective: Meletios the Monk, ‘On the Constitution of Man’, ed. by Cramer, p. 6; Ieraci Bio, ‘Medicina e teo­logia’. 27  Soranos d’Éphèse, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. by Burguière, Gourevitch, and Malinas, iv, pp. vii–xii.

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ferent aspects of labour and parturition, as well as some social-medical questions about virginity. These chapters do not belong to Soranus’s text.28 Chapter 43, on the preparation for childbirth, is surely part of Soranus’s text but is followed by two short texts (one on how to proceed manually to extract the foetus and one concerning the child’s slightly bended head presentation) that cannot be confidently attributed to Soranus. Chapter 46 (On retention of the secundines) follows the pages meant to contain the illustrations: this is one of the chapters dedicated to post-partum complications in Soranus’s fourth book of the Gynaikeia. The following chapters (47–54) are also from the fourth book and are dedicated to dystocia, embriotomy, embriulcia, and uterine prolapse. Chapters 55 to 64 are dedicated to patho­logy and surgery of the breast. These texts, which show striking similarities with Chapters 37–48 from the sixteenth book of Aetius of Amida’s medical compilation,29 are an interpolation. Chapters 65 to 67 on problems related to lactations are, instead, by Soranus. This long section within the manu­script appears as a collection of obstetrical material organized by a copyist who knowingly gathers texts from different sources in order to obtain an exhaustive new text, a process extremely common in fifteenth-century Byzantine medical manu­scripts.30 Therefore, the mention of obstetrical illustrations in the pinax, not attributed to Soranus but to a painter specialized in women’s medicine, cannot be accepted as a valid demonstration of the presence of illustrations in Soranus’s treatise. The illustrated chapters on obstetrics in Mustio’s Gynaecia show noteworthy similarities with the illustrated compilation by Apollonius of Citium (c. 90–15 bce), a physician who studied at the medical school of Alexandria under a teacher called Zophyros. His work Περὶ ἄρθρων πραγματεία (Practical Work on Joints), on Hippocratic methods to reduce dislocations, survives in just one manu­script, MS Pluteo 74.7 at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. This extraordinary manu­script, written in Constantinople between the end of the ninth and the first third of the tenth century, contains a collec28 

These chapters have been edited and translated by Paul Burguière, ‘Le Cataperotiana gynéco­logiques attribués à Soranos d’Éphèse’, as an addendum to Gourevitch, ‘Cherchez la femme’, pp. 206–11. 29  Soranos d’Éphèse, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. by Burguière, Gourevitch, and Malinas, iv, pp. x–xi. 30  See for example Bo­logna, Bibl. Univ., MS 3632, a collection of medical, astro­logical, and magical texts realized by the Constantinopolitan physician John of Aron in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The manu­script, probably conceived as a personal book, has many simple illustrations, mostly copied from other manu­scripts: Marchetti, ‘Un manoscritto senza pari’.

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tion of orthopaedic texts: the Hippocratic writings on fractures and joints, followed by Galen’s Commentaries and by extracts from Oribasius, Paulus Egineta, and others, mostly dedicated to practical issues related to the cure of dislocations and fractures (such as bandages, plasters, etc.). According to the three epigrams at the beginning of the manu­script, the texts were collected and carefully arranged by Niketas, a scholar or a doctor, who rescued precious texts that otherwise would have been forgotten. In the Medicean manu­script only two texts, the commentary by Apollonius and a manual on bandages by Soranus, are illustrated.31 Apollonius’s work must be regarded not as a typical commentary on Hippocratic texts, but rather as a practical manual on the cure of dislocations according to Hippocratic medicine. In fact, Apollonius clearly describes his specifically didactic purpose and quotes from the Hippocratic treatise On Joints a selection of short passages with the description of each healing method. Then, he explains for each passage the terms or actions that could be unclear to the reader and adds some practical advice, often citing his previous experience as pupil or medical practitioner. Finally, he introduces the illustration with a simple sentence, ‘this is the representation’.32 He divides his work in three books: the first on shoulders, the second on hands, arms, and vertebrae, and the third on the hip joint. In the introduction to each of the three books, Apollonius remarks on the educational function of his work and underlines the importance of the illustrations.33 His intentions are clear: ‘we shall provide you with a visual depiction of them (i.e. the methods to compose dislocations) by means of painted illustrations of the particular dislocations and reductions’.34 The words used by Apollonius for illustration are Ζωγραφικὴ σκιαγραφία, terms that clearly indi31 

All Apollonius’s illustrations have a long caption (sometimes copied inside the illustration) that describes each method. According to one of the epigrams at the beginning of the collection, these captions were written by Niketas himself, to help the reader understand the meaning of each drawing. On Apollonius’s illustrated manual, see Marchetti, ‘Le miniature della περὶ ἄρθρων πραγματεία di Apollonio di Cizio’, pp. 55–59; Roselli, ‘Tra pratica medica e filo­logia ippocratica’. On Apollonius’s text, see Apollonius von Kitium, Illustrierter Kommentar, ed. by Schöne; and Apollonii Citiensis in Hippocratis De Articulis commentariusi, ed. by Kollesch and Kudlien. The manu­script is available online: . 32  Potter, ‘Apollonios and Galen on Joints’. 33  See Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition, p. 112. 34  Apollonii Citiensis in Hippocratis De Articulis commentarius, ed. by Kollesch and Kudlien, pp. 14, 9–11; Apollonius von Kitium, Illustrierter Kommentar, ed. by Schöne, p. xxix.

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cate illustrations with colours, instead of pen drawings or sketches (διαγραφή or διάγραμμα). Apollonius’s illustrated commentary is certainly a different kind of work in comparison to Mustio’s illustrated obstetrical manual; nonetheless, both are mainly dedicated to the explanation of practical procedures and tend to avoid dealing with theoretical explanations. Both texts in a certain sense reorganize the instructions based on medical authority (the Hippocratic treatise on joints and the chapters on difficult labour related to Soranus) and add helpful visual representations. Finally, both address a specific kind of highly specialized medical practitioner: for Mustio the obstetrices and for Apollonius the ὀργανικοί (instrumentalists), surgeons specialized in the cure of fractures and dislocations using traction instruments and other apparatuses, attested in the Hellenistic period.35 An important testimony to the direct and hands-on use of medical illustrated books in Eg ypt during the Byzantine period can be found in the Authentic Memoirs (1.18) by Zosimos of Panopolis, who lived between the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth.36 In a passage about the methods used by artisans and their abilities, he talks about the healing of fractures: Ainsi l’on peut voir, dans chacun des arts, des gens qui le pratiquent soit en usant d’instruments et de proceeds different, soit en étant different sur le plan de l’intelligence et du succès; et par-dessus tous les arts, c’est surtout dans celui de la médecine qu’il est possible de voir cela. Par example, en cas de fracture osseuse, si on est allé trover un prêtre rebouteux, recourant à sa devotion, il ressoude l’os, de telle façon qu’on entend jusqu’au crissement des (morceaux d’)os qui se remittent l’un contre l’autre. Et si l’on na pas trouvé de prêtre, il ny a pas lieu que l’homme craigne de mourir, mais on améne des médecins tenant des livres illustrés (de figures) avec des trait pleins, hachures, et de toute espèce; en suivant le livre, l’homme est bandé avec un appairellage et il poursuit sa vie après avoir recouvré la santé; non, assurément, on ne laisse pas un homme mourir faute d’avoir trouvé un prêtre rebouteux.37 [Also we can see, in every art, persons applying them using different instruments and procedures, or being different in intelligence and success. And over every art, it is mainly in the art of medicine that this can be observed. For example, in case of bone fracture, if you go to a bone-setter priest, resorting to his devotion he will set 35 

Roselli, La chirurgia ippocratica, p. vii, n. 2. Mertens, Les Alchimistes grecs, p. 115. 37  Marganne, Le Livre médical, p. 45. 36 

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the bone, in such a way that you can hear the crunching of the little pieces of bone that are placed back one against the other. And if the priest has not been found, it doesn’t happen that the man should fear for his life, but one will find doctors who have illustrated books with full drawings, and hatchings of all kinds; and following the [instructions in the] book, the man is bandaged and braced and can continue his life after regaining his health; surely, a man is not left to die for the impossibility of finding a bone-setter priest.]

This vivid passage sheds light on two categories of healers involved in the cure of bone fractures: bone-setter priests and physicians. Apart from showing that the bone-setter priest was the first healer sought when a fracture had to be treated, the passage clearly describes the process followed by physicians to help the patient. The physician carries illustrated books, and following the illustrations, he performs the appropriate treatment. While Apollonius and Mustio clearly stated the importance of illustrations as didactic tools, Zosimos indirectly confirms how physicians continued to use them during their professional practice. Although Zosimos does not describe the characteristics and nature of those illustrated books, they could well have been similar to Apollonius of Citium’s illustrated manual, or to the mysterious illustrations showing bandages, orthopaedic apparatuses, and traction machines reproduced by the sixteenth-century Greek physician Johannes Santorinus of Rhodes (now in Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2248, fols 556–673).38 Among Santorinus’s extremely crude drawings we find 38 

In a moment of great demand for reliable editions of texts of classical medicine, as was the beginning of the sixteenth century, Florence, BML, MS Plut. 74.7 aroused considerable interest both for the rarity of its surgical texts and for the uniqueness of its illustrations. In 1534, Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici, 1478–1534, son of Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano) asked for the manu­script to be sent to Rome in order to reproduce and amend its texts. The Byzantine humanist Janus Laskaris (at that time protégé of the Florentine Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi) was in charge of the enterprise. After Laskaris’s death in 1534, both MS Plut. 74.7 and his copy became part of the library of Cardinal Ridolfi, a keen collector of medical manu­scripts, who in the following years promoted the realization of two deluxe manu­scripts based on the text amended by Laskaris, to be offered to Francis I, king of France. The first is an illustrated selection of Greek surgical texts (including those of Apollonius and Soranus), now Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2247. The second is an illustrated Latin translation with commentary by the Florentine physician Guido Guidi (1509–1569), now Paris, BnF, MS lat. 6866. Apollonius’s and Soranus’s treatises have not been included, but many of their illustrations found an appropriate place in Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic treatises on joints and fractures, and in Galen’s On bandages. The drawings of Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2247 and Paris, BnF, MS lat. 6866, attributed to the Florentine painter Francesco Salviati (c. 1509–1563) and to an anonymous associate, do not derive from the illuminations of the ancient MS Plut. 74.7, but from the drawings collected by Santorinus, another member of the entourage of Cardinal Ridolfi. His drawings con-

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the illustrations of Apollonius’s methods to cure dislocations and Soranus’s illustrations of bandages, which lack the architectonic frames that surround the illustrations in the Pluteo copy and show a different attire of patients and physicians, often portrayed with turbans. Also included are illustrations captioned as belonging to Heliodorus’s and Galen’s manuals on bandages and to Oribasius’s treatises on orthopaedic machines (On slings and On machines), texts included but not illustrated in the Pluteo manu­script. The numbers accompanying these drawings are consistent with the chapter numbers in the older manu­script: moreover, the detailed illustrations of the orthopaedic devices are perfectly compatible with their descriptions in Oribasius’s text. All these elements suggest that Santorinus’s drawings could not have been copied from MS Pluteo 74.7, but from another, more fully illustrated work, pointing to the existence of a lost surgical treatise. Finally, in order to understand the context in which the obstetrical illustrations included by Mustio in his manual were utilized, we must also consider how different the therapeutic paradigm of Soranus’s medicine was in comparison to that of the Latin Gynaecia in terms of the roles played by doctors versus midwives. At the beginning of the second book of his treatise, in the chapter dedicated to normal physio­logic delivery, Soranus doesn’t mention any male physician at the birth scene; but in the fourth book at the beginning of the chapter ‘How in general to treat difficult labour, and the detailed care of difficult labour’, he states: In cases of difficult labour, the physician should also question the midwife. Now, whether it is caused by constriction and contraction of the region through which the foetus is to travel, or by coldness or heat of the atmosphere, or by hardness of the body, or because of a concavity of the loins, or a naturally small uterus, or because of conceiving too early in life, or because of the burden of fat, or because of compressing tumors, or grief, or fear, or bending of the neck, or inflammation, or dryness, or whatever other cause, one should first promote ease and relaxation. And one should neither have immediate recourse to surgery, nor allow the midwife long to dilate the uterus forcibly.39 stitute a notebook, now bound together with Laskaris’s amended copy of the Pluteo in Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2248: the watermark of its paper suggests that the notebook could be dated to the second decade of the sixteenth century. Guidi later published a printed illustrated edition of his work, Chirurgia e graeco in latinum conversa. See Grmek, ‘Vestigia della chirurgia greca’, pp. 58–59; Kellett, ‘The School of Salviati’; Hirst, ‘Salviati illustrateur de Vidus Vidius’. Paris, BnF, MS gr. 2248 is available online: . 39  Soranus, Gyneco­logy, iv. 2, trans. by Temkin, p. 184.

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Here, the physician is in charge of the patient, but he does not touch her. This is the midwife’s task, who, according to Soranus’s text, was not merely an executor of the physician’s instructions, but contributed with her knowledge and expertise to the delivery’s successful outcome.40 The male physician’s presence and role become more evident in the following chapters dedicated to embryulcia (extraction of a dead foetus using a hook) and embryotomia (dissection in uterus of a dead foetus). Here there is no mention of the midwife, and the physician is the one who carries out the surgical procedure. A few centuries later, Mustio’s manual would reflect a different social and medical situation: no male physician is mentioned alongside the midwife, and she is the only person in charge of the suffering parturient woman in every circumstance. Consequently, she needs to acquire all the anatomical and practical knowledge required to perform the aforementioned procedures. In conclusion, the need to instruct the midwife and help her deal with the most difficult deliveries by offering her a simplified version of Soranus’s obstetrical chapters and providing her with visual support possibly led to the creation of illustrated didactic texts in question-and-answer format. This genre probably already existed alongside Soranus’s text in the third century and was later adopted by Mustio. Moreover, Mustio’s work shows a use of illustrations already attested to in the Hellenistic period — as shown by Apollonius of Citium’s illustrated manual on the cure of dislocations — and still documented in the third or fourth century by Zosimos’s work. Here, as well as in Mustio’s treatise, the illustration is a medium for the transmission of a quite sophisticated yet practical knowledge, acquired thanks to the direct practice of a specific medical art. The effectiveness of the illustrations copied by Mustio from his Greek source is the element that mostly contributed to their survival in the following centuries: from the thirteenth century, Mustio’s illustrations started to be reproduced alongside other medical and surgical texts and can be found in a considerable number of manu­scripts.41 Anyway, a word of caution must be added about their actual use during the Middle Ages, which may have differed from 40 

For the later use of Mustio’s illustrations, see Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 150–62. 41  For example, they appear after the Latin translation of the Surgery of Albucasis in an Italian late thirteenth-century collection of surgical texts, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, MS Clm 161, available online: . And they are reproduced in a single folio which was part of a deluxe manu­script now bounded with a thirteenth-century French or Angevin herbarium: Copen­hagen, KB, MS Thott 190 2°.

Francesca Marchetti

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Mustio’s stated purpose to educate the midwives. As Monica Green argues, it is unlikely that medi­e val midwives would have used these illustrations, or that the books they belonged to ‘necessarily functioned to teach gynaeco­ logy to the marginally literate’.42 Later, with the establishment of midwifery as a profession in the fifteenth century, Mustio’s illustrations once again found their place in a book specifically intended for midwives. Eucharius Rösslin’s Der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosengarten (Hagenau, 1513), a text largely based on pre-existent sources and conceived as a manual of good practices addressed to midwives and mothers-to-be, shows a series of illustrations deriving from Mustio’s Gynaecia, including the explanation of procedures for managing normal and abnormal childbirth. The illustrations were probably added not only for their didactic value, but also to enhance the visual appeal of the book and therefore increase its economic success: Rösslin’s book was in fact repeatedly translated and republished for more than a century after its first publication and determined the survival of Mustio’s illustrations well into the modern period.43

42 

Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 153, 181–82, and 269–70. See Green, ‘The Sources of Eucharius Rösslin’s “Rosegarden”’, pp. 169–70; Kruse, ‘Neufund einer handschriftlichen Vorstufe von Eucharius Rößlins Hebammenlehrbuch’. 43 

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Bo­logna, Biblioteca Universitaria [Bibl. Univ.], MS 3632 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale [BR], MS 3701–15 Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek [KB], MS GKS 1653 4° Copen­hagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek [KB], MS Thott 190 2° Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana [BML], MS Plut. 73.1 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana [BML], MS Plut. 74.7 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, MS Clm 161 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS gr. 2153 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS gr. 2247 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS gr. 2248 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS lat. 6866

Primary Sources Apollonii Citiensis in Hippocratis De Articulis commentarius, ed. by Jutta Kollesch and Fri­ dolf Kudlien, Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 11.1.1) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1965) Apollonius Citiensis, Apollonius von Kitium, Illustrierter Kommentar zu der hippokrateischen Schrift ΠΣΡΙ ΑΡΦΡΩΝ, ed. by Hermann Schöne (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1896) Guidi, Guido, Chirurgia e graeco in latinum conversa (Paris: Gaultier, 1544) Hyginus, Fabulae, ed. by Peter K. Marshall (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1993) Meletios the Monk, ‘On the Constitution of Man’, ed. by J. A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codd. manu­scriptis Bibliothecarum Oxoniensium, 3 (1836), 1–157 Mertens, Michèle, Les Alchimistes grecs, vol. iv.1, Zosime de Panopolis, Mémoires authentiques (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995) Pausanias, Description of Greece, vol. iv, Books 8.22–10, trans. by W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, 297 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1926) Radicchi, R., La Gynaecia di Muscione: manuale per le ostetriche e le mamme del vi secolo d. C. (Pisa: Giardini, 1970) Rose, Valentin, Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina nunc primum edita cum additis graeci textus reliquiis (Lipsiae: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1882) Rösslin, Eucharius, Der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosengarten (Hagenau, 1513) Sharp, Jane, The Midwives Book (London, 1671) Soranos d’Éphèse, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. by Paul Burguière, Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas, 4 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988–2000) Soranus, Gyneco­logy, trans. by Owsei Temkin (Baltimore: John Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991)

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Secondary Works Andorlini, Isabella, ‘Testi medici per la scuola: definizioni e questionari nei papiri’, in I testi medici greci: Tradizione e ecdotica, Atti del III convegno internazionale, Napoli 15–18 ottobre 1997, ed. by Antonio Garzya and Jacques Jouanna (Napoli: d’Auria, 1999), pp. 5–15 Baader, Gerhard., ‘Early Medi­eval Latin Adaptations of Byzantine Medicine in Western Europe’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 38 (1984), 251–59 Beccaria, Augusto, I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli ix, x e xi) (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1956) Bettini, Maurizio, Women and Weasels: Mytho­logies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome, trans. by Emlyn Eisenach (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2013); English trans. of Nascere: Storie di donne, donnole, madri ed eroi (Torino: Einaudi, 1998) Bischoff, Bernhard, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, vol. i (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998) Bolton, Lesley A, ‘An Edition, Translation and Commentary of Mustio’s Gynaecia’ (un­ published doctoral dissertation, Uni­ver­sity of Calgary, 2015) Demand, Nancy, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) French, Valerie, ‘Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World’, in Rescuing Creusa: New Methodo­logical Approaches to Women in Antiquity, ed. by Marilyn Skinner (Lub­ bock: Texas Technical Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 69–84 Gourevitch, Danielle, ‘Cherchez la femme’, in Le Traité des Maladies aigues et des Maladies chroniques de Caelius Aurelianus: Nouvelles approaches. Actes du colloque de Lausanne, 1996, ed. by Philippe Mudry, Olivier Bianchi, and Daniela Castaldo (Nantes: Institut Universitaire de France, Université de Nantes, 1999), pp. 177–211 Green, Monica H., ‘Gynäko­ logische und geburtshilflische Illustrationen in mittel­ alterlischen Manuskripten: sprechende Bildern halfen den Frauen’, Die Waage, 30 (1991), 161–67 —— , Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaeco­logy (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) —— , ‘The Sources of Eucharius Rösslin’s “Rosegarden for Pregnant Women and Mid­ wives” (1513)’, Medical History, 53 (2009), 167–92 Grmek, Mirko D., ‘Vestigia della chirurgia greca: il codice di Niceta e i suoi discendenti’, Kos: rivista di cultura e storia delle scienze mediche, naturali e umane, 1.5 (1984), 52–60 Hanson, Ann Ellis, and Monica H. Green, ‘Soranus of Ephesus: Methodicorum princeps’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 37.2 (1994), 968–1075 Hirst, Michael, ‘Salviati illustrateur de Vidus Vidius’, Revue de l’art, 6 (1969), 19–28 Ieraci Bio, Anna Maria, ‘L’ἐρωταπόκρις nella letteratura medica’, in Esegesi, Parafrasi, Com­ pilazione in Età Tardoantica: Atti del III Convegno Nazionale dell’Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi, Pisa, 7–9 ottobre 1993, ed.  by Claudio Moreschini (Napoli: D’Auria, 1995), pp. 186–207

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—— , ‘Medicina e teo­logia nel De Natura Hominis di Melezio’, in Les Pères de l’Église face à la science médicale de leur temps, ed. by Véronique Boudon-Millot and Bernard Pouderon (Paris: Beauchesne, 2005), pp. 29–48 Ilberg, Johannes, ‘Die Überlieferung der Gynäko­logie des Soranos von Ephesos’, in Abhandlungen der philo­logisch-historische Klasse der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 28. 2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910), pp. 1–121; repr. in Abhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 60 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1911), pp. 1–121 Ingerslev, Emmerik, ‘Rösslin’s Rosegarten: Its Relation to the Past (the Muscio Manu­ scripts and Soranus), Particularly with Regard to Podalic Version’, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaeco­logy, 15.1 (1909), 1–25 Kellett, Charles E., ‘The School of Salviati and the Illustrations to the Chirurgia of Vidus Vidius’, Medical History, 2 (1958), 264–68 Kind, Friedrich Ernst, ‘Soranus’, in Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopädie der classischen Alter­ tums­wissenschaft, 2nd Ser., vol. iii (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1927), cols 1113–30 Kruse, Britta-Juliane, ‘Neufund einer handschriftlichen Vorstufe von Eucharius Rößlins Hebammenlehrbuch der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosengarten und des Frauenbüchleins Ps.-Ortolfs’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 78 (1994), 220–36 Leith, David, ‘The Antinoopolis Illustrated Herbal (PJohnson + PAntin. 3.214 = MP3 2095)’, Zeitschrift für Papyro­logie und Epi­graphik, 156 (2006), 141–56 Maire, Brigitte, ‘Gynaecia Muscionis: Réincarnation des Gynaikeia de Soranos ou naissance d’un traité?’, in Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquite: Actes du colloque de Fribourg, 28 novembre – 1er decembre 2001, ed. by Veronique Dasen (Fribourg: Aca­ demic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 317–23 Marchetti, Francesca, ‘Un manoscritto senza pari (le illustrazioni chirurgiche e farmaco­ logiche del codice 3632 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bo­logna)’, InBUB: Studi e cataloghi sui fondi della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bo­logna, 2 (2010), 41–63 —— , ‘Le miniature della περὶ ἄρθρων πραγματεία di Apollonio di Cizio e del περὶ ἐπιλέσμων di Sorano di Efeso nel codice laurenziano pluteo 74.7’, in La collezione di testi chirurgici di Niceta (Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 74.7): Tradizione medica classica a Bizanzio, ed. by Massimo Bernabò (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010), pp. 55–90 Marganne, Marie-Hélène, ‘La Gyneco­logie dans les papyrus grecs de medecine’, Acta belgica historiae medicinae, 8.4 (1994), 207–17 —— , Le Livre médical dans le monde gréco-romain, Cahiers de Cedopal, 3 (Liège: Cedo­ pal, 2004) Medert, Johannes, ‘Quaestiones criticae et grammaticae ad Gynaecya Mustionis pertinentes’ (inaugural dissertation, Universität Giessen, 1911) Montanari, Margherita, ‘Presenze femminili in ambito medico-terapeutico attraverso le epigrafi del CIL VI’ (unpublished masters’ dissertation, Università di Firenze, 2009) Orofino, Giulia, ‘Die Illustration der Heilmittellehre des Dioskurides zwischen der Spät­ antike und dem Hochmittel­alter: Dioskurides war gegen Pflanzenbilder’, Die Waage, 30 (1991), 144–48

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Potter, Paul, ‘Apollonios and Galen on Joints’, in Galen und das hellenistische Erbe: Verhandlungen des IV. Internationalen Galen-Symposium veranstaltet vom Institut für Geschichte der Medizin am Bereicht Medizin (Charité) der Humbolt-Universität zu Berlin, 18.–20. September 1989, ed. by Jutta Kollesch and Diethard Nickel (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993), pp. 117–23 Romano, Roberto, ‘I capitoli della Gineco­logia di Aezio Amideno tràditi dal Par. Gr. 2153 di Sorano’, in Storia e ecdotica dei testi medici greci, atti del II Convegno Internazionale, Paris, 24–24 mai 1994, ed. by Aantonio Garzya (Napoli: D’Auria, 1996), pp. 363–74 Roselli, Amneris, La chirurgia ippocratica (Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1975) —— , ‘Le Medicinales responsiones di Celio Aureliano’, in Le Latin médicale: La Consti­ tution d’un langage scientifique, Actes du IIIe colloque international Textes médicaux latins antiques, Saint Étienne, 11–13 septembre 1989 (Saint Étienne: Université de Saint-Etienne, 1991), pp. 75–86 —— , ‘Tra pratica medica e filo­logia ippocratica: il caso della περὶ ἄρθρων πραγματεία di Apollonio di Cizio’, in Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie: Actes du Col­ loque International de Saint Étienne (6–8 juin 1996), ed. by Gilbert Argoud and JeanYves Guillaumin (Saint Étienne: Université de Saint-Etienne, 1998), pp. 217–31 Segoloni, Maria Paola, ‘La dedica della traduzione latina dei Gynaecia di Sorano’, in Prefazioni, pro­loghi, proemi di opere tecnico scientifiche latine, ed. by Carlo Santini and Nino Scivoletto, 2 vols (Roma: Herder Editrice e Libreria, 1992), pp. 615–26 Smith, Wesley D., The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979) Urso, Anna Maria, ‘Il Liber geneciae ad Soteris obsetrix e la tradizione di Sorano’, in Textos medicos grecolatinos antiguos y medi­evales: estudios sobre composición y fuentes, ed. by María Teresa Santamaría Hernández (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancia, 2012), pp. 215–44 —— , ‘Procedimenti di riscrittura nei Gyanecia di Muscione’, in Les Textes médicaux latins comme literature: Actes du IVe Colloque intarnational sur les textes latins médicaux de l’Antiquité et du Haut Moyen Age, Nantes, 1er–3 septembre 1998, ed. by A. Pigeaud and J. Pigeaud (Nantes: Presses Université de Nantes, 2000), pp. 297–315

Pregnancy in Middle-Persian Zoroastrian Literature: The Exchange of Knowledge between India, Iran, and Greece in Late Antiquity Paolo Delaini

I

n Late Antiquity Sasanian court patronage attracted philosophers, medical doctors, and teachers from the former Roman Empire. Contemporary observers noted that the court of the Sasanian King Xusraw  I (ad 531–79) was a meeting place open to philosophical debates and to the diffusion of medical knowledge. According to tradition, King Xusraw welcomed the Greek philosopher Damascius and the ‘seven sages of Byzantium’ to his ancient capital of Ctesiphon at the time of their expulsion from Athens’s school of philosophy.1 It seems that this king was deeply interested in medicine; he invited and hosted numerous Byzantine doctors and financially supported Abraham of Beth Rabban, director of the influential Nisibis School, in his endeavour to build a hospital (xenodocheion). In addition, according to 1 

Agathias, Histories, ii, 30–31. Xusraw Anōšag-ruwān’s (‘the immortal’) patronage of philosophers and doctors is amply documented: see Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, pp. 363–440; Tardieu, ‘Chosroès’; Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh, pp. 180–90. On the attitude of Agathias, his prejudices, and his hostility towards the figure of Xusraw, see Cameron, ‘Agathias on the Sassanians’, pp. 172–76, and Walker, ‘The Limits of Late Antiquity’, pp. 56–65. The group of seven sages included Damascius, Simplicius of Athens, and Priscian of Lydia; see Panaino, ‘L’influsso greco nella letteratura e nella cultura medio-persiana’, p. 30.

Paolo Delaini has a PhD in Iranian Studies from the Uni­ver­sity of Bo­logna. He is currently working on a postdoctoral research project on The Knowledge of the Human Body, Anatomy and Physio­logy, and the Transmission of Scientific Knowledge in Sasanian Times. He has published two mono­g raphs, Medicina del corpo, medicina dell’anima (Milano, 2013) and La medicina nell’Avesta (Milano, 2016), and has made several contributions to the history of medicine in the Iranian tradition. Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 29–51 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117817

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Paolo Delaini

Zachariah Rhetor’s Ecclesiastical History, he also sent twelve doctors to the new medical facility.2 John of Ephesus notes that King Xusraw was also very interested in philosophy,3 and one of the doctors from the Nisibis school, Paul the Persian, apparently wrote for the Sasanian king a synthesis of Aristotelian dialectic and logic.4 During Xusraw’s reign important Indian literary works reached the Iranian court, some of which contained specific medical knowledge on the physio­logy of birth. The Sasanian court was the centre of a universalist empire, and as it grew into a meeting point for philosophical and medical traditions, additional ideas and notions regarding the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth reached Sasanian lands. The delicate process of adaptation and absorption of new ideas into Zoroastrian philosophy and religion also included Greek medical knowledge, which penetrated into Iran along two paths: through Greek physicians, brought to Persian royal courts, and through the Syriac Christian medical tradition (the medical literature of the Syriac-speaking Christian communities of the West and the East) which owes a great debt to Greek heritage and especially to Galenism from late antique Alexandria. The Church of the East represented a network of Christian communities, with a remarkable number of churches and monasteries, which extended across the Iranian Empire, integrated into the Sasanian political framework. Syriac authors translated Greek philosophical and medical sources and wrote original treatises on a range of topics. Translations appear to be grouped according to two periods. The first group of translations took place during the early sixth century and is best represented by Graeco-Syriac translations, mainly by the West-Syriac priest Sergius of Reš‘aina, who studied in Alexandria. A number of these translations, commissioned by East-Syriac scholars, such as Bishop Theodoros of Karkh Juddan, 2  Zachariah Rhetor, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. by Brooks, iv (1924), 147; The Syriac Chronicle Known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene, ed. by Hamilton and Brooks, pp. 331–32. 3  John, Bishop of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History (part III, vi, 20) defines Xusraw as a ‘shrewd and wise man who in the course of his life devoted himself assiduously to the study of philosophy’ (see John of Ephesus, Historiae Ecclesiasticae Pars Tertia, ed. by Brooks, pp. 240–41, 316–18; The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History, trans. by Payne Smith, pp. 417–19). 4  See Paul the Persian, Logic Book, ed. by Land, pp. 1–30 of the Latin text; pp. 1–32 of the Syriac text. Also see Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l’Empire Perse, pp. 166–68; Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, pp. 120–21; Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books, p. 80; Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, p. 427 with n. 4; Zaehner, Zurvan, a Zoroastrian Dilemma, p. 28; Teixidor, ‘Science versus foi chez Paul le Perse’; Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh, pp. 184–85, with n. 75.

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penetrated into the Sasanian cultural field of influence. The second period was dominated by the Graeco-Arabic translations prepared by the school of the East-Syriac scholar Ḥunayn ibn-Isḥāq (d. c. 873), who was also personal physician to a number of caliphs. Greek medical and philosophical literature entered the Sasanian Empire through a long process that lasted well into the Islamic period. This timeline coincides with the reorganization of the mainly oral Middle-Persian Zoroastrian literature, which was finally written down between the ninth and tenth century with the purpose of preserving Zoroastrian traditions in the Abbasid era. This meant that, although much of the content belongs to the Sasanian period, the process of textual transmission, reworking and rearrangement, caused the inclusion of different traditions, particularly in the medical field. Consequently, some events are chrono­logically misplaced, so that the medical-scientific knowledge described in the text sometimes belongs to a period different from that of the historical context associated with it. In the Sasanian Empire a mixture of cultures was the result of a certain political openness towards other religions, although sometimes disputed. An inscription (completed after ad 293) listed the foreign doctrines attacked by Sasanian Archpriest Kerdīr in the course of his ministry, evincing the presence of different religious traditions in the Iranian world: ‘Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, Nazarenes, Christians, Baptizers, and Manicheans’. 5 Medicine was one of the earliest fields cultivated by scholars, and the search for medical knowledge was a concept deeply rooted in all of these religious traditions. The intercultural transmission of medical theories is particularly evident in key meeting places such as the medical school of Gondeshapur6 or the Turfan Oasis along the trade routes where religious doctrines spread eastwards. The present work attempts to reconstruct the trail followed by these new medical ideas — particularly those of Indian origin — within the framework of Sasanian Iran’s role as a major late antique crossroads for the exchange of medical and philosophical knowledge.

5 

Les Quatre Inscriptions du mage Kirdīr, ed. by Gignoux, pp. 69–70. A letter of the Church of the East Patriarch Timotheos I (d. 823) testifies that a hospital in Gondeshapur was in existence by the late eighth century, but its foundation could date back to the time of King Xusraw II (590–628). 6 

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India as a Source of Medical Knowledge Legend has it that Persian physician Burzōy (Arabic Barzawayh), a doctor who practised within the circle of King Xusraw’s I court, translated into MiddlePersian (Pahlavi) a very valuable Sanskrit medical text that contained the fundamentals of Indian wisdom. There are several versions of this legend, and all indicate that Burzōy visited India, but the first attested version of the story contains an additional detail: it specifies that the Persian doctor was sent to India by King Xusraw himself, who had learned of the existence in that kingdom of a ‘wondrous book’. The book, called Kalīla wa Dimnah, contains ‘everything that a king needs to know’.7 In this account, Burzōy went to the court of India’s ruler, where he won the confidence of the king and of the wise men around him. There, he secretly made a copy of the text before returning to Iran, where Xusraw rewarded him generously for his achievement. According to legend, however, the doctor rejected the gifts and asked only that his bio­graphy, written by Minister Buzurǰmihr, be included as a foreword to the precious volume he had translated. A second version, represented in fewer manu­scripts, tells how Burzōy discovered in some books the existence of a fabulous plant that could raise the dead and asked King Xusraw for permission to search for it. The doctor failed in this pursuit, but after questioning some local wise men, he realized that the story surrounding the magic plant was an allegory: the mountains represent wise men, the medicinal herbs symbolize their books, and death signifies men’s ignorance. As a result of this discovery, Burzōy collected manu­scripts containing Indian medical wisdom, translated them, and brought them to Iran, where King Xusraw considered them to be so valuable he placed the books in the royal treasury. This legend is also mentioned in John of Capua’s Latin version entitled Liber Kelilae et Dimnae, or Directorium vitae humanae, composed between 1263 and 1278 and derived from the Hebrew version of the text.8 7  A text distinct from the Pañcatantra, the ‘five rules’ or the ‘five rules of wisdom’, while containing common arguments, as stated by de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, p. 53. The original text of Kalīla wa Dimnah was probably written in Middle Persian. The text has been preserved in a Syriac translation and in an Arabic one, apparently derived from the original Middle-Persian version. There are many elements that suggest that both versions, in Arabic and Syriac, have been translated directly from Middle Persian. See de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 1–11. 8  See Nöldeke, ‘Zu Kalīla waDimna’, p.  804, and Wizārišn ī čatrang ud nihišn ī nēwardaxšīr, ed. by Panaino, p. 116.

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A third adaptation of the same legend is narrated in the Šāhnāma and in the Ghurar as-siyar of Thaʽālibī. Here a wise man explains to Burzōy that the medicinal plant is nothing more than the book of Kalīla wa Dimnah. As the Indian sovereign had forbidden Burzōy to copy the manu­script, the doctor memorized the text and subsequently put it in writing. There are other variants to this story, also involving the idea of a search or exchange of knowledge,9 but besides the imaginary elements there is real evidence of research into and adoption of new medical information from India. The autobio­graphical chapter, which Burzōy allegedly requested to be added to the rest of the book as a reward instead of payment, contains specific references to medicine and describes details only known to field experts. The narrative devices contained in Burzōy’s autobio­ graphy — legends, allegories, and literary references — reveal and confirm the movement of scientific information between the two countries.

The Autobio­graphical Chapter as Original Source of Indian Medicine The historicity of Burzōy’s figure seems to be confirmed by the data provided — allegedly by himself — in the bio­graphical chapter, the fourth, which still remains today part of the book Kalīla wa Dimnah. In this chapter, which can be seen as an introduction in many ways, Burzōy asserts that he received a generous donation in goods from King Xusraw I both before and after his voyage, and cites two places where he stayed during his trip to India, one of which was presumably the site for his translation.10 In the same autobio­graphical chapter, 9 

The fourth variant seems to agree with an extended version of the story of Šāhnāma, while the fifth variant incorporates other events, including a discussion of the game of chess, which was both an object in itself and an exchange of knowledge. See Wizārišn ī čatrang ud nihišn ī nēw-ardaxšīr, ed. by Panaino, p. 117. 10  A translation of the bio­graphy of Burzōy is available in Nöldeke, Burzōes Einleitung zu dem Buche Kalīla waDimna, pp. 11–27; the text is partially reproduced in Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, pp. 423–25. On the chapter of the bio­graphy of Burzōy, see the collection of information, critically considered, in de Blois’s Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 24–33 and 58–60. Among the criticisms of the bio­g raphy of Burzōy, that of al-Bīrūnī stands out. It dates back to the first part of the eleventh century. Discussing the works of Indian literature, al-Bīrūnī described how Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ added, with his own hand or by drawing on other material, the entire chapter (according to al-Bīrūnī, Alberuni’s India, ed. by Sachau, p. 159) or just the episode of the uncertainty of faith and religion (according to one of the hypotheses examined by François de Blois) that marks the last part of the autobio­g raphical chapter of Burzōy. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ was a follower of a particular Manichean doctrine and therefore suspected, by medi­eval Muslim theo­logians, of having interpolated the text; they viewed with suspicion the

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Burzōy narrates his life story: his study of medicine, his recognition as a medical expert, his loss of faith in his profession, the ensuing interest in spiritual matters, and the desire to escape material things through a life of asceticism. This bio­g raphy seems to closely follow Indian literary models. The allegory of medicinal plants and spiritual wisdom can be found, for example, in the Buddhist text Tripiṭaka, which has features similar to the shorter version of Burzōy’s autobio­graphy, such as the doctor’s search for medicinal plants, his discovery of philosophical wisdom, and his return to Persia bringing new knowledge.11 Besides new literary and philosophical concepts, Burzōy’s autobio­ graphy contains interesting information on Indian medicine and the process of conception and birth, including a description of human development, from embryo to death, which follows the pattern of Indian medical beliefs.12 In the fourth chapter of Kalīla wa Dimnah, the autobio­graphical chapter, we read: In the medical works we find the following. When the sperm, of which the wellformed foetus consists, enters the woman’s womb, it mixes with her mood and her blood; then it thickens and acquires a viscous consistency. Then a wind stirs it, and it becomes similar to cream and then to curdled milk in consistency. After a certain number of days, the individual limbs become defined. If it is a male child, his face is asceticism that characterized the Manichaean religion, considered a faith that led to fanaticism (see de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 29–30, who also refers to the opinion of Francesco Gabrieli in ‘L’opera di Ibn al-Muqaffaʽ’, pp. 236–47). Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, p. 423, n. 1, thinks, with al-Bīrūnī, that the chapter did not exist in the original Pahlavi (see also Fiey, Communautés syriaques en Iran et Irak, p. 252, n. 156). Gabrieli, La letteratura araba, pp. 165–67, is convinced that the part about the relativity of religions reflects the personality of Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, a brilliant and restless soul, open to the most complex problems of religious speculation. A different opinion is that of de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 29–30, who claims that the autobio­graphical chapter of Burzōy was from the beginning a part of the book and was not inserted later. 11  In the text of Tripiṭaka we find the figure of the doctor Jīvaka, connoisseur of all the medicinal plants and healer of all types of diseases (Tripiṭaka, ed. by Chavannes, n. 189). At the death of the doctor the medical plants express their pain in a dirge, thinking that their use would be forgotten and they would fall into a kind of abandonment. Only one plant, harītaka, does not fall into despair: it is capable of curing all diseases. The physician represents Buddha. The plants symbolize the different laws. The plant harītaka represents impermanence. When Buddha was present in the world he used all sorts of means to cure men from their spiritual disorders. Since he has left the world few people know how to use these means, but the very idea of impermanence is sufficient to lead men to salvation (see de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 59–60). 12  See Nöldeke, Burzōes Einleitung zu dem Buche Kalīla waDimna, pp. 22–24; Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, pp. 367–70.

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towards the back of the mother; if it is female, towards the belly. The foetus stands with its hands on its face and its chin on its knees. It is wrapped in the placenta as if it [were] stuck in a sack. It breathes through a narrow, squashed opening. All its limbs are twisted into a narrow belt. Above it there is the heat and pressure of the womb; under it a dark and tight space. Linked from its navel to its mother, it sucks and eats what she eats and drinks. It remains in this position and in this condition until the moment of birth. When the time comes, a wind lifts it from the womb and the child finds the strength to move and to turn its head down towards the opening.13

Initial studies of Kalīla wa Dimnah, especially Hertel’s history of Pañcatantra or The Five Rules of Wisdom, have emphasized the similarities between the autobio­g raphical text and some passages of classical Indian medicine. Traditional Indian medical treatises based on the legendary physician Caraka’s teachings argue that the foetal heart is connected to the mother by means of channels and that, through these channels, desires fluctuate between the foetus and the mother.14 Indian medical texts contain, in sections devoted to the body, the subject of embryo­logy, obstetrics, and gynaeco­logy, but also anatomy and anthropo­logy.15 Hertel’s attention was attracted by the fact that both in classical Indian medical texts and in Burzōy’s book procreation was explained as the encounter between male semen and menstrual blood, the new blood that appears in the uterus during menstrual flow, which takes the place of the female seed. Texts of classical Indian medicine described menstrual blood as melting from the heat produced ‘like butter in the fire’, and a similar metaphor of milk preparation recurs in Burzōy’s work.16 Indian texts indicate that conception takes place at the end of the menstrual cycle when the uterus is preparing the ‘new blood’ that makes a woman fertile. Male seed is produced by the transformation of parts of the body and has a balanced supply of the four elements (air, fire, earth, water) and six flavours. The predominance of this seed gives rise to a male child while the predominance of female blood generates a female. During the first month of pregnancy, the embryo has a mucilaginous aspect and the different limbs are not distinguish13 

Fourth chapter of Kalīla wa Dimnah, the autobio­graphical chapter ‘the doctor Burzōy’. See Nöldeke, Burzōes Einleitung zu dem Buche Kalīla waDimna, pp. 22–23; Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, p. 425; Il libro di Kalila e Dimna, ed. by Borruso and Cassarino, pp. 54–55; Avicenna, Il poema della medicina, ed. by Borruso, p. 11. 14  See Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, p. 368. With regard to Indian medicine, Hertel mainly draws from Jolly, Medicin. See Comba, La medicina indiana, p. 206. 15  Comba, La medicina indiana, pp. 204–13. 16  Jolly, Indian Medicine, p. 63.

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able, as they develop simultaneously. In the second month, the foetus differs according to sex in its diverse forms: the male is like a small mass, the female is a stretched muscle, the hermaphrodite is a round and swollen mass (like a half-round fruit).17 Cold, heat, and wind all help its development. According to Caraka’s teachings, from the third month all the limbs occur simultaneously, whereas according to Suśruta, five masses (hands, feet and head, main limbs and secondary limbs) take shape in turn. Everything that is connected with the left side of the body predicts the birth of a female (increased use of limbs, enlargement of the left breast); conversely, the signals that relate to the right side of the body (when milk first appears in the right breast, the abdomen appears more swollen on the right or the mother raises the right leg first to walk) predict the birth of a male.18 When the body of the foetus is formed, a vessel clings to the mother’s navel; the placenta connects to this vessel and in turn to the mother’s heart.19 When the mother reaches the right moment for giving birth (from the first day of the ninth lunar month until the end of the tenth) the ‘wind of childbirth’ overturns the child and draws him out.20 Jean Filliozat in La Doctrine classique, notes that Burzōy’s work introduced in Sasanian Iran the role of the wind in medical embryo­logy.21 The Iranian doctor may have been the intermediary of these theories originating in India, or he may have contributed to the rediscovery of an ancient Indo-Iranian tradition. Filliozat notes that the pre-second-century Sanskrit text Carakasaṃhitā describes the encounter between a Bactrian (or Sogdian) doctor called Kānkāyana and some Indian scholars; the presence of a doctor belonging to the Iranian world in a fundamental ancient text of Indian medicine could be indirect evidence of prior contacts between the two countries. The cosmic role of the wind and the related influence of breath in physio­logy are precepts that belong to the oldest Indo-Iranian mytho­logy and seem to have followed a more fruitful development in India than in Iran. Zoroastrian dualism, based on the presence of two coexisting entities, is at the same time ethical — based on the idea of choice — and metaphysical, based on the opposition between the two 17 

Jolly, Indian Medicine, p. 66. Carakasaṃhitā of Agniveśa, Śārīra viii, 9, 14; ii, 23–25. Suśrutasaṃhitā, Śārīra iii, 34. See Comba, La medicina indiana, p. 202. 19  Jolly, Indian Medicine, p. 68. 20  Carakasa ṃ hitā of Agniveśa, Śārīra iv, 25; vi, 22, 24. See Comba, ‘La medicina āyurvedica’, pp. 849–51. 21  Filliozat, La Doctrine classique de la médecine indienne, pp. 31–32. 18 

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entities as the result of their intrinsic nature and ensuing state of being. The strong conceptual revision imposed by Iranian religious dualism seems to have attributed to the wind a different role from the one it held in Antiquity, and in compliance with the Zoroastrian tendency towards a coexistence between monotheism and dualism, the Pahlavi books split it into two elements, a good and an evil wind.

Misunderstandings in Text Translation Early commentators, especially Hertel, thought that the terms reported by Burzōy undoubtedly belonged to classical Indian medicine. However Burzōy, while learning of the new theories, could have misunderstood some basic precepts of Indian medicine, with the result that they were transmitted in a different form. One of these misconceptions concerns the position of the child, who, if male, should have his head turned towards the mother’s back.22 Burzōy omits the notion that the male foetus lies on the right-hand side and the female foetus on the left-hand side of the womb.23 Burzōy may also have misinterpreted the original text when he describes a connection between the baby’s and the mother’s navels, contrary to classical Indian medicine, which assumes a link between the navel of the child and the heart of the mother. It could be postulated that Burzōy followed a separate medical tradition, but it is more likely that he simply misunderstood the Indian text. A key point that proves the derivation of Burzōy’s theories from Indian medicine is the role of the wind, the dōṣa, which has its seat below the navel. This could be a reference to the fourth type of wind, the apana, responsible for the expulsion of feces, urine, semen, menstrual blood, and the embryo.24 22  See Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, pp. 368–69. Hertel, having found frequent misinterpretations of the theories set forth in the classical texts of Indian medicine, supports the theory of misunderstandings. 23  Jolly, Indian Medicine, p. 67. The question of determining the sex of the baby was part of the oldest scientific discussions. See the Greek testimony of Anaxagoras referred by Aristotle (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. by Diels and Kranz, 59A107): ‘the male is formed by the parties to the right, the female ones on the left, and the males are on the right side of the uterus, females on the left’; or that of Parmenides reported by Aetius Doxogr. (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. by Diels and Kranz, 28A54): ‘when the seed is separated from the right side of the uterus, children are born similar to the fathers, when from the left, to the mothers’. See Vegetti, Opere di Ippocrate, pp. 105–06. 24  See Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, p. 369.

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The autobio­graphical chapter contains further references that point to the fact that Burzōy very probably learned classical Indian medicine fundamentals in India. In the preface to the book Kalīla wa Dimnah, Burzōy cites the ‘four enemies’ referring to the four patho­logical elements that form the body.25 In Arabic translations, they are defined as follows: bile (mirrah), blood (dam), phlegm (balgham), and wind (rīḥ). The sequence resembles that of the three dōṣa or ‘impurities, faults’ of Indian tradition, with the addition of blood, the fourth dōṣa.26 The expression ‘the four enemies’ was controversial and has been translated in various ways, yet it is important to remember that it takes its cue from the meaning of the term dōṣa. The extant versions of Kalīla wa Dimnah have probably been transmitted to us through the Arabic translation from Middle Persian, while Burzōy’s own first translation was directly from Sanskrit into Middle Persian. It is very likely that Burzōy in his first draft translated the Sanskrit expression dōṣa with the Middle-Persian term dušmen ‘enemy’. The choice of the term can be considered accurate since, according to traditional Indian medicine, dōṣa is what causes disease, therefore is a pathogenic element, an ‘enemy’. However, many scholars translating into Arabic or copying the original text instinctively replaced the term ‘enemies’ with ‘humours’, referring to the four humours of Greek medicine: black bile (mirrah sawdā’), yellow bile (mirrah ṣafrā’), blood (dam), and phlegm (balgham).27 The Indian theory of dōṣa in fact appeared so alien to Muslim copyists that they felt compelled to replace it with the Greek theory of the four humours which was much more familiar to them.28 25  See in this regard the editions of Kalīla waDimnah: La version arabe de Kalîlah et Dimnah, ed. by Shaykhū, p. 41, where the Arabic text mentions ‘the four enemies: bile, blood, phlegm and wind’ or a similar scan in the Kitābu kalīlata wa dimnah, ed. by ‘Azzām, p. 38. 26  The sequence follows the principles of Indian medicine where, concerning the doctrine of the dōṣa, the number three is not a dogma: a fourth dōṣa, blood, is mentioned in the work of Suśruta (see Comba, La medicina indiana, p. 89). The wind, in Indian medicine, has the role of dōṣa, element of corruption and therefore a patho­logic agent. In the West, the closest reference to this tradition is that of the Hippocratic treatise On the Winds. In later times the wind seems to lose these characteristics, and by the time of Galen, the pneuma, described as mental and vital, is no longer mainly a pathogenic element. See Garofalo and Vegetti, Opere scelte di Galeno, pp. 312–13. 27  See Nöldeke, Burzōes Einleitung zu dem Buche Kalīla waDimna, p. 23, n. 4. 28  The result is a series of manu­scripts that show different versions, sometimes combining Indian thought with Greek. See Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, p. 368, who attributes to Burzōy the whole chapter based on the considerable presence of elements of Indian medicine; see de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, pp. 27–28, according to which the medical expertise, evident in the

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The sequence of the four ‘enemies’ originally proposed by Burzōy shows similarities with sequences from Middle-Persian sources, such as the tenth century Dēnkard, which still stands as a compendium of Zoroastrian beliefs. The Dēnkard lists the four elements as wind (wād), blood (xōn), black bile (wīš), and phlegm (drēm/*blagm).29 A different work of Middle-Persian literature, the Škand Gumānīg Wizār (vi, 14), also contains an analogous sequence.30 The two treaties in Middle Persian, Dēnkard and Škand Gumānīg Wizār, were composed in the ninth century, three centuries after Burzōy’s journey; it is possible that they reflect the physician’s work at the court of Xusraw as the original source for Iran’s medical traditions, handed down through the centuries.31

The Physio­logy of Pregnancy in the Middle-Persian Literature The comparison between medical theories on pregnancy and birth physio­logy contained in Middle-Persian literature and those imported from India or transmitted by Syriac medical texts further attests to the complex network of knowledge exchange. The fifteenth chapter of the Iranian work Bundahišn, or Primal Creation, is a collection of Zoroastrian creation myths and cosmogony entitled ‘On the nature of the births of each species’ and is devoted to the theme of prooriginal text of Burzōy, is additional evidence that he himself was the author of his bio­graphy and not Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, who was not particularly interested in medical topics. 29  Dēnkard, iii, ch. 263; ed. by de Menasce, p. 267; trans. by Gignoux, Man and Cosmos in Ancient Iran, p. 32. 30  The Škand Gumānīg Wizār indicates that the codes that have been handed down in Pāzand and Sanskrit, were written by Mardānfarrox, the son of Ohrmazddād, in the ninth century of our era. The Pāzand text (Škand Gumānīg Wizār, ed. by de Menasce, p. 78) shows the sequence blood (xūn), wind (vāt), bile (vaš, probably an error for wīš), and phlegm (daryam); see de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, p. 27, n. 4; see the translation of the Škand Gumānīg Wizār prepared by West (Sikand-Gûmânîk Vigâr, p. 147) who interprets vaš, evidently a mistake for wīš ‘bile’, as a misreading of the Pahlavi wars ‘hair’. On the Pahlavi term for ‘phlegm’, note that Shaki, ‘A Few Philosophical and Cosmogonical Chapters of the Dēnkart’, p. 138, n. 28, has proposed a reading (*blagm) other than drēm followed by Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books, p. 105, n. 4, and other scholars; the reading proposed by Mansour Shaki explains the Pahlavi term as a loan from the Greek phlégma and justifies the error of commentators as originated from the reading daryam of the Pāzand texts. On this issue see also the critical edition of the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (Antho­logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafazzoli, p. 169). 31  Additional passages of Dēnkard reveal the influence of Indian works to the Sasanian court. Dēnkard, ed. by Madan, pp. 412.17–413.2.

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creation.32 According to this chapter, a woman is fertile within ten days of the menstrual cycle, but she can become pregnant until the time of menstruation. If the male seed is stronger she will have a son, but if the female seed is more powerful, she will have a daughter. When the two seeds are of equal power twins will be born. If male semen is emitted first, it adds to the female seed and gives strength to the woman, while the contrary happens if female semen is issued first, as it will become blood and weaken the woman. The Bundahišn describes the female seed as cold and wet, of red or yellow colour, and ‘falling’ from the hips. In contrast, male seed originates from the top of the head, is hot and dry, white and dark blue in colour. The uterus is the repository for all female seed, and male sperm fills the uterus from the top. All excess male seed becomes blood, passes into the woman’s veins, and, at the moment of birth, becomes milk and goes to the breasts. Milk comes from the male semen, which maintains its original form for the first thirty days, but during the following three days it begins to mix with the female seed.33 The Bundahišn places much emphasis on the process of transformation of the male seed into blood and into milk, in a timed metamorphosis that reap32  See Bundahišn, trans. by West, pp. 60–61; ed. by Pakzad, pp. 198–203. In the numbering followed in the translation by West, it is Chapter 16. West follows the text of the codex K20 that varies from that one proposed here. 33  ‘In the Religion (pad dēn) it is said that a woman becomes pregnant (pēš-ābust bawēd) within ten days after menstruation (az dāštān) when a man approaches her […]. The menstrual period of a woman (dāštān ī zan) and the menstrual period of the animal world (dāštān ī gōspandān) [are called] wardagīh (‘estrus, heat’), when the animals go on heat, they lose blood (xōn mēzēnd). A woman returns to the menstrual cycle continuously (hamē) unless she becomes pregnant; during the ten days after menstruation she becomes pregnant; when she is purified (šust) from menstruation the time for pregnancy has come. Whenever the male seed (tōhm ī mard) is more vigorous (nērōgōmandtar) a male child is conceived; when a woman is more powerful, a daughter, and when both seeds are equally powerful, twins will be born. If the male seed comes before [that of the female] it becomes fat (pīh) and strengthens the woman. When the female seed comes before [that of the male] it becomes blood and the woman will be weakened (nizārīhēd). The female seed is cold and wet (sard ud xwēd); falls from the hips (tāzišn az pahlūg), its colour is red and yellow (suxr ud zard). The male seed is hot and dry (garm ud hušk), and descends from the top of the head and its colour is white and dark blue (spēd ud xašēn). The female seed takes its place in the uterus (kadag-gāh) and the male seed comes from above and fills the uterus’. See Iranian Bundahišn, ch. XV: abar ciyōnīh ī zāyišnān ī az har sardag ‘On the nature of the births of each species’. See the transcription and translation prepared by Sohn, Die Medizin des Zādsparam, pp. 195–202; see Bundahišn, ed. by Pakzad, pp. 198–202. The passage of Chapter 15 corresponds to the codices: TD1, fols 44v–45r (= 16 in the numbering taken from the translation of West, Bundahišn, pp. 60–61); TD2, fols 56v–57r; DH, fol. 189r–v.

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propriates for the father the privileged — albeit peculiar — role of the unborn child’s primary provider not only of the milk the newborn will feed upon after birth, but also of the nourishment necessary for the development of the foetus’s individual shape: All the excess male seed becomes blood, passes into the veins of the woman (pad ragān ī mādagān). At the moment of birth (pad hangām ī zāyišn) it becomes milk and goes into the breast (pestān) until, at the moment of birth, the child will be nourished; all the milk comes from the male seed. The male seed mixes with the blood of the woman and becomes colostrum (frušag), and in the uterus34 it accumulates in the cavity. […] the male seed […] remains thirty days […] in his state, then three days in a state of mixture (gumēzagih).35

At that point the sperm becomes blood (xōn) and the embryo (dāšt-[ag] ‘menstrual sign’) begins its growth and transformation,36 during which first eyes, ears, nose, and mouth form and then hands, feet, and the rest of the limbs. The father provides the solid elements, such as bones and hair, while the mother produces flesh and blood. Only after the foetus has developed its complete shape, feeding on the father’s seed-turned-blood, will the mother completely take over the final period of growth, nourishing the child on what she eats during the last half of the ten-month pregnancy:37 The seed becomes blood and the embryo grows; the eyes, ears, nose and mouth form and his hands and feet and all the limbs; the bones and the hair come from the father and the flesh and blood from the mother. Then […] of men [the limbs] […] in five months […] are formed by the mother and are developed by what she eats. Finally […] after ten months […] the birth of man comes.38

34 

The term seems to refer to a hollow organ or an organ with a ‘mouth’. The term ‘mouth’ (dahan) is used in relation to visceral organs also in Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram 30.16; see Antho­ logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafazzoli, p. 100. 35  Iranian Bundahišn, ch. XV. See Bundahišn, ed. by Pakzad, pp. 200–201. 36  See Sohn, Die Medizin des Zādsparam, p. 16. On the meaning of dašt-ē as ‘embryo, foetus’, see Sohn, Die Medizin des Zādsparam, p. 202, n. 19, who refers to the different translations in the editions of the text. 37  On the ten-month pregnancy, see Gignoux, ‘La Scienza Siriaca’, p. 49. 38  Iranian Bundahišn, ch. XV. See Bundahišn, ed. by Pakzad, p. 201. The time of gestation of a woman is compared with that of animals such as donkey, horse, etc.

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Some of these theories seem to originate from Galen, who distinguished between two types of seeds with different properties.39 Galen also argued that male and female seed produce different organs. The mechanism of transmission of the Galenic material, probably due to Syriac intermediation, shows that new theories were received and amended to suit a new cultural, medical, and religious context. The author of the Bundahišn text seems to refer to the Syriac tradition of the four seats of the seed, well known to East Syrian Christian authors, when he lists the functions and different seats of the seed while insisting on the fact that the seed turns into milk in the breast. The Bundahišn may have set a sort of model for Zoroastrian encyclopaedic texts on creation that combine cosmogony and cosmo­logy with the physio­ logy of pregnancy and childbirth. The Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (Selections of Zādspram), composed by the ninth-century Zoroastrian scholar and theo­logian Zādspram, similarly attempts to explain the creation, existence, and end of the world. While the work represents a syncretic expression of the Iranian tradition in its comparison with other doctrines, Zādspram was also interested in medicine and the formation of the human being before birth. According to the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (30.17–20) the seed (tōhmag) is located in the brain, at the top of the head, and dominates the four humours ‘as a sovereign ruler over the four classes’ (priests, warriors, farmers, craftsmen). The seed descends through the back veins, due to the strength of the legs, and after it flows downwards it exits the body. The vital spirit (gyān), which is of the same substance as fire, enters its ‘place’ (i.e. the uterus) together with the seed and, in the fourth month, appears in the shape of a body. The vital spirit’s brightness is responsible for eye and vision development, and once the eyes have been formed, and the formation of the head has been completed, the vital spirit settles in the brain from where it transmits, in the form of fire, first to the heart and then to the stomach, setting up the three main organs, that is, brain, heart, and stomach.40 39 

The theory that both male and female produce a seed from which children can become either males or females appeared in the Corpus Hippocraticum, De genitura, 7 (Hippocrates, Oeuvres complétes, ed. by Littré, vii, 478–81); De diaeta (De victu) i, 27–28 (Hippocrates, Oeuvres complétes, ed. by Littré, vi, 500–503). Galen (De semine ii, 12–15) praises Hippocrates for recognizing that the seed of both parents contributes to the formation of the embryo: see Galen, On Semen, ed. and trans. by De Lacy, pp. 146–47. Nemesius of Emesa (De natura hominis, xxiv) notes: ‘against Aristotle, Galen states that women have the seed, and that the mixture of both the two kinds of σπέρματα produces the κύημα’: see Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis, ed. by Verbeke and Moncho, p. 109. 40  Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram 30.23. See Antho­logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafaz-

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The development of the embryo takes place through the action of an immaterial agent, the frawahr (fravashi), a sort of ancestor-spirit protector and promoter of birth that in the Middle-Persian texts is also indicated as a growth agent and is sometimes cited in connection to air and light to represent ether, the fifth element. The frawahr has a role in determining the functions of the different organs in the child’s abdomen: it grows and protects (Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram 30.35). The description of human anatomy and physio­logy given by Zādspram, based on Greek medicine and adapted to Zoroastrian religion and philosophy, was influenced by Syriac scholars. Their influence is evident when Zādspram describes the four forces which serve for digestion using terms clearly translated from Syriac: the force ‘which attracts’ (āhanjāg), the force ‘which takes’ (gīrāg), the force ‘which digests’ (gugārāg), and the force ‘which expels’ (spōzāg).41

The Physio­logy of Pregnancy in the Syriac Tradition The Syriac tradition, unlike that of Zādspram, follows the idea of ‘four locations of the seed’, according to which the seed is in the marrow, in the breast, in the stomach, and in the kidneys. The theory is attested in a work on human physio­logy by (Pseudo‑)Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros.42 Unlike the later author zoli, pp. 101–03. On Zādspram’s idea of sight explicated as a pure fire that comes to reside in the eyes during the embryo’s formation (Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram, 30.23), see the corresponding explanation given by Plato, Timaeus, 45. b6–c2, who transmits an idea of Empedocles. Empedocles’ explanation was rejected by Aristotle (De sensu et sensibilis, 437.b; see Opere bio­logiche di Aristotele, ed. by Lanza and Vegetti, pp. 1083–86); Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the NinthCentury Books, p. 98; Antho­logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafazzoli, p. 170, with n. 23; Delaini, Medicina del corpo, medicina dell’anima, pp. 190–91; Daryaee, ‘Sight, Semen, and the Brain’, p. 111. 41  Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram 30. 27–30. See Antho­logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafazzoli, p. 103. 42  Who is almost certainly to be distinguished from Aḥ ūhdemmeh of Balad, consecrated as Metropolitan of the East in 559. Two different works titled ‘On the composition of man’ are attributed to Aḥūdemmeh. The first (see Aḥūhdemmeh, Traité d’Aḥoudemmeh sur l’homme, ed. and trans. by Nau) is preserved in a single West-Syriac manu­script of the ninth century (London, British Library, Oriental Manu­scripts, Add. MS 14620; see Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manu­scripts, ii (1871), 800–803) and is evidently incomplete, while the second (see (Pseudo‑)Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros, Treatise on the Composition of Man, ed. and trans. by Chabot) is found in an East-Syriac manu­script dated 1904 (known as MS CSCO, syr. 21, used by Chabot for his 1943 edition and now probably lost, olim Notre-Dame des Semences in Alqoš, Vosté cod. 66; see Vosté, Catalogue de la Bibliotèque Syro-Chaldéenne du Couvent de Notre-Dame des Semences, pp. 27–28) and is attributed to ‘Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros’ (proba-

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Gewargis Wardā, who would follow a simplified version of the text, (Pseudo‑) Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros transmits to the reader the full theory of the different seed qualities, which are in direct relation to the seed’s place of origin among the four listed. According to Syriac tradition followed by (Pseudo‑)Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros, the seed can be hot or cold, red or white, more or less viscous, salty or bitter, etc., and this will determine the behaviour of the man, his illnesses, his colours, and his characteristics ‘as all his flesh is as his seed’.43 These are the four seeds of man, and his seed is just as his temperament, his illnesses, his elements, his colours and his differences, seeing as all his flesh is like his seed.44

(Pseudo‑)Aḥūhdemmeh’s Syriac text lists the negative consequences for the future human being, depending on whether the seed is received in the first three hours of the day or night, or during the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, seventh, eighth, the ninth hour. These phases correspond to the moment the seed exits from one of the four different seats. A comparison of Syriac and Iranian traditions in terms of the foetus’s life is particularly interesting: Zādspram argues that the foetus begins to come alive in the fourth month, while the Syriac tradition describes this stage at the fortieth day.45

Conclusion Late antique Iran found itself at the heart of the exchange of medico-philosophical knowledge coming first from Mesopotamia, and later from the Greek and Indian worlds. Connections between Sasanian and Indian kingdoms and courts promoted the transmission of many doctrines of oriental origin into the Iranian world. The legend of doctor Burzōy, sent to India by Sasanian King bly a work of the second century, prepared by a Doctor Antipater and not preserved elsewhere; see Brock, ‘Aḥudemmeh’). The MS of 1904 continues with a short anonymous text on man as a microcosm (see (Pseudo-)Aḥūhdemmeh, On Man as a Microcosm, ed. and trans. by Chabot) which could be by Šem‘ōn d-Ṭaibūtēh (see Reinink, ‘Man as a Microcosm’; Kessel, ‘La Position de Simon de Taibuteh’, pp. 126–28). 43  See Wardā, ‘Un poème inédit sur l’homme-microcosme’, ed. by Gignoux, p. 183. 44  (Pseudo-)Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros, Treatise on the Composition of Man, ed and trans. by Chabot. See ‘Treatise on the composition of man prepared by Mar Aḥūdemmeh Antipatros’, in Chabot, ‘Notice sur deux manu­scripts’, pp. 56–57 (ed.), p. 67 (trans.). 45  Compare the text of Wardā (Mēmrā on the Explanation of the Man as a Microcosm, in ‘Un poème inédit sur l’homme-microcosme’, ed. by Gignoux, lines 450–451, p. 183) with that of Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram 30.23: see Antho­logie de Zādspram, ed. by Gignoux and Tafazzoli, p. 101.

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Xusraw to learn the secrets of Indian knowledge, seems to be based on real evidence: Burzōy’s writings present some similarities with the oldest Āyurvedic treatises of Caraka and Suśruta, especially in the sections devoted to embryo­ logy, obstetrics, and gynaeco­logy and in the references to the role of wind during childbirth. If we accept the historical existence of Burzōy, he may have been the intermediary of these theories from India or he may have contributed to the rediscovery of an ancient Indo-Iranian tradition. The cosmic role of the wind and the related influence of breath in physio­logy are precepts that belong to the oldest Indo-Iranian mytho­logy. While in India these principles seem to have followed a more extensive development, in Iran the strong revision imposed by dualistic religious conceptions relegated the wind to a minor role. An overview of Middle-Persian texts written in Middle Persian (Bundahišn, Dēnkard, Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram) and their references to birth physio­logy suggests the influence of Greek and Syriac traditions on Sasanian medico-physio­ logical knowledge. A clear example of this influence is the case of Zādspram, whose interest in the physio­logy of birth is evident in his discussion of human body composition according to schemes and theories that go back not only to the medicine of Hippocrates and Galen, but also to Syriac ideas, such as the micro-macrocosmic doctrine (the correspondence between cosmos and body parts) and to Syriac medical theories, such as that of the four forces, which are required for physio­logical processes like digestion. Particularly significant was the role of East-Syriac monastic schools as intermediaries in the transmission of philosophical and medical traditions. The Galenism of late antique Alexandria entered the East-Syriac tradition through West-Syriac intermediaries such as Sergius of Reš‘aina, who, besides translating philosophical and medical texts, had an extensive collaboration with Sasanian Christian colleagues — notably with Theodoros of Karkh Juddan. In the face of the arrival of Graeco-Roman science, traditional medical knowledge such as herbal remedies (that probably originated in Mesopotamia) persisted: in the Syriac Book of Medicines (a compendium containing medical lectures, astro­logical references, and folk prescriptions) the Galenic material was edited together with dozens of indigenous medicinal recipes.46

46 

In an attempt to infuse medicinal recipes with the authority of Graeco-Roman science, some of these prescriptions were ascribed to figures such as Galen and Ptolemy. See Bhayro, ‘The Reception of Galen’s Art of Medicine in the Syriac Book of Medicines’. On medicine in Syriac tradition, see Muraviev, ‘La Médecine thérapeutique en syriaque’.

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Part of this medico-philosophical knowledge was, in the Iranian context, accepted and integrated into literary and religious tradition, not in a systematic way, as it appears in Greek medicine, but through a process of acquisition and adaptation into Zoroastrian religious beliefs. Although conservative religious spheres generally opposed foreign ideas, Zoroastrian theo­logians and authors wanted to compete as equals in dialectic confrontation between different religions, and so had to adopt a system of hermeneutical-philosophical tools suitable for facing the many heresies and sectarian beliefs that were spreading in their territory.47 The attempt to legitimize these new scientific principles by placing them in the shelter of tradition is evident in the work of Zoroastrian authors: on the one hand, new ideas are presented as qualifying elements supporting traditional religious conceptions; on the other, they must undergo a process of reconciliation with Mazdean religious tradition. Through this process, Zoroastrian theo­logians and authors could, for example, adhere to the general Greek theory of the four cosmic elements (water, fire, earth, air), but in order to preserve the sacredness of water and fire they were able to demonstrate, against evidence, that water and fire are never antagonistic. To explain scientific theories, such as that of the sacred fire of conception, authors such as Zādspram adopted a series of metaphors based on images close to their religious tradition: in the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram the vital fire is compared to the fire of the temple, while the fires of the head, the heart, and the stomach are likened to the three fires of priests, warriors, and farmers.48 The diffusion of medical and scientific theories, creeping into the delicate balance of religious beliefs, was subjected to the harsh judgment of the Zoroastrian clergy (which fluctuated between the reception of new philosophical instruments and the reaction against theories judged to be at odds with religious dictates). Zoroastrian theo­logians and authors seem to have been more interested in the issue of birth and conception and receptive to its multiple explanation than their monastic Syriac Christian counterparts. Despite many obstacles, Zoroastrian scholars were highly successful in operating an original synthesis of these scientific-philosophical bodies of knowledge coming to them from Greek medicine through Syriac translation, from the Indian world, and, even earlier, from Mesopotamian heritage. 47 

This process of integration was periodically interrupted by episodes of conflict and official opposition to the cultural roots of these foreign, non-Iranian teachings. See Berti, L’au-delà de l’âme et l’en-deçà du corps, pp. 7–46; on the myth of Zoroastrian intolerance, see Payne, A State of Mixture, pp. 23–58. 48  Gignoux, ‘L’Apport scientifique des chrétiens syriaques à l’Iran sassanide’, pp. 220–21.

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Works Cited Manu­script Editions DH The Codex DH: Being a Facsimile Edition of Bondahesh, Zand-e Vohuman Yasht and Parts of Denkard, Iranian Culture Foundation, 89 (Teheran: Iranian Culture Foundation 1970) K20 Bundehesh: Liber Pehlevicus, e vetustissimo codice Havniensi descripsit, duas inscriptiones regis Saporis Primi, ed. by N. L. Westergaard (Havniae: Impensis Librariae Gyldendalianae, 1851) TD1 The Bondahesh: Being a Facsimile Edition of the Manu­script TD1, Iranian Culture Foundation, 88 (Teheran: Iranian Culture Foundation 1970) TD2 The Bûndahishn: Being a Facsimile Edition of the TD Manu­script No. 2 Brought from Persia by Dastur Tîrandâz and now Preserved in the Late Ervad Tahmuras’ Library, ed. by Ervad Tahmuras Dinshaji Anklesaria with an introduction by Behramgore Tahmuras Anklesaria (Bombay: British India Press 1908)

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Tracing the Maternal Body in Medieval Muslim ­ ogical Texts Gynaecol Kathryn Kueny

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he maternal body is, with its fluid and permeable boundaries, like Lévi-Strauss’s animals, ‘good to think’.1 Despite its porous nature, the maternal body remains impenetrable to men, who must overcome their inability to experience pregnancy by having to imagine how it feels and functions, or by attempting to appropriate generative fecundity through subsidiary forms of knowledge or performance. To this end, the gynaeco­logical writings of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn Sīnā, ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīya, and others provide much insight into how medi­eval Muslim physicians both envisioned the female reproductive body and sought to harness its procreative potential through elaborate exchanges with Greek medical wisdom, Koranic revelation, legal discourse, theo­logical argument, natural science, and traditional folklore. These intricate exchanges produced ambiguous portrayals of a female reproductive body that was weak and in dire need of male control, but also an enviable and unattainable locus for divine sign, creative agency, and intimacy with nature. Helen King notes that the human body is a physical and symbolic artefact;2 as such, it is both naturally and culturally construed.3 Many feminist scholars 1 

Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, p. 89. See Kueny, Conceiving Identities, pp. 51–80. 3  King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 5. 2 

Kathryn Kueny is Professor of Theo­logy at Fordham Uni­ver­sity, where she also serves as Director of the Middle East Studies and Religious Studies programs. She received her PhD from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago in the History of Religions, working primarily under the mentorship of Jonathan Z. Smith. She is the author of two books,  The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam and  Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medi­eval Muslim Discourse and Practice. Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 53–78 BREPOLS

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take this perspective one step further to suggest there is no ‘natural’ composition to the body. Even ‘sex’, which distinguishes females from males on the basis of their reproductive organs, is always subject to cultural understandings of gender.4 Judith Butler has argued that there can be no sex that is not already gender; rather, ‘sex by definition will be shown to have been gender all along’.5 For Judith Butler and others,6 there is no ‘natural body’ that resides outside the discourse and cultural forms through which it is identified. Even internal, physio­logical processes, which have long been protected under the guise of perceived bio­logical fact, are equally susceptible to the political, social, and cultural narratives that gender the body.7 Given the difficulties in separating the vagaries of language from bio­logical ‘fact’, it is hard to deny that the material reality of the body is inextricably entwined with the cultural forms through which it is gleaned intelligible. It is an observable fact that infants emerge from women’s bodies. But notions of how life is conceived, how it develops in the womb, and how its identity, constitution, and appearance take shape vary considerably across time and space.8 Medi­e val Muslim visions of maternity reflect such variegations, as they, too, are informed by the practical experiences of mothers, fathers, familial relations, household responsibilities and duties, sex and reproduction, but also by the more abstract speculations about procreation and generation in both natural and cosmic realms. A survey of early Muslim literature reveals a plethora of diverse opinions on the many roles the maternal body plays in the generation of life, and the limited extent to which the maternal body bears responsibility for that life in terms of its health, appearance, and future standing within the community. Over time, these varied perspectives narrowed as medi­eval Muslim physicians began to describe ‘natural’ reproductive processes and the maternal body according to social, cultural, and theo­logical assumptions about the subordinate status of women. Such assumptions projected inherent physical and moral weaknesses onto the maternal body, which sanctioned men to assert control over female reproductive anatomy and behaviour to insure the ideal life that they believed 4 

Here, gender can be defined as the behavioural, cultural, or psycho­logical traits typically associated with one sex or another. 5  Butler, The Judith Butler Reader, p. 91. 6  See, for example, King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 6. 7  Birke, Feminism and the Bio­logical Body, p. 3. 8  Delaney, ‘Cutting the Ties that Bind’, p. 452.

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God desired. Later medi­eval medical discourses about the maternal body, therefore, tended to favour authoritative male voices that prescribed more traditional reproductive roles for men and women, and to blame female morals, behaviours, and physio­logies when birth outcomes appeared less than the constructed ideal. These efforts to denigrate the maternal body, however, were often put into play when ordinary men and women took matters into their own hands to control, regulate, or make sense out of their own reproductive lives.

The Bearing of Life in the Koran The Koran itself provides no comprehensive, normative manual of reproductive theories and practices. Rather, it projects brief statements in a kaleidoscopic display of procreative processes and agents of creation in both cosmic and individual realms. These statements point to an all-powerful deity whose multiplicity of creative plans and abilities engage, mystify, but ultimately transcend human logic, comprehension, and control. However, throughout its many references to cosmic creation, the generation of the first man, or human sex and reproduction, the Koran insists God alone maintains absolute command over every entity that exists, from its very inception to its final destruction. To draw essential distinctions between God and his creations, Koranic revelations recite the many ways God creates and reproduces human life so that no one view becomes normative. For example, in some passages God says the word Be! and whatever he wills comes into being (kun fayakūn).9 By way of contrast, other Koranic passages suggest God laboured to knead and shape life from a mixture of water (mā’)10 and earthy substances such as clay (ṭīn),11 potter’s clay (ṣalṣāl),12 mud (ḥamā’),13 sticky clay (ṭīn lāzib),14 and dust (turāb),15 which highlight his role as creative artisan. The image of God forming life out

9 

Sūras 2:117, 6:73, 16:40, 36:82, and 40:68. In Sūra 24:45, God creates every beast from water (mā’), and in Sūra 25:54, ‘it is he who created from water (mā’) a human being’. 11  Sūras 6:2, 23:12, 32:7, 38:71. 12  Sūras 15:26, 55:14. 13  Sūra 15:26. 14  Sūra 37:11. 15  Sūras 3:47, 22:5, 5:11, 40:6. 10 

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of a clay mixture is further deepened by the fact that mā’ can refer to either water or semen.16 In addition to these examples, the Koran also highlights God’s intimate, often sexual, interactions with a feminized earth (al-arḍ). Sūra 71:17–18 states that ‘God caused you to germinate from the earth (anbatakum min al-arḍ), then he will return you into it and bring you out again’. Sūra 53:32 suggests likewise that God ‘knows you very well since he produced you from the earth (anshā’akum min al-arḍ)’. These passages project God not as an artisan but as a farmer who plants seed into a receptive earth, nurtures life as it grows, and resurrects it after it dies each spring. When the revelations shift from descriptions about God’s initial generation of human life to the rote mechanics of human reproduction, the Koran continues to confirm God’s control over all of life, and his ability to create it in any way he chooses. Despite the fact that the Koran asserts the ‘male and the female’ (al-dhakara wa al-unthā) come together to serve as signs of God’s creative power (Sūra 92:3), or that God ‘has made pairs (azwājan) for you among yourselves, and of the cattle pairs (azwājan), multiplying you thereby’ (Sūra 42:11), the revelation insists that sexual intercourse plays a coincidental but not an essential role in the generation of life as it, too, is subject to God’s will. In contrast to these Koranic passages that display the creation of life in terms of signs that point to God’s power and transcendence, medi­eval Muslim physicians and scholars situated themselves as the primary authorities over what a womb produced. Through their concrete depictions of conception, the inner structure and workings of the maternal body, faulty pregnancies, and neonatal care, these scholars cast the female body as the passive, more dependent sex that must be controlled by men. Because these male scholars construed women’s bodies as ‘naturally’ weak, they understood the entire course of reproduction, from the first act of sexual intercourse to the suckling of the newborn baby, as a potential threat to God’s intended procreative outcomes. To alleviate this threat, medi­eval physicians and scholars asserted control over every stage of the reproductive act. These men sought to usurp maternal power over the production of life by becoming the primary custodian over women’s bodies and their inner workings.

16 

For example, Sūra 86:6–7 refers to God creating the human being (al-insān) from a sperm drop (mā’in dāfiqin) going out from between the backbone (al-ṣulbi) and the ribs (al-tarā’ibi). Islamic medical texts consistently employ mā’ to refer to male or female semen. See, for example, Ibn Qayyim, Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qur’ān, ed. by al-Ḥarastāni, p. 293.

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Medi­eval Understandings of Conception To explain how conception occurred, medi­e val Muslim medical discourse adopted the Hippocratic/Galenic two-seed theory, which affirmed that semen came from all parts of the body of each parent to form the different parts of the child’s body. Underscoring Koranic revelations, the two-seed theory projected that both male and female partners contributed similar reproductive material to the formation of the foetus. According to Hippocrates, semen resulted from sexual excitation, when the heat sparked by lust caused all the bodily fluids and organs of the body to release particles from their essence that duplicated their own likeness in the child. To account for why a child might resemble one parent or another or both, Hippocrates stated, ‘The child will resemble in the majority of its characteristics that parent who has contributed a greater quantity of sperm to the resemblance, and from a greater number of body parts’.17 Either the male or the female may contribute greater quantities of sperm to the process; one is not privileged over the other. Practically speaking, the more female sperm that is derived from the particles of a woman’s nose, for example, as opposed to the male sperm that is drawn from the father’s, will result in the offspring’s having its mother’s nose. However, the child’s eyes may still look like her father’s if the male sperm dominates in that regard. Hippocratic/Galenic reproductive theories contrasted sharply with those held by Aristotle, who supported the view that males alone provided the foetal ‘form’ and ‘principle of movement’ while females supplied only the matter that contributed to the body of the foetus. However, in terms of explaining resemblance, there is not much difference between the Hippocratic and Aristotelian models. For Aristotle, when the form completely mastered the matter, the child would be male and look like his father. Children who looked like their mothers, like distant ancestors, or appeared as monstrosities (defined as anything that resembled something other than its parents), all reflected the relative failure of the male form to master stubborn and defiant female matter.18 If the child did have its mother’s nose, the male sperm must have failed to overcome the mother’s matter in that particular area. What differs in the Aristotelian model is the overriding belief that the child should have its father’s nose, at least in an ideal world. 17  Hippocrates, The Seed, trans. by Lonie, p. 322. For a summary of both the Hippocratic and Aristotelian arguments, see Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, pp. 43–46. 18  Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, p. 45.

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Despite such medical and revelatory support for the equal role men and women played in the reproductive process, and the perceived randomness of inherited traits, many Muslim scholars and physicians insisted that the male had a more naturally dominant role in determining inherited traits than did the female. Simply put, children should look like their fathers on some fundamental level. For example, Abū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿIbādī (d. 872 ce), an Assyrian Nestorian Christian who was the personal physician of the ‘Abbasid caliph Mutawakkil in the ninth century ce — and was, most likely, very much influenced by Aristotle — declared that what is in the womb must fully reach the shape and form of the father in order to be called offspring.19 Like Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, other Muslim scholars rejected Hippocrates’ two-seed theory and suggested that males alone produced the life form of the child. Mālik, for example, relates how ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUmar disapproved of castration because ‘the completeness of the created form is in the testicles’.20 These examples illustrate, perhaps, the ongoing competition between the Aristotelian privilege of male dominance during the reproductive process and the more egalitarian view espoused by both the Koran and the Hippocratics that suggested males and females contributed equally to the production of life. Maternal contributions to reproductive outcomes were further denigrated as most medi­e val Muslim physicians, like their ancient Greek counterparts,21 came to favour a bio­logical model based on the cultural practice of competition, which envisioned the womb as an arena in which stronger, more potent sperm battled for control over thinner, weaker sperm. For example, Persian physician Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, in his tenth century ce Kitāb al-dā’ al-khafī (Book on the Hidden Illness), proposed that within the confines of the womb, one of the two sperms emitted by either the male or the female eventually came to dominate (muḥīl) the other (mustaḥīl), and then transformed it according to its own inherent characteristics.22 The idea that one sperm must come to dominate the other is reinforced through medi­e val discussions of reproductive anomalies. For example, if one sperm failed to overcome the other, scholars proposed that Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle, ed. by Filius, p. 275. Mālik, Muwaṭṭa’, 51.1.4. 21  Aristotle, for example, favoured a model of competition between opposing influences, a view that is still, though greatly modified, predominant today (Sturtevant, A History of Genetics, p. 80). For further discussions of Aristotle’s model of competition, see Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science, p. 167. 22  Rosenthal, ‘Al-Rāzī on the Hidden Illness’, p. 52. 19 

20 

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a hermaphrodite (khunthā) resulted, which was for them a less-desirable form that deviated from the norm.23 In most cases, medi­e val doctors argued the more powerful sperm would depend on its superior quantity and/or quality.24 Muslim physicians projected a variety of scripts to account for why one seed might be ‘superior’ over another. One suggestion was that the child takes after the first parent to reach orgasm.25 Here, the force of the orgasmic experience empowered and strengthened the first sperm out of the gate, allowing it to dominate the weaker.26 In theory, the male or the female could have more abundant or better-quality sperm, and therefore the child could resemble the mother or the father. However, encoded in these discussions lurked an underlying Aristotelian belief that in an ideal world, male sperm should naturally dominate the female sperm, essentially because in its optimal form it was better, hotter, stronger, thicker, and quicker. In an ideal world, then, the male sperm would always win; thus, children would always resemble their fathers. However, medi­eval physicians realized that the world humans inhabit was far from ideal: children exit the womb looking nothing like fathers, mothers, or even distant relatives. Therefore, elite male scholars spent much time explaining why a man’s sperm might deviate from its optimal form, and how he might rectify the problem so his seed achieved its natural dominance. For example, the tenth-century ce physician from Spain, ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, in his Kitāb khalq al-janīn (Creation of the Embryo), emphasized the importance of foreplay before sex, as passion was key to abundant sperm production. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd explained — quite conveniently perhaps — that the more pleasure a man experienced, the more sperm he would dispel, which, of course, increased his chances of producing offspring that would look more like him.27

ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 24; Rosenthal, ‘Al-Rāzī on the Hidden Illness’, p. 54. 24  Muslim, for example, records traditions that reflect on the subtle differences in sperm colour and consistency (Jāmiʿal-ṣaḥīḥ, ‘Kitāb al-ḥayd’, no. 608), as does Suyūṭī (Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 185). 25  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 9. See also Ibn Qayyim, Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qur’ān, ed. by al-Ḥarastāni, p. 294; and Bukhārī, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. by Karmī, ‘Kitāb al-anbiyā’, no. 546; and ‘Kitāb al-anṣār’, no. 275. 26  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 185. Here, Suyūṭī links sexual desire with the production of greater quantities of sperm. 27  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 10. 23 

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To rectify the problem of thin, weak, or minuscule amounts of sperm, a man was instructed to shower his wife with affectionate words, fondle her hand, lick her body, gaze upon her, and refrain from articulating any grievance he might have against her.28 He should even pursue peak environmental conditions by making sure there was no southerly wind blowing during his act of coitus, as it produced lazy souls,29 or it generated delicate, soft, unformed seed that lacked enough maturity to mate.30 Men were encouraged to exercise caution in choosing a suitable partner for sexual relations. They were taught never to have intercourse with a woman who refrained from sexual relations for a long period of time, or with a sick woman, as her condition might impact his ability to produce a sound child.31 In general, scholars asserted healthy men generated robust, dominant seed; old, sick, lazy, or diseased men expelled deficient or weak seed.32 Even one’s mood affected the quality and quantity of sperm produced. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, paraphrasing Hippocrates, professed men did not ejaculate sperm in one state every time; rather, sperm changed with the conditions of both the soul and the body. A happy soul strengthened the body, and a stronger body gave rise to more perfected sperm.33 Likewise, sad, sick souls only yielded weak, thin sperm that would most likely be dominated by the mother’s.34 If men worked to become happier, healthier sperm producers, they would more likely than not replicate offspring in their own image. The potential was there; they just needed to realize it. Adjustments to diet and daily habit would also produce stronger, richer sperm. The tenth-century Muslim physician Abū Ja ʿfar ibn Abī Khālid Ibn al-Jazzār al-Qayrawānī, for example, identified a number of foods men could consume that were known for their abilities to yield greater quantities of sperm: chickpeas, beans mixed with something that adds warmth, moist meat, egg yolks, pine nuts, and peppercorns.35 The Ṭibb al-a’imma, a collection of medi­ 28 

Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 249. Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 249. 30  Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 250. 31  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 19. 32  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, pp. 10, 19, 186. 33  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd claims that youths tend to bear more males, because of their strength, happiness of soul, and gladness (Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 25). 34  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 25. 35  Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 243. 29 

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eval medical ḥadīth attributed to the Shīʿite imams, recommended hot, tender endive, for it increased semen, improved the colour, and multiplied the number of males one could produce.36 The Shīʿite imams also recommended a meal of parched barley (sawīq) for the begetting of strong, healthy children.37 Some Shīʿite scholars also suggested that men who masturbated excessively easily lost their erections when it came time for intercourse, or the semen they emitted when they needed to reproduce would be less than potent.38 The key here, of course, was for them to stop pleasuring themselves or at least aim for less frequency if they wished for sperm that was thick, quick, abundant, and could easily impose itself upon the woman’s. Medi­eval physicians also suggested men failed to produce strong, dominant seed because a mother’s womb may be corrupt and distort the father’s sperm, no matter how optimal it might be. Ninth-century ce scholar Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, for example, wrote that physical deformities might be caused by ailments in the womb or in the tissues from which the foetus was composed, ‘just as an imperfection in the wool or in a tool prevents the craftsman from making something correctly, as he intends’.39 Often, medi­e val physicians believed little could be done to correct the innate weaknesses of the womb and were satisfied simply to identify and catalogue its flaws. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, for example, noted women most capable of conceiving should be of normal weight and size; heavy women had a hard time reproducing, as fat cut off the mouth of the womb, which prevented male seed from entering.40 Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, citing Hippocrates, proposed very cold women did not get pregnant because coldness solidified the seed and the very hot remained barren because heat burned the seed. Likewise, very dry and wet women failed to reproduce because their dryness shrivelled the seed and their wetness caused it to slide out.41 Here, no diets, habits, or special recipes could counter such detrimental 36 

Nīsābūrī, Islamic Medical Wisdom, trans. by Ispahamy, p. 177. Nīsābūrī, Islamic Medical Wisdom, trans. by Ispahamy, p. 111. 38  Nīsābūrī, Islamic Medical Wisdom, trans. by Ispahamy, p. 15. 39  Jāḥiẓ, Chance or Creation?, p. 78. 40  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, noting Hippocrates (Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 19). See also Hippocrates, Aphorisms, v. 46. For ancient Greek medical depictions of what type of woman is more likely to conceive, see King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 141, who quotes Hippocrates’ Prorrhetic. 41  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 36. See also ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. 37 

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bodily imbalances that froze, burned, dried, or drowned healthy male seed. In each case, male scholars depicted the female body as a hostile barrier to persistent, well-intentioned, and optimal male efforts to replicate themselves in their own likeness.

The Inner Structure and Workings of the Maternal Body Male physicians believed women needed to possess ideal wombs and have a healthy, regular menstrual cycle in order to conceive; therefore, the path to a successful pregnancy and delivery was more likely than not a precarious one. Women who exercised too much or had dark skin (because their bodies reflected the surrounding hot, dry climate) could experience little or even no discharge.42 Both Greek and Muslim physicians asserted that lighter flows might be more detrimental to conception than heavier ones since menstrual blood played a vital role in nourishing the foetus.43 In contrast, women who were moist and fleshy and/or light in colour (products of cool, wet climates) naturally had healthier menstrual cycles that would lead to more successful pregnancies.44 Scholars imagined that a single tube connected the woman’s uterus to her head, so even the smallest of afflictions, like a nosebleed, could quickly block the discharge of menstrual blood.45 In addition to worrying about a nosebleed, women also had to face the possibility that some other obstruction might block the mouth of the womb, which would prevent the menstrual blood from exiting altogether. If this happened, the menstrual blood would become congested, cause the heart to palpitate, and the woman to tremble or faint. Such conditions obviously stood in the way of male desires to reproduce. Scholars likened a woman with a blocked flow to something hideous or monstrous, a social pariah: The afflicted one would refuse to eat and would crave clay and coal as her belly turned black and her bile a bright red.46 These physicians identified the best time for conception as right after a woman completed her menstrual cycle, when the vessel of the womb cleansed ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. Second-century ce medical writer Soranus of Ephesus suggests women can stop menstruating altogether if they exercise too much (Gyneco­logy, trans. by Temkin, p. 133; King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 142). 43  King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 31. See also Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, p. 64. 44  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. 45  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. 46  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. 42 

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itself of all remaining blood.47 If any trace of blood stayed in the womb, it decayed and putrefied,48 and corrupted both the male and female seeds when mixed.49 Scholars also feared bits of menstrual blood left in the womb would severely attack the male penis by causing ulcerations,50 which might prevent conception altogether,51 and render the man impotent. A woman might still be fortunate enough to conceive if she were able to navigate successfully such physical imperfections. However, receptive wombs were also viewed with suspicion. For example, medi­eval physicians personified productive wombs as lustful harlots, ‘greedy’ creatures that had a strong appetite for seminal fluid.52 They sucked or breathed in male sperm through their hungry ‘mouths’, holding it tightly for themselves.53 Casting a womb’s ability to conceive in language parallel to discussions about promiscuous sexual behaviour meant the lucky woman who did manage to conceive must also possess a body or moral disposition that was somehow wanton or loose. Once conception occurred, however, scholars characterized the womb as modestly chaste with no further appetite for sexual intercourse.54 At this point, the womb mirrored the more conservative virtues of chastity by sealing itself up to prevent further seed from entering it.55 If the womb were to remain open to more male 47 

The Koran (unlike its Aristotelian or Hippocratic predecessors) forbids intercourse with women who are menstruating (Sūra 2:222). This prohibition supports the fact that people did not believe conception could take place (or at least could not occur in a healthy fashion) during a woman’s period of bleeding. Aristotle (Generation of Animals, trans. by Peck, 727 b12–23) also believed women would not conceive if they had sex during menstruation, but did not condemn sex during menstruation. For discussions about the views of Aristotle and Hippocrates, see Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, pp. 99–100. 48  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 10. The word he uses for menstrual putrefaction is al-fād, a word that implies moral wickedness and depravity. 49  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 28. See also Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, p. 135. 50  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 18. 51  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 20. 52  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 193. 53  The pseudo-Aristotle states the womb breathes in the male semen in much the same way as the mouth and nostrils inhale substance, and the route from the vulva to the inside of the womb is like the path from nostrils to larynx (King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 28). 54  Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 193. 55  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 18; Ibn Qayyim, Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qur’ān, ed. by al-Ḥarastāni, p. 304.

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seed, that seed might mingle with the first and produce a monstrous child that had two fathers.56 Male physicians believed a child could potentially have two fathers, even though the reality was a rare event. As such, they prohibited the possibility altogether: The Shāfīʿites, for example, ruled that a child could have only one mother and one father.57 In general, most physicians were comforted by the fact that the womb’s closure upon its reception of a man’s seed safeguarded offspring from becoming ‘mixed up’ in ways that would undermine established religious laws governing inheritance or incest. However, frightening tales of foetal twins becoming entangled into one monstrous being in the womb continued to warn men and women about the potential hazards of illicit sexual behaviour.58 Given the disastrous impact of such unlawful and unnatural liaisons, scholars viewed any birth anomaly with suspicion and held females responsible for what emerged from their wombs. Such suspicions clearly undermined Koranic passages that revealed God alone creates and shapes life in any way he pleases.

Faulty Bodies, Faulty Pregnancies: Miscarriages and Preterm Births Drawing from Greek medical literature, medi­eval Muslim physicians laid out the many gestational perils an embryo would confront in the ‘threefold darknesses’ (ẓulumāti thalāthi) of a woman’s womb.59 Physicians, for example, noted how the transition from sperm drop to clot was particularly dangerous.60 ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, for example, cited astro­logists who claimed that Saturn, a star ruled by its coldness, dryness, and rottenness, governed the drop of sperm during the first month and rendered it defenceless against random, natural elements they thought sought its demise.61 Once this period of danger passed, he noted, God willed the foetus’s life would prevail over potential destruction and wasting 56 

The reason why Islamic law abhors adultery is to prevent a child whose descent is (literally) ‘mixed up’, which is what happens when the seed of two men mingle together in a woman’s womb (Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 35). Natural historian Damīrī investigated this possibility in his discussion of the zarafa, an animal generated at the watering hole when different types of animals have sexual intercourse with one another (Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 534). 57  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 305. 58  Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle, ed. by Filius, p. 517. 59  Sūra 39:6. 60  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 40. 61  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 37.

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away, at least until the eighth month.62 By invoking Saturn, medi­eval physicians suggested forces of nature could derail God’s control over embryonic fate. Medi­e val physicians likewise proposed female bodies, and not God’s will, caused miscarriages. They speculated male and female seed may mix properly but often failed to stick to the womb, especially if its membrane were too thin.63 Or, if there were too much moisture in the womb, the seed might slip out.64 Miscarriages also resulted from tumours in the womb, reductions in the embryo’s maternal nourishment, a drying up of the woman’s blood, or pressure on her breast.65 Women may also miscarry as a result of their own corpulence, a fall, a strike, fatigue, excessive anxiety, a general weakness of the womb and its ligaments, an accumulation of sticky gastric juices that open up the uterus,66 a haemorrhaging of blood, or even diarrheal.67 Miscarriages could be instigated by the simple hazards a woman encountered in her daily life. For example, a woman might miscarry if she experienced a good fright or scare, or because she heard a loud sound or got too close to something that caused the foetus to be expelled, such as a barking dog.68 A woman’s cravings for foods that are unavailable or forbidden for her to consume may also prompt a miscarriage.69 In this case her unbridled carnal desires and needs endangered the foetus. These examples illustrated how an unstable womb or even a woman’s frivolity, hunger, or ignorance could impact negatively a foetus’s potential to thrive. Given their desire to list all the ways to prevent miscarriages, it is evident Muslim physicians believed God did not destine the foetus to die, but that women were responsible for the demise of an otherwise healthy pregnancy. 62  63 

ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 40. Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 39; ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq

al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 44. 64  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 39. 65  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 39. 66  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 44. See also Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 40. 67  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 44. 68  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 39. In Jewish texts, it is mentioned that a woman miscarried as the result of a barking dog (Schochet, Animal Life in Jewish Tradition, p. 120). Pliny reports how sneezing after intercourse causes a miscarriage (Natural History, Book 7, trans. by Beagon, no. 42), and how the very smell from lamps being put out can also cause an abortion (Natural History, trans. by Beagon, Book vii, no. 43). 69  Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 286.

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Because women often failed to bring a pregnancy to term, men needed to be more vigilant in protecting the foetus from female foibles, or in devising ways to overcome the female body’s inherent deficiencies. For example, medi­e val physicians advised pregnant women to refrain from excess movement until they entered the second month. In some cases they cautioned against women engaging in such mundane practices as walking, for fear the jiggling might loosen the seed from the womb.70 Physicians also asked men to refrain from mentioning foods their wives might crave, so that their insatiable desires would not prompt an expulsion of the foetus.71 For example, husbands were instructed to substitute harmful forms of clay their wives might crave with the more preferable clay from Nashāstaj, which they mixed with lettuce, endive, radish, and oxymel (sakanjabīn).72 They were also informed to temper their wives’ excess gas with pomegranate drinks fused with peppermint water, quince (safarjal) flavoured with spices, or a beverage derived from cassia bark (darṣīnī)73 to prevent preterm births. Rabbān al-Ṭabarī even prescribed a particular stone that men could attach to women that contained antidotes for miscarriages, a practice advocated by medi­eval Jewish physicians as well.74 In these examples, men positioned themselves between women and God to take control of female frailties or the womb’s ‘threefolds of darknesses’, where, because of a woman’s physio­logical or character insufficiencies, men felt the need to assist the divine in generating the life he commanded but could not necessarily deliver. Even when pregnancies did not result in miscarriages, much could still go wrong. For example, as the embryo developed, men feared a woman’s womb might be too tight to accommodate normal growth. Rabbān al-Ṭabarī drew carefully the analogy to what happened when a young, flowering cucumber was placed in a narrow vessel. The cucumber would expand in size and shape equal to the inside of the vessel. If the container were small and confined, then the child would also become small and weak.75 Likewise, if a tree were forced ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 42. See also Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 285. 71  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 41. 72  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 41. 73  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 40. 74  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 39. According to Jewish tradition, pregnant women should wear an eben tekuma (preserving stone) to prevent miscarriages (Preuss, Biblisch-talmudische Medizin, trans. by Rosner, p. 385). 75  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 36. See also Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle, ed. by Filius, p. 435. 70 

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to grow between stones, it would not flourish. The stones in this case represented a small, cramped womb, which would choke off vital nourishment for the child and ultimately stunt its growth.76 In this example, the womb was cast as nothing more than a container. Women could do little to expand, hone, or modify their own deficient vessels to accommodate a growing child. However, by claiming such intimate knowledge about the inadequacies of the maternal body, men distanced themselves from their own roles in producing malformed, sickly, or weak offspring. They also challenged the Koran’s position that God alone created life — or not — as he pleased, with their own authority to engineer desired maternal outcomes. If women were able to manoeuvre their burdens successfully through the many obstacles that threatened the livelihood of the foetus during the early months of gestation, more danger awaited them toward the end of their pregnancies. According to ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, women were pregnant for approximately nine to nine and a half lunar months.77 Foetuses that were born before or after this time period might survive but were often subject to disease or even death. For example, physicians asserted a foetus could not live in the womb after 288 days.78 Some women believed they might be pregnant for ten or eleven months, but medical scholars suggested their ignorance or misunderstanding was due to air coming down from the belly during coitus that bloated the womb or blocked the menses, which affected the mind.79 Here, men’s knowledge about the female body and its inner workings trumped a woman’s actual experience of her own pregnancy. Physicians all agreed that babies born during the eighth month had the least chance of survival. These individuals portrayed the eighth month as a period of great liminality, the moment where the child began to position itself for delivery. As it began to move down in the uterus, the foetus became vulnerable to a variety of diseases.80 ʿArīb ibn Saʿd noted how the natural progression of the growing, seventh-month foetus down into the uterus caused the surrounding 76  77 

ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, pp. 31–32. ʿ Arīb ibn Saʿ d, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 32. Rabbān

al-Ṭabarī suggests there is much greater variability in terms of gestation (Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 33). 78  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 37. 79  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 33. 80  For a discussion of this phenomenon in the Greek context, see Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science, p. 210. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 37.

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membrane to tear and turn weak. These tears and weaknesses prompted the womb to convulse and the umbilicus to stretch during the eighth month, which induced great pains or fevers for both mother and foetus, and made them susceptible to weakness, illness, disease, and death.81 To avoid such disasters, men urged women to exercise great caution during the eighth month by avoiding fatigue, bad food, baths, and excessive sneezes.82 Strangely, medical scholars believed that babies born prematurely in the sixth or seventh month had a better chance at survival than did children born during the eighth month.83 While they may have been thin, weak, or bore the burdens of their physical limitations for some time, these premature babies somehow did not fall prey to the same types of calamities and diseases as did those born during the eighth month.84 The peculiar belief that the eighth-month child would be in greater danger than the seventh-month child was rooted in numero­logy. In the ancient world, the number seven had positive connotations, as it was a primary number and therefore more powerful, while the number eight did not.85 For example, the Hippocratics asserted the seventh-month child thrived because of the inherent properties and qualities of the number seven. A healthy, full-term baby would be born at 280 days, which represented a cycle of seven periods of forty days.86 Following the Hippocratics, ʿArīb ibn Saʿd noted the moon, which had quick movements, governed the seventh month, but that Saturn, which was cold, dry, rotten, and slow, governed the eighth month. Saturn quickly silenced the foetus and caused it to become ill.87 In these examples, the inherent qualities of numbers, or the movement or quality of planets, rather than the divine will, dictated whether or not a pregnancy would be successful.

81  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 36. Hippocrates identifies the dangerous first and sixth forty-day periods during pregnancy as dangerous (Women’s Life in Greece and Rome, ed. by Lefkowitz and Fant, pp. 241–42). 82  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, pp. 37, 42. 83  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, pp. 33–34. Pliny notes children born before the seventh month are never viable (Natural History, Book 7, trans. by Beagon, no. 38). 84  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, pp. 36–37. 85  Pliny, Natural History, Book 7, trans. by Beagon, p. 186. 86  Hippocrates, On Fleshes, ed. and trans. by Potter, viii. 613. See also Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, pp. 33–34. 87  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 37.

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Ironically, those children who were born during the eighth month and survived, and the mothers who delivered them successfully, were often elevated in status by the medi­eval Islamic tradition. The most famous eighth-month child was the prophet Jesus, son of Mary, whose birth in the eighth month served as a sign for all of God’s creation. Jesus was the exception, however; scholars noted no subsequent child born during the eighth month would live.88 Other religious traditions also featured wondrous eighth-month births. For example, the Christian St Felicitas delivered her child during the eighth month so that she could experience better the joys of martyrdom.89 For most ordinary women, however, a premature delivery during the eighth month exposed their inherent physical, moral, or emotional limitations in carrying a child to term. In order to prevent barrenness, miscarriage, or premature births, medi­eval physicians cast the maternal body as ‘transparent’. Their need for the maternal body to reveal its inner workings through external ‘signs’ transferred agency over that body from women to men. For example, men could know that a woman was pregnant if she urinated on chickpea or lentil seeds planted in the ground and the plants suddenly grew. Here, the life within her revealed itself to men through signs in nature. Men could also detect pregnancy by fumigating a woman’s vagina with incense90 or some other powerful substance like garlic,91 and then waiting to see if the scent escaped from her nostrils. If it did, men could determine that the woman was pregnant because channels from the womb to the mouth had to be wide open so the blood would flow freely to the foetus. Men could also have a woman drink plenty of honey blended with water before she slept. If she were colicky upon awaking, it meant that she was pregnant, since the womb wrapped itself around the sperm, which caused cramping, discomfort, and gas.92 Scholars noted that a woman’s face also revealed her condition. ʿArīb ibn Saʿ d, quoting Hippocrates, stated a woman was pregnant if her eyes were sunken deep, and the whites of her eyes changed from their natural colour to Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbar, p. 66; ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 36. 89  Cobb, Dying to Be Men, pp. 112–13. 90  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 19. 91  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 36: Damīrī, Hayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 61; ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 28. 92  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 28; King, Hippocrates’ Women, p. 33. 88 

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a discoloured tint. Signs of conception also included her trembling at the time of intercourse, a slight pain indicated below her navel, an increase in her breast size, or a dusty-collared face.93 Through their ability to discern and interpret such external signs, men’s knowledge and expertise of the maternal body took precedence over women’s experience, and God’s omniscience. The maternal body also exposed the sex of the child to its male audience, who could interpret the signs thanks to their novel expertise. Medi­eval medical scholars proposed that the excess heat associated with the male foetus permeated the entire maternal body, as did the cold connected with the female foetus. Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, for example, asserted that if the colour of a woman were splendid and beautiful, then the foetus she was carrying would be male; if her colour were ugly and greenish, the foetus would be female.94 ʿArīb ibn Saʿd underscored this point by suggesting a woman who carried a male would be agile in movement, and cheerful and intelligent in soul.95 He also added that a mother who conceived a female would experience general unhappiness, a dulling of the senses, sluggishness in movement, and a corruption and greening of her skin.96 Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazwīnī (fl. 1330–40 ce) asserted a man could determine gender by squeezing out a bit of a woman’s breast milk on the palm of his hand, and then casting a louse into it. If the louse made its way out of the milk the child would be a girl, if not, a boy, since the milk of a woman who carries a girl is thin and that of one who carries a boy is thick.97 Further, they observed if a woman scratched the right side of the breast or womb, she conceived a male. Or, if her right breast were larger than her left, especially her nipple, and if all the blood vessels on her right half were harder and fuller than the vessels on the left half (especially the veins under the tongue), the child would be male.98 A woman who raised her right foot first while walk-

93  94 

ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 28. Rabbān al- Ṭ abarī, Firdaws al- ḥ ikma, ed.  by Siddiqi, p.  35. See also Suyū ṭ ī, Ṭ ibb

al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 195; Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women, p. 107; Hippocrates, Aphorisms, v. 42. 95  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 24. 96  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 24. See also Pliny, Natural History, Book 7, trans. by Beagon, no. 41. 97  Qazwīnī, The Zoo­logical Section of the Nuzhatu-l-qulūb, ed. and trans. by Stephenson, p. 45. 98  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 25. See also Suyūṭī, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 195.

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ing carried a male, and her left, a female.99 When fat accumulated on the right side of the womb, the child would be male, if on the left, female.100 If a woman found a heaviness on the right side of the womb, and she prodded it, and her eye moved to the right, the child would be male, the opposite a female.101 Even if she tried to hide such revealing characteristics of the foetus’s identity, physicians rendered a woman incapable of concealing fully what flourished within. In fact, the ḥadīth scholar Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj asserted any mother who tried to veil what was in her womb was evil.102 By marking the mother’s external form with signs of its own identity, the foetus transformed the maternal body to expose itself to its true owners — the male observers whose sperm worked in partnership with God to generate life — and to place its livelihood, care, and future in their hands. As a result, both mother and child become subject to male propriety, scrutiny, and control. Sadly, the transparent maternal body revealed not only its successes, but also its failures. For example, Rabbān al-Ṭabarī suggested if a woman were not conceiving, her urine should be cast upon a head of lettuce. If the lettuce dried up, her seeds were corrupt.103 Here, if her urine killed a living plant, her body would be exposed as incapable of supporting life.104 Physicians noted also how the female body revealed signs of death within it; as the child inside her slowly degenerated, a woman’s appearance transformed from one of glowing health to distorted sickliness. Her breasts shrivelled,105 her eyes sunk, her face, body, and legs swelled, her ears and nose turned white, and her lips became green.106 Even what a woman ate showed up on her child’s body, apparent for all to witness and evaluate. For example, if a woman secretly satisfied her cravings by consumRabbān al- Ṭ abarī, Firdaws al- ḥ ikma, ed.  by Siddiqi, p.  36. See also Suyū ṭ ī, Ṭ ibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Thomson, p. 195. 100  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 25. 101  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, pp. 24–25. 102  Muslim, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ‘Kitāb al-qadr’, no. 6393. 103  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 36. 104  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 19. 105  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 35; ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 44. This phenomenon was also noted by Maimonides, who also suggests if a woman is carrying twins and only one of her breasts withers, then one of her foetuses will be aborted (Fuṣūl Mūsā, trans. by Rosner, p. 26). See also Hippocrates, Aphorisms, v. 37, 38. 106  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 44. 99 

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ing clay (ṭīn) or coal (faḥm), those materials stuck to the child’s head, causing an abnormal defect.107 Nowhere was the maternal body more transparent than in the case of dream interpretation. In these examples, men transferred female procreative power and experience to themselves through their ability to direct the sequence of events within a dream towards positive reproductive outcomes. For example, the Egyptian historian and legal scholar Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Damīrī (1344–1405) suggested that a man who was able to seize the image of a rare bird (anqā’) in a dream would become the father of a courageous son, if his wife were pregnant.108 In addition, if his wife is already pregnant, a man who dreamt of a lion on his lap will be blessed with a boy.109 For men with expectant wives, birds of prey,110 unstrung pearls,111 and calves112 also invoke male children; scorpions in the belly indicate hostile offspring.113 If a man dreamt of a fish coming forth from his pudendum, his pregnant wife will give birth to a girl.114 Dreams also had the power to affect negatively a pregnancy. If a man dreamt about a lump of congealed blood that comes out of his nose, penis, arms, belly, or mouth, his wife would suffer a miscarriage.115 In this case, the dream context allowed the male to don the role of a pregnant female who aborted the life within him/her. This example suggested that a man who did not wish to have a child (for unspecified reasons that may have included an illicit sexual relationship or household poverty) could induce vicariously premature labour to secure the outcome he desired in reality.

107  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 40, who notes Galen. See also the Hippocratic De superfoetatione, where it is suggested that if a pregnant woman has the desire to eat coal and earth, the child will carry a black mark on its head (Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, p. 146). 108  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, ii, 90. 109  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, ii, 22. 110  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 624. 111  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 609. 112  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, ii, 292. 113  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, ii, 46–47. Damīrī also suggests sows appearing in dreams indicate large offspring (Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 435–36). 114  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, i, 572. 115  Damīrī, Ḥ iyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, ii, 75.

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Women Not Fit to Be Mothers: The Dangers Inherent in Childbirth and Neonatal Care Medi­eval Muslim literature explored a number of examples that illustrate both mothers and children perishing either right after birth or during the first few months of life. Sad and grief-laden images of dead babies, women, and children abound; there was great sympathy in the early Muslim tradition for the pain and agony a family would suffer as a result of such deaths. Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn Māja (d. 887 ce), for example, recorded how pregnant women who die during childbirth became martyrs.116 Women who lost at least three small children were elevated automatically to paradise as well.117 Newborns and those young ones who were breastfeeding would ascend straight to the paradise upon death, along with martyrs, prophets, and infant girls buried alive. 118 Clearly survival for both mother and child was feared to be the exception rather than the rule. In the medical literature, death, though sometimes avoidable, was an ever-threatening, frequent side effect of childbirth. Although some scholars deemed it legal for male physicians to look upon the forbidden parts of a woman during childbirth,119 it was more likely midwives attended women in labour to insure death was not the result. The fact that men did not witness the actual birth of the child, however, did not stop them from speculating on the difficulties and dangers mothers, their midwives, and the child itself were certain to face during this perilous process. As a result, they laid out detailed instructions for both mothers and midwives to facilitate the successful birth of a healthy child. For example, physicians predicted women might faint from their labour pains, so they commanded midwives to keep the mother conscious throughout her delivery.120 They discussed in depth how the baby’s legs might appear before its head, or the foetus may come out on its side, or be obstructed altogether.121 If the legs came out first, the midwife must manually turn the entire body around, which might lead to immediate death of both mother and child from the twist116 

Ibn Māja, Kitāb al-sunan, iii, no. 2803. Bukhārī, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. by Karmī, ‘Kitāb al-janā’iz’, nos 340, 463; Muslim, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ‘Kitāb al-birr was al-ṣila was al-adāb’, no. 6367. 118  Smith and Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, p. 173. 119  Ibn al-Jazzār, Zad al-musāfir, Book vi, trans. by Bos, p. 51. 120  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 47. 121  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 48. 117 

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ing and pressure, or elicit other illnesses and maladies.122 If the hand of the foetus came out together with the head, physicians portended the mother would suffer greatly.123 In this case, physicians instructed the midwife to push the foetus back inside, straighten or flatten it out, and then gently push out its head. If the head emerged but the rest of the body did not follow, the midwife would have to twist the baby’s entire body around again and pull the legs out first.124 Medical physicians did not always possess great confidence in the midwife’s expertise. They observed, for example, that some midwives manipulated the heads of foetuses so roughly that their shapes become distorted. They noted further that if the midwife failed to conduct even one of her movements properly, the mother would die.125 One scholar even went so far as to suggest only God, and not the midwife, could successfully flip a breech baby around in the womb by sending forth a special wind (rīḥ) to do the job.126 Clearly a midwife’s skills would only take her so far under the critical and watchful eyes of male physicians. She had to rely in part on the scientific knowledge imparted by men to deliver life successfully, although in reality she would most likely draw upon her own experience and expertise. Male physicians also fretted over what might transpire during labour. For the most part, these doctors associated more difficult labour with the delivery of a female as opposed to a male. Scholars argued that male and female infants most likely exited the womb in the positions taken by their mothers and fathers during coitus. Male babies faced downward while females looked upward,127 which made for a more precarious labour and delivery.128 Additionally, because females were considered moister and colder than males, and less able to move, their delivery was believed to take longer than that of males, as they could do little to help pull themselves out of the birth canal.129 Upon interpreting signs ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 50. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 50. 124  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 48. 125  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, pp. 47–48. 126  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 46. 127  Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Firdaws al-ḥikma, ed. by Siddiqi, p. 33; ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq 122  123 

al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 29. For medi­eval Jewish discussions on this issue, see Preuss, Biblisch-talmudische Medizin, trans. by Rosner, p. 396. 128  In general, when babies enter the pelvis before birth, they should be face down for easier deliver. The back of the head, which has the smallest diameter, should lead the way (Harms, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, p. 189). 129  See Flemming, ‘The Patho­logy of Pregnancy’, p. 107, for a discussion of this phenom-

Tracing the Maternal Body in Medieval Muslim Gynaeco­logical Texts 75

as to the sex of the child, physicians with their expertise could offer remedies (via the midwife) to assuage a woman’s suffering, in ways similar to how God came to Mary’s aid during her parturiency.130 Medi­eval Muslim scholars also read a woman’s post-partum body to predict if she would be a successful breastfeeder. If not, they might require a new father to employ a wet nurse, or they might encourage him to hire a particular type of wet nurse. Physicians determined women with large breasts would be inadequate because the excess flesh around the nipple would prevent the tongue of the infant from sucking. On the other hand, small breasts provided insufficient surface areas needed for sucking.131 Medi­eval physicians even interpreted a woman’s demeanour during labour to determine her future as a good mother more generally. Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, for example, observed that most women naturally became soft-hearted, languid, and gentle after bearing children because their natures were weakened as a result of blood loss during delivery.132 As her body conformed and submitted to the passive, gentle, submissive qualities of motherhood, she would automatically become more and more dependent upon men to protect her.

Conclusion The medi­eval Muslim medical literature’s portrayal of the maternal body and its inner workings reveal the many ways male scholars sought to capture female generative power to produce the ideal life they imagined God desired. As men took ownership of the entire reproductive process, from conception to birth, they severed women from their own bodies, identities, experiences, and their unique relationship with a God who favoured contributions from both men and women in his creation of life. In contrast to Koranic revelations that privileged God’s unique and mysterious role in generating life in often incomprehensible ways, medi­e val medical discourse projected more traditional reproductive roles for both men and women, which they reinforced through appeals to science and nature, as well as through recognized social, cultural, and theo­ logical norms. enon in the Greek context. Given that Muslim scholars carried the same assumptions about females taking longer to develop in the womb than males, it is likely they too believed the delivery of females to be more difficult than that of males. 130  In Sūra 19:24–26, God comforts Mary with water, fresh dates, and the shade of a palm tree. 131  ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn, ed. by Jahier and Noureddine, p. 55. 132  Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle, ed. by Filius, p. 465.

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Works Cited Primary Sources ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khalq al-janīn wa-tadbīr al-ḥabālā wa‘l-mawlūdīn, ed.  by Henri Jahier and Abdelkader Noureddine, Faculté Mixte de Médecine et de Pharmacie (Algiers: Maktabat Ferraris, 1956) Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. by A. L. Peck, Loeb Classical Library (Cam­bridge, MA: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press 1943) Bukhārī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b.  Ismāʿīl b.  Ibrāhīm, Jāmiʿal-ṣaḥīḥ, ed.  by Abū Ṣuhayb Karmī (Riyadh: Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawlīya li al-Nashr, 1998) Damīrī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā, Ḥiyāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 3  vols (Qum: Manshūrāt al-Raḍī, 1985) Hippocrates, Aphorisms [ac­ cessed 10 June 2016] —— , On Fleshes, ed. and trans. by Paul Potter, Loeb Classical Library, 8 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995) —— , The Seed, trans. by I. M. Lonie, in Hipppocratic Writings, ed. by G. E. R. Lloyd (New York: Penguin, 1978) Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿIbādī, Abū Zayd, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle: The Arabic Version of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and the Hebrew Version of Moses ibn Tibbon, ed. by L. S. Filius, Aristotles Semitico-latinus, 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1999) Ibn al-Jazzār, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Khālid, Zad al-musāfir wa qūt al-ḥāḍir, trans. by Gerrit Bos, Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, 6 (London: Kegan Paul, 1997) Ibn Māja, Muḥammad ibn Yazīd, Kitāb al-sunan, ed. by Muḥammad Fū’ād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 5 vols (Cairo: Dār iḥyā’ al-kutub al-ʿarabȳa, 1953) Ibn Qayyim all-Jawzīya, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qur’ān, ed. by ʿIṣām Fāris al-Ḥarastāni (Beirut: Muʿassasat al-risāla, 1994) Ibn Qutayba, ʿAbdallāh ibn Muslim, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 4  vols (Cairo: al-Muʿassasa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿẠmma li ‘l-Ta’līf wa ‘l-Tarjama wa ‘l-Nashr, 1964) Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr, Chance or Creation? God’s Design in the Universe, trans. by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Reading: Garnet, 1995) Maimonides, Moses, Fuṣūl Mūsā, trans. by Fred Rosner (Haifa: Maimonides Research Institute, 1989) Mālik ibn Anas, Muwaṭṭa’ (Beirut: Dār al-gharb al-islāmī, 1994) Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 5 vols (Beirut: Dār ibn Ḥazm, 1995) Nīsābūrī,ʿAbdallāh ibn Busṭām, Islamic Medical Wisdom: The ṭibb al-a’imma, trans. by Batool Ispahamy (London: Muhammadi Trust, 1991) Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 7, trans. by Mary Beagon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005)

Tracing the Maternal Body in Medieval Muslim Gynaeco­logical Texts 77 Preuss, Julius, Biblisch-talmudische Medizin: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Heilkunde und der Kulture überhaupt (Berlin: S. Karger, 1923); trans. by Fred Rosner as Biblical and Talmudic Medicine (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2004) Qazwīnī, Ḥamdullāh al-Mustawfī, The Zoo­logical Section of the Nuzhatu-l-qulūb, ed. and trans. by J. Stephenson (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1928) Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, ʿAlī ibn Sahl, Firdaws al-ḥikma fī al-ṭibb, ed. by Muhammad Zubair Siddiqi (Beirut: [n.pub.], 1970) Rosenthal, Franz, ‘Al-Rāzī on the Hidden Illness’, in Science and Medicine in Islam (London: Variorum, 1990), pp. 45–60 Soranus, Gyneco­logy, trans. by Owsei Temkin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1956) Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, Ṭibb al-nabawī, ed. and trans. by Ahmad Thomson (London: Ta-Ha, 1994) Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation, ed. by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, 3rd rev. edn (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005)

Secondary Works Birke, Lynda, Feminism and the Bio­logical Body (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999) Blundell, Susan, Women in Ancient Greece (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995) Bondeson, Jan, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1997) Butler, Judith, The Judith Butler Reader, ed. by Sara Salih with Judith Butler (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) Cobb, Stephanie, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) Dean-Jones, Leslie, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) Delaney, Carol, ‘Cutting the Ties that Bind: The Sacrifice of Abraham and Patriarchal Kinship’, in Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, ed. by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon (Durham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001), pp. 445–67 Flemming, Rebecca, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000) —— , ‘The Patho­logy of Pregnancy in Galen’s Commentaries on the Epidemics’, in The Unknown Galen, ed.  by Vivian Nutton, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Suppl. 77 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, Uni­ver­sity of London, 2002), pp. 101–12 Harms, Roger, ed., Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (New York: Harper & Row, 2004)

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King, Helen, Hippocrates’ Women: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998) Kueny, Kathryn M., Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medi­eval Muslim Discourse and Practice (Albany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 2013) Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Totemism, trans. by Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963) Musallam, B.  F., Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1983) Schochet, Elijah Jonah, Animal Life in Jewish Tradition: Attitudes and Relationships ( Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing, 1984) Smith, Jane Idleman, and Yvonne Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 1981) Sturtevant, A. H., A History of Genetics (Woodbury, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001)

Calculating Birth: Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Role in the Creation and Diffusion of the Trutina Hermetis Shlomo Sela

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oroscopic astro­logy, invented in Babylon, was imported to Hellenistic Egypt in the late second or early first century bce. Over the next few hundred years this art was systematized in Greek science and subsequently transferred to the Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin civilizations, where it was gradually elaborated and refined. The main tool used by astro­logers to make predictions about humans and nature is the horoscope, a diagram of the heavens showing the relative positions of the planets with respect to the horoscopic places. The word ‘horoscope’ is derived from the Greek ὥρα, meaning ‘time’ or ‘hour’. It is no wonder, then, that the ‘time’ for which the horoscope is cast is not only the first and most important thing the astro­loger has to know before casting the horoscope,1 but also the fundamental parameter that distinguishes the 1 

The zodiac is the band of fixed stars through which the seven planets move and which can be seen at any given moment as a wheel constantly moving with the daily motion and rising above the eastern horizon. For horoscopic astro­logy, the rising degree of the zodiac at the moment of casting the horoscope plays the crucial role of the starting point from which the zodiac is divided into the twelve horoscopic places. These twelve were taken to govern the main aspects of human life: the first horoscopic place was taken to signify life; the second, wealth; the third, brothers; the fourth, the father; the fifth, sons; and so on.

Shlomo Sela is Professor Emeritus in the department of Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan Uni­ ver­sity. His research focuses on Jewish attitudes towards the sciences, with special interest in the history of astro­logy in the Middle Ages. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 289/17). Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 79–106 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117819

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various branches of astro­logy.2 For the doctrine of nativities, concerned with making predictions about the fate of individuals and regarded since Antiquity as the core of the art, the time for which the horoscope should be cast is the precise instant of birth. But this was the Achilles’ heel of the doctrine of nativities, because people do not generally know or remember the precise moment of their birth. Consequently, an essential component of virtually every treatise on the doctrine of nativities, whether in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, or the European vernaculars, is the ‘rectification of the nativity’, a term that designates a variety of procedures to determine the ascendant of the natal horoscope when the time of birth is not known (the usual situation). One approach, perhaps the most famous of all and that with which we are concerned here, had long gone by the curious name trutina Hermetis, that is, the ‘balance of Hermes’. The main characteristic of this method, as we shall see, is that it takes account of the duration of pregnancy in order to ‘rectify’ the nativity. With the trutina Hermetis, the time of conception and the instant of birth become an astro­logical instrument of calculation, denying or correcting a piece of information that had always been under female control. This paper scrutinizes the role that the trutina Hermetis played in the work of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167), both his astro­logical treatises and his biblical commentaries. Ibn Ezra wrote prolifically on a wide variety of subjects, almost exclusively in Hebrew. His fame is due to his outstanding biblical commentaries; but in addition to religious and secular poetry, a series of religioustheo­logical mono­g raphs, and grammatical treatises, his intellectual interests extended to the sciences as well, especially astro­logy.3 Although procedures that involve the gestational period to rectify the nativity can be traced to astro­logical literature preceding the twelfth century,4 Ibn Ezra deserves a special place in its 2 

In the doctrine of interrogations, on replying to questions, the horoscope is cast at the time when the querent poses his question to the astro­loger; in the doctrine of elections, on choosing the most auspicious moment for performing specific actions, the timing is deliberately chosen because it corresponds to a specific astral configuration that the astro­loger considers to be propitious for beginning the undertaking in question; in historical astro­logy, the timing for casting the horoscope corresponds to specific astronomical events, such as the moment when the Sun enters Aries, which evokes the creation of the world, or the moment of the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. 3  For a chrono­logical listing of Ibn Ezra’s scholarly writings, see Sela and Freudenthal, ‘Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings’. 4  See below, p. 83 and note 16.

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history because of his impact on Jewish and Christian readers after his death. I will attempt to show, first, that the Hebrew term moʾznei Ḥanok, ‘Enoch’s balance’, and the Latin term trutina Hermetis, ‘Hermes’ balance’,5 were first used in Ibn Ezra’s Hebrew astro­logical treatises to designate a procedure that utilizes the duration of pregnancy for the rectification of the nativity; and second, that these two terms were transmitted to the Hebrew and Latin cultures through the diffusion of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical writings in Hebrew, Latin, and the European vernaculars, from the twelfth through the eighteenth century.

Enoch’s Balance in Sefer ha-Moladot (the Book of Nativities) Thanks to recent discoveries, today we know of nineteen treatises by Ibn Ezra on the main genres of Greek and Arabic astro­logy.6 Sefer ha-Moladot (henceforth Moladot), the only extant Hebrew treatise on nativities composed by Ibn Ezra, survives in at least fifty-three manu­scripts, which makes it one of the most widely copied and best-known of his astro­logical writings. Moladot is divided into four parts, of which the second is devoted in its entirety to the rectification of the nativity. It begins with a description of Ptolemy’s approach to the rectification of the nativity, after which Ibn Ezra briefly presents the trutina Hermetis, as follows: ‫ שיקרא בלשון‬,‫ אמר בטלמיוס כי נוכל לדעת המעלה הצומחת מדרך מאזנים שלו‬:‫מאזני המולד‬ ‫ והם מאזני שקר … והאמת הם‬,‫פרס נימודאר … ואלה המאזנים סמכו עליהם דייני המזלות‬ 7 .‫מאזני חנוך‬ [Balance of the nativity: Ptolemy said that we can determine the ascendant degree [at the time of birth] by his balance (moʾ znaym), which is called nimudar in the Persian language […]. This balance was trusted by the astro­logers, but it is like a crooked balance […]. Only Enoch’s balance is true.]

Why does this part bear the curious title ‘balance of the nativity’? As clearly stated in the passage just quoted, balance (moʾznaym) is Ibn Ezra’s translation 5  The Hebrew  mo ʾ znaym  is a dual form, representing the two pans of the balance. Although a literal translation might require a word in the dual or plural, in what follows I render moʾ znaym as balance, in the singular, because this is in fact the equivalent English term (and so too in many languages: e.g. the Latin trutina). 6  For a list, see the introduction to Ibn Ezra, Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 2–5. 7  Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii i, 1 through ii 4, 5, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 88–93.

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of the Persian nimudar (or namudar or animodar), which is the term commonly used in Arabic and subsequent Latin astro­logical literature to designate the concept of rectification of the nativity.8 Indeed, Ibn Ezra puns on the double meaning of balance (rectification of the nativity, on the one hand, and scale, on the other) to reject Ptolemy’s approach to the rectification of the nativity.9 We also see that in sharp contrast to his dissatisfaction with Ptolemy’s method, Ibn Ezra praises Enoch’s method of rectification, which he designates moʾznei Ḥanok or ‘Enoch’s balance’. Enoch, aka Hermes, is a legendary figure who derives from the god incarnate Hermes Trismegistus (who represents the Egyptian god Thoth and was viewed as the author of philosophical, scientific, and magic treatises). The Arabic world divided him into the triple Hermes: the first, who founded the sciences before the Flood; the second, a Babylonian, who recovered the knowledge lost in the Flood; and the third, who lived later in Egypt.10 Ibn Ezra follows closely this tradition and refers to the triple Enoch — the ‘Ancient Enoch’, ‘Enoch the First’, and ‘Enoch the Egyptian’ — in three separate sections of the first version of Sefer ha-ʿOlam (Book of the World).11 Ibn Ezra also invokes ‘Enoch’ with no accompanying epithet; this is how Enoch’s astro­logical and astronomical work is frequently referred to throughout Ibn Ezra’s oeuvre, usually in an approving tone.12 Next, Moladot outlines Enoch’s balance: 8  See, for example, Al-Qabīṣī, Kitāb al-mudḥal, iv:3, ed. and trans. by Burnett, Yamamoto, and Yano, pp. 108–09. 9  The ultimate source of Ptolemy’s method is Tetrabiblos iii:2 (see Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ed. and trans. by Robbins, pp. 231–35), the main points of which follow: ‘Difficulty often arises with regard to the first and most important fact, that is, the fraction of the hour of the birth; for in general only observation by means of horoscopic astrolabes at the time of birth can for scientific observers give the minute the hour […] discover the degree of the zodiac which should be rising, given the degree of the known hour nearest the event […]. We must, then, take the syzygy most recently preceding the birth […] we must see what stars rule it at the time of the birth […] whatever degree this star by accurate reckoning occupies in the sign through which it is passing, we shall judge that the corresponding degree is rising at the time of the nativity in the sign which is found to be closest by the method of ascensions.’ 10  Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes, pp. 121–63; Pingree, The Thousands of Abū Maʿ shar, pp. 14–19; Ṣāʿ id al-Andalusī, ed. and trans. by Salem and Kumar, pp. 19, 36; Burnett, ‘The Legend of the Three Hermes’; Plessner, ‘Hermes Trismegistus and Arab Science’; Plessner, ‘Hirmis’. 11  Ibn Ezra, Sefer ha- ʿ Olam, §  36:1–2, §  37:1–2, §  56:1–15, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 76–77, 88–89. 12  See, for example, Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 4, 5, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 92–93; ii 6, 1, pp. 94–95; ii 8, 3–4, pp. 96–99; iii i 2, 5, pp. 100–101; iii v 6, 3, pp. 146–47; iii x 3, 13, pp. 176–77.

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‫ מקום הלבנה ברגע המולד היא המעלה הצומחת‬,‫ במולד אדם‬,‫ לעולם‬:‫ אמר חנוך‬.‫מאזני חנוך‬ ‫ על‬.‫ והמעלה הצומחת ברגע המולד שם היתה הלבנה ברגע הטיפה‬,‫ברגע רדת הטיפה ברחם‬ ‫ נוכל לדעת מתי היה‬,‫ ואם ידענו רגע המולד‬,‫ נוכל לדעת רגע המולד‬,‫ אם ידענו רגע הטיפה‬,‫כן‬ 13 .‫רגע הטיפה‬ [Enoch’s balance (moʾ znei Ḥ anok). Enoch said: In the nativity of human beings, the position of the Moon at the moment of birth is always the ascendant degree at the moment of the descent of the drop [of semen] into the womb, and the ascendant degree at the moment of birth is the position where the Moon was at the moment of the [descent of ] the drop [into the womb]. Therefore, if we know the moment of the [descent of the] drop we can know the moment of birth, and if we know the moment of birth we can know the moment of the [descent of the] drop.]

In brief, according to Moladot, Enoch postulated that the position of the Moon at the time of birth is the ascendant degree at the time of conception, and vice versa. In this simplified form, and without mentioning Enoch as its originator, this method is found in aphorism 51 of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, a short work, organized in one hundred aphorisms, which the Middle Ages considered to be an authentic work by Ptolemy.14 Because Ibn Ezra frequently refers to it in various parts of his astro­logical corpus (in Moladot he designates it Sefer ha-Peri = Book of the Fruit), it certainly could have been one of his sources for Enoch’s rectification.15 Other sources that outline the same method, but without mentioning Enoch as its originator, are Vettius Valens (120–c. 175 ce), Māshāʾallāh (c. 740–c. 815), Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan b. al-Khaṣib (ninth century), and al-Bīrūnī (973–1048).16 But it is unlikely that Ibn Ezra drew on any of them, particularly because he writes, as we shall see below, that his source is a ‘book by Enoch.’17 Next Ibn Ezra expands the scope and explains how Enoch’s balance makes it possible to calculate the length of the period of pregnancy. Based on the pos13 

Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 5, 1–2, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 92–93. See Ptolemy, Centiloquium, ed. and trans. by Martorello and Bezza, pp. 144–47. 15  See, for example, Ibn Ezra, Moladot, iii i 7, 9, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 106–07 and n. on pp. 255–56. For an explicit reference to Sefer ha-Peri, see Ibn Ezra, Reshit Ḥ okhmah, ed. and trans. by Sela, § 10.3:5. 16  See, respectively: Vettius Valens, Antho­logies, trans. by Riley, i. 23k, 21p; Hugo of Santalla, Liber Aristotilis, iii i 10, 21–24, ed. by Burnett and Pingree, pp. 43–44; Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan, De Nativitatibus, ed. by Petreius, iii, sig. B4v; Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-Tafḥīm, § 526, ed. and trans. by Ramsay Wright, p. 330. 17  See below, pp. 88–90. 14 

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tulate that the Moon’s position at the time of birth is the same as the position of the ascendant degree at the time of conception (and vice versa), Enoch’s balance calculates the period ofʿ pregnancy by first checking whether the Moon at the time of birth is in one of the four cardines,18 and then applying the simple principle that ‘there are seven days between when the Moon passes one cardine and when it passes the next cardine’. Thus, if the Moon at the moment of birth is in the descendant degree, the pregnancy lasted 259 days or 37 weeks, and is designated ‘short’; if the Moon is in the next cardine, the upper midheaven, the duration of pregnancy was 266 days or 38 weeks; if the Moon is in the next cardine, the ascendant degree, the gestational period was 273 days or 39 weeks, and is designated ‘median’; if the Moon is in the next cardine, the lower midheaven, the pregnancy lasted 280 days or 40 weeks; and if the Moon is about to return to the descendant degree, the pregnancy lasted 287 days or 41 weeks, and is designated ‘long’. If the Moon is between two consecutive cardines, the calculation is based on the principle that the Moon travels 13° every day, and the interval corresponding to the cardine already traversed by the Moon is added to that between this cardine and the Moon’s position at the moment of birth.19 Then Ibn Ezra praises Enoch’s balance as true; he informs us that he himself has tested and verified it but adds that the method does not work in the abnormal cases of a person born in the seventh or the eleventh month of pregnancy. Ibn Ezra also makes his own contribution: he states that the procedure requires two corrections.20 Later he presents them in detail; they involve the positions of Venus, Mercury, and Mars with respect to the Moon near the time of birth.21

18 

The cardines are the four main points of the horoscopic chart. The first cardine coincides with the ascendant; the second coincides with the lower midheaven, that is, the point where the ecliptic intersects the lower half of the local meridian, and corresponds to the cusp of the fourth horoscopic place; the third coincides with the descendant; and the fourth coincides with the upper midheaven, that is, the point where the ecliptic intersects the upper half of the local meridian, and corresponds to the cusp of the tenth horoscopic place. For a definition, see Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-Tafḥīm, § 247, ed. and trans. by Ramsay Wright, pp. 149–50. 19  See Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 5, 3–10, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 92–95. 20  See Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 6, 1–2, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 94–95: ‘The astro­logers who came after Enoch concurred with him regarding this balance (moʾ znaym). I also tested and verified it successfully, but sometimes it needs one of two corrections. Everything we have just said is true regarding natives born after roughly nine months of pregnancy, as most humans are; but sometimes a person is born in the seventh or in the eleventh month’. 21  See Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 6, 1–6, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 94–95.

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Similar, though by no means identical, values for the duration of pregnancy are found in sources before Ibn Ezra’s time. Vettius Valens, in his Antho­logy, appears to be the most influential. He offers three periods of gestation, which, although presumably based on the relationship between the position of the Moon at the time of birth and the ascendant at the time of conception, do not involve ascribing seven days to the Moon’s passage from one cardine to the next one, as in Moladot, but adding or subtracting fifteen days to an intermediate value, as follows: (a) the mean period of 273 days, when the Moon is in the ascendant; (b) the maximum period of 288 days, when the Moon is in the descendant, which is the mean period plus fifteen days; (c) the minimum period of 258 days, when the Moon is in the place following the descendant of the nativity, which is the mean period minus fifteen days.22 Māshāʾallāh, according to the evidence provided by Liber Aristotilis (composed in the twelfth century by Hugo de Santalla), follows Valens’s tradition and mentions two periods of gestation: 258 days (258 = 273–15) and 288 days (288 = 273 + 15).23 Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan b. al Khaṣib in his Kitāb al-Mawālid also endorses Valens’s traditions and mentions the three periods of 258, 273, and 288 days. To calculate intermediate gestational periods, Abū Bakr uses a mean lunar motion of 12° a day.24 Abū Jaʿfar ibn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm (start of the tenth century), in his commentary on aphorism 51 of the Centiloquium, refers explicitly to the ‘median’, ‘long’, and ‘short’ periods of gestation in terms of revolutions of the Moon, but specifying their lengths in days or months.25 Al-Bīrūnī, in his Kitāb al-Tafhīm, puts forward the same principle, without mentioning the aforementioned terms of pregnancy, and informs readers that astro­logers employ this theory to determine the native’s temperament, constitution, and form.26 Note, however, that none of these accounts mentions the balance as the name of the procedure or Hermes or Enoch as the originator of the method.

22 

Vettius Valens, Antho­logies, trans. by Riley, i. 23k, 21p. See Hugo of Santalla, Liber Aristotilis, iii i 10, 21–24, ed. by Burnett and Pingree, pp. 43–44 and n. on p. 144. 24  Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan, De Nativitatibus, ed. by Petreius, iii, sig. B4v. 25  Ptolemy, Centiloquium, ed. and trans. by Martorello and Bezza, pp. 144–47. 26  Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-Tafḥīm, § 526, ed, by Ramsay Wright, pp. 329–31. 23 

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The Trutina Hermetis in the Liber Abraham Iudei de Nativitatibus Another text on nativities ascribed to Ibn Ezra, which survives today only in Latin, is the Liber Abraham Iudei de Nativitatibus (Book on Nativities by Abraham the Jew; henceforth De nativitatibus). This text bears striking resemblances to the two versions of Moladot and to other parts of Ibn Ezra’s oeuvre. ‘Abraham Iudeus’ is explicitly named as its author, but the nature of its affiliation with Ibn Ezra is unclear: Is De nativitatibus the translation of a lost Hebrew text by Ibn Ezra, a later elaboration based on Latin translations of carefully selected fragments from Ibn Ezra’s Hebrew astro­logical treatises, or a Latin treatise of nativities composed with Ibn Ezra’s active participation?27 De nativitatibus starts with a section on the ‘rectification of the nativity’, which first presents and then outlines Hermes’ (or Enoch’s) approach, as follows: Animodar quod interpretatur trutina de qua dixit Ptholemeus quod considerandum est quis planeta potestatem habeat in gradu adunationis vel oppositionis solis et lune que nativitatem precessit, quia quot gradus signi in quo est ille planeta preterierunt, tot sunt gradus orientis vel medii celi. Multis probationibus falsum esse constat. […] Dixit Hermes quod locus lune in hora infusionis spermatis in matricem erit gradus oriens in nativitate, gradus vero oriens in conceptione est lune locus in nativitate. Quod verum esse probatione cognitum est nisi nativitas vel septimo vel undecimo mense fuerit.28 [About animodar, whose translation is ‘balance’, Ptolemy said that it is necessary to find out which planet has rulership over the degree of the conjunction or the opposition of the Sun and Moon that took place before the nativity, because the number of degrees in the zodiacal sign in which the planet is located is the same as the ascendant degree or midheaven. Many proofs show that this is false. […] Hermes said that the position of the Moon at the hour the sperm is introduced into the womb is the degree of the ascendant in the nativity, and the degree of the ascendant at the [time of ] conception is the position of the Moon at [the time of ] the nativity. This is true and is known to have been tested, unless the birth takes place in the seventh or the eleventh month [of pregnancy].]

We see, then, that De nativitatibus, like Moladot, states that balance is a translation of the Persian word nimudar, rejects Ptolemy’s approach, and ascribes 27 

See Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt. For an account of the transmission of De nativitatibus, based on the evidence provided by virtually all the available manu­script witnesses of this text, see Sela, ‘Origins and Transmission’. I hope to produce in the near future a critical edition of this text, accompanied by an English translation and commentary. 28  Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt, sig. A2r, lines 9–33.

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to Hermes (the Latin translation of Enoch) the method that postulates a link between the times of birth and of conception. But there is a significant difference: because here we are dealing with the Latin translation of a Hebrew text, balance becomes trutina and Enoch morphs into Hermes, whence the locution trutina Hermetis. To the best of my knowledge, this passage is the earliest occurrence of this expression, which repeatedly occurs in later astro­logical literature. After an account of the distribution of the months of gestation among the planets, in the Ptolemaic order of their orbs,29 De nativitatibus resumes the account of the trutina Hermetis, as follows: Nunc autem artem trademus qua scire poterimus cognita nativitate quot dies pregnans conceptui hospicium prebuerit. Cognito oriente in nativitate cognitoque utrum luna in superiori hemisperio fuerit vel prope ipsum in principio septime domus vel iuxta principium inveneris dies more fuerunt 259. Si autem plurimum a principio septime domus distiterit, vide quot gradus equalibus ab eo distet et pro singulis gradibus, sume horam rectam et quinquaginta minuta hore, horas cum minutis hore in dies redige, et quod inde provenerit, prefate summe dierum adiunge. Quod si luna fuerit in orientis gradu, dies more fuerunt 273. Quod si luna in inferiori hemisperio fuerit, visa differentia ab oriente ad ipsam in gradibus equalibus operans ut supra; quod productum fuerit adde summe prefate dierum luna in superiori emisperio existente. Consentio Hermeti in hoc quod locus lune in conceptione erit oriens in nativitate semper.30 [I now give you a method by which, if the time of birth is known, we may know how many days the pregnant woman provided accommodation to the foetus. If the ascendant of the nativity is known, and it is known that the Moon is in the upper [celestial] hemisphere [i.e. the Moon is above the horizon] or near it, and it [the Moon] is in the cusp of the seventh place or near the cusp, you will find that the term is 259 [days]. But if the distance from the cusp of the seventh place is great, find out how many equal degrees it [the Moon] is away from it [from the cusp of the seventh place], and assign to each of these degrees one equal hour and fifty minutes of an hour, convert the hours with the minutes into hours and days, and add the result to the aforementioned sum. If the Moon is in the ascendant degree, the term is 273 days. If the Moon is in the lower [celestial] hemisphere [i.e. the Moon 29 

Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt, sig. A2r, lines 33–36; sig. A2v, lines 1–10. Ibn Ezra, for his part, offers a similar account of this doctrine in Moladot, ii 7, 1–12, ed. by Sela, pp. 96–97, and in Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot. See note 36, below. This doctrine occurs in a number of Arabic astro­logical texts: ʿUmar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb al-Mawālid, ed. by Hervagius, iii, 141; Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan, De Nativitatibus, ed. by Petreius, i, sig. B3r–v; and Al-Bīrūnī’s Kitāb al-Tafḥīm, § 526, ed. by Ramsay Wright, p. 330. 30  Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt, sig. A2v, lines 10–22.

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is below the horizon], find out the distance between the ascendant and the [Moon’s position] in equal degrees and proceed as indicated above; add the result to the aforementioned sum of days that correspond to the Moon when it is in the upper hemisphere. I agree with Hermes that the position of the Moon at conception will always be the ascendant in the nativity.]

The account of the periods of pregnancy in De nativitatibus and Moladot are wholly compatible, though the former is shorter than and omits some of the details found in the latter. In both texts, the periods corresponding to the Moon’s being in the descendant and the ascendant are 259 and 273 days, respectively, though the names of the periods are not specified in the former. De nativitatibus is silent apropos the gestational periods corresponding to the Moon’s being at upper and lower midheaven; but regarding the cases when the Moon is between the descendant and the ascendant, above or below the horizon, it says that the Moon travels 1° in one hour and fifty minutes, which is equivalent to assigning 13° to each day, as specified in Moladot.31 Both De nativitatibus and Moladot, while thoroughly disapproving of Ptolemy’s method of rectification of the nativity, strongly concur with the trutina Hermetis; both qualify their assent by stating that the method does not work when a person is born in the seventh or in the eleventh month and offer corrections.

Enoch’s Balance in Other Parts of Ibn Ezra’s Astro­logical Corpus That Ibn Ezra attached great importance to the trutina Hermetis is indicated by the fact that he addressed this doctrine not only in treatises on nativities, its natural place, but also in other astro­logical writings. A complete account of the trutina Hermetis is found in the third version of Sefer ha-Mivḥarim (Book of Elections; henceforth Mivḥarim III), now extant only in Latin translation. Why should the trutina Hermetis be incorporated into a treatise on the doctrine of elections, which is concerned with finding the best time to begin a particular activity? The answer is given at the beginning of the following passage: Quinta. Si queris horam ad recipiendi conceptionem […] Dicit Enoc […] si sciveris tempus conceptionis tu poteris scire tempus partus et econtrario […]. Et hic est scientia Enoc in libro suo et hoc pluries temptavi et inveni veritatem si viderim iudicium 2 rerum, sicut explanabo aduc. Et hoc sunt verba Enoc: semper locus lune

31 

If 1° corresponds to 1 hour and 50 minutes, then 13° correspond to 13 × [1 hour and 50 minutes] = 23 hours and 50 minutes ≈ 1 day.

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in puncto conceptionis est gradus ascendentis hora partus, et gradus ascendentis hora conceptionis est locus lune hora nativitatis.32 [Fifth [place]. If you wish [to choose] an hour to get pregnant […] Enoch said […] if you know the time of the conception you may know the time of birth, and vice versa. […] This is Enoch’s science in his book, and I have tested this many times and found it true if I take into account the judgement of two things, as I shall explain. This is Enoch’s statement: always the position of the Moon at the moment of conception is the ascendant degree at the hour of birth, and the ascendant degree at the time of conception is the position of the Moon at the hour of birth.]

Mivḥarim III, like all of Ibn Ezra’s treatises on elections, is organized in twelve chapters that deal with the indications of each of the twelve horoscopic places; the passage just quoted begins the discussion of the fifth horoscopic place. The reason for including an account of the trutina Hermetis in Mivḥarim III is that the fifth horoscopic place indicates children, and the first topic addressed in the fifth chapter is finding the appropriate time to have intercourse so that the woman will have a normal pregnancy and give birth to a healthy child. The trutina Hermetis is supposed to be useful for this. At a time when giving birth was often dangerous to both mother and child, the trutina Hermetis’s promise of astral favour at the time of planned conception must have been viewed as a source of hope. In a noble household the birth of a healthy child may determine the fate of an empire, and since in many cases royal spousal visitations were rather infrequent, highly technical calculations to determine the most promising position of the Moon must have seemed like a very reassuring practice. Following the postulate that the Moon’s position at the time of birth is the same as the position of the ascendant degree at the time of conception (and vice versa), the technical details of the account in Mivḥarim III (in a section not quoted here) are virtually identical with those in De nativitatibus and compatible with those in Moladot. Like De nativitatibus, Mivḥarim III mentions only the periods of 259 and 273 days, which correspond to the Moon’s being at the ascendant and descendant, and does not name these periods; as for when the Moon is between the descendant and the ascendant above or below the horizon, it says that the Moon travels 12° per day, which is similar to the values presented in De nativitatibus and Moladot.33 But there are significant differences between Mivḥarim III, on the one hand, and De nativitatibus and Moladot, on the other. One is that Mivḥarim III says 32 

Erfurt, Amplon, MS O.89, fol. 41b; Vienna, ÖN, MS 5442, fol. 194b. 33  Erfurt, Amplon, MS O.89, fols 41b–42a; Vienna, ÖN, MS 5442, fol. 194b.

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that Ibn Ezra learned Enoch’s procedure from a book written by Enoch himself. De nativitatibus and Moladot are silent about this. In addition, Mivḥarim III does not call the procedure a balance or nimudar, as De nativitatibus and Moladot do, although Enoch is mentioned as the originator. In all likelihood, this is because these terms refer to a procedure that is relevant only in the context of the doctrine of nativities, while Mivḥarim III applies this procedure to the doctrine of elections. Ibn Ezra also wrote about the trutina Hermetis in two of his introductions to astro­logy. One is the second version of Sefer Ṭeʿamim (Book of Reasons), composed to explain the astro­logical concepts employed in the second version of Reshit Ḥokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom), now almost wholly lost. In a section of this work on the rectification of the nativity, Ibn Ezra included a brief statement of his full agreement with the trutina Hermetis: 34

.‫ והוא דרך התולדת‬,‫ רק מה שהזכיר חנוך הוא אמת ומנוסה‬:‫ כלל‬... ‫מעלות המולד‬

[Degrees of the nativity […] as a general rule, only what Enoch said is true and corroborated by experience, and is compatible with nature.]

The second is Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot ( Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs), which includes the following account of the trutina Hermetis: ‫אמר חנוך בספרו כי מקום הלבנה במולד הנולדים קרובים אל ט' חדשים הוא הצומח בעת‬ ‫ אם היתה הלבנה קרובה אל סוף הבית‬,‫ והנה‬.‫ והצומח עתה הוא מקום הלבנה בהריון‬,‫ההריון‬ ‫ וביתד‬,‫ העמידה בבטן היתה רפ"ז ימים; ואם בתחלה הבית השביעי המעמד היה רנ"ט‬,‫השישי‬ ‫ ואל‬.‫ וביתד התהום ר"ף‬,‫ ואם היתה במעלה הצומחת היה המעמד רע"ג ימים‬,‫הרום רס"ו‬ ‫ והוא אמת‬,‫ וכבר נסיתי זה פעמים רבות‬.‫תסמוך על דברי הנשים כי אינם יודעות רגע ההריון‬ ‫ גם יש מעט המעט‬.‫ והנולד ככה לא יאריך ימים‬,‫על תנאי אם לא יצא הנולד בחדש השביעי‬ ‫ רק הוא יהיה משונה במעשיו מכל האדם כפי‬,‫שיהיה הנולד בחדש עשתי עשרה; גם הוא יחיה‬ 35 .‫מערכת הכוכבים‬ [Enoch said in his book that the position of the Moon in the nativity of those born after approximately nine months [of pregnancy] is the ascendant at the time of conception, and the ascendant then [i.e. at birth] is the place of the Moon at the time of conception. So, if the Moon [at the time of conception] is close to the end of the sixth place, the time in the womb lasts 287 days, and if [the Moon] is at the cusp of the seventh place the pregnancy lasts 259 [days], [if ] at the upper cardine 266 [days], and if at the ascendant degree the pregnancy is 273 days, and at the lower cardine 280 [days]. Do not trust what women say because they do not know 34  35 

Ibn Ezra, Sefer Ṭeʿ amim (second version), ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 234–35. Ibn Ezra, Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, ed. and trans. by Sela, § 15:1–5.

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the moment of conception. I have myself tested this empirically many times and found it to be true, on condition that the baby is not born in the seventh month, because such a baby will not live long. There are also a very few cases when a baby is born in the eleventh month; he will live, but his deeds will be unusual in comparison with other people, in accordance with the configuration of the stars.]

Wielding the authority of Enoch, Ibn Ezra adopts a rationalistic approach that counters the perceived ignorance of women and midwives and claims that his empirical experience is far more reliable than the testimony of women to calculate the duration of pregnancy, the moment of conception, and the correct time of birth. As in Mivḥarim III, we learn from Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot that Ibn Ezra was acquainted with Enoch’s balance from a book written by Enoch himself. So far this book has not yet been identified. Although Mishpeṭei haMazzalot does not refer to the cardines but to horoscopic places and does not designate the gestational periods with the customary names (median, short, long), we see that given the lengths of these periods, the accounts of the trutina Hermetis in Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot and Moladot are virtually identical, and wholly consistent with the account in De nativitatibus. At this point, as in De nativitatibus (see above, p. 87), Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot interrupts the account of the trutina Hermetis and reports the distribution of the months of gestation among the planets, in the Ptolemaic order of their orbs.36 The account of the trutina Hermetis is then resumed with instructions of how to calculate the term of pregnancy when the Moon at the time of birth is above or below the Earth. In the first case, one calculates the distance between the cusp of the seventh place (the descendant) and the position of the Moon, assigns one day to each 13° of this distance, and adds the result to 259 days. In the second case (the Moon is below the Earth), one calculates the distance between the cusp of the first place (the ascendant) and the position of the Moon, assigns one day to each 13° of this distance, and adds the result to 273 days.37 As seen above, these are virtually the same instructions as those given in De nativitatibus.38

36 

Ibn Ezra, Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, ed. and trans. by Sela, § 16:1–6. Ibn Ezra, Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, ed. and trans. by Sela, § 17:1–4. 38  See above, p. 87. 37 

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Enoch’s Balance in Ibn Ezra’s Long Commentary on Exodus 2. 2 One of the main reasons for Ibn Ezra’s popularity and success as a biblical commentator is his encyclopaedic approach: he supplemented his deep understanding of the biblical text with information drawn from all branches of human knowledge, including astro­logy, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, grammar, and logic.39 A remarkable example is how he applied the trutina Hermetis to comment on Exodus 2. 2 (‘And the woman conceived, and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months’). In his long commentary on Exodus 2. 2, Ibn Ezra focuses on the expression ‘three months’ — the period when his mother hid the infant. He takes exception to the talmudic interpretation (B Sotah 12a) that Moses was born prematurely, after a six-month pregnancy, and that his mother hid him for the three months until the normal term of gestation. Ibn Ezra argues that children born in the seventh month are of short stature and short-lived; Moses must have been born after a normal gestation of nine months: ‫ כי לא יוכלו המצרים‬,‫ גם זה דרש‬.‫ י"א כי בחודש השביעי מתחלת ההריון נולד‬.‫שלשה ירחים‬ ‫ כי אין כח באדם‬,‫ כי הכתוב ספר החדשים שיכלה להצפינו‬,‫ ולפי דעתי‬.‫לדעת מתי הרתה האשה‬ ‫ כי הנולדים‬,‫ כי רחוק הוא שהוא נולד בחדש השביעי מתחילת ההריון‬.‫לראות באשה מתי תלד‬ ‫ כי רובי הנולדים הם סמוכים‬,‫ ויותר חיים ונכבדים הם הנולדים באחד עשר‬,‫ככה הם קצרי קומה‬ .‫לתשעה חדשים‬ [Three Months. Some say that he [Moses] was born in the seventh month from the beginning of the pregnancy. This is a homiletical interpretation, [and it is implausible] because the Egyptians could not know when the woman [Moses’ mother] became pregnant. In my opinion, Scripture counted the months that she [Moses’ mother] could hide him [after he was born], because no man can know from the [outward appearance of the] woman when she will give birth. It is implausible that he [Moses] was born in the seventh month from the beginning of the pregnancy, because those born in such a condition are of short stature. Those born in the eleventh month live longer and are healthier, and the majority [of the babies] are born at approximately nine months [from the beginning of the pregnancy].]

To buttress this argument, Ibn Ezra rehearses all the technical details of the trutina Hermetis to show that a normal pregnancy lasts nine months. ‫ כי דבר‬.‫ והיודע עת הלידה יכול לדעת עת ההריון‬,‫והיודע עת ההריון יכול לדעת עת הלידה‬ ‫ כי מקום מזל הלבנה ומעלתה ברגע‬,‫ וחמשה פעמים נסיתיו גם אני‬,‫מנוסה הוא לקדמונים‬ 39 

For an analysis of the encyclopaedic aspects of Ibn Ezra’s literary work, see Sela, ‘Encyclopedic Aspects’, pp. 154–70.

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‫ שם תהיה הלבנה‬,‫ גם מעלה הצומחת רגע ההריון‬,‫ היא מעלת מזל הצומח ברגע הלידה‬,‫ההריון‬ ‫ והגדול שהוא‬,‫ והאמצעי רע"ג‬,‫ והנה המעמד הקוצב הם רנ"ט ימים ושליש יום‬.‫רגע המולד‬ 40 .‫הארוך רפ"ז; וחכמי המזלות יודו כן‬ [[Anyone] who knows the time of conception can know the time of birth, and [anyone] who knows the time of birth can know the time of conception. It has been demonstrated empirically by the Ancients, and I myself have proved it empirically five times, that the position of the Moon and its degree at the moment of conception is the ascendant degree at the time of birth, and the ascendant degree at the moment of conception is where the Moon will be at the time of birth. So the short term is 259 and 1/3 days, the median [term] is 273 [days], and the most extended, which is the long [term], is 287 [days]; the astro­logers accept this.]

Once again Ibn Ezra outlines the trutina Hermetis. But it is striking that here he feels no reticence about embedding the main technical points of this method in a biblical commentary. Moreover, to drive home his point, Ibn Ezra emphasizes that he has ‘proved it empirically five times’ and again gives the names and lengths of the short, median, and long periods of pregnancy, as in Moladot, De nativitatibus, Mivḥarim III, Ṭeʿamim, and Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot. But in this exegetical environment he does not deem it appropriate to mention the name of the procedure (balance or nimudar) or credit Enoch as the originator. Instead, he mentions the Ancients and the astro­logers as the authorities for the validity of the procedure.

The Reception of Enoch’s Balance in Hebrew The trutina Hermetis was transmitted to Hebrew readers mainly through the repeated copying of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical treatises, particularly Moladot and Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot. We know that such texts circulated in Provence as early as in the last decades of the twelfth century; there is a substantial increase in the number of extant manu­scripts of this sort produced starting in the fourteenth century. It is also from this century that we have the first direct witnesses of the reception of the trutina Hermetis by prominent Hebrew intellectuals. Two examples follow. The first is Rabbi Levi ben Gershom, or Gersonides (1288–1344), one of the most original medi­e val Jewish thinkers, whose interests and writings spanned philosophy, biblical exegesis, astronomy, mathematics, natural science, logic, and medicine. In his commentary on the third chapter of Job, Gersonides 40 

For the Hebrew text, see Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Exodus 2:2, ed. by A. Weiser, ii, 16.

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invokes astro­logy to interpret the biblical text. He was drawn by the fact that Job 3. 3 mentions both the day of his birth and the night of his conception: ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night wherein it was said: “A man-child is brought forth”’. At the end of his commentary on the entire chapter, Gersonides adds some general remarks that relate these two points in time, throwing into relief the astro­logical ideas he identifies in it, which go back to Abraham Ibn Ezra’s account of the trutina Hermetis. We know that Gersonides’ private library contained three codices with collections of Ibn Ezra’s astro­ logical writings, including a copy of Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot.41 The second example is the mathematician and astronomer Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils of Tarascon (fl. 1340–77), best known by his Šeš kenafayim (Six Wings), six-part astronomical tables that predict future solar and lunar positions. One of Immanuel ben Jacob’s other works is Beʾur moʾznei Ḥanok (Explanation of Enoch’s Balance), a short treatise extant in at least five manu­ script copies, devoid of astro­logical content, in which the author acknowledges that he is expanding on the method of calculation of the length of the period of pregnancy explained by Abraham Ibn Ezra in his Moladot.42

Echoes of the Trutina Hermetis in the Latin West We turn now to the impact of Ibn Ezra’s trutina Hermetis on the Latin West. As already noted, neither balance as a generic name for the rectification of the nativity nor Hermes or Enoch as the name of the originator of one of these methods is found before Ibn Ezra’s time. Traces of the trutina Hermetis may be detected in three Latin texts written in Ibn Ezra’s time or slightly later. The first is the last para­graph of an extension of aphorism 51 of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium found in a large number of manu­scripts, and presented here according to the version preserved in a thirteenth-century manu­script found in Madrid, in which ‘Abraham Isbendeut’ expounds an imperfect or divergent version of the trutina Hermetis: Dixit magister Abraham Isbendeut: gradus infusionis spermatis non erat ex toto locus lune in nativitate vel ipse erat vel ei oppositus, et similiter erat de ascend-

41  See Sela, ‘Gersonides’ Astro­logy and Abraham Ibn Ezra’; Weil, La Bibliothèque de Gersonide, p. 46. 42  See, for example, Paris, BnF, MS héb. 903, fifteenth century, fol. 36a.

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ente nativitatis, id est non erat locus lune in spermatis infusione vel ipse erit aut ei oppositus et hoc expertus fuit multociens.43 [Master Abraham Isbendeut said: the degree [at the hour] the sperm was introduced [into the womb] is not at all the position of the Moon in the nativity, but it was the [degree in] opposition to it [the position of the Moon], and the same applies to the ascendant of the nativity, namely, it [the ascendant of the nativity] is not the position of the Moon [at the hour] the sperm was introduced [into the womb] but it was the [degree in] opposition to it [the degree of the Moon at the hour the sperm was introduced into the womb]; this has been tested many times.]

Abraham Isbendeut has been conjecturally identified with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud (c.  1110–1180).44 However, since this fragment includes a version of the trutina Hermetis, one wonders whether Abraham Isbendeut may not be a corruption of Abraham Avenesra. Particularly impressing is the conclusion of Abraham Isbendeut that ‘this has been tested many times’, which almost seems to be Abraham Ibn Ezra’s signature. The second text is a passage from a treatise entitled Amitegni, found in a four­ teenth-century Oxford manu­script of astro­logical works that shows links to the De occultis by Hermann of Carinthia (c. 1100–c. 1160).45 This passage includes a precise and detailed exposition of the trutina Hermetis and assigns this doctrine to Hermes, but neither the term trutina nor Ibn Ezra’s name occur in it. Ex Hermetis ergo et aliorum communiter astro­logorum sententia deprehensum est, quoniam locus Lune in hora natali oriens est in conceptione, lunaris etiam gradus in hora conceptionis est oriens gradus natalis.46 43  Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 10015, fol. 19. For an analysis of this extension of aphorism 51 of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, see Boudet, ‘Naissance et conception’. I am grateful to Alexander Fiodora for placing a digital copy of this fragment at my disposal. For a printed edition of this text, based on Paris, BnF, MS lat. 7307, see Thorndike, ‘Notes on Some Astronomical, Astro­logical and Mathematical Manu­scripts’, p. 129. 44  See D’Alverny, ‘Avendauth?’, p. 39. 45  For a description of Amitegni and an edition and translation of the first part of this work, see Burnett, ‘Amitegni’. 46  Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Laud Misc. 594, fols 147v–148r. I am grateful to Charles Burnett for placing this passage at my disposal. Following the postulate that the Moon’s position at the time of birth is the same as the position of the ascendant degree at the time of conception (and vice versa), the Amitegni mentions short, median, and long durations of pregnancy, and allots them respectively 258, 273, and 288 days, according to whether the Moon at the time of birth was located in the degree of the descendant, in the degree of the ascendant, or in the degree of the descendant less even one degree.

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[From the statement of Hermes and other astro­logers it has been indicated jointly that the position of the Moon at the moment of birth is [the ascendant degree] at [the time of ] conception, and the degree [of the position] of the Moon at the time of conception is the ascendant degree at [the time of ] birth.]

The third text is a passage in the Epitome totius astro­logiae, a popular twelfthcentury Latin work attributed to John of Seville and dated 1142, which consists of an introduction to astro­logy and four sections on the main subdivisions of Arabic astro­logy. Recent research has showed close links between some of the content of the Epitome and various parts of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical corpus, although the precise nature of Ibn Ezra’s contribution to Epitome remains to be ascertained.47 One example occurs in the part of the Epitome devoted to nativities, in a section addressing the rectification of the nativity: Ait autem Hermes, quod locus Lunae in conceptione erit ascendens in nativitate, & gradus Lunae in nativitate fuit ascendens in conceptione.48 [Hermes said that the position of the Moon at conception is the ascendant at birth, and the degree of the Moon at birth is the ascendant at conception.]

Except for Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical treatises, Epitome totius astro­logiae and Ami­ tegni are the first in which Hermes is credited as the originator of the trutina Hermetis. Likewise, the short, median, and long durations of pregnancy are mentioned in Epitome totius astro­logiae and Amitegni, just as in Moladot, Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, and Ibn Ezra’s long commentary on Exodus 2. 2. Note, however, that the word trutina does not occur in Epitome totius astro­logiae or 47 

Charles Burnett first advanced this thesis in ‘John of Seville and John of Spain’. Burnett showed further links between various parts of the Epitome and Ibn Ezra’s oeuvre in ‘Weather Forecasting, Lunar Mansions and a Disputed Attribution’ and ‘Hebrew and Latin Astro­logy in the Twelfth Century’. Burnett’s thesis was fleshed out by Renate Smithuis, who found additional parallels between various parts of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical oeuvre and the Epitome. See Smithuis, ‘Abraham ibn Ezra the Astro­loger’, especially ch. 3. I continued this research in my editions of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical treatises. 48  Epitome totius astro­logiae, ed. by Montanus and Neuber, ii.1, sig. H3r–v. Following the postulate that the Moon’s position at the time of birth is the same as the position of the ascendant degree at the time of conception (and vice versa), the Epitome mentions short, median, and long durations of pregnancy, and assigns them respectively 258, 273, and 288 days, according to whether the Moon at the time of birth was located in the degree of the descendant, at the cusp of the first place, or in the next degree after the descendant. The Epitome also puts forward a method to determine the duration of pregnancy that corresponds to any other position of the Moon at the time of birth.

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Amitegni, or anywhere else until the end of the thirteenth century, as we shall see now. In the final decades of the thirteenth century Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical treatises began to be transmitted to non-Jewish readers via collections that were translated in repeated waves into Latin and the emerging European vernaculars. Henry Bate of Malines (1246–c. 1310), a student in theo­logy and the arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Paris, incumbent of several ecclesiastical offices, proficient in astronomy and astro­logy and an author on these topics, organized the first translation project of Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical writings. Bate commissioned in 1273 a Jewish scholar known as Hagin le Juif to translate a collection of them from Hebrew into French, and in 1282 and 1292, Bate produced six Latin translations of astro­logical writings by Ibn Ezra.49 In 1280, Bate composed an astro­logical autobio­graphy, Liber Servi Dei de Mechlinia de Ducatu Brabantie super inquisitione et verificatione nativitatis incerte ex iudiciis ac subsequentibus nato post nativitatem (Book by a Servant of God from Malines in the Duchy of Brabant, on the determination and verification of an uncertain nativity on the basis of judgments and subsequent [events occurring to] the native after [his] birth; henceforth Nativitas), where he showed a close acquaintance with Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical work, including the following: Ad trutinam Hermetis qui et Enoch confugimus iuxta consilium Abrahe cognomine Principis et Ptolemei in Centilogio 51 propositione et Albumasar in Sadan necnon et reliquorum et precipue Abrahe Avenesre in suo libro De Nativitate corrigentis ibidem et uerificantis pretactam trutinam siue annimodar Hermetis. Hec ergo trutina siue annimodar, cui nullus philosophorum contradicit, talis est quod gradus lune in hora conceptionis est ascendens in hora natiuitatis, et e contrario gradus lune in hora nativitatis est ascendens in conceptione.50 [We have recourse to the trutina Hermetis or of Enoch in accordance with Abraham, named the Prince, and Ptolemy in aphorism 51 of the Centiloquium, and Abū Maʿshar in Sadan, and also, especially among the others, with Abraham Ibn Ezra in his book On Nativities, who corrected and tested the aforementioned trutina or annimodar of Hermes. This trutina or annimodar, which none of the scholars contradicts, states that the degree of the Moon at the time of conception is the ascendant at the time of birth, and conversely, the degree of the Moon at the time of birth is the ascendant at the time of conception.]

49  50 

See Sela, ‘The Ibn Ezra­–Henry Bate Astro­logical Connection’. Bate, Nativitas ed. by Steel, p. 6, lines 86–95.

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As far as I know, this passage is the earliest mention of the trutina Hermetis in a datable Latin text after Ibn Ezra’s death. But from where did Henry Bate take the expression trutina Hermetis? A plausible answer is that he took it from the aforementioned De nativitatibus (see above, pp. 86–88). Indeed, Bate’s Nativitas includes a large number of passages excerpted from De nativitatibus, which is designated there Liber Nativitatum and is said to be authored by certain Abraham Iudeus. Many of these passages are verbatim quotations, which are the earliest available evidence of the existence of De nativitatibus. One of these verbatim quotations is closely related to the trutina Hermetis.51 That ‘Abrahe Avenesre in suo libro De Nativitate’ in the quoted passage refers to Ibn Ezra’s Moladot is confirmed by the following two points: first, because Bate’s Nativitas includes dozens of passages which are said there to be taken from a Liber Nativitatum authored by Abraham Avenesra, and which, under scrutiny, turn out to be Latin translations of passages excerpted from Ibn Ezra’s Moladot;52 second, because Bate’s Nativitas describes Abraham Ibn Ezra as ‘correcting and testing in this book the aforementioned trutina or annimodar’. As seen above, in all his accounts of the trutina Hermetis Ibn Ezra highlights that he has tested this procedure many times, but only in Moladot do we find a full account of the two corrections of the method.53 The quoted passage mentions three additional sources for the trutina Hermetis: (1) Aphorism 51 of the Centiloquium, as said above (see p. 83), 51 

See Bate, Nativitas ed. by Steel, p. 9, lines 179–86: ‘Vidi autem in quodam libro Nativitatum, relato ad quendam Iudeum Abraham, scriptum sic: Consentio Hermeti in hoc quod locus Lune in conceptione erit oriens in natiuitate semper. Contingit uero si prope natiuitatem, scilicet 7 uel 5 dies ante natiuitatem, alius planeta quam Saturnus obtinuerit gradum orientem in conceptione ibique potestatem habens Lunam uel ex quadrato uel ex opposito respexerit, exhibit partus citius tempore prefinito’ (I have seen written in a certain Book on Nativities, conveyed by a certain Abraham, the Jew, as follows: I agree with Hermes that the position of the Moon in the conception will always be the ascendant in the nativity. If close to the birth, for example seven or five days before the birth, it happens that a planet other than Saturn reaches the ascendant degree at [the time of ] the conception, and there [the planet] exerts lordship over the Moon from quadrature or opposition, the delivery will take place quicker than the expected time). Cf. Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt, sig. A2v, lines 21–25. 52  See Sela, ‘The Ibn Ezra­–Henry Bate Astro­logical Connection’, p. 173. 53  See Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 4, 5, ed.  by Sela, pp.  92–93, and particularly ii 6, 1–6, pp. 94–95. These corrections predict that the native can be expected to be born before term when, in the days close to the delivery, Venus and Mercury, on the one hand, or Mars, on the other, enter the position where the Moon will be at the time of birth. The corrections are also mentioned extremely briefly in Ibn Ezra, Liber de Nativitatibus, ed. by Ratdolt, sig. A2v, lines 22–25. De nativitatibus, however, never refers to ‘corrections’, as Moladot and Henry Bate do.

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reports the trutina Hermetis in a simplified form but mentions neither the term trutina nor Hermes as the originator. (2) ‘Albumasar in Sadan’ refers to Mudhākarāt Abī Maʿshar fī asrār ʿilm al-nujūm (Sayings of Abū Maʿshar on the Secrets of Astro­logy), a book that was not written by Abū Maʿshar himself but by his pupil Abū Saʿīd Shādhān bin Bahr.54 Henry Bate’s Nativitas has several quotations from Albumasar in Sadan that deal with the trutina Hermetis. To judge by these quotes, Albumasar in Sadan did not use the term trutina or cite Hermes as its originator, but offers a simplified account of the trutina Hermetis. (3) ‘Abraham Princeps’ is actually Abraham Ibn Ezra but refers to Abraham Bar Ḥiyya (c. 1065–c. 1136), who was known within Jewish society as Abraham ha-Naśiʾ, that is, Abraham the Prince, and is famous because of his Luḥot ha-nasiʾ, ‘the [astronomical] tables of the Prince’. A surprising element of Henry Bate’s attitude towards Abraham Ibn Ezra is that when Bate refers to astro­logical treatises that we now know were written by or are attributed to Abraham Ibn Ezra, he assigns them to one of three different authors. All three are ‘Abraham’, but they have distinguishing cognomens. One is ‘Abraham Princeps’.55 But Bar Ḥiyya never wrote a work on nativities, let alone one that refers to the trutina Hermetis. In Nativitas Bate ascribes to ‘Abraham Princeps’ a number of treatises that we know were authored by Ibn Ezra or are attributed to him. One of them is a treatise on the doctrine of elections, designated Tractatus de Electionibus, to which Nativitas associates a passage on the trutina Hermetis.56 Under scrutiny, it emerges that this passage of Tractatus de Electionibus is a paraphrase of a passage on the trutina Hermetis in Ibn Ezra’s Mivḥarim III.57 54  Albumasar in Sadan, ed. by Federici Vescovini, 19, p. 312, 23 p. 317; Burnett, ‘“Albumasar in Sadan” in the Twelfth Century’; Thorndike, ‘Albumasar in Sadan’; Pingree , ‘Abū Maʿshar’. 55  See Sela, ‘The Ibn Ezra­–Henry Bate Astro­logical Connection’, pp. 171–83. 56  See Sela, ‘The Ibn Ezra­–Henry Bate Astro­logical Connection’, pp. 175–80. 57  See Bate, Nativitas ed. by Steel, pp. 6–7, lines 107–08: ‘Abrahe cognomine Principis in suo De Electionibus Tractatu: Potest enim tempus harum morarum anticipari propter Venerem et Mercurium’ (Abraham, called the Prince, in his Treatise on Elections, [said]: The time [i.e. completion] of these periods [of pregnancy] may by anticipated because of Venus and Mercury). Cf. Liber Eleccionum, Erfurt, Amplon, MS O.89, fol. 42a, lines 6–11: ‘Et oportet aduc respicere quod si fuerit terminus propinquius et Mercurius intraverit in loco in quo decet ipsum esse, et sit ei fortitudo magna in illo loco, et ipse est de inferioribus a sole, vel Mars propter festinacionem naturae sue et dederit fortitudine stelle existenti in loco predicto, exibit motus antequam attingat ad dictum locum quia stella faciet opus lune et hoc est probatum multotiens’ (It is also necessary to consider that when the term [i.e. the period of pregnancy]

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The second explicit mention of the trutina Hermetis in a Latin text occurs in the work of Pietro d’Abano (c. 1250–c. 1315), the Italian philosopher and professor of medicine,58 who in 1293 embarked on his own project to translate Ibn Ezra’s astro­logical writings, almost simultaneously with Henry Bate. In Pietro’s masterpiece, the Conciliator differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur (Conciliator of the Differences between the Philosophers and the Physicians), we read the following passage: Si autem decimo moretur in utero mense, sub Martis nascitur dominio, et quia is laboriosis movetur motibus hinc iste agitatus egreditur at quia in fortuna calidus et siccus que plurime natus sub eo ponit Abraam Evenare vivere parum. Ego, tamen anno existens 53, velut a matre solertissima potui comprehendere ac per trutinam Hermetis nativitatis gradus ascendentis occulti investigationem repperi, moram novem mensium et 14 dierum me in utero contraxisse.59 [But if [the foetus] is delayed in the womb until the tenth month, he will be born under the dominion of Mars, and since it [Mars] is moved by troublesome movements henceforth he comes out agitated, but since by fortune it [Mars] is hot and dry, he will be short-lived, like many newborns, as said by Abraham Ibn Ezra. I, [now] fifty-three years old, could understand from my most sagacious mother and discover through the trutina Hermetis and the investigation of the hidden ascendant degree, that the period of pregnancy in which I was carried in the womb was nine months and fourteen days.]

The first part of this text paraphrases Pietro’s own Latin translation of a passage from Moladot, which is substantiated by Pietro’s acknowledgement of his

is close [to its completion], if Mercury enters the position where it is suitable that it will be [at the moment of birth], and it [Mercury] exercises a great power in this position (as it is one of the planets inferior to the Sun), or [if ] Mars, because of the quickness of its nature, gives power to a planet placed in the aforementioned position, the development [of the pregnancy] will be interrupted before it reaches the aforementioned position because the planet behaves like the Moon, and this has been tested many times). For the first part of the discussion about trutina Hermetis in Mivḥarim III, see above, p. 88–89. 58  Thorndike, A History of Magic, ii, 874–947. 59  Pietro d’Abano, Conciliator, Diff. 49, sig. G5r 2, lines 60–66. An additional passage, in which Pietro paraphrases his own Latin translation of a passage from Ibn Ezra’s account of the trutina Hermetis in Moladot (see Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 6, 2, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 94–96) and mentions explicitly Ibn Ezra’s name in the same breath as the trutina Hermetis, occurs a few lines later in the same chapter of the Conciliator. See Pietro d’Abano, Conciliator, Diff. 49 sig. G5v 2, lines 23–28.

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reliance on Ibn Ezra.60 That Pietro applied Ibn Ezra’s trutina Hermetis to calculate the length of his own gestation (nine months and fourteen days) is corroborated not only by the explicit mention of Ibn Ezra’s name but also by the fact that Moladot’s presentation of the distribution of the months of gestation among the planets, in general, and of Mars’s dominion over the tenth month of pregnancy, in particular, occur immediately after the account of the trutina Hermetis there. But Pietro’s explicit use here of the expression trutina Hermetis is intriguing, because Pietro, in his own Latin translation of Moladot, did not use that locution, but equatio or investigatio Hermetis.61 I would suggest that Pietro took trutina Hermetis from De nativitatibus, which was well known at the end of the thirteenth century, as demonstrated by the fact that Henry Bate employed it and quoted it in his aforementioned Nativitas. We have to wait until the first printed edition of De nativitatibus, published by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice in 1485, for the full emergence of the trutina Hermetis in the Latin West, although by then the name of Abraham Ibn Ezra is no longer associated with the procedure. The first occurrence, or one of the first, is in the Latin translation of aphorism 51 of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium made by the humanist and poet Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), which accompanied the first printed Greek edition of Ptolemy’s text on astro­ logy, the Tetrabiblos, in 1519.62 From that time on, occurrences of the trutina Hermetis in both astro­logical and anti-astro­logical literature are legion. I would suggest that the rise of absolute monarchies and the ever-growing pressure for viable heirs, coupled with the practice of political marriages that could only be successful if fruitful, fits very nicely with the spread of the trutina Hermetis. One example is in the chapter on the rectification of the nativity, in the third part on nativities, of the Christian Astro­logy by William Lilly (1602–1681), a huge compendium of astro­logical techniques and the first of its kind to be printed in English. Lilly refers to the ‘Trutine or Scrutiny of Hermes (one of the wisest of all mortal men, and as ancient as Moses)’, says that ‘this way is far more ancient than the Animodar of Ptolemy, allowed by Ptolemy himself in the 51st Centiloquium’, and mentions four predecessors who endorsed the trutina Hermetis: the Italian priest Francesco Giuntini, or Junctinus (1522–1580), the German polymath Johannes Schöner (1477–1547), the aforemen60 

See Ibn Ezra, Moladot, ii 7, 11, ed. and trans. by Sela, pp. 96–97. Cf. Ibn Ezra, Liber Abrahe Avenare de revolutionibus et nativitatibus, p. xxvi4 2, lines 8–12. 61  Ibn Ezra, Liber Abrahe Avenare de revolutionibus et nativitatibus, pp. xlvv, lines 13 and 31. 62  For this information, see David Origanus, Novae motuum coelestium, p. 371.

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tioned Giovanni Pontano, and the writer on astro­logy Christopher Heydon (1561–1623).63 The onset of the scientific revolution called astro­logy into question, and with it the validity of the trutina Hermetis. I conclude by quoting two refutations of its accuracy, which still mention this name and describe the procedure. The first is in the Tetractys anti-astro­logica by the English philosopher Henry More (1614–1687): Trutina Hermetis goes upon this ground, that that degree of the zodiack the Moon is in at the time of conception, the same is the horoscope of the nativity. But what a foolish subterfuge is this when as the exact time of conception, is as hard to be known as that of the nativity? And if it were known, there is yet no certainty, some coming sooner, some later, as every mother, nurse or midwife knows full well.64

The second comes from the first edition of L’Encyclopédie (1751), compiled by Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), proving that the trutina Hermetis was still well known in the eighteenth century: TRUTINA HERMETIS, (Divin.) terme familier aux astro­logues, & qui signifie une méthode artificielle d’examiner & de rectifier la nativité ou l’horoscope pris du moment de la naissance d’une personne en remontant au moment de sa conception, & déterminant quel étoit alors l’état des cieux. On sent que par-là ces imposteurs ont voulu se ménager une ressource, mais aussi fautive que leur premiere méthode.65

[TRUTINA HERMETIS, (Divination) a term well known to astro­logers, denoting an artificial method of examining and correcting the nativity or horoscope taken at the moment of a person’s birth by going back to the moment of his conception and determining the state of the skies at that time. One feels that these impostors wanted to avail themselves of another resource, but one as faulty as their first method.]

63 

Lilly, Christian Astro­logy, XCVIII, p. 501. More, Tetractys anti-astro­logica, ch. XVI, p. 70. 65  Encyclopédie, ed. by Diderot and d’Alembert, xvi, 728. 64 

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Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Documents Erfurt, Amplon, MS O.89 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 10015 Oxford, Bodleian Library [Bodl. Lib.], MS Laud Misc. 594 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS héb. 903 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS lat. 7307 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek [ÖN], MS 5442

Primary Sources Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan, De Nativitatibus, in Albubater magni Alchasili de nativitatibus, ed. by Iohannes Petreius (Norimberga: apud Ioh. Petreium, 1540) Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-Tafḥīm, in The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astro­ logy, ed. and trans. by R. Ramsay Wright (London: Luzac, 1934) Albumasar in Sadan, in Graziella Federici Vescovini, ‘La versio latina degli Excerpta de secretis Albumasar di Sadan’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 65, (1998), 273–330 Al-Qabīṣī, Kitāb al-mudḥal, in The Introduction to Astro­logy: Editions of the Arabic and Latin Texts and an English Translation, ed. and trans. by Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and M. Yano (London: Warburg Institute, 2004), pp. 18–155 Bate, Henry, Nativitas, in The Astro­logical Bio­graphy of a Medi­eval Philosopher: Henry Bate’s Nativitas (1280), ed. by Carlos Steel, intro. and annot. by Carlos Steel, Steven Vanden Broecke,  David Juste, and  Shlomo Sela (Leuven: Leuven Uni­ver­sity Press 2018), pp. 123–267 David Origanus, Novae motuum coelestium (Frankfurt an der Oder: apud Davidem Reich­ ar­dum bibliopolam Stetinensem, 1609) Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, 28 vols (Paris, 1751) Epitome totius astro­logiae, conscripta a Ioanne Hispalensi Hispano Astro­logo celeberrimo, ante annos quadringentos, ac nunc primum in lucem edita. Cum praefatione Ioachimi Helleri Leucopetraei, contra Astro­logiae adversarios, ed. by Iohannes Montanus and Ulricus Neuber (Nuremberg, 1548) Hugo of Santalla, Liber Aristotilis, ed. by Charles Burnett and David Pingree (London: Warburg Institute, 1997) Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Exodus, vol. ii of Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Torah, ed. by A. Weiser ( Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1976) —— , Liber Abrahe Avenare de revolutionibus et nativitatibus, in Abrahe Avenaris Iudei Astro­logi peritissimi in re iudiciali opera ab excellentissimo philosopho Petro de Albano

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post accuratam castigationem in Latinum traducta (Venice: Petrus Liechtenstein, 1507), sig. xlivv–lviiiv —— , Liber de Nativitatibus, in Abraham Iudei de nativitatibus, ed.  by Erhard Ratdolt (Venezia, 1485) —— , Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astro­logy: A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the ‘Book of the Beginning of Wisdom’ and the ‘Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs’, ed. and trans. by Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 488–555 —— , Moladot, in Abraham Ibn Ezra on Nativities and Continuous Horoscopy: A Parallel Hebrew English Critical Edition of the ‘Book of Nativities’ and the ‘Book of Revolution’, ed. and trans. by Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 84–203 —— , Reshit Ḥokhmah, in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astro­logy: A  Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the ‘Book of the Beginning of Wisdom’ and the ‘Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs’, ed. and trans. by Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 48–271 —— , Sefer ha-ʿOlam, in The Book of the World: A Parallel Hebrew–English Critical Edition of the Two Versions of the Text, ed. and trans. by Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2010) —— , Sefer Ṭeʿamim (second version), in The Book of Reasons: A Parallel Hebrew–English Critical Edition of the Two Versions of the Text, ed. and trans. by Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Lilly, William, Christian Astro­logy (London: John Partridge, 1647; repr. Abingdon, 2005) More, Henry, Tetractys anti-astro­logica, or, The four chapters in the explanation of the grand mystery of holiness which contain a brief but solid confutation of judiciary astro­logy (London: Printed by J. M. for Walter Kettilby, 1681) Pietro d’Abano, Conciliator differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur (Venezia, 1476) Ptolemy, Centiloquium, in Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn Al-Dāya, Commento al Centiloquio Tolemaico, ed. and trans. by Franco Martorello and Giuseppe Bezza (Milano: Mimesis, 2013) —— , Tetrabiblos, ed. and trans. by F. E. Robbins (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī: Book of the Categories of Nations, ed. and trans. by Semaʿan I. Salem and Alok Kumar (Austin: Uni­ver­sity of Texas Press, 1991) ʿUmar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb al-Mawālid, in De nativitatibus secundum Omar, ed. by Iohannes Hervagius (Basel, 1533) Vettius Valens, Antho­logies, trans. by Mark T. Riley, on the basis of Wilhelm Kroll’s (1908) and David Pingree’s (1986) editions,

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Secondary Works Boudet, Jean-Patrice, ‘Naissance et conception: Autour de la proposition 51 du Centilo­ quium attribué à Ptolémée’, in Festschrift for Danielle Jacquart (Genève, forthcoming) Burnett, Charles, ‘“Albumasar in Sadan” in the Twelfth Century’, in Ratio et superstitio: Essays in Honor of Graziella Vescovini, ed. by Giancarlo  Marchetti, Orsola  Rignani, and Valeria Sorge (Louvain-le-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales, 2003), pp. 59–67 —— , ‘Amitegni: A  Newly-Discovered Text on Astro­logical Judgements’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 21 (2015), 653–61 —— , ‘Hebrew and Latin Astro­logy in the Twelfth Century: The Example of the Location of Pain’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Bio­logical and Biomedical Sciences, 41.2 (2010), 70–75 —— , ‘John of Seville and John of Spain, a mise au point’, Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 44, (2002), 59–78; repr. as essay VI in Charles Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 59–79 —— , ‘The Legend of the Three Hermes and Abū Maʿshar’s Kitāb al-Ulūf in the Latin Middle Ages’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 39 (1976),  231–34; repr. as essay V in Charles Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 231–34 —— , ‘Weather Forecasting, Lunar Mansions and a Disputed Attribution: The Tractatus pluviarum et aeris mutationis and Epitome totius astro­logiae of “Iohannes Hispalensis”’, in Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages, ed. by Anna Akasoy and Wim Raven (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 219–65 D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse, ‘Avendauth?’, in Homenaje a Millas-Vallicrosa (Barcelona: Con­ sejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1954–56), i, 19–43 Pingree, David, ‘Abū Maʿshar’, in Dictionary of Scientific Bio­graphy (New York: Scribner, 1970), i, 32–39 —— , The Thousands of Abū Maʿshar (London: Warburg Institute, 1968) Plessner, Martin, ‘Hermes Trismegistus and Arab Science’, Studia Islamica, 2 (1954), 45–59 —— , ‘Hirmis’, in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1971), iii, 463–65 Sela, Shlomo, ‘Encyclopedic Aspects of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scientific Corpus’, in The Medi­eval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy, ed. by S. Harvey (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), pp. 154–70 —— , ‘Gersonides’ Astro­logy and Abraham Ibn Ezra’, Aleph, 17 (2017), 251–333 —— , ‘The Ibn Ezra­–Henry Bate Astro­logical Connection and the Three Abrahams’, Medi­terranea, 2 (2017), 163–86 —— , ‘Origins and Transmission of Liber Abraham Iudei de Nativitatibus: A  New Ap­ praisal Based on the Scrutiny of the Available Manu­scripts and other Sources,’ Revue des études juives, 177 (2018), 313–48

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Sela, Shlomo, and Gad Freudenthal, ‘Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings: A Chrono­ logical Listing’, Aleph, 6 (2006), 13–55 Smithuis, Renate, ‘Abraham ibn Ezra the Astro­loger and the Transmission of Arabic Science to the Christian West’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Manchester, 2004) Thorndike, Lynn, ‘Albumasar in Sadan’, Isis, 45 (1954), 22–32 —— , A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1923–58) —— , ‘Notes on Some Astronomical, Astro­logical and Mathematical Manu­scripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris’,  Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes,  20 (1957), 112–72 Van Bladel, Kevin, The Arabic Hermes (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009) Weil, Gérard E., La Bibliothèque de Gersonide (Leuven: E. Peeters, 1991)

Part 2 Birth, Death, and Magic

Mother and Child: Archaeo­logical Evidence of Childbirth Complications in Medie­ val Normandy Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, and Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse

W

hen scholars started collecting burial and death data from historical records, particularly in relation to medi­eval and early modern sites, they noticed the anomalous death rate of young women of reproductive age, which generally far exceeds that of young men of the same age group. The logical explanation for the high incidence of female death in the fertile period of life pointed to the high risk of childbirth, especially during the first delivery. This interpretation is supported by icono­graphic and literary sources from the High Middle Ages,1 and specifically by the concern expressed in medical and scientific treatises and in the numerous miracle narratives, which frequently address the problems of pregnancy, childbirth, or their 1  Gourevitch, ‘Grossesse et accouchement’; Laurent, Naître au Moyen Âge, p. 296; Laurent, ‘L’Accouchement dans l’icono­graphie médiévale’.

Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel is Research Engineer, CNRS, Centre Michel de Boüard (Centre de recherches archéo­logiques et historiques anciennes et mediévales, Université de Caen Normandie). Raphaëlle Lefebvre is Inrap Grand-Ouest/ Research Member of Centre Michel de Boüard (Centre de recherches archéo­logiques et historiques anciennes et mediévales, Université de Caen Normandie). Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse is Associate Member of Centre Michel de Boüard (Centre de recherches archéo­logiques et historiques anciennes et mediévales, Université de Caen Normandie). Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 109–133 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117820

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immediate consequences.2 If pregnancy represented for many women the fulfilment of their female role, the ensuing delivery prospect was synonymous with anxiety and suffering, as death in childbirth was a particularly real threat when the woman was too young, too old, or presented a smaller pelvis. These risks were all too well known: during the twelfth century Bartholo­ maeus Anglicus, in his encyclopaedic work De Proprietatibus Rerum, emphasizes early motherhood risks for women ‘with small members and body passages that are too narrow’ and enumerates every possible complication during delivery ‘by the fact that the way is narrow or that the woman is too fat or because the child is too big or because the expulsive virtue is too weak or because the child has died and does not cooperate in coming out’. He also specifies that it is necessary to verify that the placenta is expelled with the child because ‘if the placenta remained in the mother’s body after the child was driven out, it would place the mother in great danger’.3 However, if literary and historical sources offer a natural, if speculative, reason for the excessive percentage of deaths among young women in their fertile years, their explanation is not fully validated by what period burials seem to reveal: if maternal death was undoubtedly rather common in the Middle Ages, its archaeo­logical evidence is relatively limited.4 The low number of reported archaeo­logical examples is mostly due to various material factors (displaced burials due to the crowding of graves in cemeteries, post-sepulchral reintervention, etc.) as well as to taphonomic reasons (natural processes of body decay and putrescence and/or the nature of sediment more or less altering the state of bone preservation). Above all, according to archaeo­logical parameters, only cases of simultaneous or concurrent death of both mother and child can be unquestionably identified as death in childbirth, specifically because of historical burial customs. To establish a definitive diagnosis for maternal mortality within archaeo­ logical remains, this study takes into consideration three conditions that follow the normal chrono­logical birthing process: death during pregnancy, dur2 

See Alexandre-Bidon and Closson, L’Enfant à l’ombre des cathédrales, p. 276; Gélis, ‘L’Accouchement au xviiie siècle’; Gélis, ‘Sages-femmes et accoucheurs’; Sigal, ‘La Grossesse, l’accouchement et l’attitude envers l’enfant mort-né’; Portat and others, Rencontre autour de la mort des tout-petits, p. 342. 3  Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, trans. by Schäffer, vi. 10. 4  See Mafart, ‘Approche de la mortalité maternelle’; Boëtsch, Rabino-Massa, and Bello, ‘Accouchements et mortalité maternelle’; Alduc-Le Bagousse and Blondiaux, ‘Mortalité maternelle et périnatalité au premier millénaire’.

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Figure 5.1. Geo­graphical localization of the sites considered. Figure by Jean-Claude Fossey and Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel.

ing childbirth, or during the period following childbirth. This study therefore includes pregnant female skeletons still holding a foetus in their womb,5 as well as women that died during labour or very close to term and were buried with their child still in utero.6 The third type of inhumation here considered is that of women who were buried with their newborn child placed in the same grave, directly in contact with the mother’s body. However, the graves of those women buried simultaneously with infants over twenty-eight days old were excluded from our study. 5  The term ‘foetus’ indicates a child considered viable that is before twenty-two weeks of amenorrhea (Classification statistique internationale des maladies et des problèmes de santé connexes); ‘Consultation technique de l’OMS en vue d’élaborer une stratégie pour favoriser un développement optimal du foetus, Genève, 25–27 novembre 2003’, Annexe 1 in Pour un développement optimal du foetus, p. 51. 6  We followed the WHO definition of perinatal mortality: the perinatal period begins at the end of the twenty-second week of gestation and ends seven days after birth (premature neonatal mortality). Newborns who died within twenty-eight days of birth (late neonatal mortality) can also pertain to this study.

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Funeral Customs for Pregnant Women that Died during Childbirth or Shortly after their Child’s Death We will analyse elements related to burial customs and to funeral practices of these very specific graves as well as their location within the sepulchral space. These observations will allow us to determine if the burial of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth was in any way different from the medi­e val community norm. The various examples we studied come from Norman medi­ eval sites (Figure 5.1). Courcy (Calvados) This site, located around forty kilometres south-east of Caen, was explored in 2014 during a preventive investigation dig.7 During the dig, three tombs containing women with a dead infant of foetal or perinatal age were discovered. Each grave corresponds to a different fatality due to obstetrical problems. In all three cases, the mother–child direct bio­logical link exists without any doubt between these individuals, buried simultaneously in the same grave. Two graves associate a woman with a foetus still in position in the adult pelvis (S. 2003 and 2006). The third one associates a woman and her deceased perinatal child laid to rest at knee height between the adult’s thighs. Aizier (Eure) In the context of a long-term archaeo­logical programme, the medi­e val leper house of Saint-Thomas d’Aizier was dug from 1998 till 2010 under the supervision first of Marie-Cécile Truc (GAVS-Inrap-CRAHAM), then of Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel (CNRS-CRAHAM).8 Located in the middle of a forest, the establishment belonged to the Abbey of Fécamp (Seine-Maritime). Today only the ruins of the Romanesque chapel, dedicated to Thomas Becket, are still in existence. This leper house, a small and otherwise unimportant rural building, is unique in the total preservation of its untouched structure, which offers the very rare opportunity of exhaustive excavation. Established in the late 7 

Dupont and Lefebvre, Courcy ‘Le Bourg’. Chapelain de Seréville-Niel and others, ‘La Chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier (Eure)’; Blondiaux and others, ‘Saint-Thomas d’Aizier, la vie et la mort dans une léproserie médiévale normande’. 8 

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twelfth century and abandoned during the sixteenth century, the leper house seems to have been sporadically visited before the forest claimed it, safeguarding its remains. The cemetery associated with the chapel was entirely excavated, and more than 220 identified burials have offered a greater understanding of the population buried in such medi­eval leper houses. One of these graves includes a young leper buried with a perinatal deceased child, still partially in utero. Square Darnétal in Caen (Calvados) This cemetery was located on the north side of Saint-Peter’s church, below the ducal castle.9 A  programmed excavation was conducted between 1991 and 1993 by the Museum of Normandy archaeo­logical department (supervised by Jean-Yves Marin). For administrative purposes, that excavation only dealt with part of the parochial cemetery, where 914 burials were identified, with a huge number of tombs overlapping or even built against one another. The cemetery high-density burial can be explained by the fact that Saint-Peter’s parish was clearly one of the largest in the city of Caen in terms of both area and population. It was possible to determine various inhumation periods: about ten graves date prior to the thirteenth century, a dozen from the thirteenth to fourteenth century, and the large majority (930) postdate the fourteenth century. The cemetery was finally abandoned in 1792. Two of the late medi­eval graves contain a woman associated with a foetus. In the first case (S. 462), childbirth must have been imminent, as the child’s head, a full-term baby, had already descended into the pelvic cavity. In the second case (S. 848), the presence of a child still in utero is mentioned in archaeo­ logical documentation, but its exact location in the grave was not specified, as at the time of the excavation field surveys did not typically integrate taphonomic observations. The Church of Saint-Julien in Caen (Calvados) An archaeo­logical excavation was carried out at the church of Saint-Julien and its cemetery in the late 1980s.10 This site is located near Caen castle, and the dig was conducted by the Archaeo­logical Department of the Museum of Normandy 9  Leroux, ‘Typochrono­logie des sépultures du viiie au xviiie siècle’, i, 11–23; Marin and Leroux, Rapport intermédiaire des fouilles, pp. 1–7 + annexes. 10  Leroux, ‘Typochrono­logie des sépultures du viiie au xviiie siècle’, i, 17–23.

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(supervised by Jean-Yves Marin). The church interior and its nearby cemetery were dug, and 376 tombs were identified according to three inhumation phases ranging from the seventh to the thirteenth century. Two of the graves discovered during the archaeo­logical operation (S. 129 and 357) associated a woman with a child still in utero. The first case was noticed in the choir of the church of Saint-Julien and the second in its outside cemetery, in the north-eastern part of the religious building.11 The old archaeo­logical excavation field records are incomplete and of lower quality than what is normally expected of modern digs. However, it was possible to examine the existing pictures of the graves (overviews and details), although observations on taphonomic processes based on this documentation could only yield partial results.

Archaeo­logical Examples of Maternal Deaths Death Occurred during Pregnancy On the site of Courcy, a burial (S. 2003, Figure 5.2) corresponds to a death during pregnancy. The woman is fully laid out on her back in an anthropomorphous grave with a cephalic logette and lateral benches. Her arms are placed along the body, the right forearm folded at a 90-degree angle, left arm directed towards the abdomen. Her right hand bones are scattered in the left hemithorax, the left ones in the pelvis cavity. Her lower limbs are arranged parallel to the body axis. A displacement of feet bones can be observed, as they have collapsed and rotated laterally. Her pelvis belt is fully open and has fallen down, coxal bones appear by their medial face, and partial anatomical connection is still preserved with the sacrum. If the general body’s decay seems to have occurred in an enclosed empty space, some of the skeleton bones indicate that various parts of the corpse were also progressively covered with sediment after the decay of soft tissue, and that the grave filling varies depending on the different areas of the body (left ribs and foot). As no evidence of a supporting structure or linear delimitation along the side of the body was found during the dig, it is not possible to attest to the use of a durable burial container. During the adult skeleton excavation, non-viable foetus bones were identified, mainly in the pelvic cavity.12 The foetus age was estimated to week 18.3 11  Leroux, ‘Typochrono­logie des sépultures du viiie au xviiie siècle’, i, 45–46; Leroux, Margerie, and Marin, ‘Les Eglises de Caen du viie au xiie siècle’. 12  The assumption of foetus viability is generally twenty-two weeks of amenorrhea

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Figure 5.2. Courcy, burial no. 2003. Reproduced with permission of INRAP.

of amenorrhea (i.e. between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy).13 Some bones were also found between the adult femurs. No anatomical connection was preserved between the immature foetus bones. Skeletal elements displacement could be owed to the body decay in void space and to the relaxation of the mother’s pelvic floor muscles. Only the baby’s long bones were found, and no cranial element at all remained in the grave. This could simply be due to differential preservation of the baby’s fragile skull bones. Many factors can be considered to explain this woman’s death during pregnancy: she was over thirty years old, osseous marker on coxal bones may suggest several previous pregnancies (a rather deep preauricular sulcus, a groove on the pelvic surface of the ilium, lateral to the auricular surface supports this idea), and she was of short stature (stature considered at 1.55 m height or 5.08 ft). Analysis of the woman’s health conditions reveals no significant particularity (according to current WHO recommendations (Classification statistique internationale des maladies et des problèmes de santé connexes). 13  Adalian, ‘Evaluation multiparamétrique de la croissance fœtale’, p. 372.

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(a large presence of dental calculus is noticed, but only two caries and a single ante-mortem dental loss). No patho­logical occurrence was found either on this woman or on the child. Death at the End of a Pregnancy with Baby in Utero Within the leper house of Saint-Thomas d’Aizier, a grave, located along the chapel north wall, contains a woman (31 years old +/-1.48 year) of short stature (1.53 m height or 5.01 ft) buried with her near-term foetus in utero (Figure 5.3).14 The woman was fully laid out on her back, her head oriented to the west, arms placed alongside the body, forearms bended on her abdomen, right on left. Her right hand lay flat under her left arm and over the left ribs. The left hand bones were scattered over the right elbow and along the right ribs. Her pelvic girdle was fully open, partly connected to the sacrum. Lower limbs were symmetrically arranged parallel to the body axis, knees and feet together. Several nails, wedging stones, and the body’s mode of decay, typical of a void space, testify to a probable wood coffin burial. During the archaeo­logical dig several baby bones were identified at the pelvic bone level. A number of cranial elements were directly in contact with the adult’s left coxal bone. Although it was not possible to observe any strict anatomical connection, in particular for long bones, some anatomical logic was, however, preserved. Several of the child’s bones remained in the upper abdominal area, mainly on the right part of the adult skeleton, while other bones had been displaced to mid-thigh level probably during the mother’s body decay process, or moved by the action of burrowing animals. By taking all this into account, it is possible to assume the baby’s initial arrangement: the child appears head-down in the womb, but still in a transverse position. That means that delivery had probably not yet begun, but that it was imminent. Another hypothesis is that labour might have started prematurely, before the child had turned upside-down in a birthing position, causing an attempted childbirth with fatal results for the mother. These two subjects’ preliminary examination at the time of the archaeo­ logical field investigation revealed some osseous anomalies on the diaphysis of the adult’s lower limbs and on some parts of the child’s skeleton. Further laboratory analysis on these two subjects identified patho­logical conditions and, in 14 

Age estimation based on cement annulation count (original data of the Paleoanthropo­ logical Department, CRAHAM UMR 6273 CNRS-UNICAEN, 2014).

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Figure 5.3. Aizier (Eure, France), Saint-Thomas d’Aizier chapel, 2008, site no. 27 006 003. Figure by Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel.

the mother’s case, established a link with leprosy, even if that was not the main cause of death. The mother’s general oral health was average, with some antemortem dental falls and moderate caries not associated with periapical cysts. However, the nasomaxillary region presents specific signs of leprosy disease. The post-cranial skeleton carries additional evidence of leprosy. No patho­logy was observed on the foetal skeleton.

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Figure 5.4. Courcy, burial no. 2006. Reproduced with the permission of INRAP.

The second example is provided from the site at Courcy, where another maternal death occurred probably at the end of pregnancy (Figure 5.4). This dead woman, aged between twenty and thirty-nine years old, lies on her back, her head wedged in a cephalic notch pointing west. Her body position is supine, upper limbs resting alongside it, hands by coxal bones, lower limbs parallel to the body axis, feet in extension. Her cranium is disconnected from the atlas and from the mandible, which was displaced forward on thoracic vertebrae. The vertebral column is still in anatomical connection with cervical vertebrae raised up from the other ones. The right rib cage is fully open and partially flat (due to the peri­ natal skeleton) while the left rib cage retains its original volume. Shoulders are disconnected in particular on the left-hand side, whereas elbows are still connected. Forearms, in a pronated position, are disconnected from hand and wrist bones. Hand bones appear scattered, in particular on the right side. However, from some of the bones’ original positions it is possible to determine that her hands were initially lying flat. The woman’s pelvis is semi-opened and partially collapsed, coxal bones appearing by their frontmedial face. The right coxo-femoral articulation is loosely connected, the femoral head partially outside the acetabulum. Lower limbs are still connected to tarsus bones, except for

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the left patella, which fell away from the femur. Feet and leg bones are raised, presenting a sort of ‘logette’ at this level. Although talus-crural articulations are preserved, other feet bones are disconnected. No wall marker, linear delimitation, or demarcation of a hard-shell container were noted during the excavation or determined by the taphonomic study. However, the dead body’s decay seems to have taken place in a void space, which suggests the possible existence of one or several wooden cover boards on the grave. Bones of a perinatal individual are still in position within the mother’s body. The child lies laterally on the right, head engaged inside the pelvis, face pointing north. Most of its bones are scattered over the mother’s right hemithorax. The baby’s lower limbs are located along the adult’s lower backbone. The immature infant’s age was estimated at 39.5 weeks of amenorrhea.15 This baby may therefore be considered within the average standard of a bio­logically full-term foetus. On the woman’s coxal bones no osseous scars from parturition were observed. It is then possible that this was a first pregnancy. The child’s position and location (in particular its skull in the female pelvic cavity and the rest of the perinatal remains highly positioned relative to the pelvis) suggest a classic cephalic delivery foetal presentation. The child was still in utero at the time of burial. Lack of sediments between adult and immature bones confirms that this was the grave of a pregnant woman and not of a mother who died during childbirth and buried together with the stillborn baby placed upon her body. Although it cannot be easily determined if the childbirth process had started or not, it is sure that the foetal delivery had not yet occurred, but was most probably imminent (the cephalic position is very low). The woman died just before or during a difficult delivery (dystocia).16 Various likely explanations of these two simultaneous deaths include a profuse uterine bleeding and/or some complications due to eclampsia.17 Also, the young woman’s potential primiparity, her morpho­logical hyper-slenderness, and her small stature (estimated at 1.43 m height or 4.69 ft) can indicate ‘a 15 

According to medical studies, the normal length of the gestation is forty-one weeks of amenorrhea, but it varies between 280 and 290 days from the first day of the beginning of the last menstrual period. Calculation methodo­logy may vary slightly depending on countries, genetic factors, and maternal characteristics (Lansac, Lecomte, and Marret, Gynéco­logie pour le praticien, p. 46). 16  Alduc-Le Bagousse and Blondiaux, ‘Mortalité maternelle et périnatalité au premier millénaire’. 17  Dystocia is one of the main causes of death rate in childbirth. See Sage Pranchère, ‘La Mort apparente du nouveau-né’; Lyonnais, ‘Le Rôle de la sage-femme’, p. 24.

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high-risk pelvis’.18 The first patho­logical examinations led on both individuals did not show particular affected areas on bones. Only some caries and dental ante-mortem losses were noticed on the adult. The third example comes from the excavation led at the church of SaintJulien at Caen, where a burial chest includes an adult woman with a child in utero (Figure 5.5). This grave was truncated in its eastern part at the pelvis and the lower limbs area. This woman was buried in supine position, head pointing west, wedged in a stone cephalic niche. Her left hand was placed along the body. Her right Figure 5.5. Burial 357, Church Saint-Julien hand is abducted, later(Calvados, France). Reproduced with the permission alized, the elbow held of Jean-Yves Marin (Musée de Normandie, Caen). in high position against the south sidewall of the grave. Forearms are flexed, the right at ninety degrees resting on her belly, the left folded over her chest. The right hand maintained connection alongside the lumbar vertebrae. Left hand bones, connected, seem to have been placed flat on the right breast. The thorax is closed and flattened. The pelvis is partially present; the left side disappeared during further overlapping of the grave. The right coxal bone seems to be incompletely flattened and shows a lateral strain. 18 

These morpho­logical caracteristics usually include higher risks of death for the mother. Thus, some historical descriptions mentioned the ‘disproportion which existed between the woman’s pelvis narrowness and the size of the child’s head’ (Gélis, La Sage-femme ou le médecin, p. 279).

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A compression is also noted at shoulder and arm level (verticalization of clavicle and lateralization of scapulas and humerus). The body’s decay seems to have occurred inside a void space with fast progressive filling. Available taphonomic observations indicate the possibility of a shroud. Bones of a perinatal child were discovered in the pelvic cavity, in the righthand side of the abdominal cavity as well as in the right ribcage. Cranial elements indicate a classic cephalic childbirth position of a full-term foetus. The child’s upper body (in particular ribs, clavicles, probably long bones of upper limbs and iliums) is scattered on the right coxal bone and on the bottom of the mother’s belly. Its lower limbs seem to be under the woman’s right ribs and forearm. This child would correspond to a full-term foetus, unborn. The absence of bio­logical data for both child and mother does not allow us to determine more precisely the various possible causes of these deaths. Women Dying in Childbirth with Full-Term Foetus Two cases of women who died during childbirth with their child incompletely delivered from the womb were identified from two old excavations in Caen. The taphonomic observations are rather brief and can be deduced only based on old excavation pictures. At Saint-Peter of Caen-Square Darnétal cemetery, a grave from the end of the Middle Ages (burial 462, Figure 5.6) includes a woman and a full-term foetus. The woman rests in a supine position, her face pointing south-east. Her arms are along her body, the left slightly to the side. Her forearms are crossed over the chest, right on left. The left hand is flat on the right hemithorax; the right is in the space between left arm and left ribs. Her pelvis is partially open, the left coxal bone is totally flat, while a partition trace can be observed on the skeleton right side. The lower limbs, partially visible on the picture, are arranged parallel to the main body axis. A compression effect is visible at the shoulder girdle (verticalization of clavicles and lateralization of both humerus and right scapula) and on the right ribs and coxal bone. Osseous disconnections (elbows, ribs, sternum, mandible, right clavicle, hands, left coxal bone) point to the body’s decomposition in a void space. The baby’s prone position (all the bones appear by their posterior face) is reverse relative to the adult. The skull, although crushed during burial, is complete and in perfect connection with the first cervical vertebrae. It lies between the proximal half of the adult femur, face slightly turned southwards looking at the maternal left thigh. The rest of the post-cranial baby skeleton is still in position in utero: shoulders, thorax, and upper limbs are underneath the

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Figure 5.6. Burial 462. Saint-Peter, Square Darnétal (Calvados, France). Reproduced with the permission of Jean-Yves Marin (Musée de Normandie, Caen).

pubic bones, on the left coxal bone internal face, and the sacrum front side. These bones rest within the internal pelvis volume, while the child’s pelvic girdle bones are on the upper-internal part of the woman’s left coxal bone. The baby’s extended lower limbs are situated on the endothoracic face of floating rib extremities. They occupy all the abdominal space to the second lumbar vertebra level. A comparison between the child’s and the woman’s positions indicates that the baby’s head had exited the mother’s womb, but the rest of its body had remained inside the uterus. This indicates a delivery interrupted by the mother’s death, occurring after or simultaneously with the foetus’s death, which would explain the absence of any noticeable external intervention to help the child’s delivery. The external position of the child’s skull is undoubtedly connected to the dynamics of the body’s decay in a void space. The mother’s skeleton indicates a young woman, most probably between eighteen and twenty-five years old, relatively tall (estimated at 1.63 m height or 5.41 ft) and without visible signs of any osseous patho­logy. This woman’s esti-

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mated age is not a priori a decisive explanatory factor for her death. She was young but not a teenager, which eliminates increased risk linked to early childbearing.19 The bilateral presence of a wide and deep preauricular sulcus on the coxal bones is a potential indication for multiparity.20 All medical statistics agree on the fact that high-order births constitute a deteriorating factor for the mother, especially in case of poor general health.21 This woman’s dental examination showed highly deficient health, rather surprising considering her young age. Several antemortem losses were also observed on the jaw and the mandible, affecting essentially molar and premolar areas. They are concomitant with about ten infected caries from moderate to very severe level, accompanied by relatively important peri­ apical cysts. The foetus’s age and size seem to have contributed to the death dur- Figure 5.7. Burial 129a/b, Saint-Julien (Calvados, France). Reproduced with the permission of ing delivery. The child’s skeleton Jean-Yves Marin (Musée de Normandie, Caen). is particularly well preserved and allowed us to estimate its gestational age to the forty-first week of amenorrhea. That would correspond to at least one week beyond average term. According to various indicators, its size was between 53 and 54 cm, placing the child in the top percentage for fullterm dimension. Even if the maternal pelvis presents no osseous anomaly and is compatible to metric standards for a normal vaginal childbirth, the child’s 19 

Vigarello, Corbin, and Courtine, Histoire du corps, p. 53. Bruzek, Schmitt, and Murail, ‘Identification bio­logique individuelle en paléoanthropo­logie’. 21  Roman and others, ‘La Grande Multiparité’. 20 

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large size suggests either foetal macrosomy, which increases the risk factor for the mother, or an exceeded delivery term, an important risk factor for the child, and can explain the fatal outcome of this childbirth. Another grave of a woman who died during childbirth with her child still partially in utero was found on the church site of Saint-Julien in Caen (burial 129, Figure 5.7). She was supine, facing east. Her arms, in lateral position, were placed along the body, the forearm folded at 90 degrees on the upper part of the abdomen, the right upon the left. Her rib cage is closed and totally flattened. The pelvic girdle is also flattened, and coxo-femoral connections have been preserved. The grave lower part is missing, and femurs are truncated at their third distal portion. A compression effect at shoulder girdle level and a bilateral linear demarcation are noticed. These could indicate a possible hard shell container. Taphonomic observations confirm this hypothesis and indicate body decomposition in an empty space. Observations of the child’s bones still in position during the excavation seem to indicate that it rested on its back, its head possibly already engaged in the pelvis. Its whole upper body is within the maternal pelvic volume. The right ribs lean against the sacrum, whereas the left ribs are scattered against the right coxal bone. The baby’s right upper limb, still connected, leans against the adult’s left coxal bone. The lumbar vertebrae, the pelvic girdle, and the lower limbs lie inside the mother’s lower abdomen, mainly on its right side. The child’s knees are on the adult’s third and fourth lumbar vertebrae; its leg bones have fallen on the vertebrae left side. In spite of taphonomic disturbances linked to the body’s decay in an empty space, the child’s skeleton kept some anatomical coherence. It is possible to perceive a natural arched curvature of the child’s body, a position similar to that of a foetus during delivery. The baby’s head seems to have been engaged in the pelvis at the time of death, but its release from the maternal body volume seems to be due to corpse decay and to the presence of empty space within the grave. For these two subjects, the absence of a bio­logical examination does not allow us to present hypotheses on the potential causes of death (multiparity? the mother’s patho­logy?). Woman Dying during Childbirth or Shortly Afterwards, with Stillborn or Newborn Dying Immediately after Birth On the Courcy site a joint burial of a woman and a perinatal child deposited between her thighs at knee level was discovered (burial 2005, Figure 5.8). This woman is supine, head pointing west, face to the east. Her cranium is disconnected from the mandible (fallen on the thoracic vertebrae) and from the atlas.

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Figure 5.8. Courcy, burial no. 2005. Reproduced with the permission of INRAP.

Her first three cervical vertebrae are disrupted. The vertebral column retains good anatomical connection, but the lumbar vertebrae are loosely connected with one another and with the sacrum. Her rib cage is closed, and the manubrium and sternal body have flattened. They are in loose connection following the rib cage collapse. Her arms are placed along the body, left elbow is slightly apart, right elbow against the south side of the tomb. Forearms are folded at 90 degrees, the right higher than the left. Except for the right clavicle, verticalized and disconnected from the scapula, the shoulders are in tight connection. Her right elbow shows loose connection while her left is still well joined. The right forearm distal extremity is no longer connected (ulna raised). Right hand bones are scattered in the hemithorax and under the left forearm. Left hand bones, undoubtedly initially placed on the abdomen, are disjointed and distributed between right coxal bone and elbow. The woman’s pelvis is opened and flattened; coxal bones appear by their medial face, slightly tilted to the front. The right femur rotation has caused a loose connection with the coxo-femoral articulation (the femoral head partially outside the acetabulum). The lower limbs are in strict connection up to the tarsus, lengthened, in parallel to the main body axis. Feet

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are in extension, the right turned to the outside while the left is aligned with the body. Some taphonomic disturbances of the metatarsals are observed, probably due to burrowing animal activities. Several disconnections are visible and point to body decay in an empty space. No rigid container was identified (no linear demarcation nor wall effect perceived). The use of one or several wooden boards could explain the presence of empty space within this grave. The perinatal child, probably originally placed on the left side against the woman’s knees, lies between the femurs’ distal extremities. Some anatomical connections are kept and allow us to partially reconstruct the child’s initial placement. Several osseous movements, which probably took place gradually during the decomposition of the dead bodies, were identified by taphonomic study. Both parietal and temporal skull bones collapsed on each other, the right ones on the left in a rocking westward movement. Other more fragmentary cranial elements were found under the right parietal bone. Both hemi-mandibles are disconnected from each other and are no longer in strict anatomical position with the cranium. While the right side has slightly migrated eastwards, the left hemi-mandible is totally displaced and was found above the right one and against the medial condyle of the adult’s right femur. A part of the lower costal gril and several vertebral bows and pieces were found in anatomically logical position under the cranial elements. While the left rib cage seems flattened and closed, the right side is more open. The upper limbs are disjointed, although the left limb preserves anatomical logic, resting to the body’s side. The upper limb has moved downward along the body. The humerus and the ulna are disconnected but remain in anatomical closeness, whereas the radius migrated under the adult’s left femur within the thighs’ internal volume. The child’s pelvic girdle kept its anatomical logic, the right ilium on the left one. The left coxo-femoral articulation is preserved. The femur appears by its posterior face, and the tibia and fibula in hyperflexion (appearing by their medial face), their distal extremities resting on the proximal third part of the femur. Right lower limb anatomical connections are not preserved: the femur, appearing on its posterior face, fell over forwards. It is totally disconnected from the ilium and the leg bones, which fell onto the left lower limb, while the fibula migrated north and is no longer in anatomical position in relation to the tibia. These osseous migrations could have been increased during the decay of the adult thighs’ soft flesh. It seems that originally the upper part of the baby’s body, placed slightly on the left side, was supported against the woman’s knees and that the head was

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held between them. During the decomposition, the child’s right upper limb and hemithorax seem to have collapsed and toppled over backward. The lower portion of the child’s body was also positioned on the left side, the lower limbs hyperflexed. The child’s estimated age is around 39.8 weeks of amenorrhea, thus bio­ logically at full-term. The child was possibly stillborn or died immediately after birth, and its death could have occurred simultaneously or very shortly after the woman’s death, considering they were buried together. This intended association supposes a strong link between both individuals, most probably a familial bond (mother–child). However, this connection can just be assumed for the moment, as only further DNA studies can confirm the family relationship. The woman’s estimated age was between twenty and thirty-nine years old. The presence of osteoarthritis relatively developed on several thoracic vertebrae and the epiphysis fusion of the clavicle medial extremity would indicate an age over thirty years. As the risks of maternal mortality increase with age, this could have been a possible cause of complications leading to death. She was apparently small (stature estimated at 1.56 m high or 5 ft, 1 in.) and presented a poorly developed preauricular sulcus on her coxal bones, sign of possible previous pregnancies. The woman does not otherwise present any notable patho­logy that could explain a premature death. These examples indicate that both extremes of the fertility age-span — young girls under the age of twenty and women older than thirty-five — carry the highest obstetric risk. Accident probability is higher during a first childbirth or during a birth beyond the fifth child. It is therefore always the young multiparous and the older multiparous females who pay the ultimate costs of maternity. Other causes contributing to death in childbirth are a small stature, poor health, or a mother with a morpho­logically high-risk pelvis (osseous slenderness sometimes in connection with a large-size foetus), but equally dangerous is any abnormal presentation at delivery.

Funeral Practices Linked to Maternal Mortality Questions about the particular burial of pregnant women that died in childbirth or shortly after delivery involve exploring if the burial required a specific handling, what funeral practices were adopted in comparison to other dead persons, and if their graves were fully integrated into the sacred space or kept to a separate area. In each case listed in this study, the women and their children seem to have been buried according to medi­eval Christian religious rites. Their graves are ori-

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ented according to Church precepts (the head always pointing to the west), and no unusual position of deposit was observed. All are buried in a supine position with legs lengthened along the main body axis. Their upper limbs display more varied positions that are nevertheless common for the period (in particular arm and forearm placed along the body). Some cases are particularly unusual, showing a forearm placed over the belly (perhaps in support of a round stomach). Burial customs present no peculiarity and are identical to those observed in other tombs in these cemeteries. In Courcy, three women are buried in anthropomorphic graves that include lateral benches, allowing the installation of a wooden board. These arrangements are similar to those of nearby burials. At Aizier, the woman who died during pregnancy is buried in a wooden coffin, a container commonly used in this medi­e val leper house. Finally, in Caen, at Square Darnétal, the various cases correspond to burial in a wooden container or in a coffin. At Saint-Julien, both women are buried either in a coffering of calcareous rubble stones or in a wooden coffin. These two sites show no difference between the burial of these women and that of other deceased ones. No grave goods were found deposited in graves. Thus, these various examples indicate that these women, who died during their pregnancy, during childbirth, or immediately after birth do not seem to have been treated differently or buried with any particular funeral practice.

The Grave Location within the Cemetery: Exclusion or Not? In the various medi­e val Norman cemeteries examined, no exclusion was observed outside the sacred sepulchral area. Indeed, all the burials are integrated among the other graves within the graveyard area.22 On the other hand, most of the time their location corresponds to specific burial sectors. On SaintJulien’s site, grave 129 is installed in the church choir. At Aizier, grave 636 is along the north lateral wall of the chapel. At Square Darnétal, grave 462 is situated in front of the portal of the Last Judgement. At Courcy, it is possible to suggest the existence of a specific area reserved for the burial of women that died during childbirth or pregnancy. Indeed, of nine graves brought to light on this site, three clearly indicate maternal death. These are positioned in immediate proximity to one another and seem to be at the very edge of the sepulchral zone, in a sector relatively distant from the religious building. 22 

Niel and Alduc-Le Bagousse, ‘Zones d’inhumations spécifiques pour les jeunes enfants dans les cimetières paroissiaux médiévaux’.

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The rare texts on this subject mention no differential treatment either in funeral practices or regarding the topo­graphic placement of graves within the cemetery. Nîmes’s 1252 synodal statutes indicate that women who died during childbirth could be interred in cimiterio ecclesiastico: Besides, it happens frequently that a woman dies in childbirth there, while we believe the child is still living in the breast of her mother: from the moment it is considered certain that the woman has died, if the midwives believe that the fruit is still alive, an incision must be made on to the woman […] so that the fruit if he is alive is baptized […]. But, if it happens that the fruit dies at the same time as the mother, this woman must be buried without having been cut in the cemetery of the church.23

Liège’s 1288 synodal statutes require that these women have access to all Christian rights.24 However, some earlier church liturgists, such as twelfthcentury theo­logian Jean Beleth, state that these women cannot expect a religious ceremony inside the church.25 Women who had given birth would not have been allowed to go to church for forty days, and as these deceased could not even benefit from the ceremony of churching/purification, their body was considered impure. The following century French canonist Guillaume Durand (died 1296) abandoned this interdiction, allowing all women who died in childbirth to be buried within the cemeterial compound.26 23 

‘De muliere in puerpuerio decedente. Postremo quia frequenter contingit mulierem in puerpuerio descedere, et partus in maternis visceribus adhuc creditor esse vivus: ex quo pro certo mulierem mortuam esse consiterit si partum credant vivere obstetrices, aperiatur mulier par aliquem vel aliquam, sine mora, ut partus, si vivus fuerit, baptizetur. Et ut quilibet ad hec se exhibeat promptiorem, quicumque aperiendo taliter mulierem partum procuraverit baptizari, in remissionem sibi profficiat peccatorum; et hoc per ecclesias annis singulis publicetur. Si autem partum cum matre simul mori contigerit, sine apertione mulier in cimiterio ecclesiastico tumuletur’: Pontal, Les Statuts synodaux français, pp. 281–83, cited by Vivas, ‘La Privation de sépulture au Moyen Âge’, p. 13. 24  Portat, Guillon and Delattre, ‘Les Comportements funéraires chrétiens autour de la mortalité fœtale et périnatale’; Vivas, ‘Christiana sepultura priventur’. 25  Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. by Douteil, p. 159: ‘sed puer extrahatur de ventre eius et sepeliatur extra cimiterium’, cited by Vivas, ‘La Privation de sépulture au Moyen Âge’, p. 13. 26  This ceremony corresponds to the mother’s first appearance at church after giving birth. Guillaume Durand, Rationale divinorum officiorum, i, V, 16, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, p. 62: ‘Partus tamen de ventre ipsius extractus mortuus et non baptizatus extra cimiterium sepeliatur. Sunt tamen quidam qui dicunt quod partus debet una cum muliere in cimiterio sepeliri, eo quod pars viscerum esse censetur’ (cited by Vivas, ‘La Privation de sépulture au Moyen Âge’, p. 13).

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Conclusions These medi­eval Norman examples allow for a more specific examination of the treatment and social attitudes towards the deaths of mother and child either before, during, or after the birth, when these two events occur within a very short time from each other. Still, the data on such burials is unavoidably limited, because unless the mother and her newborn died on the same day, both were probably buried separately and not placed together in the same grave. This explains why in most of the cemeteries examined the association mother–child is extremely rare: when mother and child are buried in unconnected graves, archaeo­logy cannot determine the family link. Archaeo­logical observations confirm that funeral practices reserved for these women do not differ from those granted to other deceased people and reveal no exclusion from the sepulchral space. These conclusions correspond to the rare medi­eval textual sources on this subject. Indeed, even after delivery, the child is still perceived as part of the mother’s body, and there is a clear desire to maintain the mother–child link by uniting them in the same grave, even after the child is born or if the foetus is extracted from the mother. The dates of the burial sites confirm the change of customs and the lifting of the interdiction regarding the burial of women who died in childbirth after the thirteenth century, shedding light on the interaction between liturgy, social customs, and archaeo­logy.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, trans. by Jürgen Schäffer, Anglistica et americana, 161 (Darmstadt: Georg Olms Verlag, 1976) Beleth, Jean, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. by Heriberto Douteil, 2 vols, Corpus Chris­ tianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976) Durand, Guillaume, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Anselme Davril and Timothy M. Thibodeau, 3 vols, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 140 (Turn­ hout: Brepols, 1998)

Secondary Works Adalian, Pascal, ‘Evaluation multiparamétrique de la croissance fœtale: Applications à la détermination de l’âge et du sexe’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Bordeaux, 2001) Alduc-Le Bagousse, Armelle, and Joël Blondiaux, ‘Mortalité maternelle et périnatalité au premier millénaire à Lisieux (Calvados, France)’, Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropo­logie de Paris, n.s., 14.3–4 (2002), 295–309 Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle, and Monique Closson, L’Enfant à l’ombre des cathédrales (Lyon: CNRS Éditions, 1985) Blondiaux, Joël, Cécile Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Raphaëlle Lefebvre, and MarieCécile Truc, ‘Saint-Thomas d’Aizier, la vie et la mort dans une léproserie médiévale normande’, in Actes du colloque Purifier, soigner ou guérir? Maladies et lieux religieux de la Méditerranée antique à la Normandie médiévale, regards croisés, Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle, 01–05 Oct. 2014 (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming) Boëtsch, Gilles, Emma Rabino-Massa, and Sylvia Bello, ‘Accouchements et mortalité maternelle à l’Hôtel-Dieu de Marseille au milieu du xixe siècle’, Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropo­logie de Paris, n.s., 10.3–4 (1998), pp. 425–41 Bruzek, Jaroslaw, Aurore Schmitt, and Pascal Murail, ‘Identification bio­logique individuelle en paléoanthropo­logie: Détermination du sexe et estimation de l’âge au décès à partir du squelette’, in Objets et méthodes en Paléoanthropo­logie, ed. by Olivier Dutour, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Bernard Vandermeersch (Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2005), pp. 217–46 Chapelain de Seréville-Niel, Cécile, Marie-Cécile Truc, Thomas Guérin, Fabien Le Roux, Bruno Penna, and Françoise Yvernault, ‘La Chapelle Saint-Thomas d’Aizier (Eure): Bilan de douze années de fouille programmée’, in Journées archéo­logiques de HauteNormandie: Evreux, 6–8 mai 2011 (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2012), pp. 241–60 Classification statistique internationale des maladies et des problèmes de santé connexes, Dixième révision, 2 vols, Ministère des affaires sociales et de la santé: Bulletin officiel, 2015/9bis, Fascicule spécial (Paris: WHO, 2015)

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Dupont, Hélène, and Raphaëlle Lefebvre, Courcy ‘Le Bourg’: Un habitat médiéval, moderne et contemporain et le cimetière paroissial,  Rapport Final d’Opération de fouille préventive, Service Régional d’Archéo­logie de Normandie / Inrap Grand-Ouest, 2017 Gélis, Jacques, ‘L’Accouchement au xviiie siècle: Pratiques traditionnelles et contrôle médical’, Ethno­logie Française, 6.3–4 (1976), 325–40 —— , La Sage-femme ou le médecin (Paris: Fayard Editions, 1986) —— , ‘Sages-femmes et accoucheurs: L’Obstétrique populaire aux xviie et xviiie siècles’, Annales Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 32.5 (1977), 927–57 Gourevitch, Danielle, ‘Grossesse et accouchement dans l’icono­graphie antique’, Dossiers histoire et archéo­logie. La médecine dans l’Antiquité, 123 (1988), 42–48 Lansac, Jacques, Pierre Lecomte, and Henri Marret, Gynéco­logie pour le praticien (Amster­ dam: Elsevier Masson, 2007) Laurent, Sylvie, ‘L’Accouchement dans l’icono­graphie médiévale, d’après les miniatures de la Bibliothèque Nationale’, in Maladies, médecines et sociétés: Approches historiques pour le présent, Actes du VIe colloque d’Histoire au présent (Paris, 1990) (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1993), pp. 144–52 —— , Naître au Moyen Âge: De la conception à la naissance: La Grossesse et l’accouchement, xiie–xve siècles (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 1989) Leroux, Pascal, ‘Typochrono­logie des sépultures du viiie au xviiie siècle à travers l’exemple de trois cimetières caennais’, 2 vols (Mémoire de l’EHESS, 1997) Leroux, Pascal, Pierre Margerie, and Jean-Yves Marin, ‘Les Églises de Caen du viie au xiie siècle, d’après les fouilles récentes’, in Archéo­logie des villes dans le Nord-Ouest de l’Europe (viie–xiiie siècle), Actes du IVe Congrès International d’Archéo­logie Médiévale (Douai, 26–28 Sept. 1991), ed.  by Pierre Demolon, Henri Galinie, and Frans Ver­ haeghe (Douai: Société Archéo­logique de Douai, 1994), pp. 125–32 Lyonnais, Elisabeth, ‘Le Rôle de la sage-femme dans la prise en charge des causes de mor­ talité maternelle entre 1870 et 1914, Gynéco­logie et obstétrique’ (Mémoire de di­ plôme d’Etat de Sage-Femme, Uni­ver­sity of Paris-Descartes, 2011) Mafart, Bertrand-Yves, ‘Approche de la mortalité maternelle au Moyen Âge en Provence’, in La Femme pendant le Moyen Âge et l’époque Moderne, Actes des 6e Journées Anthro­po­ logiques de Valbonne (9–10–11 June 1992), ed. by Luc Buchet, Dossiers de Docu­men­ tation Archéo­logique (CNRS-CRA), 17 (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1994), pp. 207–19 Marin, Jean-Yves, and Pascal Leroux, Rapport intermédiaire des fouilles archéo­logiques menées au square Darnétal — Eglise Saint-Pierre (Caen: Archéo­logie urbaine, 1991) Niel, Cécile, and Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse, ‘Zones d’inhumations spécifiques pour les jeunes enfants dans les cimetières paroissiaux médiévaux: quelques exemples bas-normands’, Le Corps des anges: Réflexions sur les pratiques funéraires autour de l’enfant mort au Moyen Âge. Actes de la journée d’études de Blandy-les-Tours, 14 Nov. 2009 (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2011), pp. 90–101 Pontal, Odette, Les Statuts synodaux français du xiiie siècle, 2  vols (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1983) Portat, Emilie, Magali Detante, Cécile Buquet-Marcon, and Mark Guillon, eds, Rencontre autour de la mort des tout-petits: Actes de la 2e Rencontre du Groupe d’Anthropo­logie

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et d’Archéo­logie Funéraire (3–4 Dec. 2009), Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Condé-surNoireau: Gaaf, 2016) Portat, Emilie, Mark Guillon, and Valérie Delattre, ‘Les Comportements funéraires chrétiens autour de la mortalité fœtale et périnatale: Deux exemples récents (xie–xviiie) pour une lecture archéo-anthropo­logique du phénomène de répit’, in Regroupement des morts: genèse et diversité archéo­logique, ed. by Dominique Castex, Patrice Courtaud, Henri Duday, Françoise Le Mort, and Anne-Marie Tillier (Bruges: Thanat’Os, 2011), pp. 231–48 Pour un développement optimal du foetus: rapport d’une consultation technique (Geneva: WHO, 2006) Roman, Horace, Pierre-Yves Robillard, Eric Verspyck, Thomas-C. Hulsey, Loïc Sentilhes, Loïc Marpeau, and Georges Barau, ‘La Grande Multiparité: Excès de risque obstétrical ou néonatal?’, Journal de Gynéco­logie Obstétrique et Bio­logie de la Reproduction, 33 (2004), 347 Sage Pranchère, Nathalie, ‘La Mort apparente du nouveau-né dans la littérature médicale (France, 1760–1900)’, Annales de démo­graphie historique, 123 (2012), 127–48 Sigal, Pierre-André, ‘La Grossesse, l’accouchement et l’attitude envers l’enfant mort-né à la fin du Moyen Âge d’après les récits des Miracles’, in Santé, médecine et assistance au Moyen Âge: Actes du 110e Congrès national des Sociétés Savantes, Montpellier, 1985, Section d’histoire médiévale et de philo­logie (Paris: CTHS, 1987), pp. 23–41 Vigarello, Georges, Alain Corbin, and Jean-Jacques Courtine, Histoire du corps: De la Re­ naissance aux Lumières (Paris: Seuil, 2005) Vivas, Mathieu, ‘Christiana sepultura priventur: Privation de sépulture, distinction spatiale et inhumations atypiques à la lumière des pratiques funéraires (xe–xive siècles)’, in De corps en corps: Traitement et devenir du cadavre, ed. Isabelle Cartron, Dominique Castex, Martine Charageat, Patrice Georges, and Mathieu Vivas (Bordeaux: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, 2010), pp. 193–214 —— , ‘La Privation de sépulture au Moyen Âge: L’Exemple de la Province ecclésiastique de Bordeaux (xe – début du xive siècles)’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Poitiers, 2012)

‘Girde hyr wythe thys mesure’: Birth Girdles, the Church, and Lollards Mary Morse*

T

he two earliest English birth girdles, parchment or paper replications of actual metal or fabric girdle relics believed to have been belts worn by the Virgin and other saints, were produced during the early fifteenth century, subsuming apotropaic childbirth protection within orthodox messages that promoted the Church position against Lollardy. Associated with the followers of the Oxford cleric John Wyclif, Lollardy represented England’s first major encounter with heresy. Lollards rejected practices which the Church sanctioned, especially veneration of images and relics, saintly intervention, and priestly intercession in delivery of the sacraments. Within the female space of the birthing chamber, birth girdles simulated girdle relics, connected their prayers to saints and images, and reinforced the role of priests while simultaneously positioning the Church as a protector of women in childbirth. Whenever   * I thank Rider Uni­ver­sity for funding a 2014 research leave to study the connections between magic and orthodoxy in the English birth girdles. I presented an early version of this essay, ‘Magic as Orthodoxy in the English Birth Girdle Tradition’, in an Early Book Society session at the International Congress on Medi­eval Studies, Kalamazoo MI, on 15 May 2015. I presented ‘Birth Girdles as Banderoles’ at the ‘Pregnancy and Childbirth: History, Medicine and Anthropo­logy’ International Symposium, Uni­ver­sity of Bo­logna, Italy, on 31 May 2017. I especially thank Costanza Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Antonella Parmeggiani, organizers, and the participants for their helpful suggestions. A shortened version of this essay appears as ‘Defending Orthodoxy with Birthgirdles’.

Mary Morse is a Professor of English and past director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies programme at Rider Uni­ver­sity, Lawrenceville, NJ. Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 135–170 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117821

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a birth girdle fulfilled its protective claims, the mother and the women assisting her became less susceptible to heretical rhetoric. Just nine manu­script and printed English birth girdles are extant, the remnants of a 150-year tradition that transitioned from manu­script to printed rolls and ended only after Reformation authorities had confiscated and/or destroyed the girdle relics that inspired the birth girdles’ production. Throughout a tumultuous period marked by persistent Lollard outbreaks, the dynastic shifts of the Wars of the Roses, and the English Reformation, birth girdles set the physical experience and societal expectations of childbirth within a deeply religious context. The birth girdles not only protected women during the most dangerous times in their lives but assured divine intercession for those mothers and/or their children who would not survive their birthing ordeals. Men also relied on their spiritual protections, as we can see from male names inserted into the same Latin suffrage in two birth girdles. In noble and gentry households already endangered by the possibility of a husband’s death in battle or for treason, a wife’s death increased familial instability. A child’s death could mean the loss of an heir and subsequent forfeitures of family property.1 After King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in January 1533, buyers of Wynkyn de Worde’s printed birth girdle could spend just a penny to add their hopes for a royal male heir to protective prayers for their own wives and anticipated children. Earlier in his life, Henry himself had owned a birth girdle.2 Westminster Abbey monks promoted their Virgin’s girdle as the very same girdle that the Virgin sent from heaven to St Thomas as proof of her Assumption, a story preserved in the York Corpus Christi cycle, John Mirk’s Festial, church art, and manu­script miniatures. London archaeo­logists have excavated buckles that might have been parts of Westminster girdle souvenirs. At least two English queens, Eleanor of Provence (m. to Henry III) and Philippa of Hainault (m. to Edward III), relied on the Westminster girdle relic’s protection during childbirth.3 It may have been the same ‘our Lady gyrdelle’ noted in the December 1 

Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 424; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 195, 198, 278 n. 48; Skemer, Binding Words, p. 263; French, The Good Women of the Parish, p. 136. 2  Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 56–57; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 264–66. 3  Our Lady’s Appearance to Thomas, in York Plays, ed. by Smith, pp. 480–91, esp. pp. 486, 489; Mirk, Festial, ed. by Powell, ii, 200–206, esp. p. 203; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 200–201; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 193–94; Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England, pp. 252, 253 fig. 126 (De Lisle Hours, New York, Morgan Library, MS Glazier 50, fol. 162v); Marks, Image and Devotion, pp. 148–49, 164, 251–52;

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1502 privy purse expenses of Elizabeth of York (m. to Henry VII) before her last confinement, but the girdle saved neither the queen nor her daughter.4 We might think that a queen’s death would lessen belief in the protective powers of the girdle relic, but certainty that this girdle once was touched and worn by the Virgin assured the dying queen that both she and her child would receive the Virgin’s blessing and her special intercession with Christ.5 While the monks loaned their precious girdle relics to noble or wealthy families, women of all classes could purchase their own birth girdles, and midwives could afford to add them to their birthing kits.6 Seven of the birth girdles are written and illuminated on narrow rolls less than three to five inches (76 to 127 mm) wide, but the widest is just over seven inches (178 mm).7 Lengths varied considerably but were often long enough for pregnant women to wrap them around their abdomen as in the instruction to ‘girde hyr wythe thys mesure’ (gird her with this measure).8 Wrapping most likely occurred during labour but pregnant women also may have wrapped and pinned the girdles around their outer clothing as public statements of devotion or in imitation of the girdle relics or the real girdles women gave to their parish churches to adorn statues of the Virgin or St Margaret.9 In a departure from the surviving French birth Williamson, Object of Devotion, pp. 142–43, 176–77; Harvey, ‘The Monks of Westminster’, pp. 11–12, 12 n. 31; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 107; Hardman, ‘Gawain’s Practice of Piety’, pp. 256, 266 n. 40; Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, p. 149. 4  Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, p. 35 n. 2; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 107; Dilling, ‘Girdles’, p. 421; Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, ed. by Nicolas, p. 72. 5  Augustinian monasteries at Bruton and Haltemprise, the Premonstratensian monastery at Dale, and the Cluniac monastery at Bromholm also claimed a Virgin’s girdle relic. While most sources identify the Bruton girdle as a Virgin’s girdle, Duffy associates it with St Mary Magdalene, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 384–85. Also see Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 193–94, 276 n. 30; Orme, Medi­eval Children, pp. 16–18; Knowles and Hadcock, Medi­eval Religious Houses, pp. 98, 150, 155, 158; Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. by Wright, pp. 58–59. 6  Gilchrist, Medi­eval Life, p. 138. Skemer describes birthing kits as ‘groups of individual amulets, together with devotional objects’ used in childbirth, Binding Words, p. 242. 7  Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, fig. 3: ‘Comparative List’. 8  New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, MS Takamiya 56. Unless otherwise indicated, Middle English translations are mine. 9  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 203; Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, pp. 183–84 ; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 107; French, The Good Women of the Parish, p. 47.

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girdles dedicated to St Margaret, the most popular medi­eval childbirth protector, eight of the nine English birth girdles feature a childbirth prayer invoking SS Quiricus and Julitta, a three-year-old boy and his mother martyred during the Diocletian persecutions.10 Church dedications in south-western England, Wales, and Cam­bridgeshire, coupled with an Anglo-Norman rubric invoking the pair’s intercession for childbirth pain in the Neville of Hornby book of hours commissioned for Isabel Neville, point to English crusader imports of the Byzantine saints’ cult.11 While part of the content of the Middle English childbirth prayer and other prayers on the rolls implies a multipurpose function, I contend that the nine rolls here identified as birth girdles were commissioned or sold primarily for the protection of parturient women. As Peter Murray Jones and Lea T. Olsan state, ‘their acquisition belonged among the customary practices surrounding childbirth — infant baptism, lying-in, and churching of postpartum women’.12 Margery Kempe’s persistent connection of word and image in her visions suggests that this merchant-class mother of four10 

Identified French birth girdles include London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS 804 and possibly 804A (Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manu­scripts, pp. 1472–74); New York, ­Morgan Library, MSS  779 and 1092 (Skemer, Binding Words, pp.  245–47). Quiricus is the name assigned to the child in Latin martyro­logies. Julitta is the usual name for the child’s mother. Hereafter, I will refer to Quiricus and Julitta in general reference and use the names as they appear in specific birth girdles. 11  Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England, p. 256; Neville of Hornby book of hours, London, BL, MS Egerton 2781, fol. 26v; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 190–92. 12  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 424. Some scholars question whether ‘birth girdle’ appropriately identifies prayer rolls with texts pertaining to childbirth mixed with other more general texts. In Binding Words, pp. 259–60, for example, Skemer refers to London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 632 as ‘a multipurpose amulet roll’ and to New Haven, MS Takamiya 56 as ‘an English amulet roll’, yet the updated online MS Wellcome 632 catalogue entry concurs with its identification as ‘a “Birth-girdle”’. When examining another ‘English amulet roll’, Oxford, Bodl. Lib., roll no. 26, with ‘no specific references to either childbirth or women’, Skemer suggests that multipurpose amulet rolls could have been used as birth girdles because their ‘ribbon-like format would have made it easy to wrap it around a pregnant woman’s abdomen or leg, like a birth girdle’ (p. 260). Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, states that MS Wellcome 632 ‘may well have seen service as a “birth girdle”’ (p. 273). Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, likewise states that New York, Morgan Library, MS Glazier 39 and other rolls containing the measure of the Cross ‘could be wrapped as a “birth girdle” around the expectant mother’ (p. 96). In late medi­e val Ethiopia, scrolls containing protective prayers for multiple purposes often were commissioned specifically for childbirth protection: Mercier, Art that Heals, p. 46; Delamarter and Haile, Catalogue of the EMIP, pp. xlii, 350. I thank Sean Winslow for suggesting the Ethiopian sources.

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teen children may have used a birth girdle that likewise connected word and image, but her Book does not mention one.13 Outside of the birth girdles themselves, the most convincing evidence for the tradition lies in the words of the Lollards and Reformation authorities objecting to the use of birth girdles and other objects and texts venerating and seeking the intercession of the Virgin and other saints.14 Don Skemer describes the content of textual amulets, his category for birth girdles, as ‘the magical efficacy of powerful words and symbols’.15 Such magical efficacy fits neatly into Eamon Duffy’s description of ‘a devotional underground of dubiously orthodox religion in which the dividing line between prayer and magic is not always clear’ but where ‘“popular” religion’ echoes ‘official liturgy’.16 In the English birth girdles as a group, images and texts related to the sacraments of the Eucharist, baptism, penance, and extreme unction constitute a significant proportion of their total content, suggesting that a mise-en-page dominated by sacramental messages mitigated and transformed suspect magical elements of the birth girdles into an influential affirmation of orthodoxy. In a sense, the birth girdles’ prayers functioned as sacramental petitions for protection.17 Even the simple instruction to a woman to gird herself with a belt measured to the height of the Virgin violated the Lollards’ rejection of relics and veneration of the Virgin. The Lollard preacher Richard Wyche (burned in 1440) detested the Virgin’s most popular shrine in England, reportedly calling the statue ‘the wyche of Walsingham’. Lollard preachers told women that conversion to Lollardy required them to give up such childbirth protections. The Lollard Elizabeth Sampson not only refused to let women assisting in births call upon the Virgin but forced her own mother-in-law out of the birthing chamber for the same offense when Sampson herself was in labour. Despite Sampson’s testimony, Shannon McSheffrey suggests that few women wished to relinquish such ‘powerful psycho­logical support’, one reason that Lollardy attracted fewer women than

13 

Morse, ‘Seeing and Hearing’, p. 27; London, BL, MS Additional 61823. Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 51–52. Visitation Articles and Injunctions, ed. by Frere and Kennedy, p. 59; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 201; McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, p. 147. 15  Skemer, Binding Words, p. 1; Olsan, ‘The Marginality of Charms in Medi­eval England’, pp. 137–38. 16  Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 269. 17  Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, pp. 184–86. 14 

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men.18 Perceived as women’s special access to the Church’s protection and allied with veneration of the Virgin and other saints, relics, and images, the birth girdles discouraged women from renouncing the Church and converting to Lollardy. The two earliest English birth girdles, Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, olim Esopus, and New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, Takamiya Deposit, MS Takamiya 56, were written and illustrated in a period that coincided with the early circulations of John Wyclif ’s teachings and civic upheaval blamed on his Lollard followers. Five other manu­script birth girdles — New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, MS Beinecke 410; London, BL, MS Additional 88929; New York, Morgan Library, MS Glazier 39; London, BL, Harley Roll T.11; and London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS  Wellcome 632 — were produced between 1485 and 1500, when Lollard resurgences united the newly crowned Henry VII and the Church in tracking and punishing heretics. London, BL, Harley Charter 43.A14 includes no references for reliable dating, although the BL online catalogue assigns a 1425 date. Capitalizing on popular beliefs in the efficacy of the birth girdles, and especially of the martyred Cyriace and Iulyte, the London printer Wynkyn de Worde perhaps printed his birth girdle, STC 14547.5 (London, BL, MS Harley 5919), as ‘a miniature propaganda campaign’ to garner popular support for Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.19 18 

McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy, pp. 146–47; Carroll, ‘Pilgrimage at Walsingham on the Eve of the Reformation’, pp. 47–48. 19  Morse discusses the intercessory role of Quiricus and Julitta in MS Beinecke 410; BL, Harley Charter 43.A14; BL, Harley Roll T.11; BL, MS Add. 88929; MS Glazier 39; MS Wellcome 632; and tentatively identifies olim Esopus and MS Takamiya 56 as birth girdles in ‘Alongside St Margaret’. Gwara and Morse analyse STC 14547.5 and its relationships to MS Beinecke 410; BL, MS Add. 88929; BL, Harley Charter 43.A14; MS Glazier 39; and MS Wellcome 632; as well as its propaganda potential in ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’. Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, offers an individual study of MS Takamiya 56. Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 259–67, describes MS Beinecke 410; BL, Harley Roll T.11; BL, MS Add. 88929; MS Glazier 39; MS Takamiya 56; and MS Wellcome 632. Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, compares MS Glazier 39 to BL, Harley Charter 43.A14; BL, Harley Roll T.11; and MS Wellcome 632. Nichols, Edsall, and Rudy provide the most extensive studies of olim Esopus to date. See Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, pp. 312, 318, 325–26, 354–77; Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, p. 141; Nichols, ‘The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi’, p. 121; Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, pp. 178, 180, 182–94, 199, 205, fig. 3: ‘Comparative List’; Rudy, Postcards on Parchment, pp. 213–14. Also see Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, pp. 424–27; Rudy, ‘Kissing Images’, pp. 42–56; Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers, pp. 167–70, 181; Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, pp. 96–98; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, p. 108.

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John Wyclif, the Oxford cleric who inspired Lollardy, rejected the Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantiation in 1379, after earlier opposing ecclesiastical ownership and earning papal condemnation from Gregory XI. Wyclif later rejected the necessity for priestly intercession in the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance, baptism, and extreme unction, leading to an English condemnation of Wyclif in 1382.20 Wyclif wrote his most influential works in Latin and apparently none in English, not even the biblical translation attributed to him. Yet the most significant indicator of Lollardy among Lollards and their prosecutors alike lay in the ‘possession’ of English vernacular books and prayers or knowledge of their texts.21 Shannon McSheffrey argues that prosecutors perceived that ‘Lollard rejection of Latin was part of an overall rejection of Catholic authority’. Possessing a vernacular book did not necessarily mean that its owner could read it, any more than we can assume that all women could read the texts written on the birth girdles. An illiterate audience could listen to someone reading the Bible or prayers in English.22 Illiterate women present in birthing chambers also could listen to someone reading the vernacular birth girdle texts, but their responses to the images, which encouraged gazing at, touching, and even kissing, differentiated the birthing chamber women’s listening experience from that of accused heretics.23 Lollards would have disdained the images — and the birth girdles depicting them — as objects of unnecessary veneration and intercession. The 1390–1410 dating for olim Esopus, made when Lollardy and Eucharistic fervour for viewing the elevated Host collided, relies on icono­ graphic style and its ‘O Vernicle’ (NIMEV 2577) poem. 24 The marginal illuminations accompanying ‘O Vernicle’, along with borders resembling those found in a contemporary book of hours, Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS B.11.7, and the style of the flourished capital initial < Ẏ>-substituting for in most stanzas, point to English artistic and scribal practices of the late fourteenth century. The damaged Annunciation miniature, which copies a motif found in English books of hours produced in the 1420s, could have been sewn onto the top of the roll up to forty years later. Kathryn Rudy sus20 

Aston, Lollards and Reformers, p. 1; Rex, The Lollards, pp. 27–53. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. by Hudson, pp. 10, 162. 22  McSheffrey, ‘Heresy, Orthodoxy and English Vernacular Religion’, p. 61; Aston, Lollards and Reformers, pp. 119–21, 201; Morse, ‘Seeing and Hearing’, pp. 18–20. 23  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 426; Rudy, ‘Kissing Images’, pp. 2, 56. 24  Boffey and Edwards, A New Index of Medi­eval English Verse, hereafter NIMEV. 21 

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pects that the Annunciation miniature was added to concretize olim Esopus as ‘a birthing aid’. To make room for the miniature, the roll had to be extended with a linen strip, ‘as if a pregnant woman’s belt needed to be loosened and lengthened’.25 The childbirth prayer on the dorse opens with instruction to the reader to visualize and multiply the mensura Christi, presented as a marginal tau cross, fifteen times, ‘Ẏis lyne fiftene sythes meten is ye lenght of our lord ihu crist’ (This line fifteen sides measured is the length of our lord Jesus Christ), to match Christ’s presumed height of six foot, three inches (1.91 m).26 The cross is integrated into a red flourished border but marked out with its red and green diagonal stripe and smaller crosses inserted into two square and one circular seals at both the cross-beam and base (Figure 6.1). The measure promises protection against the devil, weather, fire, drowning, sudden death, poisons, and diseases embedded in variants of the Charlemagne charm and prayers attributed to St Paul and St Peter through ‘god & Saynt Cirice and Saynt Julitte’. The childbirth clause ends the prayer, ‘And ȝif a woman trauayl of childe sche schal be deliuerd hastili with owte ony peril’ (And if a woman travail of child she shall be delivered hastily without any peril), followed by two Latin suffrages again seeking the protections of the martyred saints. While both the vernacular prayer and Latin suffrages alluding to these saints appear in other English manu­script books of hours and devotional miscellanies, the birth girdles represent a childbirth cult to Quiricus and Julitta that remained popular enough for Wynkyn de Worde to print a birth girdle and for Peter Treveris, another London printer, to incorporate the vernacular prayer into a fraudulent printed indulgence issued in 1528.27 Most studies of olim Esopus concentrate on the texts and illustrations for ‘O Vernicle’, a long vernacular poem that directs meditation on the arma Christi, 25 

Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, p.  139; Song, ‘Arma Christi Roll Condition Report and Estimate’; Rudy, Postcards on Parchment, pp. 213–14, fig. 192 (olim Esopus). I thank Kathleen Scott for her help in dating the olim Esopus borders and the Annunciation miniature on the basis of similar borders and the Annunciation miniature in Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS B.11.7, fol. 7r; Scott, Later Gothic Manu­scripts, i, pl. 194; ii, 152. 26  Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, p. 325. ‘Sythes’ differs from the usual wording of ‘tymes’ in the measurement. Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 195–96; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, p. 39 n. 18, 60; Skemer, Binding Words, p. 143; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 274–75; Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, pp. 273–74. 27  Boston, Harvard Uni­ver­sity, Houghton Library, STC 14077 c. 64. Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 195, 278 n. 43; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 40 n. 20, 52–58; Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medi­eval England, p. 267. For other witnesses of both the vernacular and Latin texts, see Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 277–78 n. 42.

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Figure 6.1. ‘Ẏis lyne fiftene sythes meten’ begins the childbirth prayer invoking SS Cirice and Julitte on the dorse of olim Esopus. Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, New York. 1390–1410. Reproduced with permission of the Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province.

a popular icono­graphic motif in late medi­eval Europe. Including olim Esopus, ten of the poem’s twenty witnesses occur in illustrated rolls, prompting Rossell Hope Robbins to categorize the group as ‘arma Christi rolls’ and to propose that they were hung and viewed in churches, a theory that most scholars have since rejected.28 In a birthing chamber, however, the exquisite marginal illustrations accompanying the ‘O Vernicle’ verses and the equally intricate marginal measure of the cross imply that this roll was indeed meant for visual display on either side — not on a church wall but in the more intimate space of the birthing chamber. The interdependency of word and image in olim Esopus carries forward into subsequent birth girdles and contributes to acceptance of their orthodox messages. 28 

Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, pp. 141–42 n. 19; Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, p. 315; Robbins, ‘The Arma Christi Rolls’, p. 415 n. 1. For an exception, see Clemens and Graham, Introduction to Manu­script Studies, p. 254.

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Ann Nichols classifies ‘O Vernicle’ as penitential literature, with the components of the arma Christi as ‘focal points for serial consideration of personal sin to facilitate an examination of conscience for specific sins’ in ‘a methodical Lenten exercise’.29 Like the birth girdles themselves, ‘O Vernicle’ functions as a ‘devotional double’ for penitential preparation and apotropaic protection.30 When considered as preparation for the required annual confession, which most parishioners received during Holy Week, the mise-en-page of text and image in olim Esopus reinforces orthodox insistence on priestly intercession in the sacrament of penance, a stance that Lollards ridiculed. Writing before 1401, the influential Bristol Lollard John Purvey (d. 1414) insisted that ‘every man holy and predestined to eternal life, even if he is a layman, is a true minister and priest ordained by God to administer all the sacraments necessary for the salvation of man, although no bishop shall ever lay hands upon him’.31 The Esopus ‘O Vernicle’ thus offers a precedent for other apotropaic texts functioning as instruction on later birth girdles. Employing the model of confessional practices at the most appropriate time for penance, Good Friday sermons and religious verse particularly emphasized the correspondences between the seven deadly sins and the Passion narrative.32 ‘O Vernicle’ connects each sin to a different instrument in the arma Christi: the ‘vernicle’ (veronica) against ‘bakbytyng’ (envy), the knife of the circumcision against ‘leccherye’ (lechery), the veil against ‘uengans’ (ire), the thirty coins against ‘couaytise’ (avarice), the scourges against ‘slouth’ (sloth), the sponge against ‘glotony’ (gluttony), and both the hand pulling out hair and the lance against ‘prid’ (pride). The nails, the crown of thorns, and the hammer generalize the need for repentance and for protection from evil. The pelican and the sepulchre connect the reader-viewer to Christ’s sacrifice as embodied in the Eucharist, ‘Our Lord us fede with his blode’ (Our Lord feeds us with his blood), and the eternal joys that extreme unction promises, ‘To þe dome come with out dedly fray | And wende to blise in companye’ (To the doom come without deadly fear | And go to bliss in company).33 29  Nichols, ‘The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi’, pp. 115–16; Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, p. 143. 30  Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, p. 195; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, p. 188. 31  Aston, Lollards and Reformers, p. 16; Rex, The Lollards, p. 85. 32  Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 60–61; Johnson, ‘“The Hard Bed of the Cross”’, pp. 132–33; Newhauser and Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage’, pp. 84–93. 33  References from Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, pp. 354–77, 379 n. 10, 383 n. 55. The ‘O Vernicle’ verses do not follow late medi­e val associations that link each wound

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Two shorter poems, ‘Jhu for þe blod þat þu bled’ (NIMEV 1701) and ‘I thank þe Lord’ (NIMEV 1370), reinforce the Passion association between the instruments and the wounds. ‘O Vernicle’ itself contains no references to parturient women, but women’s labour recalled the Virgin’s grief at the loss of her child and the promise of salvation through her son’s suffering. Both Rupert of Deutz and Marguerite of Oignt encouraged such conflation, as did Margery Kempe when the sight of a male child inspired thoughts of the Passion or when she wept at the grave of the Virgin in Jerusalem.34 Nichols similarly classifies ‘These armes of Christ’ (NIMEV 3305.8), composed by the ‘O Vernicle’ author and following ‘O Vernicle’ in olim Esopus and six other manu­scripts, as a pardon poem intended to encourage readers to reduce the penalties of sin after acknowledging their guilt in confession and receiving penance.35 ‘These armes of Christ’ ends with a complicated indulgence that calculates the pardon for viewing the arma, promising that daily viewing for a year will reduce time in purgatory by 6,755.5 years plus three days. To use Robert Swanson’s term, such ‘devotional indulgences’ required neither payment nor pilgrimage but only ‘contrition and confession, confirmed by absolution’.36 Parturient women receive individual attention: ‘And also to women it is meke and milde | When þai travailun of her childe’ (And also to women it is meek and mild | When they travail of their child).37 The indulgence extends the orthodox promise of pardon to all women present, reminding each of her responsibility to confess to a priest. The Esopus roll concludes with the tetragrammaton-agla charm commonly found in textual amulets and ‘Deus qui liberasti’, an intercessory prayer with references to Jonah, Susannah, and the to a particular sin but occasionally, as with the knife and the sponge, do follow earlier precedents. See Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, p. 143; Johnson, ‘“The Hard Bed of the Cross”’, pp. 132–33; Newhauser and Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage’, pp. 93–94. 34  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 427; Bynum, Wonderful Blood, p. 160; Morse, ‘Seeing and Hearing’, pp. 26–27; Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of Flesh, p. 180; Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Meech and Allen, pp. 72–73, 94. 35  Nichols, ‘The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi’, pp. 115–16, 120–21; Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations’, p. 143; Gayk, ‘Early Modern Afterlives’, pp. 278–79. 36  ‘To se hit xii moneth[s] vche daye entere | haf vi [thousand] vii and lv ȝere and half ȝere and dayes thre | of pardon yis popus han graunted ye’ (my transcription). For the version in London, BL, MS Royal 17 A.XXVII, fols 80v–81r, which includes the mention of women and the same indulgence, see Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, pp. 195–96; for additional calculations, see Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medi­eval England, p. 255. 37  For transcription, see Nichols, ‘The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi’, p. 121.

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three young men in the furnace. Though based upon the Profisciscere anima christiana recited by the priest during extreme unction, people also employed the prayer for apotropaic purposes, a telling example of a ‘sacramental blessing’ that blurred the lines between Christian sacramental charms and magic.38 The deeply orthodox associations of ‘O Vernicle’ with penance replaced the magical associations of ‘Deus qui liberasti’ with the ecclesiastically approved message that the dying could not seek God’s intercession on their own. The protections may have been written deliberately on the dorse, so that the face images and texts of the arma Christi could be placed against the labouring woman’s flesh to magnify the arma’s amuletic potency. Other women aiding in the birth could simultaneously read or recite the dorse prayer while viewing the measure of the cross or the red crosses of the tetragrammaton-agla charm. Bishop Buckingham of Lincoln burned the Lollard William Swynderby and excommunicated the popular Wycliffite preacher Philip Repingdon, an Austin canon of the Leicester abbey of St Mary, in 1382. Repingdon recanted and later prosecuted Lollards after being named Bishop of Lincoln in 1405.39 Arundel’s 1409 Constitutions against lay possession of vernacular translations of the Bible and other theo­logical tracts transformed possession of English books and religious tracts into presumed heresy. Only Church-approved vernacular texts such as Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ escaped suspicion. The defeat of Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard army in January 1414 may have ended the heresy’s early period, but the revolt strengthened the impetus to enforce Arundel’s restrictions since sedition and literacy now were closely aligned.40 The survival of olim Esopus demonstrates an artistic and instructional programme that somehow overruled concerns about lay reading of vernacular texts and perhaps initiated the birth girdle tradition. Lollard prosecutions continued into the 1430s, with five Lollards burned during Bishop Alnwick’s Norwich trials of sixty male and female accused Lollards between 1428 and 1431.The nine-year-old King Henry VI was abroad 38 

Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, p. 325; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 266–68; Edsall, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?’, pp. 183–85; Jones and Olsan, ‘The Middleham Jewel’, pp. 260–62; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 25–26 n. 12, 212–13; Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England, p. 28. 39  Aston, Lollards and Reformers, pp. 70–73, 75, 83, 86 n. 57, 208–12; Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. by Hudson, p. 8; Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections in Later Medi­eval England, pp. 50–51; McHardy, ‘Bishop Buckingham’, pp. 131 . 40  Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medi­e val England’, pp. 825–26, 830; Aston, Lollards and Reformers, pp. 11–15.

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awaiting his French coronation when Lollard dissension again shook England in March 1431. The two-month uprising spread from London to the south before Henry’s uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, quelled the revolt with public executions of its leaders in May. A contemporary witness, Nicholas Bishop of Oxford, condemned the Lollards as ‘fals heretikes’ (false heretics), writing that ‘common traytures and felouns of our kyng lete dude wryte divers fals bulles and fals scriptures and gilful and many contraris the doctrine of christyn feyth conteynyng’ (common traitors and felons of our king lately did write diverse false bulls and false scriptures and guileful and containing many contrary [to] the doctrine of Christian faith).41 Even if political rather than doctrinal issues fueled the 1431 uprising, the short-lived revolt demonstrated anew that Lollardy threatened both Church and State. The prayers in the MS Takamiya 56 birth girdle, produced in the early years of Henry VI’s reign, oppose key Lollard principles: the rejection of transubstantiation and the priest’s role in the Eucharist, insistence upon vernacular devotional reading, refusal to participate in confession, and distrust of friars. The eight Latin prayers dominating the texts in MS Takamiya 56 imply that its maker(s) inserted English rubrics only for spiritual direction. Vernacular rubrics did not allow readers to interpret the texts on their own but offered Church-mandated instruction that confronted Lollardy head-on. Likewise, readers of the two unique vernacular elevation verses and a ‘measurement’ verse could not misconstrue or adapt them to Lollard purposes. Among English birth girdles, the replication of the Virgin’s presumed height of five feet, eight inches (1.73 m) of MS Takamiya 56 offers the most compelling evidence for Bishop Nicholas Shaxton’s 1538 injunction censuring midwives for their dependence upon ‘girdles, purses, measures of our Lady, or other such superstitious things’.42 In a Middle English rubric to a Latin prayer, ‘Ave domina sancta Maria’, the scribe connects MS Takamiya 56 to the Benedictine Tewkesbury Abbey with a fanciful tale of the devil’s theft of this prayer from a Tewkesbury altar and dates the roll to the sixth regnal year of Henry VI (1434– 35). As with olim Esopus, the apotropaic content is written on the dorse, including the birth girdle prayer incorporating the length of the Virgin, the 41 

Aston, Lollards and Reformers, pp. 32–37; for transcription, 44–45. The Virgin’s height is compared to that of Christ, Moses, Alexander, St Thomas of Canterbury, and King Edward IV in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 306, fol. 203r; Pickering and O’Mara, The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist XIII, p. 24 [39]; Furnivall, Political, Religious and Love Poems, p. 61; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 204; Visitation Articles and Injunctions, ed. by Frere and Kennedy, p. 59. 42 

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Figure 6.2. The childbirth protection, the measure of the length of the Virgin, and other apotropaic content appears on the dorse of MS Takamiya 56. New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, Takamiya Deposit. 1435–50. Photo courtesy of Kalamazoo, Western Mich­i­g an Uni­ver­sity, Dwight B. Waldo Library, with permission of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya.

‘Iesus autem transiens’ charm, and the names of the four evangelists and the three Magi (Figure 6.2). The Takamiya prayer claims it was sent to ‘[Const] antyne the nobyll and hytt was closyd yn golde’ (Constantine the noble and it [the length of the Virgin] was enclosed in gold), although the reference to Constantine rather than Charlemagne may be a scribal error. The prayer further promises ‘That whate man or woman that berythe hytt […] may go safe […]. And a woman that ys quyck wythe chylde [girde] hyr wythe thys mesure and she shall be safe fro all maner of perillis’ (That what man or woman that beareth it […] may go safe […]. And a woman that is quick with child gird her with this measure and she shall be safe from all manner of perils). An extra strip of vellum, now attached with tiny modern nails, ensures an exact match to the Virgin’s height, ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary [longe]’ (This much more is our lady Mary long), but the roll actually extends one-eighth inch beyond.43 An inscription running along the dorse of MS Wellcome 632 confirms ‘Thys parchement [?] ys oure lady seynt mary length’ (This parchment is our lady saint Mary’s length), but its nearly eleven-foot (3.32  m) length undercuts 43 

Morse provides a full transcription of the dorse texts: ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 203.

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Figure 6.3. The vertical side wound with detached hands and feet in MS Takamiya 56 may have continental origins. The side wound image frequently appears near childbirth texts. New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, Takamiya Deposit. 1435–50. Photo courtesy of Kalamazoo, Western Michigan Uni­ver­sity, Dwight B. Waldo Library, with permission of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya.

any claim to verisimilitude.44 The Lenten antiphon from Luke 4. 30 that also appears on the MS Takamiya 56 dorse, ‘Iesus autem transiens per medium illorum ibat in pace’ ( Jesus passed through the crowd and walked away in peace), is engraved on medi­eval English coins from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, is inscribed on a genealogical roll of Edward IV, and appears in other English manu­scripts, but shows up again among s only in BL, Harley Roll T.11.45 44  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp.  199, 204–05, 212–13; Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manu­scripts, p. 492. 45  Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, p. 40 n. 20; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 200, 203–06; Rudy, ‘Kissing Images’, pp. 13–14.

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‘Ave domina sancta maria’ and the other Latin prayers introduced by vernacular rubrics on the front of the MS Takamiya 56 birth girdle often promise extravagant indulgences for reciting these prayers, a ploy that promotes Latin as the language of orthodoxy. A vernacular devotional indulgence of nine thousand years marks the Takamiya witness of ‘Ave domina sancta maria’, but later continental books of hours attribute its variants to the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) and attach indulgences of up to eleven thousand years. Franciscan influences also echo in two Latin antiphons glorifying St Francis and his stigmata, a doctrinal emphasis upon the Immaculate Conception fifty years before Sixtus IV regularized its feast in 1477, and the distinctive Takamiya image of the side wound (Figure 6.3), a favourite motif among English Franciscans.46 As a unit, the MS Takamiya 56 texts countered Lollard invective against the friars, offering women an apparatus for confessional meditation and apotropaic protection within the birthing chamber and granting them a devotional autonomy they did not otherwise possess. The laity readily associated the Eucharistic rituals of the Mass with magical benefits controlled by priests, even if congregational members did not receive communion but merely viewed the Host.47 We have no way of knowing whether any Church authority approved the Takamiya birth girdle’s two unique elevation verses, ‘Hayle holy bodye of criste ihu’ (Hail holy body of Christ Jesus) and ‘Hayle precyous blode of god cryst ihu’ (Hail precious blood of God Christ Jesus), but their easily memorized rhyme royal stanzas keep the elevation of the host, and its priestly control, foremost in the mind of the birth girdle’s users. An empty stepped cross wreathed with thorns and with a salmoncoloured heart-wound at its centre provides the associated contemplative image.48 English rubrics introduce the verses, unusual in a scribal culture that more often assigned English rubrics to Latin texts and Latin rubrics to the few

46 

Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 209–10, 210 n. 39, 214, 216; Blackburn, ‘The Virgin in the Sun’, pp. 158–60, 178–79. 47  Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 31–36; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 341–42. 48  Late medi­e val English manu­script and church art often shows the heart in the traditional position of the side wound in depictions of the five wounds. Dolan, ‘Devotion to Sacred Heart’, pp. 378–81, suggesting that the devotion to the sacred heart began in England c. 1400, also describes instances where the heart alone is pierced by the lance or appears on a cross; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 303–04. Since the heart clearly belongs to the penitential meditations of the Passion encouraged in the birth girdles, I have chosen to use the term ‘heart-wound’ when the heart appears with other wounds, among the instruments, or on the empty cross.

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allowed English prayers and carols.49 The two rubrics, ‘To the leuacion of the bodye of cryste ihu’ (To the levation of the body of Christ Jesus) and ‘To the eleuacion of the blode of criste’ (To the elevation of the blood of Christ), locate the Eucharistic ritual within the Mass and emphasize the priest’s ritual performance. On the dorse, a belt-like border with evenly spaced circles outlined in brown simulates the metal mounts of a leather girdle or the knotted rope of the Franciscan habit but also recalls the round Host the priest raises at the elevation. The circles even may have been left blank for a later insertion of the Holy Monogram, the ‘I.H.C.’ or ‘I.H.S.’, that often marks the Host in miniatures, as seen in MS Beinecke 410.50 MS Takamiya 56 reflects the increasing popularity of the devotional motif of the five wounds in text and image in fifteenth-century England. Henry VI reportedly kept an image of the wounds near him as he slept and as he ate. While wound icono­g raphy certainly was not the sole province of Franciscan artists, the cult of the five wounds responded to St Francis receiving the stigmata, referenced in the Latin antiphon to the saint, ‘Celorum candor splenduit’ (The brightness of heaven glimmered), on the birth girdle’s face.51 The separate MS Takamiya 56 side wound, marked only on Christ’s half-length body in the sepulchre in olim Esopus, initiates a birth girdle convention, albeit in different forms, as seen in MS Wellcome 632; MS Glazier 39; BL, Harley Roll T.11; and BL, MS Add. 88929. Although created more than half a century later and presented horizontally rather than vertically, the wound on the Wellcome birth girdle resembles the Takamiya lozenge-shaped side wound with detached hands and feet set at its outer edges. The three-compartment Takamiya wound carries an inscription within its outer compartment beginning ‘Hic vulnus lateris nostri redemptoris’ (Here is the wound in the side of our Redeemer’), and the inner diamond is inscribed with I.H.S. In MS Wellcome 632, which also features an inner diamond inscribed with I.H.S., the mostly illegible inscription, probably due to frequent rubbing, is placed beneath the wound image (Figure 6.4).52 The shared Takamiya and Wellcome images are otherwise unique in 49 

Morse, ‘Two Unpublished English Elevation Prayers’, p.  270; Robbins, ‘Levation Prayers’, pp. 132–33. 50  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 207–08. 51  Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 304; Gray, ‘The Five Wounds of our Lord’, pp. 86–88; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 215–16, with thanks to Elaine Beretz for the Latin transcription and translation. 52  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 211–12, esp. 211 n. 47.

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Figure 6.4. The horizontal side wound image in MS Wellcome 632 closely resembles the image in MS Takamiya 56. London, Wellcome Medical Library. 1500. Reproduced with permission of Wellcome Library.

English representations of the side wound; similar icono­graphy in Les Heures de Pierre II of Bretagne (c. 1455–57) may indicate a continental import.53 The remaining Takamiya vernacular verse, ‘The nomber of the droppys of blodde’ (NIMEV 3443), guides viewers to contemplation of the side wound. The vernacular poem recognizes the spiritual benefits of counting the drops of blood Christ shed (547,500 drops) but makes no attempt to associate the counting with sacramental functions restricted to priests. MS Takamiya 56 may be the earliest of the poem’s seven witnesses, which include the Wellcome birth girdle, but only four others, including MS Wellcome 632, calculate the same 547,500 drops.54 The poem functions as a rubric for the following Latin prayer to the 53 

Paris, BnF, MS lat. 1159, fol. 141; Leroquais, Les Livres d’ Heures, pl. LII. The three others are Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21 (fols 277vb–278va); Robert Reynes, commonplace book, Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Tanner 407, fol. 10v; and BL, MS Add. 54 

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seven sacred blood-lettings of the circumcision, the bloody sweat, the flagellation, the crown of thorns, the wounded hands (the feet are not mentioned), and the side wound as heart.55 The MS Takamiya 56 image of the three nails also reflects Church teaching that encouraged the faithful to employ measures in their daily devotions. A vernacular rubric instructs the roll’s user to ‘beholde thys mesure of thys iij. naylys wythe contricion and good deuocion’ (behold this measure of these three nails with contrition and good devotion), establishing the nails as a mnemonic for confession and devotional stimulus. Two more Latin prayers precede the image, the first a short invocation to Christ and the cross and the second a prayer to the wounds as assurance against sudden death. These Latin prayers make veneration of the nails an implicit aspect of a confessional mode that recalls Christ’s sacrifice, but the image of the nails remains foremost as the visualized and measured symbol of penitence. At seven inches (178 mm) long, the brown diamond-tipped nails, wreathed with thorns and displaying a heartwound at their centre, represent an exaggerated measure, another convention that later birth girdles will retain. Surprisingly, the later birth girdles do not possess indicators of production before 1485, the year Henry Tudor defeated Richard III and ascended the throne as Henry VII. Lollardy, likewise, is rarely mentioned in ecclesiastical documents during the Wars of the Roses, but the Lollard groups discovered during the early Tudor period imply either that the heretics may have been otherwise occupied during these turbulent years of shifting alliances or that trial testimonies disappeared. In the late 1480s, church authorities intercepted Lollard reading circles in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, and extant documents record at least seventy trials during Henry VII’s reign.56 In a bid to confirm his Lancastrian legitimacy, Henry VII requested canonization of his deposed uncle, Henry VI, and planned to rebury the body in his new Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The people’s belief in the miracles of this homegrown royal saint countered Lollard rhetoric that denied the efficacy of pilgrimages and saintly intercession.57 Henry 37049, fol. 24r, a Carthusian miscellany from Yorkshire likely written in 1460–70. Also see Morse, ‘Two Unpublished English Elevation Prayers’, p. 272; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 210–11. 55  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 211. 56  Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. by Hudson, p. 8; McSheffrey and Tanner, Lollards of Coventry, p. 2; Lockyer and Thrush, Henry VII, p. 62. 57  Marsden, ‘Henry VII’, pp. 58–59; Craig, ‘Royalty, Virtue and Adversity’, pp. 187, 190.

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VI figures prominently in MS Glazier 39 with both an image and prayer, yet curiously not at all in Prince Henry’s birth girdle, BL, MS Add. 88929. Along with the other images and borders inked in vermilion and red, the Glazier image of Henry VI likely represents the idiosyncratic artistry of the birth girdle’s scribe, the self-identified Percevall of Yorkshire’s Premonstratensian Coverham Abbey. Percevall may have found his models for his drawing of Henry VI in the pilgrim badges excavated all over England in numbers rivaled only by Canterbury badges. Many miracles attributed to Henry VI centred upon healing and/or resurrecting children.58 Percevall also exhibits Tudor sympathies in his image of St Armagilus (Armagile) in a long prayer, ‘Salvatorem deprecare nos a malis liberare’ (We pray you to save us from evils), followed by a short collect which also seeks deliverance. Henry VII particularly admired this sixth-century Breton saint and imported his cult to England. Despite its omission of Henry VI, the last miniature on Prince Henry’s birth girdle portrays Armagilus (Armyl) before a vernacular prayer to the saint seeking protection from ‘feuers and pockes and many other infirmites’ (fevers and pox and many other infirmities) and acknowledging ‘the king oure souereyne lord harry’ (the king our sovereign lord Henry). The Latin prayer and collect to St Armagile at the end of BL, MS Add. 88929 follow the same exemplars that Percevall used.59 The vernacular childbirth prayer and the two most common Latin suffrages invoking Quiricus and Julitta comprise the central text of the later birth girdles and, in the case of BL, Harley Charter 43.A14, constitute its only texts. Just as the St Armagilus images and prayers were incorporated into MS Glazier 39 and BL, MS Add. 88929 to honour Henry VII, many birth girdles seemingly reflect a commissioner’s personal tastes or possibly a group of texts and images favoured by a particular workshop or monastic order. In addition to the scribal markers in MS Takamiya 56 and MS Glazier 39, donor portraits in BL, MS Add. 88929 and MS Beinecke 410 reveal likely monastic connections. 60 The relative crudeness of the cross image in BL, Harley Charter 43.A14 and the five images in MS Wellcome 632 suggest commercial production, borne out by de Worde’s printed girdle featuring just two woodcuts, a Salvator mundi 58 

Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, p. 201; Plummer, The Glazier Collection, p. 38; Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, pp. 189–92; Craig, ‘Royalty, Virtue and Adversity’, pp. 206–07. 59  Skemer, Binding Words, p. 267; Friedman, Northern English Books, p. 167; transcription of Latin prayer to Armagile (Legge, ‘A Decorated Mediæval Roll’, pp. 101–02). 60  Shailor, Catalogue, p. 310; McKendrick, Lowden, and Doyle, Royal Manu­scripts, p. 186.

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and a tau cross.61 Following the precedent set by MS Takamiya 56, Latin texts dominate the birth girdles with the vernacular usually reserved for rubrics or indulgences, short poems, and measure prayers. In addition to the Quiricus and Julitta prayer, the birth girdles as a group include the following significant vernacular texts: ‘Hayle holy bodye of criste ihu’ and ‘Hayle precyous blode of god cryst ihu’ (MS Takamiya 56); ‘The nomber of the droppys of blodde’ (MS Takamiya 56, MS Wellcome 632); ‘O man unkynde’ (MS Beinecke 410); ‘Jhu for þe blod þat þu bled’ (olim Esopus); ‘I thank þe Lord’ (olim Esopus); measure prayer with indulgence to the nails (MS Takamiya 56; BL, Harley Roll T.11; BL, MS Add. 88929; MS Glazier 39); measure of the length of the Virgin (MS Takamiya 56, MS Wellcome 632); indulgence for viewing the arma (MS Beinecke 410); indulgence for praying ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ (MS Takamiya 56); penitential prayer to the cross (BL, MS Add. 88929); prayer to St Armagilus (BL, MS Add. 88929); ‘O Vernicle’ (olim Esopus); ‘These armes of Christ’ (olim Esopus); measure prayer to the side wound (BL, Harley Roll T.11). The Latin birth girdle texts offer considerably more variation, perhaps because Latin texts did not receive the same scrutiny from the Church as the vernacular. Witnesses to Wynkyn de Worde’s Latin suffrages to Quiricus and Julitta, which differ from those in the manu­script birth girdles, appear in a medical miscellany, London, BL, MS Sloane 783B, folio 215r–v, and the sanctorale of the Sarum Missal.62 BL, Harley Roll T.11 and MS Takamiya 56 witness the short ‘Iesus autem transiens’ charm, which frequently appears in genealogical rolls and devotional miscellanies. ‘O nuda humanitas’ (MS Takamiya 56 and MS Beinecke 410) appears elsewhere in English manu­scripts only in the Shaftesbury Hours and in a fifteenth-century commonplace book.63 In addition to the Latin prayer and collect to St Armagilus (MS Glazier 39 and BL, MS Add. 88929) and the prayer to Henry VI (MS Glazier 39), Latin prayers to St George (MS Glazier 39 and BL, MS Add. 88929) also honour Henry VII’s appropriation of a saint associated with the kings of England since Edward I. Latin memorials to St Christopher, almost a mother-surrogate in his care for the Christ-child (MS Glazier 39 and BL, MS Add. 88929), seem especially appro61 

Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 50–51. Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 41–43, 45 n. 37; Legg, The Sarum Missal, p. 277. 63  Cam­bridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 2–1957, fol. 78r; Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.53, fol. 70v; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 209–10. 62 

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priate for birth girdles. The Latin memorials to St Margaret and St Katherine (MS Glazier 39), both at the centre of parish church women’s cults and, in the case of Margaret, invoked as a childbirth saint, seem equally appropriate. Yet they appear only on a list of female saints, along with St Dorothy and St Anne, two saints also invoked in childbirth, in MS Wellcome 632.64 The ‘Crux Cristi’ incantation (MS Beinecke 410) sometimes is inscribed on separate strips of parchment that women may have wrapped around their waists and also appears in early English primers. Wynkyn de Worde claims the ‘Names of God’ were sent to Charlemagne and follows the list with the Latin names of the three Magi, the twelve apostles, and the four evangelists.65 Surprisingly, as the indulgences for ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ (MS Takamiya 56) proliferated during Sixtus IV’s papacy, it appears in later birth girdles only in MS Wellcome 632 as an almost illegible variant. The prayer’s associations with the Immaculate Conception, under attack by the end of Sixtus’s reign, especially from the Dominicans, may have discouraged their use.66 An ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ variant appears around 1500 in a northern English prayer roll, New York, Morgan Library, MS 486, but because it lacks a separate childbirth prayer or length of the Virgin, it is not here identified as a birth girdle.67 Some different prayers to the Virgin accompanied by images of the Virgin and Child and the Pietà appear in the later birth girdles. The miniature of the Virgin and Child in BL, MS Add. 88929 introduces ‘Ave maria ancilla trinitatis humilia’ (Hail Mary, humble handmaid of the Trinity), a prayer to the Virgin later set as a motet by Nicholas Ludford, likely during the reign of Henry VIII.68 The MS Glazier 39 artist presents the Virgin as Pietà in a historiated initial ‘O’ beginning a prayer to the Virgin that incorporates feminine case endings that may point to a female owner.69 While we might expect miniatures of Quiricus and Julitta, especially since illuminators could borrow from Virgin and Child 64 

French, The Good Women of the Parish, pp. 133–35, 140, 143, 150, 232; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 202 n. 11; Good, The Cult of St George, pp. 52–58, 88–93. 65  Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 39–40, esp. p. 40 n. 20, p. 59; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 273. 66  Blackburn, ‘Messages in Miniature’, p. 171. 67  New York, Morgan Library, MS 486; Bühler, ‘A Middle English Prayer Roll’, pp. 555–56. 68  Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, pp. 214–16; Nutter, Early Music Ensemble, 21 Nov. 2010. 69  The prayer begins ‘O gloriosa. O optima. O sanctissima. virgo maria’ (Legge, ‘A Decorated Mediæval Roll’, p. 102); Friedman, Northern English Books, p. 167.

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exemplars as did the artist of a twelfth-century Spanish altar painting, their only English manu­script image depicts them as bearded (obviously an artist’s mistake) in the sanctorale of the Sherborne Missal.70 The sainted martyrs, especially Quiricus, may have seemed even more appealing as protectors of mothers and their children in a time when chroniclers implied that Richard III had murdered his two nephews, the imprisoned sons and heirs of Edward IV. While the English people did not love the princes’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, in the way they would love Elizabeth of York, her daughter and queen of Henry VII, the courage and faith of the child Quiricus and his mother Julitta must have resonated deeply.71 In the Gilte Legende, Quiricus affirms his own Christianity, ‘I am cristen’ (I am Christian), as he watches his mother beaten for refusing to deny her faith. After he bites the ear of the provost Alexander, the provost throws the boy down the steps, bashing his head. Julitta praises God for allowing Quiricus to enter heaven before her. Every time a woman prayed to these childbirth protectors while measuring and adoring the cross that symbolized eternal joy and Christ’s sacrifice, she would remember the Virgin’s agonizing grief for the death of the son she had borne and nurtured and Julitta’s joy in the salvation that death brought to her, to Quiricus, and to all Christians.72 Birth girdle makers may have been inspired by the banderoles inserted in miniatures to display the liturgical or Gospel texts most closely associated with specific icono­graphic motifs. Scrolls with texts, banderoles functioned as reminders of the theo­logical significance of the scenes depicted, as memorization aids for Latin texts, and as proclamations, as in the ‘Ave Maria gratia plena’ banderole in miniatures such as the olim Esopus Annunciation and its exemplars.73 The kneeling monk in the donor portrait of MS Beinecke 410 prays with a banderole inscribed with ‘Quinque vulnera dei sint medicina mei’ (The five wounds of Christ are my medicine), clearly intended as instruction to consider 70  BL, MS Add. 74236, fol. 462; Scott, Later Gothic Manu­scripts, ii, 50. Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 193, 276 n. 27; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, p. 35 n. 3. 71  Penn, The Winter King, pp. 5, 97–98; Weir, Elizabeth of York, pp. 95–98; Gristwood, Blood Sisters, pp. 193–95. 72  Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 188–90; Gilte Legende, ed. by Hamer with Russell, p. 370. 73  Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS  B.11.7, fol.  7 r; the Bedford Hours, BL, MS  Add. 42131, fol. 7r; Scott, Later Gothic Manu­scripts, i, pls. 194, 209. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England, p. 42 fig. 9 (Neville of Hornby Hours, BL, MS Egerton 2781, fol. 53r).

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the wounds and the arma as a collective entity for spiritual and physical protection. In compliance with ecclesiastical assumptions that Middle English vernacular texts were either Lollardinitiated or could be presented as Lollard theo­ logy, Latin inscriptions dominate the banderoles in most fifteenth-century English miniatures. The birth girdles themselves served the anti-Lollard purposes of banderoles as their use proclaimed the intercessory powers of the Virgin, the saints, and their priestly servants. The most extraordinary example of the banderole device in a birth girdle appears in BL, MS  Add. 88929, where its makers not only place Figure 6.5. The English and Latin birth girdle prayers are its prayer and suffrages placed in banderoles alongside the crucified Christ in to St Cirico and St Julitt London, British Library, MS Additional 88929. 1485–1509. near the middle of the Reproduced with permission of the British Library Board. eleven-foot (3.35  m) birth girdle, but write both the English and Latin texts within banderoles. Angels unfurl the banderoles alongside a crucified Christ, with the vernacular prayer inked in reddish brown on the left and the suffrages in dark brown on the right (Figure 6.5). The hanging Christ on the cross of the prayer’s measure eloquently captures the emotional intensity of affective piety while magnifying the prayer’s apotropaic qualities and ensuring ecclesiastical approval of the birth girdle’s usage

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in the rigours of childbirth: ‘if a woman be in travell off childe, ley this on her body and she shal be delyverd with oute parel, the childe chrystendom, and the moder purificacyon’ (If a woman be in travail of child, lay this on her body and she shall be delivered without peril, the child Christendom and the mother purification). The birth girdle’s portrait of a kneeling bishop may represent an ecclesiastical donor, implying that the strategic banderole display marks these texts as insurance for the dynastic longevity of the Tudor line. Skemer describes the banderole texts in the crucifixion miniature as ‘the most clearly amuletic section’. The delicacy and colouring of the illuminations, many painted or limned in gold, indeed produced a gift fit for a prince and his future wife. Ironically, given Henry’s own problems with siring a male heir, he gave his birth girdle to William Thomas, his Privy Chamber servant, at an unknown date before his 1509 coronation and marriage to Catherine of Aragon.74 BL, Harley Roll T.11; BL, Harley Charter 43.A14; MS Glazier 39; and MS Wellcome 632 add the same additional promises of baptism for the child and purification for the mother even if a priest could not be called in time to baptize a dying infant or offer extreme unction to a dying mother.75 While John Mirk’s Instructions to Parish Priests allows midwives to conduct emergency baptisms, these birth girdle promises solidified the orthodox legitimacy of the childbirth prayer and spread that legitimacy to other vernacular birth girdle texts. Given the legal significance of church baptisms in proving age of heirs, the social events tied to the baptism ritual, and priests’ sacramental authority, the added clause ceded to women’s desire for autonomy in childbirth practices yet restricted vernacular prayer to the controlled space of the birthing chamber.76 Purification was not a sacrament, but it too was a socially significant ritual celebrated in the public space of the parish church. Even the Virgin, impregnated by the Holy Spirit and not through sexual intercourse, subjected herself to purification. As Paula Rieder explains, the purification rite ‘approximated the sacrament of penance and its ability to forgive sin’ and ‘confirmed and strengthened the authority of the priest’. The omission of the public ritual requirement for purification seems like another concession to parturient 74 

Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 264–66; transcription, McKendrick, Lowden, and Doyle, Royal Manu­scripts, p. 186. 75  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, pp. 426–27. 76  Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. by Peacock, pp. 3–4; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion’, pp. 110–11; Deller, ‘The First Rite of Passage’, pp. 4–8; Nichols, Seeable Signs, p. 204.

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women. But it may not have been as much of a concession as it seems because women would desire to celebrate this significant ritual publicly or, at the very least, to request a priest to perform a private purification. Watching the women gather in purification processions inspires Margery Kempe’s ‘gostly syghts’ (spiritual sights) of the Virgin’s purification and sets off spells of weeping.77 Five of the later birth girdles guarantee that the prayer is registered at St John Lateran, Rome’s principal church, adding an extra layer of authority. Perhaps significantly, St John Lateran owned a well-known relic of Christ’s measure that was first associated with the Charlemagne charm.78 The Lateran registration’s omission in BL, MS Add. 88929 might signal royal dispensation. Two ornate miniatures of the full arma Christi appear in MS Beinecke 410. The saturated colours and exquisite detail, plus the arms of two prominent Lincolnshire families, suggest a commission from a wealthy family. If the ‘Thome’ whose name is inserted into the Latin suffrage to Quiricus and Julitta was indeed an Austin friar, the birth girdle would have proved useful to one entering an order that preached and ministered to the laity in overt Lollard opposition.79 In the first miniature, the I.H.C. inscribed on the round wafer inserted into the steeple of the gothic church framing the instruments and a standing crucified Christ holding the cross makes an explicit connection between Christ’s sacrifice and the priestly rituals of elevation (Figure 6.6). ‘O man vnkynde’ (NIMEV 2504), a six-line poem found in two other English manu­scripts and a church wall inscription, and here followed by a mind-boggling indulgence of 32,055 years, separates this miniature from the next arma, where a slashed and bleeding heart-wound wreathed in thorns and superimposed upon three brown diamond-tipped nails appears beneath the veronica hanging from the cross-arms.80 The wounded hands and feet, with bleeding stumps and dominant nail-holes, are set above and below the heart alongside the nails, and other instruments are suspended in a blue background above the nails. Angels placed on each side between the hands and feet gesture towards the heart. 77 

Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Meech and Allen, p. 198; Rieder, On the Purification of Women, pp. 73–74, 113–14, 129–30. 78  Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 195, 278 n. 47; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, p. 39 n. 18; Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medi­eval England, p. 54 n. 136. 79  Shailor, Catalogue, p. 310; Mirk, Festial, ed. by Powell, i, pp. xxii–xxiii, xliii. 80  The manu­script sources are Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Laud Misc. 330, fol. 74 v and BL, MS Add. 37049, fol. 20r; a 1522 transcription of the inscription at Almondbury Church, Yorkshire appears in BL, MS Add. 37605, fol. 192r. See Boffey and Edwards, NIMEV, p. 164.

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Figure 6.6. This image of Christ in a Gothic frame surrounded by the arma Christi shows the arma’s Eucharistic associations in the round wafer inscribed with I.H.C. and inserted into the steeple. New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, MS Beinecke 410. 1475–1500. Reproduced courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library.

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The prominence of the heart-wound could explain why a sixteenth-century owner attributed the Beinecke birth girdle to Innocent VI (1352–62), often linked to a seven-year indulgence to the side wound. The motif of the heart superimposed at the centre of three diamond-tipped golden nails surfaces again in BL, MS Add. 88929, with the prayer attributed to an unnumbered Innocent. BL, Harley Roll T.11, however, connects its image of the nails to Innocent VIII (1484–92) in its ‘seven gifts’ prayer, perhaps to acknowledge the pope in office at the time of writing.81 Neither BL, Harley Roll T.11, with distinctive redstriped green nails suspended among four red-beaded strands, nor MS Glazier 39, with the crown of thorns braided among its three black- and red-striped nails, incorporate the heart or another side-wound image. A slashed red heartwound walking on two bloodied feet and extending bloodied hands in supplication represents Christ’s body in a unique and separate five-wound motif in MS Glazier 39. In a less obvious fashion, the Glazier prayer to Cirice and Julite features a slashed heart-wound on the shaft of the cross. In BL, MS Add. 88929, the artist also presents the side wound as its own separate image. Within a gilded rectangular frame placed between the banderoles of the childbirth protections and the life-size image of the nails, a twopart lozenge with the inner part coloured a deep red is set within a fluffy blue cloud held by two angels. In BL, Harley Roll T.11, a vertical lozenge displays four compartments, each shaded a different red, with the darkest reserved for the inner compartment. The lozenge is set among six red-beaded strands, just as the nails were set among four red-beaded strands higher up on the birth girdle. The prayer placed alongside the wound on the right of the birth girdle labels it as ‘the mesur of the blessyd wounde that oure Lord Ihesu Crist had in his right syde, the whiche an angell brought to Charlamayn, the nobyll emperour of Constantyne, wyth-in a cofer of gold’ (the measure of the blessed wound that our Lord Jesus Christ had in his right side, the which an angel brought to Charlemagne, the noble emperor of Constantine, within a coffer of gold). The names of both Charlemagne and Constantine in this later birth girdle suggest that the MS Takamiya 56 scribe, who mentioned Constantine only, was working from memory and forgot the crucial Charlemagne connection.82 Whether presented either as its own image (BL, MS Add. 88929 and BL, Harley Roll T.11) or as the centre of the five wounds (MS Takamiya 56, 81 

Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, pp. 271–72, 277 n. 48. Transcription from Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, p. 277; Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’, p. 205. 82 

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MS Wellcome 632, and MS Glazier 39), the side wound carried special significance in Eucharistic orthodoxy and also for parturient women.83 As Caroline Bynum reminds us, ‘In late medi­eval depictions of the crucifixion, the figure of Ecclesia not only receives blood from Christ’s side in what is clearly an image of feeding, hence of eucharist; she also emerges from the wound in Christ’s side, taking her very being from him’. Likewise, the side wound embodied the maternal presence of God. Julian of Norwich’s mystical revelations visualize the side wound as both breast and womb: ‘The moder may geven her child soken hir mylke, but our pretious moder Jesus, he may feden us with himselfe […] oure tender moder Jesus, he may homely leden us into his blissed brest be his swete open syde’ (The mother may give her child suck of her milk, but our precious mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself […] our tender mother Jesus, he may gently lead us into his blessed breast by his sweet open side).84 By the late fifteenth century, the early birth girdle tradition, which emphasized Eucharistic devotion as an anti-Lollard tactic, had expanded to privilege the devotional practices of expectant mothers, midwives, and other females within the confines of the birthing chamber. Assuming the function of banderoles in helping their users recognize what the Church expected women to know, birth girdles taught them how they should respond to those expectations. In encouraging birth girdle usage to the extent that monks and bishops either commissioned them for their own or their patrons’ use, the Church symbolized the loving presence of Christ and the Virgin in its own actions, discouraging women and their families from following Lollard priests and neighbours. United as a group by two different vernacular texts, the childbirth prayer invoking Quiricus and Julitta in eight birth girdles and the prayer to the length of the Virgin in two, the assemblages of texts and images in the surviving birth girdles delineate a tradition that served owners of all ranks and classes. The English birth girdle tradition could accommodate the individual devotional preferences of owners able to afford commissioning their own birth girdles, such as MS Beinecke 410; MS Glazier 39; BL, Harley Roll T.11; MS Takamiya 56; and olim Esopus or, as in the spectacular example of BL, MS Add. 88929, could receive birth girdles as gifts from those seeking their favour. Yet the same tradition offered ordinary women and midwives commercially produced birth girdles featuring preselected texts and images, such as MS Wellcome 632; BL, 83 

Rudy, ‘Kissing Images’, pp. 44–45; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 207, 263. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, pp. 160–61; Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, ed. by Glasscoe, pp. 73–74. 84 

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Harley Charter 43.A14; and especially de Worde’s printed roll. For all women, the birth girdles offered not only the solace of divine love, but a devotional autonomy that they rarely experienced within their church or elsewhere in their society.

Works Cited Manu­scripts and Early Printed Editions Note: I have included URLs for catalogue entries with links or information about accessing the images. Cam­bridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 2–1957 Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS B.11.7 [accessed 1 December 2018] Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.53 [accessed 1 December 2018] Cam­bridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 37049 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 37605 London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 42131 London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 61823 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 74236 London, British Library [BL], MS Additional 88929 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], MS Egerton 2781 London, British Library [BL], Harley Charter 43.A14 [access 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], Harley Roll T.11 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, British Library [BL], MS Royal 17 A.XXVII London, British Library [BL], MS Sloane 783B London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 306 London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 632 [accessed 1 December 2018] London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 804 [accessed 1 December 2018]

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London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 804A [accessed 1 December 2018] New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, MS Beinecke 410 [accessed 1 December 2018] New Haven, Yale Uni­ver­sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library, Takamiya Deposit, MS Takamiya 56, private collection of Professor Emeritus Toshiyuki Takamiya, Tokyo [accessed 1 December 2018] New York, Morgan Library, MS 486 New York, Morgan Library, MS 779 [accessed 1 December 2018] New York, Morgan Library, MS 1092 [accessed 1 December 2018] New York, Morgan Library, MS Glazier 39 [accessed 1 December 2018] New York, Morgan Library, MS Glazier 50 [accessed 1 December 2018] Oxford, Bodleian Library [Bodl. Lib.], MS Laud Misc. 330 Oxford, Bodleian Library [Bodl. Lib.], MS Tanner 407 Oxford, Bodleian Library [Bodl. Lib.], roll no. 26 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS lat. 1159 Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, olim Esopus STC 14547.5 (London, British Library, MS Harley 5919) STC 14077 c. 64 (Boston, Harvard Uni­ver­sity, Houghton Library)

Primary Sources Furnivall, F. J., Political, Religious and Love Poems: From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth MS No. 306, and Other Sources, 2nd edn, Early English Text Society, o.s., 15 (London, 1903) Gilte Legende, ed. by Richard Hamer with Vida Russell, vol. i, Early English Text Society, o.s., 327–28 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006) Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich, A  Revelation of Love, ed. by Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: Uni­ver­sity of Exeter Press, 1976) Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe: The Text from the Unique MS Owned by Colonel W. Butler-Bowdon, vol. i, ed. by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, Early English Text Society, o.s., 212 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1941; repr. 1997) Legg, J.  Wickham, The Sarum Missal Edited from Three Early Manu­scripts (Oxford: Claren­don Press, 1916; repr. 1969)

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Mirk, John, John Mirk’s Festial Edited from British Library MS  Cotton Claudius A.II, ed. by Susan Powell, vols i and ii, Early English Text Society, o.s., 334–35 (Oxford: 2009–11) Morris, Richard, Legends of the Holy Rood: Symbols of the Passion and Cross-Poems, Early English Text Society, o.s., 46 (London: N. Trübner, 1871; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969) Myrc, John, Instructions for Parish Priests: Ed. from Cotton MS  Claudius A.II, ed. by Ed­ward Peacock, Early English Text Society, o.s., 31 (London: Trübner, 1868; repr. 1902) Nichols, Ann E., ‘“O Vernicle”: A Critical Edition’, in The Arma Christi in Medi­eval and Early Modern Material Culture with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 308–91 Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth, ed. by Nicholas H. Nicolas (London: Pickering, 1830; repr. 1972) Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. by Anne Hudson (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 1997) Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. by Thomas Wright, Camden Society Publications, o.s., 26 (London: Camden Society, 1843) Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. by W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, vol. ii (London: Longmans, Green, 1910) York Plays: The Plays Performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York, on the Day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, ed. by Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885)

Secondary Works Aston, Margaret, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medi­eval Religion (London: Hambledon Press, 1984) Blackburn, Bonnie, ‘Messages in Miniature: Pictorial Programme and Theo­logical Impli­ cations in the Alamire Choirbooks’, in The Burgundian-Habsburg Court Complex of Music Manu­scripts (1500–1535) and the Workshop of Petrus Alamire, ed. by Bruno Bouckaert and Eugeen Schreurs, Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, 5 (Leuven: Alamire, 2003), pp. 161–84 —— , ‘The Virgin in the Sun: Music and Image for a Prayer Attributed to Sixtus IV’, Jour­ nal of the Royal Musical Association, 124.2 (1999), 157–95 Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards, eds, A New Index of Medi­eval English Verse (London: British Library, 2005) Bühler, Curt F., ‘A Middle English Prayer Roll’, Modern Language Notes, 52 (1937), 555–62 —— , ‘Prayers and Charms in Certain Middle English Scrolls’, Speculum, 39 (1964), 270–78 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Wonderful Blood: Theo­logy and Practice in Late Medi­eval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)

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Carroll, Michael P., ‘Pilgrimage at Walsingham on the Eve of the Reformation: Specu­ lations on a “Splendid Diversity” only Dimly Perceived’, in Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity, ed. by Dominic Janes and Gary Waller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 35–48 Clemens, Raymond, and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manu­script Studies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2007) Craig, Leigh Ann, ‘Royalty, Virtue and Adversity: The Cult of King Henry VI’, Albion, 35.2 (Summer 2003), 187–209 Delamarter, Steve, and Getatchew Haile, The Catalog of the Ethiopic Manu­script Imaging Project (EMIP): Codices 106–200 and Magic Scrolls 135–284, vol.  ii (Cam­bridge: James Clarke, 2012) Deller, William S., ‘The First Rite of Passage: Baptism in Medi­eval Memory’, Journal of Family History, 36.3 (2011), 3–14 Dilling, W. J., ‘Girdles: Their Origin and Development, Particularly with Regard to their Use as Charms in Medicine, Marriage, and Midwifery’, Caledonian Medical Journal, 9 (1913–14), 337–57, 403–25 Dolan, Gilbert, ‘Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Medieaeval England’, Dublin Review, 120 (1897), 373–85 Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-.1580 (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992) Edsall, Mary Agnes, ‘Arma Christi Rolls or Textual Amulets?: The Narrow Roll Format Manu­scripts of “O Vernicle”’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 9.2 (Winter 2014), 178–207 French, Katherine L., The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) Friedman, John B., Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995) Gayk, Shannon, ‘Early Modern Afterlives of the Arma Christi’, in The Arma Christi in Medi­eval and Early Modern Material Culture with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 273–307 Gilchrist, Roberta, Medi­eval Life: Archaeo­logy and the Life Course (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012) Good, Jonathan, The Cult of St George in Medi­eval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009) Gray, Douglas, ‘The Five Wounds of our Lord’, Notes and Queries, 208 (1963), 50–51, 82–89, 127–34, 163–68 Gristwood, Sarah, Blood Sisters: The Women behind the Wars of the Roses (New York: Basic Books, 2013) Gwara, Joseph J., and Mary Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, The Library, 13 (2012), 33–62 Hardman, Phillipa, ‘Gawain’s Practice of Piety in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”’, Medium Ævum, 68.2 (1999), 247–67 Harvey, Barbara, ‘The Monks of Westminster and the Old Lady Chapel’, in Westminster Abbey: The Lady Chapel of Henry VII, ed. by Tim Tatton-Brown and Richard Morti­ mer (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003), pp. 5–32

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Johnson, Holly, ‘“The Hard Bed of the Cross”: Good Friday Preaching and the Seven Deadly Sins’, in The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, ed. by Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 129–44 Knowles, David, and R. Neville Hadcock, Medi­eval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London: Longman, 1971) Jones, Peter Murray, and Lea T. Olsan, ‘The Middleham Jewel: Ritual, Power, and Devo­ tion’, Viator, 31.1 (2000), 249–90 —— , ‘Performative Rituals for Conception and Childbirth in England, 900–1500’, Bul­ letin of the History of Medicine, 89 (2015), 406–33 Legge, William H., ‘A Decorated Medieaeval Roll of Prayers’, The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeo­logist, 10 (1904), 99–112 Leroquais, Victor, Les Livres d’Heures Manuscrits de la Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris: [n.pub.], 1927) Lochrie, Karma, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) Lockyer, Roger, and Andrew Thrush, Henry VII (New York: Longman, 1997) Marks, Richard, Image and Devotion in Late Medi­eval England (Phoenix Mills: Sutton, 2004) Marsden, Gordon, ‘Henry VII: Miracle King’, History Today, 59.3 (2009), 54–60 McHardy, A. K., ‘Bishop Buckingham and the Lollards of Lincoln Diocese’, in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. by Derek Baker, Studies in Church History, 9 (Cam­ bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1972), pp. 131–45 McKendrick, Scott, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manu­scripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011) McSheffrey, Shannon, Gender and Heresy (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) —— , ‘Heresy, Orthodoxy and English Vernacular Religion, 1480–1525’, Past and Present, 186 (2005), 47–80 McSheffrey, Shannon, and Norman Tanner, eds, Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522, Royal Historical Society (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003) Mercier, Jacques, Art that Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia (New York: Museum for African Art, 1997) Moorat, S. A. J., Catalogue of Western Manu­scripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, vol.  i (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962–73) Morse, Mary, ‘Alongside St Margaret: The Childbirth Cult of Saints Quiricus and Julitta in Late Medi­eval English Manu­scripts’, in Manu­scripts and Printed Books, 1350–1550: Packaging, Presentation and Consumption, ed. by Emma Cayley and Susan Powell (Exeter: Uni­ver­sity of Liverpool Press, 2013), pp. 187–206, 273–81 —— , ‘Defending Orthodoxy with Birth Girdles’, in Pregnancy and Childbirth: History, Medicine and Anthropo­logy, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel (St. Mary’s College of California: Steuben Press, 2018), pp. 107–12 —— , ‘Seeing and Hearing: Margery Kempe and the “mise-en-page”’, Studia Mystica, 20 (1999), 15–42

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—— , ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”: Takamiya MS  56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition’, in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday, ed. by Simon Horobin and Linne  R. Mooney (Woodbridge: York Medi­eval Press, 2014), pp. 199–219 —— , ‘Two Unpublished English Elevation Prayers in Takamiya MS  56’, Journal of the Early Book Society, 16 (2013), 269–77 Newhauser, Richard G., and Arthur J. Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage in an Early Fifteenth-Century Arma Christi Roll’, in The Arma Christi in Medi­eval and Early Modern Material Culture with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 83–112 Nichols, Ann E., ‘The Footprints of Christ as Arma Christi: The Evidence of Morgan B.54’, in The Arma Christi in Medi­eval and Early Modern Material Culture with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. by Lisa  H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 113–41 —— , ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations of an Arma Christi Poem’, in Tributes to Kathleen  L. Scott. English Medi­eval Manu­scripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators, ed. by Marlene Villalobos Hennessy (London: Harvey Miller, 2009), pp. 139–69 —— , Seeable Signs: The Icono­graphy of the Seven Sacraments 1350–1544 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994) Nutter, David, dir., The Early Music Ensemble (Davis: Uni­ver­sity of California), programme 21 November 2010, St Martin’s Episcopal Church Olsan, Lea, ‘The Marginality of Charms in Medi­eval England’, in The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe, ed. by James Kapaló, Éva Pócs, and William Francis Ryan (Budapest: Central European Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 135–64 Orme, Nicholas, Medi­eval Children (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003) Penn, Thomas, The Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011) Pickering, O.  S., and V.  M. O’Mara, The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist XIII: Manu­scripts in Lambeth Palace Library (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999) Plummer, John, ed., The Glazier Collection of Illuminated Manu­scripts (New York: Pier­ pont Morgan Library, 1968) Rawcliffe, Carole, Medicine and Society in Later Medi­eval England (London: Sandpiper, 1999) —— , ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion in Later Medi­eval England’, in Women and Reli­ gion in Medi­eval England, ed. by Diana Wood (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), pp. 91–117 Rex, Richard, The Lollards (New York: Palgrave, 2002) Rieder, Paula M., On the Purification of Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) Robbins, Rossell Hope, ‘The Arma Christi Rolls’, Modern Language Review, 34 (1939), 415–21 —— , ‘Levation Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philo­logy, 40.2 (1942), 131–46 Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medi­eval Culture (Cam­bridge: Cam­ bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991)

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Rudy, Kathryn M., ‘Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manu­scripts through the Physical Rituals They Reveal’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2011, Article 5, pp.  1–56

—— , Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medi­eval Books (New Haven: Yale Uni­ ver­sity Press, 2015) Scott, Kathleen L., Later Gothic Manu­scripts, 1390–1490, vols i and ii (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996) Shailor, Barbara A., Catalogue of Medi­eval and Renaissance Manu­scripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­script Library Yale Uni­ver­sity, vol. i (Binghamton, NY: Medi­eval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987) Skemer, Don C., Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006) Smith, Kathryn A., Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books of Hours (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 2003) Song, Minah, ‘Arma Christi Roll Condition Report and Estimate’, report prepared for the Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (Philadelphia, 29 Feb. 2012) Spencer, Brian, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medi­eval Finds from Excavations in London, 7 (London, 1998; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010) Swanson, Robert E., Indulgences in Late Medi­eval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cam­ bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2007) Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971) Watson, Nicholas, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medi­eval England: Verna­ cular Theo­logy, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), 822–64 Weir, Alison, Elizabeth of York: A  Tudor Queen and her World (New York: Ballantine, 2013) Wenzel, Siegfried, Latin Sermon Collections in Later Medi­eval England: Orthodox Preach­ ing in the Age of Wyclif (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005) Williamson, Paul, ed., Object of Devotion: Medi­eval Alabaster Carvings from the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Art Services International, 2011)

Prayer as Obstetric Practice at Thirteenth-Century La Cambre Sara Ritchey

I

n thirteenth-century northern Europe, religious women occasionally provided obstetrical care to the parturient poor. Beguines in Brabant-Liège, for example, acted as midwives with some frequency.1 In Champagne, a number of Cistercian female communities grew out of domus-Dei and hospices, and the women there continued to provide care to the needy even after their formal affiliation with the order.2 In Angers and Brussels, female canons provided care to poor and homeless pregnant women in hospitals.3 While we have little textual evidence demonstrating that religious women read formal medical manuals, we know that women could be auditors of medical texts like the Trotula or abbreviated excerpts from Muscio’s Gynaecia, and that mulieres religiosae developed textual communities in which medical knowledge may have been disseminated orally.4 1 

Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 78. On efforts to prohibit women’s obstetrical care, see also Greilsammer, ‘The Midwife, the Priest, and the Physician’. 2  Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 129–34. 3  Rubin, Charity and Community, p. 158. On the statutes of the hospital at Brussels, see Cartulaire de l’hôpital Saint-Jean de Bruxelles, ed. by Bonenfant; on Angers, see Bird, ‘Medicine for the Body and Soul’. 4  Monica Green discusses the manner through which laywomen, including beguines and anchorites, and, we can assume, Cistercian nuns, developed textual communities for obstetric care. Women heard medical manuals or encyclopaedias such as Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum. See Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 145–50.

Sara Ritchey is Associate Professor of History at the Uni­ver­sity of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Holy Matter: Changing Perceptions of the Material World in Late Medi­eval Christianity (Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014). Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 171–194 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117822

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The thirteenth-century Cistercian manu­script Brussels, BR, MS 8609–20 provides insight into religious women’s obstetric practices and the transmission of obstetric knowledge. The manu­script was made for use by the Cistercian women’s community of La Cambre, near Brussels, and includes a series of four Latin birthing charms.5 It has been described as a vitae sanctorum, as it contains the Lives of numerous female saints including Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth of Hungary, Lutgard of Aywières, Christina Mirabilis, Ida of Nivelles, Margaret Contracta, and Alice of Schaerbeek, who was also a member of the community at La Cambre.6 The manu­script was produced at the Cistercian abbey of Villers, which maintained paternity over La Cambre since its foundation in 1201 by Henry I and Mathilda, the duke and duchess of Lower Lorraine.7 As such, the document was most likely used in the pastoral care of the nuns of La Cambre, providing them with edifying devotional reading and instruction. This situation begs the question, however: Why did Cistercian confessors consider it appropriate to include birthing charms in a book made for the use of nuns? Did the nuns of La Cambre use these charms in direct performance? After contextualizing these four birthing charms among other charms and performative rituals used in childbirth, I will suggest possible interpretations for the use and significance of the charms in MS 8609–20, how they may have been read and understood by the nuns of La Cambre, and what they can reveal about the obstetric care provided by religious women in the thirteenth century. Before doing so, however, a review of the state of obstetric knowledge in the thirteenth century can help position these birthing charms within the spectrum of healthcare options. Obstetrics and gynaeco­logy, although onto­logically linked in Western medicine since its ancient Greek foundation, were generally considered separately, with distinct practitioners treating each field of knowledge. While university-trained physicians incorporated gynaeco­logical matters into their treatises, and expounded on gender differences and embryo­logy, women remained the caretakers of normal births.8 Female midwives tended 5 

On this manu­script, see also Scheepsma, The Limbourg Sermons, p. 193; Folkerts, Vorbeeld op schrift, pp. 98–101. 6  The manu­script also includes one, very brief, Vita of a man, Odo of Liège, who was priest to numerous mulieres religiosae in Liège (fols 179–80). On the manu­script’s designation as a Vitae sanctorum, see Van den Gheyn, Catalogue du manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, v, 181–82. 7  Monasticon Belge, ed. by Despy-Meyer and others, iv, 441–68. Van der Meer, Atlas de l’Ordre Cistercien, p. 274; de Betz and others, L’Abbaye cistercienne de la Cambre. 8  Demaitre, Medi­eval Medicine, p. 315.

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uncomplicated births, with emergency obstetrical and gynaeco­logical care being reserved for male specialists.9 Women assisted in providing ocular and manual inspection of female genitalia, but it was male physicians and surgeons who delivered authoritative direction and interpretation of their findings. Moreover, midwifery did not emerge as a distinct profession in western Europe until the thirteenth century.10 During Late Antiquity, medical guides such as those by Muscio, Caelius Aurelianus, and Theodorus Priscianus were composed specifically for midwives, who operated as professionals requiring textual authority. But by the early Middle Ages, although women remained as attendants at birth, they tended to be neighbours and family members rather than specifically skilled authorities in obstetric care. Vernacular terms for midwife, which signal the professionalization of the practice, began to emerge in the thirteenth century. Friar Bartholomew the Englishman wrote in his encyclopaedia that a midwife was ‘a woman who has the art of aiding a woman in birth so that she might give birth more easily and the infant might not incur any danger’.11 The professionalization of midwifery stemmed at least in part from canonical legislation generated after the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council, in which laypeople were required to perform emergency baptisms for newborn fatalities. By the following century, ecclesiastic officials sought to ensure that midwives received additional instruction in this practice. As a result, a specialized group of practitioners slowly emerged, as the French terms for midwife, meraleresse (documented in 1267) and ventrière (from about 1300), indicate. The Dutch word for midwife, vroedemoeder, did not appear until the fourteenth century.12 These terms, however, were still fluid; they could refer to midwife or wet nurse, godmother or simply ‘woman’, based on the range of healing practices exhibited by women as part of their fulfilment of familial roles as women.13 In the thirteenth-century Low Countries, when the charms discussed in this essay were composed, midwifery had not fully re-emerged as an 9 

Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 12–21. As Monica Green has shown, midwifery was a distinct profession in the late antique period. Caelius Aurelianus, Theodorus Priscianus, and Muscio all wrote gynaeco­logical texts for obstetrice and medicae. See her Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, p. 127. 11  Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, Book vi, De Obstetrice: ‘Obstetrix autem dicitur mulier que habet artem juvandi mulierem parientem ut facilius pariat et infantulus partus periculum non incurrat’. 12  Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, p. 135; Lie, The Secrets of Women in Middle Dutch. 13  Cabré, ‘Women or Healers?’. 10 

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independent professional occupation. The obstetric charms in MS 8609–20 can thus reveal the multifaceted and intermingled role of religious women as healthcare providers, charitable caregivers, obstetric specialists, and practitioners of prayer for the poor laity in their surrounding community.

Four Latin Birthing Charms Although there is a long history of seeing charms as evidence of ‘superstitious’ or magical practices, scholars have now shifted focus to the consideration of charms as a component of ‘rational’ medicine and religious ritual.14 Charms could be either religious hymns or verbal cures, either uttered or written.15 Used in healing, charms provided instructions for the performance of certain ritual actions, such as prayer or making the sign of the cross, and delivered the script of powerful words to be pronounced or inscribed on an amulet.16 Numerous charms were sanctioned by both the clergy and medical authorities and reflected a rather common means of using Christian power to alter the natural world.17 By the thirteenth century, medical authorities that included charms in their compendia generally relegated them to a secondary status, categorizing them as empirica (inexplicable remedies) and recommending them as supplements to other cures that had rational, natural explanations for their efficacy.18 The charms in MS 8609–20 are not marginal. In addition to the four birthing charms in the manu­script, there is only one other healing charm. Just before 14 

On the rationality of charms, see Milner, ‘The Physics of Holy Oats’. On charms as ‘superstitious’, see Flint, The Rise of Magic and Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. On the place of charms in the overlapping categories of medi­e val magic, superstition, and medicine, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 69–74; Kieckhefer asserts the difficulty of distinguishing magical and religious verbal formulae, but does offer a helpful typo­logy distinguishing prayers, blessings, and adjurations. On charms in manu­scripts, see Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England; Skemer, Binding Words. General overviews include Bozoky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques; Delaurenti, La Puissance des mots ‘Virtus verborum’. A few antho­logies provide broad geo­graphic and typo­logical analyses; see Roper, Charms and Charming in Europe; Kapaló, Pócs, and Ryan, The Power of Words. On charms in academic medical texts, see McVaugh, ‘Incantationes in Late Medi­eval Surgery’. 15  Olsan, ‘The Inscription of Charms’. 16  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’. 17  Rider, Magic and Religion, pp. 25–45. 18  Olsan, ‘Charms and Prayers’. According to Olsan (p. 348), ‘Experimenta worked without relation to natural causes that were explicable, and therefore treatable, according to the principles of Galenic medicine’.

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the birthing charms the scribe has copied a well-known charm for caducus morbus, or epilepsy, known as the ‘Three Kings Charm’.19 The charm for curing epilepsy is indicative of the audience for which MS 8609–20 was written. In medi­ eval medical theory, epilepsy was associated with the disease known as ‘uterine suffocation’ (suffocatio matricis). Medical authors such as Valesco of Taranta related the etio­logy of uterine suffocation to abstinence from sex. Based in Hippocratic gynaeco­logy, the disease was thought to cause the uterus to move throughout the body because of retention of menses, excessive fatigue, lack of food, lack of heterosexual activity, or dryness of the womb (in older women).20 These conditions most often could be found in nuns, particularly widows or virgins. Ancient authorities assimilated the conditions of uterine suffocation to epilepsy. For example, Hippocratic treatises explained that, ‘the woman turns up the whites of her eyes and becomes chilled; some women are livid. She grinds her teeth and saliva flows out of her mouth. These women resemble those who suffer from Herakles’ disease [epilepsy]. If the womb lingers near the liver and the abdomen, the woman dies of the suffocation’.21 The association of epileptic symptoms with those of uterine suffocation, a disease considered prevalent among nuns, might explain the inclusion of the ‘Three Kings Charm’ in a manu­script created for the use of the nuns of La Cambre. The placement of the ‘Three Kings Charm’ in relationship to a birthing charm is also found in a thirteenth-century parchment bound in a manu­script from northern France.22 In Paris, BnF, MS n.a.f. 4267, an Old French verse prayer guaranteed that the woman who wore the amulet would experience ease in birth, just as Mary did when she bore Christ.23 The association between the ‘Three Kings Charm’ and the birthing charms in MS 8609–20 suggests that women, even cloistered nuns,

19 

The ‘Three Kings Charm’ was included in Bernard de Gordon’s Lilly of Medicine as well as Roger Bacon’s Opus majus. See Olsan, ‘Charms and Prayers’; Messler, ‘The Three Magi and Other Christian Motifs’. 20  The Trotula, ed. and trans. by Green, p. 22. 21  As quoted in Green’s introduction to The Trotula, p. 22; Faraone, ‘Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb’, p. 4. 22  Paris, BnF, MS n.a.f. 4267. The birthing charm is written in French, while the ‘Three Kings Charm’ appears in Latin, at the bottom of the page. Skemer, Binding Words, p. 241. 23  The use of the original parchment is unclear, as it is bound with fourteenth-century material. The text for the birthing amulet reads: ‘Quant fame enfantera metés ces brief sour lui | Celle escapera vive, et ses frus autresi. | Li papes fu de Roume ki le traita et fist | Jhesu Cris en ait l’ame en son saint paradis | Et nos pechiés pardoinst et nos doinst boinne fin’.

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could be responsible not only for obstetric care, but also in some instances for other gynaeco­logic problems. The birthing charms in MS 8609–20 appear in sequence under the rubric ad partum mulieris. Each one is clearly marked with a cross, which was a typical identifying marker for charms. The charms flow consistently in scribal hand and mise-en-page with the previous and subsequent scripta copied into MS 8609–20. They follow a litany of names identifying St Ursula’s assistants. The saint and her followers had an important place in the convent: while La Cambre was in possession of relics belonging to St Ursula and to her 11,000 companions, MS 8609–20 also included a copy of the visions of St Elizabeth of Schönau that served to authenticate the relics, which had been discovered in Co­logne in the early twelfth century.24 Immediately following the charms is a brief para­g raph on the healing miracles of Jesus, derived from the Gospel of Nicodemus.25 The charms’ codico­logical connection in MS 8609–20 with Ursula’s relics, the many Lives of mulieres religiosae, and miraculous healing demonstrates an integration of religious language and ritual with medical function. Their presence among meditative healing prayers and purportedly powerful relics suggests a sacramental function of the charms — practitioners of these charms may have approached them as sacramentals, as a means to channel divine grace into the elements of the earth and bodies. The first birthing charm recorded in MS 8609–20 reads Panditur interea domus olympi. It was a familiar charm, based on the opening to the tenth book of Vergil’s Aeneid, in which the gods of Olympus discuss Aeneas’s suffering. The charm can be found in a twelfth-century medical manu­script from Vienna and was in use at least until the fifteenth century, when the English physician Thomas of Fayreford attested to its efficacy in his commonplace book.26 Based on its transcription in these other manu­scripts, we know that this charm would most likely have been used as an amulet, in which the Vergilian verse was transcribed onto parchment, then bound to a parturient woman’s thigh. Handling 24 

‘Ordo revelationis de gloriosis sodalibus sanctae Ursulae’ (fols 185–92). On the visions, see Die Visionem der hl. Elizabeth und die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schönau, ed. by Roth. On Elizabeth’s role in authenticating the relics, see Moulinier, ‘Élisabeth, Ursule et les Onze mille Vierges’; Campbell, ‘Sanctity and Identity’. 25  See Izydorczyk, The Medi­eval Gospel of Nicodemus. 26  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, pp. 421–22; on the twelfth-century Viennese manu­script, see Franz, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittel­alter, pp. 201–02. On Fayreford’s ‘commonplace book’, which is a manu­script book of remedies only partly written by Fayreford, see Jones, ‘Harley MS 2558’.

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this manu­script, therefore, would have required some literacy and access to writing equipment. That the charm itself does not offer such instruction for writing, but only the phrase itself, suggests that there was a strong oral tradition and understanding of how to use such charms. This reliance on the oral tradition for complete execution, we will see, was common to all of the birthing charms included in MS 8609–20. The second charm is far less familiar. It reads, terra terram accusat meum autem est judicare. The line is related to a story from the Gospel of John (8. 1–11) in which a crowd asked Jesus how to punish a woman who was accused of adultery; he responded by writing in the dirt of the earth. Though the exact content of what he wrote is not indicated, theo­logians beginning with Ambrose of Milan were undeterred from speculation. One of the most favoured responses was terra terram accusat,27 a phrase that entered a rich interpretative tradition in sermons, images, and Gospel commentaries. Known as the pericope adulterae, it was incorporated into the Latin liturgy by the eighth century and read on the third Saturday of Lent.28 The phrase had some historical resonance for pregnant women. Valerie Flint has shown that the famous Carolingian ‘Lothair Crystal’, a gem with engravings depicting the biblical story of Susanna and dating from the ninth century, featured the phrase through its connection with Susanna’s story. Flint argues that Susanna was depicted on the crystal as the adulteress from the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John.29 The Lothair Crystal was a talisman that King Lothair II gifted to Queen Theutberga upon the reconciliation of their marriage after he had accused her of incest and abortion.30 It is possible that the crystal was used as a charm to generate a healthy offspring after the reconciliation. The interpretation of the crystal as a healing talisman related to female fertility offers the possibility that this birthing charm was, like the crystal, amuletic. Transcribing this phrase onto parchment was believed to transfer the power of Christ’s words to the labouring woman to whom they were attached. 27 

Knust and Wasserman, ‘Earth Accuses Earth’. Other interpretations include Schöndorf ’s suggestion that the passage is linked to Exodus 31. 18: see his ‘Jesus schreibt mit dem Finger auf die Erde’. Aichele connects the passage to the logocentrism of John’s Gospel; see his ‘Reading Jesus Writing’. 28  Vogel, Medi­eval Liturgy, p. 310. 29  The Lothair Crystal was a lens-shaped engraved rock commissioned by Lothair II, King of Lothairingia from 855 to 869. Flint, ‘Susanna and the Lothar Crystal’. 30  On the crystal, see also Kornbluth, ‘The Susanna Crystal of Lothar II’. She offers a different reading, suggesting that the crystal associated Lothair II with Justice.

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The third birthing charm draws on another line from Vergil, [En]nova progenies cello demittitus alto.31 This verse was part of a very common birthing charm, and one of the oldest charm motifs, known as the ‘peperit’ charm, which addressed a sequence of holy mothers’ names such as Mary and Elizabeth. The charm had a textual tradition going at least as far back as the sixth century, where it could be found in a copy of Pseudo-Theodorus Priscianus’s Additamenta.32 In perhaps its most elaborate version, this charm appears in a late fourteenth-century Anglo-French medical miscellany, London, BL, MS Sloane 3564, where it instructed users to write these words on a ‘foille’ and place it on the flank of a woman in labour.33 The Vergilian phrase to be inscribed was just one component of a multipart process. In full, the charm reads: ‘Saint Mary gave birth and this mother did not suffer, bore Christ the king who redeems us with his blood.’ Place this thing around the right side of the woman. And in the same way, write this message on a page, ‘Because it is a boy, now a generation is let down from above [iam nova progenies cello dimittitur alto]. Christ, Mary, John, Elizabeth, Remigius, Celina, Lazarus come out, I adjure you, creature of God, whether you are a boy or girl, in the name of the father, etc. come out of the womb. Christ who calls you, creates you, and redeems you and will judge you in the world, amen.’ Place this on the right arm and the baby will come out soon, living or dead.34

In this more extended version of the charm, the formula begins by setting the labouring woman in the context of Mary, who gave birth without suffering. 31 

‘Now a generation is let down from heaven above’. The manu­script shows a scribal aberration from the standard, ‘iam nova progenies’. This aberration may indicate that the scribe was not fully Latin fluent or that the scribe understood the words to be inscribed in this precise way. 32  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 415. On the late antique inscription of the charm, see also Foscati, ‘La scena del parto’, p. 314. 33  Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, p. 92. 34  Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, p. 92: ‘“Sancta Maria peperit et mater illa non doluit, Christum regem genuit qui nos sanguine suo redemit.” Ceste chose lyez entour le destre flank de la femme. Et de ceste mesmes escrivez en un foille “Quia puer cest vrs[?] ‘iam nova progenies celo dimittitur alto’ + Christus + Maria + Johannes + Elizabet + Remigius + Celina, Lazare veni foras, adjuro te, creatura Dei utrum sis puer an puella, in nomine Patris, etc. exi de utero. Christus te appellat qui te creavit et redemit et in seculum judicabit, amen.” Ceste lyez entre le destre dedeyns et tantost istera l’enfant vif u mort’. In the Sloane manu­script, the peperit charm is copied next to another peperit charm for childbirth in which the labouring woman is instructed to ingest bread or cheese inscribed with the Exi foras adjuration. It opens up the possibility that the charm in MS 8609–20 was also ingested in this manner.

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The formula continues by instructing users to write specific words and phrases. Here, the Vergilian passage occurs, but in the Anglo-French version there are additional inscriptions, such as the sequence of holy mothers. The holy mothers cite biblical precedents for healthy, even miraculous, childbirth, each mother being paired with her child. Finally, the practitioner adjures the baby to come out. The name of Lazarus, like the sequence of holy mothers, acted as a historiola in brief, setting the beneficiary of this cure in a biblical context, one of hope for resurrection, for the giving of new life.35 The final charm, In exitu Israel de egypto domus Jacob de populo barbaro, derives from Psalm 113 (114), which was commonly used as a funerary song.36 The evocation of this biblical scene analogizes the act of leading the child out from the womb. It was a message of deliverance. While I have found no other textual analogues for this birthing charm, there are certainly other psalm texts that played a role in obstetric care. For example, Psalm 142 is used in a formula to facilitate childbirth that is found in a late medi­eval Hebrew compilation on women’s health care, The Book of Women’s Love. There, the charm instructs a practitioner to write the words of the seventh line of the Psalm on a clay vessel that has been broken, then to place the inscribed vessel under the feet of the labouring woman.37 Another ritual for speeding up birth directs the practitioner to write a verse from Psalm 115 on parchment, and then to read it over the head of a woman, tying it with a seal and binding it to the joint of her finger with a red silk thread.38 These two psalm texts used in birthing charms suggest once again that the words from Psalm 113 (114) would most likely have been inscribed on an object used as an amulet and worn by the woman in labour. Each of these four charms derives from a literary or biblical tradition, reflecting a reappropriation of culturally significant words for the purpose of healing. The words themselves, then, were resituated as powerful texts that could bring about physio­logical transformation, from illness to health, from struggle to ease in labour. Such powerful words had a long history in Western healing traditions, as demonstrated by comparative examples. Don Skemer has col35 

For a breakdown of the components of the peperit charm, see Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, pp. 415–16. 36  ‘When Israel came out of the house of Egypt, Jacob from a foreign people’: Del Alamo and Pendergast, Memory and the Medi­eval Tomb, p. 161; Rutherford, ‘Psalm 113 (114–115) and Christian Burial’ pp. 391–95. 37  Caballero-Navas, The Book of Women’s Love, pp. 174–76. I thank Professor CaballeroNavas for sharing her work with me and helping me with this passage. 38  Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, p. 423.

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lected a vast range of birthing charms and amulets used by midwives from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. His examples reveal how manu­scripts packaged disparate textual elements to address childbirth in a way that tended to conflate textual amulets with devotional prayers and practices. For example, a southern French ‘birthing kit’ consisted of a folded amulet composed of twenty-six medallions. The medallions represented abridged saints’ Lives such as that of Margaret of Antioch, some Gospel readings, the ‘Three Kings Charm’, a crucifixion scene (among other images, principally of saints), and a list of divine names with an indulgence protecting against death, including death in childbirth.39 The ‘kit’ could be unfolded, placed on the abdomen of the parturient woman, and read from throughout her labour. The words read provided protection as well as a meditative narration into which the labouring woman could insert herself as a means of focusing her attention during the birthing process. Although unadorned by physical medallions, the charms in MS 8609–20 are similarly embedded among prayers, meditations, and saints’ Lives, just like the ones represented in the medallions within the French folded amulet. These similarities introduce the possibility that the manu­script may have had multipurpose functions, one being its service during the birthing process.

Latin Charms in an Oral Context The charm texts’ abbreviation indicates that they operated within an oral context. In all four of these charms, the text is limited to a template for written words, the amuletic component. All other traditional aspects of the charm text, such as instructions for performance, historiola, or prayer words, were omitted.40 This abbreviation suggests that any additional components of the charms were conveyed orally and that the practitioners of these charms were immersed in a tradition in which the knowledge necessary to perform the entirety of the remedy was passed down through a vibrant oral tradition.41 The text of the charms therefore points to a larger oral context for their transmission, and this oral context suggests that the charms were inscribed for the use of nuns, who might have required assistance with the writing of specific, technical Latin 39 

Skemer, Binding Words, p. 242. On the components of charms, including historiola, see Bozoky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques. 41  On the aural/oral tradition of charms, see Olsan, ‘The Marginality of Charms in Medi­ eval England’. 40 

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phrases. The women of La Cambre who were responsible for aiding pregnant women likely already knew the ritual process of these charms, that is, the associated historiola, prayers, invocations, and gestures, and only needed a template for the Latin words that they were instructed to transcribe onto a writing support — such as bread, cheese, or parchment — or to read the charm over the parturient woman’s body. The highly oral-aural component of these charms suggests, also, a degree of adaptability.42 The oral and therefore unfixed feature of these charms would have allowed the nuns to adapt them for specific cases. Marianne Elsakkers has called attention to the manner in which charms could be adapted for specific contexts. Examining European manu­script versions of the ‘peperit’ charm, she has revealed the charm’s textual variance in timing and phrasing.43 Each word, line, and phrase of the charm shows some variation, demonstrating that it was adaptable; for example, the ‘exi’ command might appear as ‘adjuro te infans’, or ‘ut exeas foras’.44 Some manu­scripts included prayers and formulas taken from the liturgy, such as instructions to make the sign of the cross.45 Others, like MS 8609–20, included hexameters from Vergil, which suggests that the poetic and rhythmic quality of the ‘peperit’ charm could be adapted for speed based on the pace of the mother’s labour. Additionally, the charm’s list of holy mothers and its ‘exi’ imperative could be repeated cyclically throughout the course of the labour so that the practitioner synced her utterances with the rhythm of the patient’s contractions.46 The long litany of holy mothers could be expanded or abbreviated, depending on the timing needs of the birth process, either adding names to the catalogue of mothers or extending the length of the chant. Meanwhile, the ‘exi’ demand provided the forceful, urgent directives necessary during a contraction or while pushing. The textual variance of charms serves to emphasize the powerful orality that lay behind the sparse written words provided in MS 8609–20. The adaptability of the birthing charms copied into MS 8609–20 might also have functioned in a meditative capacity, to calm the mother during her labour. For example, in the final charm copied into MS 8609–20, only the first line of the psalm is provided. In addition to serving as an amuletic text for inscription, the verse could also act as a prompt for the nuns to intone the entirety of the 42 

L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 55. Elsakkers, ‘In Pain You Shall Bear Children’. 44  Elsakkers, ‘In Pain You Shall Bear Children’, pp. 187–88. 45  Elsakkers, ‘In Pain You Shall Bear Children’, p. 191. 46  Elsakkers, ‘In Pain You Shall Bear Children’, p. 205. 43 

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psalm in a chant that could foster a meditative state by modulating notes and tones according to pace of labour.47 Or, for example, the list of holy mothers in the ‘peperit’ charm might provide imagery to which the labouring mother could latch, identifying herself and her birth process with those worthy women who preceded her. The labouring woman might be calmed by the hope that, like the holy mothers, the nuns’ iteration of the charm’s verbal power would secure divine assistance for the successful birth of her child.48 Due to the adaptability of the charm formula in an oral context, it is possible that other holy mothers may have been inserted, making the charm more regionally and personally significant for the parturient woman. For example, some manu­script versions of the ‘peperit’ charm include Anna, Celina, or Remigius in the list of holy mothers.49 In addition to enhancing the charm formula with personally significant worthy mothers, as Elizabeth L’Estrange has shown, the holy mothers were complemented in some manu­scripts by invocations to other saints through their Lives and relics.50 For example, a fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman book of hours includes a prayer that was said to have been used by Thomas Becket’s mother during her labour.51 The story of Becket’s birth was also included in the Queen Mary Psalter, another fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman manu­script, suggesting that St Thomas’s mother had joined the ranks of the holy mothers in that region.52 Given the largely oral transmission of the birth charms in MS 8609–20, it is possible that saintly mothers with regional significance, such as Elizabeth of Hungary, whose Life was included in MS 8609–20, were invoked in the performance of the ‘peperit’ charm at La Cambre. Because the Latin birthing charms in MS 8609–20 are situated in a manu­ script composed mainly of saints’ Lives, it is worth examining how hagio­graphic textual practice might further illuminate their use at La Cambre. Hagio­graphic 47 

That the Psalms were used in women’s healing practices is clear from several thirteenthcentury psalters in the Mosan region that include health calendars and healing prayers. One particularly resonant example of how women’s psalters may have worked to transmit medical knowledge is Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, MS 431. On folio 152v, at the Hours of the Nativity of the Virgin, an illustration of two midwives attending Mary’s birth may have served an instructional purpose. In an upper register, one midwife bathes the baby, while on folio 153r, a midwife prepares its meal. 48  L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 57. 49  Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, pp. 302–03. 50  L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 67. 51  L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 63. 52  L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, p. 67.

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materials played an important role in medi­eval obstetric care. Among the most frequently cited saints to intervene in childbirth was Margaret of Antioch, the virgin martyr, to whom a great number of birthing amulets were dedicated.53 Margaret’s legend was exceedingly popular in the Middle Ages. It held that a dragon-disguised demon swallowed Margaret, but the crafty saint used a tiny crucifix to cut a hole through his back in order to escape. In manu­script copies of Margaret’s Lives, the saint was often portrayed as petitioning Christ to remit the sins of anyone who reads, hears, or carries a copy of her Passio. In addition to this request, the Lives often include a saintly plea that, ‘In the house where a woman is lying in labour, as soon as she recalls my name and my passion, Lord, make haste to help her and listen to her prayer and may no deformed child be born in that house, neither lame nor hunchbacked, neither dumb nor deaf nor afflicted by the Devil’.54 Margaret’s plea licensed parturient women and, by extension, their aids in labour to expect divine assistance by the act of reading, contemplating, or hearing her passion. Copies of her Life and Passio were placed on the stomachs of parturient women. Particularly common in France, Margaret’s abridged Life and Passio was often copied on a small parchment that was rolled or folded into an amulet or onto a scroll that was worn as a birthing girdle. In this way, proximity to the Life of Margaret was believed to be powerful enough to shepherd a safe childbirth.55 The manu­script or amuletic copy of the saint’s Life was itself a relic of sorts, a means of ‘embodying contact with the saint’s life’.56 Seen from this perspective, it is quite possible that these charms were used in conjunction with the other texts within the manu­script, particularly the Lives of female saints, to bring about healthy birth. The childbirth practices associated with Margaret of Antioch support the possibility that the saints’ Lives within MS 8609–20 were read in conjunction with the labouring process. The nuns might have read or recited passages of the Lives to the mother during labour as a meditative and intercessory practice.57 Or, given the oral context suggested by the relics, the nuns may have placed the manu­script compendia of Lives in a sack and suspended it from the body of the labouring woman.58 53 

Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 235–78; Gwara and Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’. 54  Wogan-Browne, ‘The Apple’s Message’, p. 44. 55  Wogan-Browne, ‘The Apple’s Message’, p. 52. 56  Wogan-Browne, ‘The Apple’s Message’, p. 43. 57  Skemer, Binding Words, p. 250. 58  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, p. 8.

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Nuns as Practitioners of Obstetric Care The presence of four Latin birthing charms in a manu­script created for Cistercian nuns raises important questions about the practical reality of their use. The most obvious problem is the association of nuns and birthing charms: Why would nuns be in need of birthing charms? Were the nuns of La Cambre present at numerous childbirths? Were these births taking place inside the cloister? What could a Cistercian nun uniquely bring to a birth that a practitioner, a midwife, or even a cleric could not? The healing charms in MS 8609–20 suggest that the women of La Cambre may have provided care to parturient mothers as well as other sick or indigent people in the region. La Cambre was located just outside the city of Brussels, which like all the major cities of the southern Low Countries, included a number of charitable institutions, such as hospices, hospitals, and leprosaria, that served the urban indigent and poor.59 These institutions of care combined religious with healing functions. Jacques de Vitry, considering the foundation of numerous hospitals throughout western Europe in the thirteenth century, described them as ‘hospices of piety, houses of honesty, workshops of sanctity, convents of the right and religious life, refuges of the poor, sustenance to the wretched, consolation to those in mourning, refectories for the hungry, comfort and relief for those who are ill’.60 In this sense, the thirteenth-century hospital was a place of convalescence for those who could not afford in-home care or who were without families to procure it.61 The thirteenth-century proliferation of hospitals was directly related to the larger spate of religious ‘movements’ sweeping Europe, for which apostolic poverty, charity, and experimentation in communal life were characteristic devotional features.62 Among this movement, the beguines of the southern Low 59 

Brodman, Charity and Religion in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 73–74, 196–97. Jacques de Vitry, The Historia Occidentalis, ed. by Hinnebusch, pp. 150–51: ‘sunt hospitalia pietatis et domus honestatis, officine sanctitatis, conventus decoris et religionis, refugia pauperum, auxilium miserorum, consolationes lugentium, refectio esurientium, suavitas et mitigatio infirmorum’. 61  De Spiegeler, Les Hôpitaux et l’assistance à Liège, pp. 29–32. See also Bonenfant, ‘Origine des hôpitaux en Belgique’; Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul; Horden, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages. 62  Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit, pp. 1–33. The term ‘religious movements’ derives from Herbert Grundmann’s Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, who used it as a term to connote the proliferation of options for the religious life in the late twelfth and 60 

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Countries were particularly engaged in the provision of health care as a defining component of devotional practice and charitable activity. At least six court beguinages were founded by beguines working as nurses at a nearby hospital.63 In seven others, the infirmary was the first building of the beguinage.64 Walter Simons has shown that the terms ‘beguine hospital’ and ‘beguine convent’ were often used in sources interchangeably, so closely were these women associated with the care provided to the sick, weary, elderly, and needy. At least nine beguine convents, including Ter Arken in Brussels, were created for the purpose of caring for elderly and poor beguines, and many more were designed as small group homes for poor women.65 In these caregiving communities, beguines were also trained as midwives. A number of beguine statutes forbade them to practice midwifery, which, to Walter Simons, ‘means, of course, that some actually did’.66 In this capacity, the beguines of the southern Low Countries must have received some form of medical training as midwives, caretakers of lepers, and more generally as nurses. The participation of beguines in charitable healthcare is important to our understanding of the charm texts in MS 8609–20 because many of the women who took orders as Cistercian nuns in the Low Countries in the early thirteenth century maintained important connections with beguines. As Constance Berman has demonstrated, the Cistercian Order in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries often absorbed pre-existing communities of women, most commonly beguines and Augustinian canons who had dedicated themselves

thirteenth centuries in western Europe. Scholars have since moved away from Grundmann’s explanatory model of religious experimentation, which regarded the rise of women’s ‘semi-religious’ communities as being caused by a lack of access to formal orders. 63  These were Borgloon, Ghent (Groot Begijnhof ), Lille, Mechelen, Tongeren, Valenciennes; possibly also Bergues and Saint-Christophe in Liège. Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 76. 64  These were Antwerp (Sion), Assenede, Cambrai (Cantimpré), Diksmuide, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Maubeuge, and Mons (Cantimpret). Simons, Cities of Ladies, pp. 76–77. 65  These were Antwerp (Klapdorp), Arras (Saint-Anne), Bruges (Saint-Aubert), Brussels (Ter Arken), Douai (Wetz), Ghent (Poortakker), Louvain (Wierinck), Mons (de le Taye), and Ypres (Baerdonc). Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 77. 66  Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 78. Simons found that St Catherine’s of Mechelen prohibited midwifery in 1286–1300 and that Sint Truiden and Geraardsbergen and Hoogstraten prohibited it in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Dendermonde permitted midwifery only if the mother’s life was in danger, and Herentals stipulated that a beguine could provide midwifery services to her mother or her brother’s sister.

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to provision of charity to the urban poor.67 Many of the women who became Cistercian nuns in the thirteenth century had lived previously as beguines or Augustinian canons, or had received informal education from beguines.68 Even after a woman joined the Cistercian Order, however, and practised ‘enclosure’, she might continue to maintain strong ties with service to the sick and poor.69 We can see this desire for continued caregiving to the local sick in the Cistercian convents established by the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux, and Boulancourt, who worked passionately to ensure that convents remained institutionally defined by their ties to the care of lepers, the sick, and the poor.70 As Anne Lester has shown, when the domus-Dei and leprosarium at Ramerupt was adopted as a formal Cistercian community in 1229, for example, the abbots negotiated with the Bishop of Troyes to maintain the nuns’ institutional affiliation with their hospice and leprosarium.71 The Cistercian abbeys of Nieuwenbos, Flines, and Marquette, as Erin Jordan has shown, supported hospitals within their cloister walls.72 Zwijveke was founded as a hospital and only later was taken over by the Cistercian women who were attracted to the hospital’s work.73 At Flines and Marquette, hospitals were built within the abbey enclosures, and only later were transferred to another location.74 And at Nieuwenbos, nuns travelled fifteen kilometers to the infirmary in order to fulfill their hospital duties. Fearing the safety of her nuns, in 1229 the abbess of Niewenbos successfully petitioned the Countess of Flanders and Hainaut for release from the administration of the hospital. At that point, a new abbey, Bijloke, emerged directly adjacent to the hospital in order to continue charitable care provided there.75 MS 8609–20

67 

Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, pp. 163–68. De Ganck, ‘The Cistercian Nuns of Belgium’; Roisin, ‘L’Efflorescence cistercienne et le courant féminin’. 69  Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 117–46. The ‘enclosure’ of nuns was less of an impermeable physical boundary than a metaphorical state of mind or prescriptive ideal. Recent interpretations of enclosure include Gill, ‘Scandala’; Lutter, ‘Christ’s Educated Brides’; and the essays in Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit. 70  Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 132–34. 71  Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, p. 130. 72  Jordan, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities’, p. 608. 73  Jordan, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities’, p. 608. 74  Jordan, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities’, p. 613. 75  Jordan, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities’, p. 608. 68 

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suggests that this continued dedication to service of the sick may have been taking place at La Cambre as well. Other Cistercian manu­scripts from the region provide further evidence of nuns’ health-related activities, in particular their dedication to obstetric care. One example is Brussels, BR, MS 4459–70, which was produced in the early fourteenth century by John of St Trond, a monk of Villers, for the nuns of Vrouwenpark in the diocese of Liège. This manu­script contains, in addition to numerous saints’ Lives and sacramental texts, a meditative prayer song rubricated as Carmen de sancta cruce ad pedes.76 The song, written by Arnulf of Leuven, abbot of Villers, greets the wounded limbs of the crucified Christ in a petition for health, playing on the multivalent meaning of salvation as both health and redemption. Within the verses of the carmen — also a word with multiple meanings in this context as both song and healing charm — an image of the side wound of Christ is depicted, along with the instruments of his passion. Around the wound are words verifying that it was the exact measure of Christ’s side wound.77 The measure of Christ’s side wound was frequently evoked in obstetric healthcare; several extant manu­scripts instruct pregnant women to observe the image or to place it on their body to ensure an uncomplicated birth.78 In addition to the image of the wound and prayer for health, MS 4459–70 includes an indulgence for contemplating the wounds of Christ, along with yet another drawn rendering of them. This second indulgence offers general apotropaic protection and states that contemplation of the image ‘will provide the best remedy for women in labour’.79 Contemplation of the arms of Christ, then, was a remedy for difficult labour that the nuns of Vrouwenpark sought to provide to parturient petitioners. They must have kept a copy of it, along with two illustrated renderings of the arms of Christ, for the purpose 76 

Brussels, BR, MS 8609–20, fols 150r–152r. ‘Hec est mensura vulneris lateris domini nostri Christi. Nemo dubitet quia ipse apparuit cuidam et ostendit ei vulnera sua’. On the illustration, see Berliner, ‘Arma Christi’. Berliner has argued that Brussels, BR, MS 4459–70 was the oldest literary indulgence for viewing the arma Christi. 78  Lewis, ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion’. Don Skemer notes Princeton, Princeton Uni­ver­sity Library, MS 138.44 and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 545; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 249–50. See also London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 632 for an example of a ‘birth girdle’. On birth girdles, see Morse, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”’. 79  Brussels, BR, MS 8609–20, fol. 152v: ‘Item mulieribus in partu laborantibus prestat optimum remedium’. 77 

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(not necessarily exclusive) of assisting poor women in labour. The evidence of these two manu­scripts suggests that Cistercian nuns in the thirteenth-century southern Low Countries were providing some degree of obstetric care to parturient women.

Conclusion: Prayer as Obstetric Practice at La Cambre The birthing charms in MS 8609–20 point to methods of healthcare practice that were highly verbal, prayerful, and meditative. Such obstetric practices are not generally included in historic surveys of medi­eval medicine. The reasons for their omission are multiple. To begin, childbirth was not patho­logized and as a consequence it was only minimally, if ever, discussed in medi­eval medical compendia. Charms for various afflictions tended to be rather marginalized in such compendia.80 Moreover, twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholars have focused primarily on the arrival of scholastically trained medical practitioners and the allopathic approaches that reflect our own current practices. As a result, the range of healers who did not fit into this niche has been highly obscured from our understanding of the distribution and practice of medical care. The nuns of La Cambre and the charms in MS 8609–20 can help to complete the picture of lived charitable healthcare and of the full range of healing practices available to thirteenth-century individuals. Women in need of obstetric assistance, and who were without families that could provide it, discovered refuge among small communities of religious women like the nuns of La Cambre. At La Cambre, a pregnant woman who was near labour would have been exposed to the monastic liturgy and the Eucharist, to the relics of St Ursula, to the recitation of saints’ Lives, and to the Latin birthing charms. As a result, the experience of her labour would have reflected a number of devotional practices: practices centred on her mental, spiritual, and emotional composition. This interest in providing a setting conducive to affective serenity operated smoothly within the parameters of textbased medicine. Medi­eval Islamicate physicians had developed passages from Galen and Hippocrates to postulate the role of the ‘non-naturals’ in determining the health of a patient. Enumerated among the six non-naturals (meaning 80 

McVaugh, ‘Incantationes in Late Medeival Surgery’. While incantations were often included in thirteenth-and fourteenth-century medical texts, they were often introduced with stipulations associating them with ‘old women’ or caveats explaining that they were handed down by ancient authorities.

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factors exterior to the body, such as the environment and food) were the ‘passions of the soul’. Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, author of the Isagoge, which, in its Latin translation, was fundamental to the Western medical curriculum, understood the experience of certain passions, such as grief, anger, and delight, as leading to powerful physio­logical effects on the body: [These are] certain affections of the mind which generate within the body an effect such as that which moves the heat from the interior part to the outer surface of the skin, sometimes impetuously as in anger, or slowly and sweetly as in delight.81

Latin medical practitioners inherited this understanding of the emotions as bearing physio­logical effects. Some physicians, working from the doctrine of the non-naturals, prescribed patients to read felicitous stories or listen to delightful music as a means to uplift the spirits and goad good health.82 I would argue that, even if the nuns of La Cambre were not aware of the theoretical explanations for the emotions’ role in humoral medicine, they nevertheless understood these charms to produce calming affects that resulted in physio­logical changes such as the relaxation of muscles necessary for labour. Devotional practices such as the recitation of prayer, the audition of saints’ Lives, meditative contemplation on the life and passion of Christ, and contact with relics all worked together along with the utterance or inscription of birthing charms in MS 8609–20 to create a therapeutic environment that was conducive to delivery. A later hand has scratched through the charms in black ink, indicating that at some point a user found them unfit for the nuns’ reading.83 The censoring of these charms points to several developing new outlooks on religious women and charitable caregiving. The Observant Reforms sweeping through western Europe would have encouraged a tighter claustration of the women of La 81  Hunayn Ibn Ishāq ( Johannicius), ‘Johannicius: Isagogue ad Techni Galieni’, ed. by Maurach, p. 160: ‘Sunt quaedam accidentia animae quae faciunt intra corpus, sicut ea, quae commovent calorem ab interiori parte ad superficiem cutis, aut impetuose ut ira, aut leniter cum suavitate ut deliciae’. 82  Olsan cites the regimen of Aldobrandino of Siena, edited as La Régime du corps de maître Aldebrandin de Sienne, ed. by Landouzy and Pepin; on music as therapy, see Horden, ‘Music as Medicine’, in Hospitals and Healing from Late Antiquity to the Present. 83  The ‘censoring’ of charms became a common practice in the later Middle Ages. On fifteenth-century charm censorship, see Olsan, ‘The Marginality of Charms in Medi­eval England’, pp. 155–59. Olsan attributes charm censorship to various social forces including Wycliffite distaste for ritual words associated with material objects and Protestant tactics of reform. On this censorship, see also Bailey, Battling Demons.

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Cambre, effectively cutting off the nuns from their service to the local poor and indigent. Furthermore, an increasing distaste for the mixing of religious words with medical practices would have led a scrupulous abbess or cleric-confessor to discourage the healing charms from being read and used. Prior to their censure, however, these four Latin birthing charms point to vital emotional and devotional healing practices that were employed by Cistercian women in the thirteenth-century Low Countries.

Works Cited Manu­scripts Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale [BR], MS 4459–70 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale [BR], MS 8609–20 Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, MS 431 London, British Library [BL],MS Sloane 3564 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 545 London, Wellcome Medical Library, MS Wellcome 632 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS n.a.f. 4267 Princeton, Princeton Uni­ver­sity Library, MS 138.44

Primary Sources Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (Anton Koberger: Nuremburg, 1483) Cartulaire de l’hôpital Saint-Jean de Bruxelles, ed. by P. Bonenfant (Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1953) Hunayn Ibn Ishāq ( Johannicius), ‘Johannicius: Isagogue ad Techni Galieni’, ed. by Gregor Maurach, Sudhoffs Archiv, 62 (1978), 148–74 Jacques de Vitry, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition, ed. by John Frederick Hinnebusch (Fribourg: Fribourg Uni­ver­sity Press, 1972) Monasticon Belge, ed. by Andrée Despy-Meyer and others (Liège: Centre national de la recherches d’histoire religieuse, 1964–72) La Régime du corps de maître Aldebrandin de Sienne: Texte français du xiiie siècle, publié pour la première fois d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ed. by Louis Landouzy and Roger Pepin (Geneva: Slatkine, 1978) The Trotula: A  Medi­eval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. by Monica Green (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Die Visionen der hl. Elisabeth und die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schön­au, ed. by F. W. E. Roth (Brünn: Verlag der Studien aus dem Benedictiner- und CistercienserOrden, 1884)

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Flint, Valerie, The Rise of Magic in Early Medi­eval Europe (repr., Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) —— , ‘Susanna and the Lothar Crystal: A Liturgical Perspective’, Early Medi­eval Europe, 4 (1995), 61–86 Folkerts, Suzan, Vorbeeld op schrift: De overlevering en toe-eigening van de vita van Christina Mirabilis in de late middeleeuwen (Sint Truiden: Hilversum Verloren, 2010) Foscati, Alessandra, ‘La scena del parto: Nascita del corpo e salvezza dell’anima tra religione, medicina e “magia” nell’altomedioevo’, in La presenza dei bambini nelle religioni del Mediterraneo antico: La vita e la morte, i rituali e i culti tra archeo­logia, antropo­logia e storia delle religioni, ed. by Chiara Terranova (Roma: Aracne, 2014), pp. 311–37 Franz, Adolf, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittel­alter (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1960) Gill, Katherine, ‘Scandala: Controversies Concerning Clausura and Women’s Religious Communities in Late Medi­eval Italy’, in Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. by Scott Waugh and Peter Diehl (Cam­ bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), pp. 177–203 Green, Monica H., Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaeco­logy (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) Greilsammer, Myriam, ‘The Midwife, the Priest, and the Physician: The Subjugation of Midwives in the Low Countries at the End of the Middle Ages’, Journal of Medi­eval and Renaissance Studies, 21.2 (1991), 285–329 Griffiths, Fiona, and Julie Hotchin, eds, Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) Grundmann, Herman, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. by Steven Rowan (South Bend, IN: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2005) Gwara, Joseph, and Mary Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, The Library, 13 (2012), 33–62 Horden, Peregrine, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages (Alder­ shot: Ashgate, 2008) Hunt, Tony, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England: Introduction and Texts (Wood­bridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1994) Izydorczyk, Zbigniew, The Medi­eval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contents in Western Europe (Tempe: Medi­eval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997) Jones, Peter Murray, ‘Harley MS  2558: A  Fifteenth-Century Medical Commonplace Book’, in Manu­script Sources of Medi­eval Medicine: A Book of Essays, ed. by Margaret Schleissner (New York: Garland, 1995), pp. 35–54 Jones, Peter Murray, and Lea T. Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals for Conception and Child­ birth in England, 900–1500’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 89 (2015), 406–33 Jordan, Erin, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities: The Cloistering of Religious Women in the Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medi­eval and Early Modern Studies, 42.3 (2012), 597–614

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Kapaló, James, Éva Pócs, and William Ryan, eds, The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe (Budapest: Central European Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013) Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989) Knust, Jennifer, and Tommy Wasserman, ‘Earth Accuses Earth: Tracing Jesus’s Writing on the Ground’, Harvard Theo­logical Review, 103 (2010), 407–46 Kornbluth, Generva, ‘The Susanna Crystal of Lothar II: Chastity, the Church, and Royal Justice’, Gesta, 31 (1992), 25–39 Lester, Anne, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011) L’Estrange, Elizabeth, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012) Lewis, Flora, ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by Lesley Smith and Jane Taylor (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 204–29 Lie, Orlanda, The Secrets of Women in Middle Dutch: A Bilingual Edition of Der vrouwen heimelijcheit in Ghent Uni­ver­sity Library Ms 444 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011) Lutter, Christina, ‘Christ’s Educated Brides: Literacy, Spirituality, and Gender in TwelfthCen­tury Admont’, in Manu­scripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Re­new­al in Twelfth-Century Germany, ed. by Alison Beach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 191–213 McVaugh, Michael, ‘Incantationes in Late Medi­eval Surgery’, in Ratio et superstitio: Essays in Honor of Graziella Vescovini, ed.  by Giancarlo Marchetti, Orsola Rignani, and Valeria Sorge (Louvain-le-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales, 2003), pp. 319–45 Meer, Frederick van der, Atlas de l’Ordre Cistercien (Brussels: Editions Sequoia, 1965) Messler, Katelyn, ‘The Three Magi and Other Christian Motifs in Medi­eval Hebrew Medical Incantations’, in Latin into Hebrew: Texts and Studies, ed.  by Alexander Fidora, Harvey Hames, and Yossef Schwartz (Leuven: Brill, 2013), pp. 161–220 Milner, Matthew, ‘The Physics of Holy Oats: Vernacular Knowledge, Qualities, and Rem­ edy in Fifteenth-Century England’, Journal of Medi­eval and Early Modern Studies, 43 (2013), 219–45 Morse, Mary, ‘“Thys moche more ys oure lady Mary longe”: Takamiya MS  56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition’, in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday, ed.  by Simon Horobin and Linne R. Mooney (Woodbridge: York Medi­eval Press, 2014), pp. 199–219 Moulinier, Laurence, ‘Élisabeth, Ursule et les Onze mille Vierges: Un Cas d’invention de reliques á Co­logne au xiie siècle’, Médiévales, 22–23 (1992), 173–86 Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999) Olsan, Lea, ‘Charms and Prayers in Medi­eval Medical Theory and Practice’, Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 343–66 —— , ‘The Inscription of Charms in Anglo-Saxon Manu­scripts’, Oral Tradition, 14 (1999), 401–19

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—— , ‘The Marginality of Charms in Medi­eval England’, in The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe, ed. by James Kapaló, Evá Pócs, and William Francis Ryan (Budapest: Central European Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 135–64 Rawcliffe, Carol, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of and English Medi­eval Hospital: St Giles’s Norwich, c. 1249–1550 (Stroud: Sutton, 1999) Rider, Catherine, Magic and Religion in Medi­eval England (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2012) Roisin, Simone, ‘L’Efflorescence cistercienne et le courant féminin de piété au treizième siècle’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 39 (1943), 342–78 Roper, Jonathan, ed., Charms and Charming in Europe (London: Palgrave, 2004) Rubin, Miri, Charity and Community in Medi­eval Cam­bridge (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1987) Rutherford, Richard, ‘Psalm 113 (114–115) and Christian Burial’, in Studia Patristica, vol.  xiii: Papers Presented to the Sixth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1971, ed.  by E.  A.  Livingstone (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1975), pp. 391–96 Scheepsma, Wybren, The Limbourg Sermons: Preaching in the Medi­eval Low Countries at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century, trans. by David F. Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2008) Schöndorf, Harald, ‘Jesus schreibt mit dem Finger auf die Erde’, Biblical Zeitschrift, 49 (1996), 91–93 Simons, Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Southern Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Skemer, Don C., Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006) Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (repr., New York: Penguin, 2003) Van den Gheyn, Jan, Catalogue du manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, vol. v (Bruxelles: Henri Lamertin, 1905) Vogel, Cyrille, Medi­eval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources (Ann Arbor: Pastoral Press, 1986) Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, ‘The Apple’s Message: Some Post-Conquest Hagio­graphic Accounts of Textual Transmission’, in Late Medi­eval Religious Texts and their Trans­ mission: Essays in Honour of A.  I.  Doyle, ed.  by A.  J.  Minnis (Cam­bridge: Brewer, 1994), pp. 39–53

Retracing Childbirth through ­ raphical Texts and Hagiog Canonization Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Alessandra Foscati

I

t is not an easy task to reconstruct the events and the people surrounding childbirth during the Middle Ages, explaining the actions of all those attending the birth and illustrating any variations over time.1 As artists tend to reproduce contemporary scenes of life, the religious icono­graphy of the Birth of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist in the late Middle Ages can sometimes be interpreted as genre art offering a plausible depiction of the moments following childbirth. The setting usually features women gathered around the mother, including relatives, neighbours, maidservants, and the midwife, a figure with renewed professional value after a fall from grace in the early Middle Ages.2 Extensive studies conducted on the profile and behaviour of those who looked after parturient women use medi­e val medical texts as their starting point. As Monica Green observes, this is because Western physicians and sur 

* My sincerest thanks go to Ottavia Niccoli for reading this text before publication and for her precious suggestions. 1  As Ottavia Niccoli writes: ‘il parto va considerato un oggetto storico, e in quanto tale soggetto a variabili, secondo un molteplice registro’ (‘Maternità critiche’, p. 466). 2  Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 33–36.

Alessandra Foscati is research fellow at SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo studio del

Medioevo Latino) where she studies medical lexicon in medi­eval hagio­graphic sources. A large part of her research concerns the relationship between profane and religious medicine in the Middle Ages and early modern period.

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 195–224 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117823

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geons started to include sections about gynaeco­logy and midwifery in the wake of the tradition established by authors of Arabic texts, such as Albucasis and Avicenna, albeit a considerable time after the appearance of Latin translations and the acquisition of their works in the West in the twelfth century.3 The development of dissection practices subsequently enhanced knowledge of female anatomy, and from the fifteenth century onwards, particularly in northern Italy, medical and surgical texts implied that male surgeons were directly involved in cases of obstructed labour or in treating gynaeco­logical disorders. This would indicate not only advances in medical practices in the fields of obstetrics and gynaeco­logy, but also a more general change in the social dynamics of relations between male physicians and women suffering from diseases affecting the sexual organs. As Monica Green writes: ‘if all of these accounts of male gynaeco­logical and even obstetrical practice in fifteenth-century northern Italy are true, then a change must have occurred not simply in how male physicians and surgeons practised, but in how their female patients let them practise’.4 It is conceivable, however, that this change occurred more slowly in everyday life than the texts in question suggest; at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the physician Scipione Mercurio still referred in his treatise De gli errori popolari d’Italia to the mistrust shown by pregnant women and their relatives towards physicians.5 Katharine Park takes a resolute stance, underlining the clear separation of the roles of physicians, surgeons, and midwives in Italian cities in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance: ‘midwives delivered babies; physicians provided pre- and post-partum medical care and surgeons and barbers as in the case of Isabella Della Volpe performed operations such as foetal incisions and embryotomy’.6 In mentioning Isabella Della Volpe, Park refers to the procedure of post-mortem Caesarean section performed to extract a foetus believed to be still alive — to which we shall return below — while embryotomy was the technique of removing a foetus by dismemberment in cases where it could not be delivered (dead or alive) and the mother’s life was in danger.7 Park’s 3 

Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, p. 102. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, p. 256. In general, social behaviour comes from defined social models. The fact that women, as a sign of virtue, did not show their bodies is exemplified in the Vitae of many female saints. Also in Antiquity, women’s strict sense of modesty was an obstacle for male physicians’ intervention. See Gourevitch, ‘La Gynéco­logie et l’obstétrique’, p. 2089. 5  Scipione Mercurio, De gli errori popolari d’Italia, v. 12, 14, pp. 373–75, 377–80. 6  Park, ‘The Death of Isabella Della Volpe’, p. 174. 7  A treatment that was widely debated by ancient authors and subsequently by Arab4 

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hypothesis is based on evidence inferred from medical texts, but above all on testimonies from the correspondence referring exclusively to women in the top echelon of society.8 In a text reporting Frances of Rome’s vision of hell there is some curious fifteenth-century evidence regarding the involvement of physicians in embryotomy in the late Middle Ages — they receive a terrible sentence as a result of this practice. The vision was transcribed by Giovanni Mattiotti, Frances’s spiritual father, and features a punishment clearly inspired by the law of retaliation. It accounts for the souls of physicians tarnished by the murder of a baby in the maternal womb in an attempt to save the mother; for this, they were sentenced to remain hanging upside down, enclosed within burning metal plates and tortured with hooks by demons.9 As this example shows, information can also be obtained from sources external to the subject, such as the mystical visions of a fourteenth-century female saint. It is clear that, in order to examine changes over time and make an approximate but realistic reconstruction of the birth scene, we need to analyse a wide range of source types, overcoming the limits inherent to each genre of writing. To this end, documented miracles were studied in a large number of canonization processes in France and the Italian peninsula between the thirteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth.10 In order to use a wider range of source material and make a comparative study, I also examined some Libri miraculorum in conjunction with the canonization processes. These collections of post-mortem miracles drafted by one or more authors were compiled to exalt the thaumaturgical virtus of saints, helping to create and promote a cult of relics.11 Even language authors. See Gourevitch, ‘Chirurgie obstétricale dans le monde romain’, pp. 245–62; Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 102–04. 8  Park, Secrets of Women, pp. 134–35; Park, ‘The Death of Isabella Della Volpe’. 9  Pelaez, ‘Visioni di s. Francesca Romana’, p.  396. See Bartolomei Romagnoli, ‘Santa Francesca Romana’. 10  The biblio­g raphy for canonization processes is quite extensive. Most of the processes benefited from a specific biblio­graphy which has been taken into account for contextualization of the source but which for reasons of space cannot be included here. However, it is essential to cite the fundamental study by Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident. 11  Regarding the editions of the sources analysed, refer to the biblio­g raphy. In the footnotes, canonization processes will be abbreviated as CP followed by the name of the saint. The other miracle collections will be indicated as Liber miraculorum with the name of the saint. In the case of unpublished sources, the manu­scripts will always be indicated in footnotes. The CPs examined are those of Saints Ambrogio of Massa (Orvieto, 1240–41); Antonino

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though the acts of the canonization processes consist of testimonies by people who benefited from the miracle or witnessed the event, the texts are reworked by men of the Church and are therefore significantly encumbered by the topoi of hagio­graphical collections. This is especially evident in the way that most witness accounts unfold in a repetitive manner. Like the Liber, the accounts are part of a publicity mechanism surrounding the individual and highlighting his or her saintly accomplishments. This strategy is revealed by the questioning procedure (articuli interrogatorii), prepared specifically by the ecclesiastical authorities to gather testimonials during the canonization processes.12 Nevertheless, if due caution is adopted, these texts are all unique sources of information about the daily habits and practices of those in the community and can be used for studies on religious and social history, as well as for research on the history of disease and even for the relationship between secular healers and patients.13 Pierozzi (Florence, 1516–23); Bernardino of Siena (1445–50, L’Aquila, Siena, and neighbouring cities); Bridget of Sweden (Naples-Rome, 1376–80), Stockholm, Royal Library, MS Holmiensis A14; Charles of Blois (Angers, 1371); Clare of Montefalco (Montefalco, 1318–19); Dauphine de Puimichel (Apt-Avignon, 1363); Frances of Rome (Rome, 1450–53); Francis of Paola (Cosenza-Tours, 1512–13); Louis of Toulouse (Marseille, 1308); Nicholas of Tolentino (Marche and Umbria, 1325); Peter of Luxembourg (Avignon, 1389–90); Philip of Bourges (Bourges-Beaugency-Orléans, 1265–66), Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 28–100, and Paris, BnF, MS lat. 5373A, fols 1–65; Thomas Aquinas (Naples-Fossanova, 1319–21); Yves of Tréguier (Brittany, 1330). The Libri miraculorum examined are those of saints Edmund of Abingdon (thirteenth century), Auxerre, Bibl. Mun., MS 123G, fols 104va–154v (two different collections of miracles that refer to the abbey of Pontigny, where the saint’s body was buried; the first one (fols 104va–112vb), written by Archbishop Albert of Armagh, is also transcribed as ‘Incipit pro­logus in miraculis B. Edmundi Archiepiscopi et confessoris’, and the second one (fols 113r–154v) is unpublished); Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (fifteenth century); Louis of Toulouse (1297); Philippe de Chantemilan (fifteenth century); Ranieri dal Borgo (beginning of the fourteenth century); Saints of Savigny (thirteenth century), Paris, BnF, MS n.a.l. 217, fols 1–78 (part of this text is transcribed as ‘Ex libro de miraculis sanctorum savigniacensium’); Urban V (Marseille, 1376–79). 12  See Paciocco, ‘Processi e canonizzazioni nel Duecento’, pp. 118–28. 13  See Foscati, ‘I miracoli del parto’. Regarding a study of childbirth miracles linked to German sanctuaries, see the well-documented article by Signori, ‘Defensivgemeinschaften’; for childbirth miracles in France, see Sigal, ‘La Grossesse, l’accouchement et l’attitude envers l’enfant mort-né’. Some miracles are also cited by Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 33–35. The article by Powell, ‘The Miracle of Childbirth’, is limited to the analysis of Thomas of Canterbury’s dossier. A study of childbirth miracles, albeit limited to the dossiers of the fourteenthcentury saints Nicholas of Tolentino and Thomas Cantilupe, appears in Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life. Regarding childbirth miracles in old Norse language, see Cormack, ‘Better Off Dead’.

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With few exceptions, childbirth miracles are not one of the most common types in saints’ dossiers and are sometimes even completely absent.14 In any case, the analysis of a large number of hagio­g raphical collections has made it possible to assemble extensive records that can be compared with studies of other sources.

The Leading Players in Childbirth Scenes The texts of canonization processes reveal that physicians and surgeons are never featured among the witnesses called to provide accounts of childbirth miracles.15 This comes as no surprise: generally speaking, such figures rarely testified during these trials, even when they were mentioned in reports for having tried in vain to heal a patient before the miraculous intervention of the saint.16 It was not until the seventeenth century — above all through the endeavours of the physician Paul Zacchias — that they became first-hand witnesses in canonization processes, attesting to the incurable nature of the disease healed by the intercession of the saint.17 The lack of testimonies about childbirth on the part of medical professionals is also due to the fact that surgeons do not seem to have been directly involved before the sixteenth century. In this sense, hagio­ graphic texts are not in line with the findings of medical sources as analysed by Monica Green. Even then, physicians’ involvement only emerges from brief mentions in accounts of three miracles included in the two latest canonization processes studied: those of Francis of Paola in Tours (1513) and Antonino Pierozzi, Bishop of Florence (1516–23). The first miracle attributed to Francis of Paola tells of a woman who ‘had had two previous pregnancies in which the babies came out dismembered following the intervention of surgeons’ before 14 

Examples of processes that do not include childbirth miracles are those of John the Good (Cesena-Mantua, 1251–54) and Peter of Morrone (Sulmona, 1306). 15  In Philippe de Chantemilan’s dossier there is a magister Petrus Plaisant (‘in medicina licentiatus’) who is a witness but only as the parturient’s husband (Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan, p. 76). 16  Joseph Ziegler has sought to highlight the different ways in which physicians participated as experts in canonization processes to validate the miracle (‘Practitioner and Saints’). In our view, however, it was a sporadic participation. Moreover, until well into the seventeenth century the physician’s judgement was not considered fundamental, and above all it was in most cases placed on the same level as that of the other witnesses. 17  See Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the Holy Body’. About Zacchia, see Pastore and Rossi, Paolo Zacchia.

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managing to give birth to a son through the intercession of the saint.18 With regard to the second miracle, the mother herself testified that after two days of labour ‘the surgeons and all those present were despairing about her health and whether she could give birth in any way’.19 Antonino’s miracle is more insightful, telling of an unidentified ‘magister’ who attended a woman in labour who was unable to expel a foetus that had died in her womb. He arrived with his iron implements, but the woman managed to avoid surgery and deliver the stillborn child by wearing the bishop’s hat (birretus) that had belonged to the saint.20 In all the other earlier miracles, the delivery is supervised exclusively by mulieres and obstetrices who carry out all procedures, even the most gruesome ones, in complicated deliveries due to the abnormal presentation of the foetus or the need to extract a dead foetus from the mother’s womb either whole or dismembered. To cite a few examples, the thirteenth-century collection of miracles of Edmund of Abingdon (which were recounted at Pontigny) features a number of childbirth-related accounts,21 with various references to midwives having to deal with difficult deliveries single-handedly in cases where ‘the foetus was trying to come out in an unnatural manner and order’.22 In one case, where the baby’s arm was the only part emerging from the uterus, they did their best to push it back inside by force, holding the mother upside down by her feet.23 The aim of the procedure was to put the baby back into a natural position, although it did not lead to the desired outcome.24 Two miracles cited in the canonization 18  CP Francis of Paola (Tours), p. 306: ‘arte et industria cirurgicorum et non alias membratim infantes habuerat’. Unless otherwise indicated, Latin translations are mine. 19  CP Francis of Paola (Tours), p. 317: ‘desperabatur a cirurgicis et aliis astantibus de eius salute nec poterat quoquomodo partum emittere’. 20  CP Antonino Pierozzi, p. 349B: ‘et magister cum ferreis instrumentis ad extrahendum foetum advenerat; superinducto birreto et imposito mulieri, statim sine labore ac ferris foetum mortuum et absque laesione penitus ulla emisit’. Birretus, as the saint’s relic, is quoted for another childbith miracle (p. 349D) and for the healing of various diseases. 21  The majority are about resurrection miracles of stillborn babies (e.g. Auxerre, Bibl. Mun., MS 123G, fols 127vb, 131ra, 131vb, 132rb, 149rb). On certain healing miracles referred to in this source, see Wilson, ‘Miracle and Medicine’. 22  Auxerre, Bibl. Mun., MS 123G, fol. 126ra. 23  The same obstetrical maneuvre done by the midwives is found in the account of a miracle performed by Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (Liber miraculorum, p. 760E). 24  ‘mulieres/ […] vide/runt brachium partus contra modum/ et ordinem nature ab utero matris exitum/ suum tenere. Tunc obstetrices mulierem peri/clitantem arbitrantes non posse

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process of Bernardino of Siena (1447) feature midwives who forcefully pull stillborn babies out of the womb, by both feet in one case and a single foot in the other.25 Similarly, in a miracle of Louis of Toulouse (1390), obstetrices extract the dismembered and putrefied remains of a twin that had remained inside the mother’s womb for six weeks (the other twin is also stillborn, but is extracted intact).26 During the canonization process for the same saint, the midwife testifies that she was forced to intervene using special instruments to extract the foetus following its death and that the operation seriously damaged the mother’s body, leaving her paralyzed to the extent that she could not move from her bed, even for bodily functions.27 Numerous other examples follow a similar pattern. There is further confirmation in the dossier of Peter of Luxembourg of the few references to the presence of surgeons before the sixteenth century. His canonization process (1308) features at least a dozen miracles related to childbirth, but none of them mentions these medical professionals. However, an account of a much later miracle that occurred during the transfer of some of the saint’s relics in 1598 specifies that a stillborn child was extracted from its mother’s womb by a surgeon, a certain Johannes Valerianus.28 Peter performed a miracle of temporary resurrection so that the baby could be baptized, after the priest had lamented the fact that it had to be buried in unconsecrated ground: this was a so-called miracle à répit, to which we will return below. The rare cases in which physicians or surgeons are mentioned in a professional capacity in the months leading up to childbirth refer to women suffering from serious illnesses: they are therefore called to sickbeds regardless of the state of pregnancy. In the liber miraculorum (1376–79) of Urban V, a woman in her fifth month of pregnancy is examined by physicians who abandon hope as she is affected by a form of pestilential fever.29 In the process of Louis of Toulouse, three physicians minister to a woman about to give birth who is suf-

evadere/ periculum mortis timuerunt valde et do/luerunt. illam per pedes inter brachia/ sua suspendentes brachium rursus in/ uterum matris mediante ostetricandi/ arte industria […] cum multa violentia/ retruserunt’ (Auxerre, Bibl. Mun., MS 123G, fol. 138vb). 25  CP Bernardino of Siena, pp. 207–08, 214. 26  CP Louis of Toulouse, pp. 134–38. In the case of the twin extracted intact, a resurrection miracle was requested. 27  CP Louis of Toulouse, pp. 167–68. 28  CP Peter of Luxembourg, p. 626B: ‘Anna Bouffacio […] puerum in lucem edere non valeret, Johannes Valerianus chirurgus prolem extraxit mortuam’. 29  Liber miraculorum of Urban V, pp. 225–26.

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fering from a ‘high fever and constant anxiety’.30 An interesting case in the process (1363) of Dauphine de Puimichel occurred when she was still alive and concerns Catherina, a pregnant woman seriously affected by an unspecified illness. The physician and canon of Apt, Durandus Andree,31 thinks that she is too weak to stand childbirth and expects her to die as a result. However, in order to console her husband, Durandus promises to ‘prepare something to help Catherina’s weakness’ during the event.32 When the woman goes into labour a month later, her husband is unable to procure the promised remedy, and as the physician is away, he decides to turn to Dauphine. She sends a folded white linen cloth, which triggers the birth of the baby as soon as it is placed on the woman’s body. The witness specifies that ‘there was something inside the cloth, but neglected to see what it was’.33 In this way, the item assumes a role similar to that played by the breve, a piece of paper or scroll with a talismanic function worn by the patient on which certain words were written (often invocations to a saint or prayers) and whose content had to be kept secret to preserve its effectiveness. Curiously, this cloth donated by Dauphine is in some way comparable to the ‘birthing bag’ handed down for many generations by a family in Haute-Auvergne until the twentieth century, described by Alp Aymar and Louis Carolus-Barré. The historical periods also coincide, as the oldest scroll found inside this item dates back to the fourteenth century.34 The only account of post-partum intervention by a physician or surgeon is in the dossier of Louis of Toulouse. Left paralyzed with a fractured pelvis following the extraction of the dead foetus, the woman suffers terrible pain from a fragment of bone left in her body. She thus summons the surgeon (‘advocavit cirurgicum’) so that he can heal her by performing a painful and invasive opera30 

CP Louis of Toulouse, p. 251. In hagio­g raphic texts it is quite frequent to find the theme of the physician who abandons his patient after giving a death prognosis. It is probable that this corresponds more to a hagio­g raphic topos than to reality. As Daniele Jacquart explains, physicians usually advised prudent behaviour, especially in predictions of negative outcomes ( Jacquart, ‘De la faillibilité de l’art médical’, pp. 285–86). 31  He was a friend of and physician to Dauphine. See CP Dauphine de Puimichel, pp. 225, 241. 32  CP Dauphine de Puimichel, p. 379. 33  CP Dauphine de Puimichel, p. 380: ‘aliquid erat infra illum pannum sed ignorat quid erat’. 34  Aymar, ‘Contribution à l’étude du folklore de la Haute-Auvergne’; Carolus-Barré, ‘Un nouveau parchemin amulette’. Out of curiosity we note that also in Philip Neri’s CP (1596) it is written that the saint owned a particular bag, containing various relics, which he lent to labouring women (CP Philip Neri, i, 10–11, 30).

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tion (‘cum coctura vel scissura’). However, as he would have to operate on her private parts, the male surgeon refuses to examine or even touch her unless her husband or another family member is present. At this point, the woman asks him to return the following day when her husband will be there, but is then so afraid of the gruesome operation (‘timens incisionem’) that she prays to the saint and is healed.35 This version of the story only appears in the Liber miraculorum of Louis,36 while the accounts of the miracle given by various witnesses in the canonization process (the woman herself, her husband, a friend, and the midwife that had extracted the foetus) make no reference to the surgeon’s visit.37 Instead, there is general agreement that the woman turned directly to the saint to be healed.38 Admittedly, the detail of the home visit is not particularly credible: being bedridden, the woman could have only asked for the surgeon’s help through the mediation of a family member and, most importantly, would never have acted without her husband’s permission. By adding this element to the account of the miracle, it is as if the compiler of the Liber wanted to enhance the dramatic nature of the story. In this way, thanks to the intervention of the saint, the woman not only was cured, but also avoided a particularly gruesome form of profane treatment. This topos occurs quite frequently in healing miracles.39 The account of the miracle in the Liber might be interpreted as proof that surgeons had access to a woman’s private parts at the time if they complied with precise ethical rules.40 However, the low plausibility of the story and the fact 35 

Liber miraculorum of Louis of Toulouse, p. 301. It is a collection of 211 miracles that does not pertain to the canonization process dossier, but it dates from almost the same period. 37  The midwife states that she had been summoned only after her collegues had failed in the attempt to assist the woman in giving birth (CP Louis of Toulouse, p. 167). It is a further demonstration of how requesting the presence of a surgeon for difficult childbirths was not a common practice. 38  CP Louis of Toulouse, pp. 168–69. 39  It might have been easier and more immediate for the patient to pray to a saint for divine intervention rather than request a physician, as the surgeon Henri de Mondeville denounced (Chirurgia, iii, 2, 5, ed. by Pagel, pp. 476–77; ii, 2, 3, p. 320). Furthermore the therapeutic choice was not limited to a saint-physician dichotomy, but also involved a wide array of healers. See Agrimi and Crisciani, ‘Medici e “vetulae” dal Duecento al Quattrocento’. For the early modern period, see Pomata, La promessa di guarigione; Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy. 40  See Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 111–12. 36 

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that the surgeon is totally absent from the canonization process records make it difficult to determine how reliable the source actually is. Apart from a few late exceptions,41 the accounts of miracles show that women were reluctant to consult physicians to speak about female diseases because they felt a sense of shame.42 A miracle cited during the canonization process of Bernardino of Siena tells of a woman afflicted with ‘apostema in secretiori parte nature muliebri’ (apostema in woman’s intimate part) who is only able to talk about it to her husband and niece because of the ‘vile’ place where her pain resides.43 Another woman experiencing prolonged bleeding during menstruation was too embarrassed to even inform her husband, preferring to confide in the nuns at the nearby convent of Santa Lucia dell’Aquila.44 This issue of intimacy between lay women and nuns on matters related to female diseases had previously emerged in one letter of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179),45 while many convents distinguished themselves over time as places that accumulated knowledge of pharmacopoeia and forms of treatment that sometimes combined profane elements with the thaumaturgical properties of saints’ relics.46 The sources confirm that childbirth consolidated the close relationship and solidarity among women. For example, in the dossier (1450–53) of Frances of Rome, we learn that in Roman society it was common practice for female relatives, friends, and neighbours to gather at the mother’s house as soon as she went into labour and pass the time in conversation.47 Husbands are always secondary figures in the accounts, and the fact that their presence is only mentioned after the birth shows that they occupied places other than the delivery room.48 41  In Francis of Paola’s CP (Tours) a woman had suffered from a flow of blood for more than four years and had undergone frequent examinations by physicians and surgeons, albeit without healing (p. 302). 42  It is interesting to note that, in contrast to today, breast diseases were not considered female disorders. 43  CP Bernardino of Siena, p. 226. 44  CP Bernardino of Siena, pp. 101–02. Also a Franciscan tertiary did not disclose the same disturbance because of shame (ob verecundiam) (pp. 559–60). 45  In one of her letters, Hildegarde gave useful advise (in addition to giving a charm) to a woman who had turned to her for help regarding a flow of blood. See Moulinier, ‘Aspects de la maternité’, p. 215. About Hildegarde’s childbirth charm, see Foscati, ‘La scena del parto’, pp. 315–16. 46  See Pomata, ‘Medicina delle monache’. 47  CP Frances of Rome, p. 176. 48  This claim was already expressed by Niccoli, ‘Maternità critiche’, pp. 466–67.

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In a number of cases, they are called upon to make a vow to a saint if the woman is about to die, or to ask for the resurrection of a stillborn child. The other male figure that often appears in these texts is the priest, who is mainly called upon to hear the confession of women in labour on their deathbeds. Just as the midwife administers baptism in extremis to babies delivered almost stillborn,49 the priest sometimes accompanies the husband when a vow is made to a saint, for example in the case of one of the miracles (1330) of Yves of Tréguier in which a cleric carries out the ritual of the mensura of the baby in order to ask the saint for momentary resurrection.50 In actual fact the whole community to which the woman in labour belongs takes an active part in expressing the vow to the saint through promises of penitence and future visits to the saint’s tomb, very often in association with votive offerings (wax, money, objects, clothes, and so on). Sometimes the vows were associated with ritualistic acts, such as in the case of the canonization process of Bridget of Sweden, where it is repeatedly stated that the mother took the resurrected baby to visit the saint’s tomb and offered an ‘ymaginem argenteam’ (statuette?) of the child.51 It is important to note that even if a miracle occurred at the house of a woman in labour, the place where the saint’s holy remains were kept maintained a fundamental symbolic value and played a major role in the pact established with the saint in the vow.

Saving the Baby’s Soul The final outcome of childbirth miracles is always the survival of the woman in labour. Regardless of whether the baby is delivered dead or alive, the focus of the miracle is the woman regaining her health thanks to the intervention of the saint, which suggests that the mindset of the time saw it as the most important 49  If the child survived, the priest baptized him again in church but sub conditione using the formula: ‘si es baptizatus, non te baptizo, si non es baptizatus, ego baptizo te’ (Odo of Sully, Synodicae Constitutiones, ed. by Mansi, col. 677). 50  CP Yves of Tréguier, pp. 282–83. Mensura was the ritual of measuring the sick person or a part of their body (usually the part struck by illness) before appealing to the saint. Measurement was often made with a piece of cord which was subsequently used as a candle wick. Regarding the ritual of mensura, see Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Constructing a Relationship with the Sacred’. In many collections of medical recipes there are carmina for childbirth, and it emerges that priests were often called to recite them (see Foscati, ‘La scena del parto’, p. 317). This activity does not appear in our sources. 51  CP Bridget of Sweden: Stockholm, Royal Library, MS Holmiensis A14, fols 62v, 138v, r 140 , 177v–178r, 198r–v. More rarely, the image offered was made of wax (fol. 114v).

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result. This type of miracle can also be explained by the high mortality rate of women during childbirth in Western society during the Ancien Régime, which also accounts for the frequent use of the verb liberare (release) to refer to the act of giving birth52 and the occasional definition of pregnancy as a disease (‘in puerperii morbo laborantes’).53 When the miracle focuses on the baby’s health, it is generally a matter of eternal salvation; it is rarely placed within the affective realm of parents and relatives. The question arises as to whether this was a real trend or the result of the dominant concern on the part of the Churchmen who compiled the texts. Saints were asked to revive stillborn babies for a short time so that their souls could be saved by baptism, enabling them to be buried on consecrated ground and gain access to heaven: this is known as a miracle à répit, on which much has been written.54 André Sigal underlines that the interest in baptizing newborn babies was largely related to the development of the sacramental ministry from the thirteenth century onwards through the regular publication of synodal statutes, which often emphasized the value of baptism.55 However, such miracles are also cited in older sources, starting from Augustine of Hippo’s attestation,56 and the issue of baptizing a foetus was widely discussed at later dates in relation to the troublesome contemporary question of ensoulment and the implications of the Limbo of children, with wide-ranging developments following the Council of Trent.57 There are numerous accounts of miracles à répit in saints’ dossiers from the late Middle Ages, a time when some — mostly Marian — sanctuaries became specialized centres for such events.The texts examined reveal that the baby’s body had to be fully intact for a miracle à répit to be performed successfully. This is not surprising, as the miracle had to be as credible as possible; after all, 52 

See Niccoli, ‘Maternità critiche’, p. 471. E.g. CP Frances of Rome, p. 186; CP Francis of Paola (Cosenza), p. 54; CP Philip of Bourges, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 67 v. In one of Edmund of Abingdon’s miracles, labour pains are described as if they carried Eve’s curse (Auxerre, Bibl. Mun., MS 123 G, fol. 108rb). 53  CP Francis of Paola (Tours), p. 289. 54  There is an extensive biblio­graphy about this issue in French, Italian, and German that Adriano Prosperi refers to in Dare l’anima, p. 205 n. 77 and p. 206 n. 79. 55  Sigal, ‘La Grossesse, l’accouchement et l’attitude envers l’enfant mort-né’, p. 33. The sacrament of baptism could be given by anyone in case of need. 56  Augustine of Hippo, Sermones ad populum, ed. by Migne, cols 1446–47. A similar miracle was also performed by Wilfrid of York, in the eighth century (Vita Wilfridi I, p. 213). 57  See Prosperi, Dare l’anima; Betta, Animare la vita; Franceschini, Storia del Limbo.

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it always occurred under the watchful eyes of various witnesses such as family members, midwives, mulieres, and the mother’s friends and neighbours if the resurrection took place within a house, or a whole community if it happened in one of the designated sanctuaries. Miracles à répit are the epitome of the choral quality highlighted in testimonies in canonization processes from this period, where sickness and healing involved the patient’s entire network of friends, neighbours, and relatives. Philippe de Chantemilan’s fifteenth-century dossier describes how her place of burial became a popular sanctuary in the south of France specializing in this type of miracle.58 The baby believed to be dead was placed near the tomb containing the saint’s remains, and a varied group of people — not only friends and relatives — kept careful watch day and night in order to seize upon any sign that might portend a resurrection. The indicators mentioned in the accounts are changes in facial complexion, movement of the eyes, limbs, lips, or tongue, and bleeding, especially from the nose.59 Onlookers did not always restrict themselves to passive observation and often touched the body in order to detect any movement in the baby’s internal organs, which was considered a vital sign. For example, one woman stated that she felt the throbbing of the baby’s heart and entrails through her hand ‘in the same way as a mole in the ground makes the (surface of the) earth jump up and down and move’.60 Before recognizing the signs of resurrection, the eyewitnesses needed to be sure that the baby was dead. This was no easy task at the time, even for adult patients, as death was often pronounced on the basis of external signs that were not always certain and were sometimes based on dubious empirical evidence.61 With regard to newborn babies, midwives carefully observed their reactions to a number of tests that included submerging them in water, squeezing their ears, and even putting crushed garlic, onion, salt, spices, and warm wine into 58 

See Paravy, ‘Angoisse collective et miracles au seuil de la mort’. Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan, pp. 39–40, 44–45, 47, 49, 51–54, 57, 58, 62, 68, 69, 80–81, 83–86, 88. 60  Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan, pp. 51–52: ‘testis cor ejusdem infantis tetigit, et tangendo ipsum cor et interiora in pectore ejus sentiit moveri et pulsari, sicut talpa in humo existens salire facit et movere terram’. 61  It often emerges in the texts that there wasn’t an absolute certainty about death. Besides observations of the signs that appeared on the patient’s body (pallour, rigidity, etc.), the process sometimes involved looking for further proof of death as in the CP of Clare of Montefalco, where boiling wax was poured on the patient’s face to observe if there were any reactions (pp. 319, 326). 59 

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their mouths.62 We may note that in his 1565 treatise on puericulture (written in French), Simon de Vallambert would also recommend placing odoriferous substances on the lips when there were signs of faintness in a newborn baby and included the method among the knowledge contributed by midwives.63 It was left to the mulieres to understand the baby’s real condition. Indeed, one of them states in a miracle of Ranieri dal Borgo that as a result of her vast experience as a midwife (obstetricandi) she can say without hesitation that the baby must have been dead, as she had found its umbilical cord dry and devoid of blood.64 In one of Bernardino of Siena’s miracles, we learn that the midwife was required to apply what were seen as resuscitation procedures by blowing air into the lifeless baby’s mouth, nose, or even ears. A similar procedure is mentioned more than a century later in the canonization process of Philip Neri in 1596, as well as in Vallambert’s treatise.65 Even if the baby was clearly dead, it was not unusual to attempt baptism, as shown in a 1371 miracle performed by Charles of Blois. After delivering twins with only one baby surviving, the mulieres made a vow to the saint and took both babies to church to receive the sacrament. When the priest flatly refused to baptize the dead baby, it came back to life.66 In an account of the miracles (fifteenth century) of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, it is said that a stillborn baby was carried to the baptismal font in order to alleviate the desperate mother’s sorrow that her son would not be able to enjoy the beatific vision of God. Even in church, the baby showed no signs of life until Jeanne-Marie, an onlooker at the event, started praying to God to resurrect him.67 It was probably felt that juxtaposing the baby’s lifeless body with the baptismal font would help to inspire 62 

CP Bernardino of Siena, pp. 206, 228–29. For example, we read: ‘cum ipsa [the midwife] solita remedia adhibuisset, videlicet insufflando in aures ipsius et fricando cepe per os eius’ (p. 538). In the CP of Peter of Luxembourg a midwife declares that she ‘sufflabat in ore pueri cum speciebus et vino caldo’ (p. 595B). In the Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan the salt is put into the baby’s mounth (p. 52). 63  Simon de Vallambert, Cinq livres, pp. 35–36. About the text, see Jacquart, ‘Naissance d’une pédiatrie’. 64  Liber miraculorum of Ranieri dal Borgo, p. 42. 65  In the CP of Bernardino of Siena we read about a midwife’s witness account: ‘Interrogata si ossitavit sive insufflavit in os, aures et nares pueri, dixit quod non, quia non videbatur sibi necesse, quia videbatur mortuus’ (p. 230). See CP Philip Neri, ii, 4; Simon de Vallambert, Cinq livres, p. 36. 66  CP Charles of Blois, pp. 304–05. 67  Liber miraculorum of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, p. 746AB.

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the miracle.68 It is significant that priests sometimes had to violate the ban on baptizing a dead body, such as in the account of one of the miracles of Louis of Toulouse, where a stillborn baby is carried into church and baptized as normal, only coming back to life after the administration of the sacrament.69 Witness accounts make it clear that the baby only had to make the slightest movement, which might sometimes have been imagined by onlookers after hours of careful observation, for baptism to be administered. It is not surprising that the Church authorities were sometimes sceptical about miraculous events and annulled the sacrament. For example, a 1499 document drafted by the Archdeacon of Paris condemned a priest and one of his female parishioners for having falsely certified a miracle à répit.70 In the late seventeenth century, Abbot Thiers criticized the tendency of certain femmelettes (foolish women) to find non-existent signs of life in a newborn baby, thereby persuading curates to baptize babies that were already dead.71 Besides featuring the largest number of childbirth miracles — above all miracles à répit — Philippe de Chantemilan’s dossier contains two references to the practice that scholars have arbitrarily defined as sectio in mortua, which consisted of cutting open a dead mother’s womb to extract a living baby.72 The sectio in mortua procedure, which already existed in Justinian legislation, incorporates ancient mytho­logical elements bequeathed by literature and reflects a taboo that emerged from theo­logical sources against burying pregnant women in consecrated ground.73 It subsequently became a practice that was only condoned by the Church for the purpose of baptizing babies to save their souls, shown primarily in transcriptions of synodal acts from the thirteenth cen68 

The sacrament performed in church by the priest should have been considered more effective. In an account in one of Louis of Toulouse’s miracles, a mother beseeches the saint to prolong her child’s life until a priest could baptize him, even if a midwife had already baptized the baby (Liber miraculorum, p. 329). 69  CP Louis of Toulouse, pp. 128–29. 70  Pommeray, L’Officialité archidiaconale, no. 123, p. 586. 71  Thiers, Traité des superstitions, pp. 61–62, 74–75. See Cavazza, ‘La doppia morte’. 72  This expression, which is often used by scholars, does not appear in the sources. 73  Regarding Antiquity in terms of legal, literary, and mytho­logical sources, see Gourevitch, ‘Chirurgie obstétricale dans le monde romain’, pp. 239–45. About the dissemination of ancient myths in the Middle Ages, see Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born. Regarding taboos against pregnant women, see Van Der Lugt, ‘L’Animation de l’embryon humain’, pp. 250–52. Additionally, about sectio in mortua, see Schäfer, Geburt aus dem Tod; Filippini, La nascita straordinaria; Bednarski and Courtemanche, ‘“Sadly and with a Bitter Heart”’.

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tury onwards and other religious texts.74 The practice is mentioned in medical sources starting from Bernard de Gordon’s thirteenth-century work, although with a few exceptions: the learned physicians cite sectio peripherally and in a manner that is repetitive from one author to the next, with quotations from classical sources referring to etio­logical myth, rarely demonstrating any concrete involvement. It was precisely exponents of practical medicine who could claim real experience of the operation even if their approach is hard to fully evaluate since it emerges only sporadically and indirectly from the sources. More generally, although an increase in testimonies of sectio cases from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries has been ascertained, we cannot yet speak, as we have tried to demonstrate, of a routine intervention with regard to the late medi­eval and early modern period.75 Questions of inheritance were certainly a determining factor in seeking the intervention, and this is why the texts of jurists become indispensable sources for any study of the subject.76 A paradigmatic description of the practice is a consilium written by the jurist Bartolomeo Cipolla (1420–1475), which provides more details than other sources about the discussions on whether babies were dead or alive and the ways in which groups with contrasting financial interests interpreted their bodily signs.77 Cipolla’s account of the method for observing the baby and the techniques that onlookers used to recognize any signs of life coincides exactly with the descriptions of the miracles à répit in the dossier of Philippe de Chantemilan. It is notable in the account in the consilium that although the priest is one of the witnesses that fail to detect any vital signs and is inclined to pronounce the baby dead, he does not oppose baptism, confirming the ease with which children could be baptized even when it was not certain that they were alive.78 Contrary to what we might expect, the opinion of the medical expert — the surgeon who cuts open the womb — is considered unreliable; he is deemed biased as agreements state that he will only be paid if 74 

See Taglia, ‘Delivering a Christian Identity’. See Foscati, ‘Venire alla luce e rinascere’, pp. 103–06; Foscati, ‘“Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit”’. 76  It is not possible to go into detail here. Diverse Italian jurists of the fifteenth century dealt with the problem of the deceased mother’s inheritance, which could be inherited by the child delivered alive from the abdomen. See Cavallar, ‘Septimo mense’; Foscati, ‘“Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit”’. 77  Bartolomeo Cipolla, Consilia, 50, fols 186r–189v. See Foscati, ‘“Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit”’. 78  Bartolomeo Cipolla, Consilia, 50, fols 186v–187r. 75 

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the baby is delivered alive. It is therefore very much in his interest to testify to this end.79 With regard to the hagio­graphical texts and canonization processes examined, there are only three references to the practice of sectio in mortua. Given the nature of these sources, they naturally focus only on the aspect of saving the baby’s soul; the miracle consists of granting the infant the opportunity to stay alive long enough to be baptized. This eventuality was considered so difficult to achieve that a saint’s help was requested for something akin to a miracle à répit. It is therefore no surprise that the practice of sectio is mentioned above all in the dossier of Philippe de Chantemilan. It is only actually carried out in one instance though, when the duly extracted baby stays alive for two hours and is baptized in accordance with the witnesses’ wishes.80 A second case is more akin to a near miss: a heartbeat is detected in a woman in labour just as she is about to be cut open with a sword, a form of miraculous intervention that brings the procedure to a halt and saves both mother and child.81 It is noteworthy that the operation is performed by one of the mulieres, unlike other accounts in various sources where it is always done by a surgeon (or barber),82 although Ottavia Niccoli reports a case on the Italian peninsula in 1576 when a midwife cuts open the unfortunate Francesca Caetani.83

79 

Bartolomeo Cipolla, Consilia, fols 186v–187r. Usually doctors and surgeons were called upon as experts by jurists. See Cavallar, ‘Septimo mense’. About the early modern period, see Pastore, Il medico in tribunale. As per the timing of childbirth and the vitality of the foetus, see the consilium given by doctor Gentile of Foligno (d. 1348) to jurist Cino of Pistoia: Kantorowicz, ‘Cino da Pistoia’; Chandelier, Avicenne et la médecine en Italie, pp. 466–76. In this consilium, we can read the widespread theory about gestation months connected to the planets. Regarding the origin of the theory, see Burnett, ‘The Planets’. See Foscati, ‘“Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit”’. 80  Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan, pp. 73–74. 81  Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan, pp. 46–47. 82  As examples, see the sources transcribed by Bednarski and Courtemanche (‘“Sadly and with a Bitter Heart”’), Green (‘Moving from Philo­logy to Social History’, p. 360 n. 90), and Park (‘The Death of Isabella Della Volpe’). 83  In the previous testimony, regarding Philippe de Chantemilan’s miracle, the practitioner was not indicated. There was no indication about the presence of a surgeon. The husband of Francesca Caetani, a pregnant noble woman who was considered adulterous, had his wife killed and made the midwife open her side with a razor to take out the baby (Niccoli, Rinascimento anticlericale, p. 154).

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Another case of sectio is cited in one of the miracles performed by JeanneMarie de Maillé in her lifetime. Called to the bedside of a woman who had died of childbirth complications, the saint persuades a miles to cut open her womb by making an incision in her side. The baby is then extracted, staying alive long enough to be baptized.84 These examples are the only accounts of sectio in mortua to be found in the numerous miracles examined; the woman in labour is saved in all the other miracles. Although her life is at risk in the majority of cases, the option of cutting open her womb is never recommended. Therefore, hagio­g raphical sources do not help to demonstrate that the practice of sectio was widespread in the Middle Ages. However, as Ottavia Niccoli stressed, there was an increase in such cases from the sixteenth century onwards, especially after the Council of Trent.85 The miracle of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé that features a sword-bearing miles (soldier) is truly original but somewhat implausible, although the text demonstrates a certain theoretical knowledge of the practice by mentioning the technique of cutting open the womb on one side.86 Such knowledge also emerges in the description of another miracle performed by the same saint, where a piece of wood is placed between the dying mother’s teeth so that the foetus can still breathe.87 Both mother and child are saved as a result of miraculous intervention, but the act of propping open the dead woman’s mouth is deemed highly important in descriptions of the sectio in mortua procedure, which is mentioned in synodal acts as well as in medical texts.88 While these testimonies refer to a well-known and recommended practice implemented in the period when the two saints’ dossiers were compiled, it is difficult to interpret the accounts of two older miracles (thirteenth century) from nearby areas found in the acts of the canonization process of Philip of 84 

Liber miraculorum of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, p. 746B. Niccoli, ‘Corps maternels’, pp. 394–95. Performing the sectio in mortua became the norm of the Catholic Church in 1614 thanks to Pope Paul V. See Filippini, La nascita straordinaria, pp. 42–43. 86  The opening on the side is indicated, for example, by physician Guy de Chauliac, Inventarium, vi, 2, 7, ed. by McVaugh and Ogden, p. 389. 87  Liber miraculorum of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, p. 760E. 88  To only cite two examples: physician and surgeon Guy de Chauliac writes: ‘tenendo mulierios et matricem apertam, ut volunt mulieres, aperiatur mulier’ (Inventarium, vi, 2, 7, ed. by McVaugh and Ogden, p. 389). We can read in the text of the synod of Rouen of 1275: ‘Mortuae in partu scindantur, si infans credatur vivere […] sed os mortuae teneatur apertum’ (Synodi Rotomagenses, ed. by Bessin, p. 84). See Foscati, ‘Venire alla luce e rinascere’, pp. 95–97. 85 

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Bourges and in the Liber miraculorum of the Saints of Savigny.89 The first case reads as follows: Adelina/ […] dixit/ quod cum ipsa laboraret in partu et exivisset partus usque ad capud quedam/ mulieres que erant ibi temptaverunt extrahere eum et non potuerunt et puer/ erat mortuus nec erat ad terminum deficiente tempore unius mensis nec plus/ potuit sustinere pre dolore ut plus temptarent extrahere unde petebat/ ut ferro incideretur.90 [Adelina […] said that during the delivery, the body of the foetus, except for the head, came out of her womb. Women who were present tried unsuccessfully to extract the premature foetus. Not being able to withstand the pain, [Adelina] asked to be incised with iron.]

Another witness specifies that ‘Adelina petebat/ a marito suo quod apperiretur ferro propter dolorem’.91 As the baby had partly emerged from the mother’s womb, it could be inferred that an embryotomy was needed to put an end to her sufferings, but the use of the verb aperire in the passive suggests that the woman actually asked for an incision to be made in her body. In the second case, the testimony from Savigny reads as follows: Johanna […] pregnans erat et collidebantur gemini in utero ejus. Cumque advenisset tempus pariendi peperit filiam alteramnequaquam, sed remansit gravida magis quam ante et laboravit postea per IX dies. Venerunt vicine mulieres et matrone […] et aliae multe, nescientes consilium, timentes ne foetus mortuus esset in ventre mulieris. Tandem in hoc consenserunt quod/ scinderetur mulier et extraheretur infans mortuus sive vivus […] Voverunt dictam mulierem sanctis Savigniacensibus. Quid plura? Mulier absque mora sine incisione vel lesione corporis sui peperit alteram filiam […] magnum est hoc et arduum et contra solitum cursum nature. Quae enim una hora, ut dicunt physici conceperat geminos, secundum cursum naturae una hora, debuisset ambos peperisse sicut in Jacob et Esau.92

89 

About the Liber miraculorum of the Saints of Savigny (Normandy), see Foscati, ‘Malattia, medicina e tecniche di guarigione’. 90  CP Philip of Bourges, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 55v, and Paris, BnF, MS lat. 5373A, fol. 9v. 91  CP Philip of Bourges, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 4019, fol. 56v. Paris, BnF, MS lat. 5373A, fol. 10v: ‘Adelina petebat a marito suo quod ferro aperiretur propter dolorem’. Trans.: ‘Adelina asked her husband that she be opened by iron because of the pain’. 92  Liber miraculorum of the Saints of Savigny, Paris, BnF, MS n.a.l. 217, fols 36–37.

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[ Johanna […] was pregnant and two twins were fighting in her womb. During the delivery only one daughter came out, the other one not at all, and the woman continued to have labour pains for nine more days. All her female neighbours came to her, […] but they didn’t know what to do since they were afraid that the other foetus was dead in her womb. They finally decided to perform an incision on the woman in order to extract the foetus dead or alive […]. Thereafter they decided to pray to the Saints of Savigny on her behalf and subsequently she was able to deliver another daughter without incisions or lesions to her body […]. This is against the normal course of nature. In fact, according to the course of nature, and as physicians say, the twins are conceived within an hour and they must be born within an hour, as happened to Jacob and Esau.]

Leaving aside the similarities with the birth of twins in the Bible (they also jostled with each other in the womb), which must have been an edifying example for the author of the text,93 the most interesting element in this case is once again the fact that the midwives made preparations to cut open the woman’s body to extract the foetus. The intention of both texts was probably to emphasize the dramatic nature of the story, giving greater prominence to the miracle by demonstrating the serious danger that the women were facing. Was it an exaggeration on the part of the witnesses and authors of the texts, or is it plausible that mulieres performed gruesome surgery on women at the time, even though there do not seem to be any other textual references? Alternatively, are we dealing with a kind of cultural resonance of the idea of sectio in mortua that leads to the surgical practice being wrongfully attributed to live rather than dead women in accounts? The use of the verbs aperire and scindere might suggest the latter option, as they are frequently used in religious texts advocating the practice of sectio in mortua that started to circulate in France in the thirteenth century.94

Carmina and Items to Facilitate Childbirth Women were the natural custodians of childbirth-related knowledge, which also encompassed carmina and various objects used as charms to make the process faster and less painful. Different textual sources, including collections of medical recipes, books of hours, and medical texts, provide descriptions of 93  On the theme of the conception and birth of twins, see Zuccolin, ‘“E cussì se fanno homicidiale di proprii fioli”’. 94  See note 88 above. See Foscati, ‘Venire alla luce e rinascere’, pp. 95–96.

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such items and the ways they were used, thanks to an interweaving of medical knowledge and female knowledge. In particular, we find different examples of carmina that recall the childbirth experiences of the Virgin Mary (the only woman to give birth without pain), St Anne, St Elizabeth, and others. Starting from evidence on a Christian papyrus, references to Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, can be found from the fifth century onwards. Christ’s command to Lazarus ‘veni foras’ (come forth; John 11. 43) was addressed to babies, ordering them to leave the womb as if it were a tomb, which reflects a close link between birth and death with ancient anthropo­logical roots.95 ‘Veni foras’ was associated with other orders borrowed from exorcism formulae such as adiuro and coniuro, which are also found in carmina intended to expel certain specific ailments like fever from the body. In this way, babies were ordered to come out as if they were a foreign entity just like an evil spirit or an illness to be relieved.96 This coincides with the perception of childbirth as an illness, which, as we have seen, is also sometimes apparent at a lexical level. Texts specified that natural items and substances were invested with such a power of attraction that they had to be removed or eliminated as soon as the baby was delivered, as otherwise they might cause the mother’s innards to spill out too.97 This knowledge of formulae, rituals, items, and substances used to help women in labour — which cannot be analysed herein — does not emerge from the sources under consideration. This is due to the care taken by men of the Church to avoid referring to anything that might have been construed as superstitious in any way,98 but above all because of the need to demonstrate that a successful childbirth could only be ascribed to the intervention of a saint. Indeed, the reference to the mysterious bag in the account of Dauphine de Puimichel’s miracle is a unique example; in all other sources, any objects 95 

See Aubert, ‘Threatened Wombs’, pp. 439–40. See Foscati, ‘La scena del parto’, p. 316. 97  Since the classical world there have been okytokia, diverse objects that worked in that sense. See Gaillard-Seux, ‘Rites magiques’; Dasen, ‘Femmes à tiroir’. 98  The Church’s attitude towards formulas and objects of talismanic value has been complicated and changeable over time. See Delaurenti, La Puissance des mots ‘Virtus verborum’. At times it was the Church that promoted the use of certain objects as in the case of the Agnus Dei, a wax disc imprinted with the Lamb of God (Foscati, ‘Healing with the Body of Christ’, pp. 221–25). About charms in general, see Bozoky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques; Delaurenti, ‘La Pratique incantatoire à l’époque scolastique’. About childbirth charms, see L’Estrange, ‘“Quant femme enfante…”’; Foscati, ‘La scena del parto’, pp. 312–16; Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’; and Mary Morse’s and Sara Ritchey’s contributions to this book. 96 

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that appear are closely related to the saint — they are sometimes even bodily remains or contact relics. Objects are placed on the bellies of women in labour in a number of miracles in canonization processes: an image of Peter of Luxemburg, Antoninus Pierozzi’s birretus, and a piece of Ranieri dal Borgo’s tunic. Instead, some relics of Bridget of Sweden are tied around a woman’s neck until she gives birth.99 There are numerous other examples, but the most original item is found in the two canonization processes of Francis of Paola: a candle blessed by the saint in his lifetime that was said to have many apotropaic properties, including assistance with the childbirth procedure. While it is only mentioned once in the first canonization process in Cosenza (when its miraculous origin is recounted),100 the second process in Tours includes numerous testimonies of how it was used. We read that women used to keep it lit until the baby had been delivered and then carefully conserve the stub so that it could be reused or lent to friends and neighbours. In one reported case it was used by the midwife herself, who must have kept it with her childbirth instruments.101

Conclusion From a reading of narrations of the numerous miracles dedicated to childbirth it emerges that the intervention of physicians and surgeons is not recorded prior to the sixteenth century, and that no source refers to a precise division of responsibilities among medical professionals during the different stages of pregnancy. More generally, regardless of the increase in the number of chapters devoted to gynaeco­logy in medical texts, women in the sources studied in this context show an extreme reluctance to seek help from physicians for problems related to their sexual organs. With regard to the delivery, the whole procedure — including even the most gruesome steps — is performed by the midwife, assisted by other women. In fact only women were present in the delivery room: not simply midwives but relatives, neighbours, acquaintances. Birth was a choral moment experienced by the female community. The one male figure admitted was the priest, who intervened at dramatic moments to hear the confession of the dying woman. The husband was always outside the delivery room

99 

See note 20 above; CP Peter of Luxembourg, p. 579; Liber miraculorum of Ranieri dal Borgo, p. 43; CP Bridget of Sweden: Stockholm, Royal Library, MS Holmiensis A14, fol. 140r. 100  CP Francis of Paola (Cosenza), p. 54. 101  CP Francis of Paola (Tours), pp. 289, 300, 305, 310, 334, 335, 337.

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and played an important role at the moment of making a vow to the saint with promises of gifts and pilgrimages. In these accounts we find no references (except a mention of Dauphine de Puimichel’s linen cloth) to carmina, objects or rituals aimed at helping the woman in labour, although we know from other sources that they must have been widely used. The hagio­graphic text certainly serves to demonstrate that it was the saint alone, through divine intervention, who aided the woman, so the only objects recorded are those related thereto and thus take on the value of relics, like the candle of Francis of Paola used by the midwife herself. The latter was not only the most important figure at the moment of birth but also dealt with the child’s first moments of life and, drawing on her experience, sometimes adopted singular strategies to diagnose whether the baby was dead or alive and to resuscitate it if necessary. As far as the baby is concerned, the salvation of its soul was the primary consideration, regardless of whether this was the result of a genuine need on the part of the family or of the publicity mechanisms employed by the Church, increasingly focused on highlighting the importance of the sacrament of baptism: overall, the miracle à répit is the most frequently mentioned type of miracle in accounts of childbirth. Nevertheless, the saving of the baby’s soul was never set against the mother’s life, which was to be saved even at the cost of sacrificing the foetus by means of embryotomy. We know that with time, at least after the Council of Trent, there tended to be an inversion of priorities: but that is another story.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Auxerre, Bibliothèque Municipale [Bibl. Mun.], MS 123G, fols 104va–154v: Libri miraculorum of Edmund of Abingdon Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS lat. 5373A, fols 1–65: CP Philip of Bourges Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS n.a.l. 217, fols 1–78: Liber miraculorum of the Saints of Savigny Stockholm, Royal Library, MS  Holmiensis A14 (facsimile of the manu­script in Isak Collijn, Acta et processus canonizationis Sanctae Birgittae: Codex Holmiensis A14 (Stockolm: Cederquists grafiska aktiebolag, 1920)): CP Bridget of Sweden Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [BAV], MS Vat. lat. 4019, fols 28–100: CP Philip of Bourges

Primary Sources Augustine of Hippo, Sermones ad populum, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1844–64), vol. xxxviii Bartolomeo Cipolla, Consilia ad diversas materias […] (Venezia: Ad Signum Iurisconsulti, 1575) CP Ambrogio of Massa  = Acta Sanctorum totius anni, ediderunt Socii Bollandiani, (Antwerp, 1643–), Nov., iv, pp. 571–608 CP Antonino Pierozzi  = Acta Sanctorum totius anni, ediderunt Socii Bollandiani, (Antwerp, 1643–), May, i, pp. 335–51 CP Bernardino of Siena  = Il processo di canonizzazione di Bernardino da Siena (1445–1450), ed. by Letizia Pellegrini (Grottaferrata: Quaracchi, 2009) CP Charles of Blois = Monuments du Procés de canonisation du Bienheureux Charles de Blois, Duc de Bretagne, 1320–1364, ed. by P. Antoine de Sérent (Saint-Brieuc: impr. de R. Prud’homme, 1921) CP Clare of Montefalco = Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. by Enrico Menestò (Scandicci: La nuova Italia, 1984) CP Dauphine de Puimichel  = Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel, comtesse d’Ariano († 26/XI/1360), ed. by Jacques Cambell (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1978) CP Frances of Rome  = I processi inediti per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (S.  Francesca Romana) 1450–53, ed. by Placido Tommaso Lugano (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1945) CP Francis of Paola  (Cosenza) = Pinzuti, Mario M., ‘Processus factus in Calabriam per episcopum Cariatensem super vita et miraculis sancti patris Francisci de Paula’, Bollettino ufficiale dell’ordine dei Minimi, 9 (1963), 1–233

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CP Francis of Paola (Tours) = Pecchiai, Pio, ‘Il testo autografo del processo turonense per la canonizzazione di s. Francesco di Paola (1513)’, Bollettino ufficiale dell’ordine dei Minimi, 9 (1963), 273–402 CP John the Good = Acta Sanctorum totius anni, ediderunt Socii Bollandiani, (Antwerp, 1643–), Oct., ix, pp. 771–885 CP Louis of Toulouse  = Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O.  F.  M. Episcopi Tolosani, Analecta Franciscana, 7 (Quaracchi-Firenze: Ex Typo­ graphia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1951), pp. 122–254 CP Nicholas of Tolentino  = Il processo per la canonizzazione di s. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. by Nicola Occhioni (Roma: École française de Rome, 1984) CP Peter of Luxembourg  = Acta Sanctorum totius anni, ediderunt Socii Bollandiani (Antwerp, 1643–), Iul., i, pp. 462–628 CP Peter of Morrone = Il processo di canonizzazione di Celestino V, ed. by Alfonso Marini, Corpus Coelestinianum, ii (Firenze: SISMEL-Edizioni de Galluzzo, 2016) CP Philip Neri  = Il primo processo per san Filippo Neri nel codice vaticano latino 3798 e in altri esemplari dell’archivio dell’Oratorio di Roma, ed.  by Giovanni Incisa della Rocchetta and P.  Carlo Gasbarri, 4  vols (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1957–63) CP Thomas Aquinas (Fossanova) = Laurent, M.-H., ‘Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Fossae-novae’, in Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis (Saint-Maximin: Revue thomiste, 1937), pp. 409–532 CP Thomas Aquinas (Naples) = Thomae Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipuae, ed. by A. Ferrua (Alba: Edizioni Domenicane, 1968), pp. 203–350 CP Yves of Tréguier = Monuments originaux de l’histoire de saint Yves, ed. by Arthur de la Borderie, J.  Daniel, R.  P. Perquis, and D.  Tempier (Saint-Brieuc: Imprimerie  L. Prud’homme, 1887) ‘Ex libro de miraculis sanctorum savigniacensium’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xxiii (Paris: H. Welter Editeur, 1894), pp. 587–605 Guy de Chauliac, Inventarium sive chirurgia magna, ed.  by Michael R. McVaugh and Margaret S. Ogden (Leiden: Brill, 1997) Henri de Mondeville, Chirurgia, ed.  by Julius  L. Pagel, Die Chirurgie des Heinrich von Mondeville (Berlin: A. Hirschwald, 1892) ‘Incipit pro­logus in miraculis B. Edmundi Archiepiscopi et confessoris’, in Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, vol.  iii, ed. by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand (Paris: Bibliopolarum Parisiensium, 1717), cols 1882–90 Liber miraculorum of Jeanne-Marie de Maillé = Acta Sanctorum totius anni, ed. by Socii Bollandiani (Antwerp, 1643–), Mart., iii, 444–762 Liber miraculorum of Louis of Toulouse  = Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O.  F.  M. Episcopi Tolosani, Analecta Franciscana, 7 (QuaracchiFirenze: Ex Typo­graphia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1951), pp. 275–331 Liber miraculorum of Philippe de Chantemilan  = Vie et miracles de la bienheureuse Philippe de Chantemilan, ed. by Ulisse Chevalier (Valence: Picard, 1894)

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Liber miraculorum of Ranieri dal Borgo = Il libro dei miracoli del Beato Ranieri dal Borgo, ed. and Italian trans. by Leonilde Amadori Tani (Arezzo: Le Balze, 2004) Liber miraculorum of Urban V = Actes anciens et documents concernant le bienheureux Urbain V, pape, sa famille, sa personne, son pontificat, ses miracles et son culte, ed.  by Joseph Hyacinte Albanès and Ulysse Chevalier (Paris: Picard, 1897), pp. 124–365 Odo of Sully, Synodicae Constitutiones, in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Giovanni Domenico Mansi, 54 vols (Paris: H. Welter, 1901–27), xxii, cols 675–86 Scipione Mercurio, De gli errori popolari d’Italia libri sette (Verona: Stamparia di Francesco Rossi, 1645) Simon de Vallambert, Cinq livres de la maniere de nourrir et gouverner les enfans des leur naissance (Poitiers: Marnesz et Bouchetz, 1565) Synodi Rotomagenses Nova Praecepta, in Concilia Rotomagensis Provinciae […], ed. by William Bessin (Rouen: Apud Franciscum Vaultier, in vico Judaeorum, 1717), pp. 84–85 Thiers, Jean Baptiste, Traité des superstitions qui regardent les sacrements […] (Paris: Com­ pagnie des libraires, 1741) Vita Wilfridi  I. Episcopi Eboracensis auctore Stephano, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici, vol.  ii, ed. by Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1902), pp. 163–263

Secondary Works Agrimi, Jole, and Chiara Crisciani, ‘Medici e “vetulae” dal Duecento al Quattrocento: problemi di una ricerca’, in Cultura popolare e cultura dotta nel Seicento (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1983), pp. 144–59 Aubert, Jean-Jacques, ‘Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic’, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30.3 (1989), 421–49 Aymar, Alp, ‘Contribution à l’étude du folklore de la Haute-Auvergne: Le Sachet accoucheur et ses mystères’, Annales du Midi, 38.149 (1926), 273–347 Bartolomei Romagnoli, Alessandra, ‘Santa Francesca Romana e l’aldilà della sofferenza’, Benedictina, 32.1 (1985), 223–53 Bednarski, Steven, and Andrée Courtemanche, ‘“Sadly and with a Bitter Heart”: What the Caesarean Section Meant in the Middle Ages’, Florilegium, 28 (2011), 33–69 Betta, Emmanuel, Animare la vita: Disciplina della nascita tra medicina e morale nell’Ottocento (Bo­logna: Il Mulino, 2006) Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medi­eval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1990) Bozoky, Edina, Charmes et prières apotropaïques (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003) Burnett, Charles S. F., ‘The Planets and the Development of the Embryo’, in The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, ed. by Gordon R. Dunstan (Exeter: Uni­ver­sity of Exeter Press, 1990), pp. 95–112

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Carolus-Barré, Louis, ‘Un nouveau parchemin amulette et la légende da sainte Marguerite patronne des femmes en couches’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscription et Belles-Lettres, 123.2 (1979), 256–75 Cavallar, Osvaldo, ‘Septimo mense: Periti, medici e partorienti in Baldo degli Ubaldi’, in VI centenario della morte di Baldo degli Ubaldi, 1400–2000, ed. by Carla Frova, Maria Grazia Nico Ottaviani, and Stefania Zucchini (Perugia: Università degli Studi, 2005), pp. 365–460 Cavazza, Silvano, ‘La doppia morte: resurrezione e battesimo in un rito del Seicento’, Quaderni storici, 50. 2 (1982), 551–82; English trans.: ‘Double Death: Resurrection and Baptism in a Seventeenth-Century Rite’, in History from Crime, ed. by E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994), pp. 1–31 Chandelier, Joël, Avicenne et la médecine en Italie: Le ‘Canon’ dans les universités (1200– 1350) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2017) Cormack, Margaret, ‘Better Off Dead: Approaches to Medi­eval Miracles’, in Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medi­eval Scandinavia, ed. by Thomas A. DuBois (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 334–54 Dasen, Véronique ‘Femmes à tiroir’, in Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité: Actes du colloque de Fribourg, 28 novembre – 1er decembre 2001, ed. by Véronique Dasen (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 127–44 Delaurenti, Béatrice, ‘La Pratique incantatoire à l’époque scolastique: Charmes et formules des réceptaire médicaux en latin et in langues romanes (xiiie–xve siècle)’, in La Formule au Moyen Âge II / Formulas in Medi­eval Culture II, ed. by Isabelle Draelants and Christelle Balouzat-Loubet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 473–94 —— , La Puissance des mots ‘Virtus verborum’: Débats doctrinaux sur le pouvoir des incantations au Moyen Âge (Paris: Cerf, 2007) Filippini, Nadia Maria, La nascita straordinaria: Tra madre e figlio la rivoluzione del taglio cesareo (sec. xviii–xix) (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1995) Finucane, Ronald C., The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medi­eval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997) Foscati, Alessandra, ‘Healing with the Body of Christ: Religion, Medicine and Magic’, in Il ‘Corpus Domini’: Teo­logia, antropo­logia e politica, ed.  by Laura Andreani and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Firenze: SISMEL, 2015), pp. 209–26 —— , ‘Malattia, medicina e tecniche di guarigione: il Liber de miraculis sanctorum Sav­ igniacensium’, Reti Medi­evali Rivista, 14.2 (2013), 59–88, —— , ‘I miracoli del parto: personaggi e rituali nelle fonti agiografiche tra xiii e xvi secolo’, Reti Medi­evali Rivista, 19.2 (2018) pp. 63–83, DOI: , —— , ‘“Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit”: Postmortem Cae­ sarean Section in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period’, Social History of Medicine (2018), DOI: 10.1093/shm/hky022 —— , ‘La scena del parto: Nascita del corpo e salvezza dell’anima tra religione, medicina e “magia” nell’altomedioevo’, in La presenza dei bambini nelle religioni del Mediterraneo

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antico: La vita e la morte, i rituali e i culti tra archeo­logia, antropo­logia e storia delle religioni, ed. by Chiara Terranova (Roma: Aracne, 2014), pp. 311–37 —— , ‘Venire alla luce e rinascere: Il cesareo da madre morta e il miracolo à répit nel tardo Medioevo’, in Nascere: Il parto dalla tarda antichità all’età moderna, ed. by Alessandra Foscati, Costanza Gislon Dopfel, and Antonella Parmeggiani (Bo­logna: Il Mulino, 2017), pp. 95–114 Franceschini, Chiara, Storia del Limbo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2017) Gaillard-Seux, Patricia, ‘Rites magiques néfastes à l’accouchement d’après les sources de l’époque romaine impériale’, in Femmes en médecine en l’honneur de Danielle Gourevitch, ed. by Véronique Boudon-Millot, Véronique Dasen, and B. Maire (Paris: De Boccard, 2008), pp. 61–73 Gentilcore, David, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 2006) Gourevitch, Danielle, ‘Chirurgie obstétricale dans le monde romain: Césarienne et embryo­ tomie’, in Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité: Actes du colloque de Fribourg, 28 novembre – 1er decembre 2001, ed. by Véronique Dasen (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göt­tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 239–64 —— , ‘La Gynéco­logie et l’obstétrique’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, 37.3 (1996), 2083–2146 Green, Monica H., Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaeco­logy (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) —— , ‘Moving from Philo­logy to Social History: The Circulation and Uses of Albucasis’s Latin Surgery in the Middle Ages’, in Between Text and Patient: The Medical Enterprise in Medi­eval & Early Modern Europe, ed. by Florence Elisa Glaze and Brian K. Nance (Firenze: SISMEL, 2011), pp. 331–72 Jacquart, Danielle, ‘De la faillibilité de l’art médical aux erreurs du praticien au début du xive siècle: Une Imperceptible Marge’, in Recherches médiévales sur la nature humaine: Essais sur la réflexion médicale (xiie–xve s.) (Firenze: SISMEL, 2014), pp. 277–96 —— , ‘Naissance d’une pédiatrie au milieu de cour’, in Recherches médiévales sur la nature hu­maine: Essais sur la réflexion médicale (xiie–xve s.) (Firenze: SISMEL, 2014), pp. 195–219 Jones, Peter Murray, and Lea T. Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals for Conception and Child­ birth in England, 900–1500’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 89 (2015), 406–33 Kantorowicz, Hermann U., ‘Cino da Pistoia ed il primo trattato di medicina legale’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 37 (1906), 115–28 Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari, ‘Constructing a Relationship with the Sacred: Measuring Rituals as Form of Communication’, in Agiografia e culture popolari: In ricordo di Pietro Boglioni, ed. by Paolo Golinelli (Bo­logna: Clueb, 2012), pp. 313–27 —— , Gender, Miracles and Daily Life: The Evidence of Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) L’Estrange, Elizabeth, ‘“Quant femme enfante…”: Remèdes pour l’accouchement au Moyen Âge’, in Femmes en fleurs, femmes en corps: Sang, santé, sexualités, du Moyen Âge aux Lumières, ed. by Cathy McClive and Nicole Pellegrin (Saint Étienne: Publication de l’Université de Saint Étienne, 2010), pp. 167–81

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Moulinier, Laurence, ‘Aspects de la maternité selon Hildegarde de Bingen (1098–1179)’, in La madre / The Mother, Micro­logus, 17 (Firenze: SISMEL, 2009), pp. 215–34 Niccoli, Ottavia, ‘Corps maternels: Les Mystères de la génération aux débuts de l’époque moderne’, in La madre / The Mother, Micro­logus, 17 (Firenze: SISMEL, 2009), pp. 379–97 —— , ‘Maternità critiche: Donne che partoriscono agli inizi dell’Età moderna’, Studi storici, 47.2 (2006), 463–79 —— , Rinascimento anticlericale: Infamia, propaganda e satira in Italia tra Quattro e Cinque­ cento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2005) Paciocco, Roberto, ‘Processi e canonizzazioni nel Duecento: Documenti e riflessioni a proposito di Filippo di Bourges’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 40 (2002), 85–174 Paravy, Pierrette, ‘Angoisse collective et miracles au seuil de la mort: résurrections et baptêmes d’enfants mort-nés en Dauphiné au xvème siècle’, in La Mort au Moyen Âge (Strasbourg: Libraire Istra, 1977), pp. 87–102 Park, Katharine, ‘The Death of Isabella Della Volpe: Four Eyewitness Accounts of a Postmortem Caesarian Section in 1545’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 82 (2008), 169–87 —— , Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, 2010) Pastore, Alessandro, Il medico in tribunale: la perizia medica nella procedura penale d’antico regime (secoli xvi–xviii) (Bellinzona: Casagrande, 1998) Pastore, Alessandro, and Giovanni Rossi, eds, Paolo Zacchia: alle origini della medicina legale, 1584–1659 (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2008) Pelaez, Maria, ‘Visioni di s. Francesca Romana: Testo romanesco del secolo xv’, Archivio della Regia Società Romana di Storia Patria, 14 (1891), 251–409 Pomata, Gianna, ‘Malpighi and the Holy Body: Medical Experts and Miracolous Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, Renaissance Studies, 21.4 (2007), 568–86 —— , ‘Medicina delle monache: Pratiche terapeutiche nei monasteri femminili di Bo­logna in Età moderna’, in I monasteri come centri di cultura tra Rinascimento e Barocco, ed. by Gianna Pomata and Gabriella Zarri (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2005), pp. 331–63 —— , La promessa di guarigione: Malati e curatori di antico regime (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1994) Pommeray, Léon, L’Officialité archidiaconale de Paris aux xve–xvie siècles (Paris: Sirey, 1933) Powell, Hilary, ‘The Miracle of Childbirth: The Portrayal of Parturient Women in Medi­ eval Miracle Narratives’, Social History of Medicine, 25 (2012), 795–811 Prosperi, Adriano, Dare l’anima. Storia di un infanticidio (Torino: Einaudi, 2005) Schäfer, Daniel, Geburt aus dem Tod: Der Kaiserschnitt an Verstorbenen in der abendländischen Kultur (Hürtgenwald: Pressler, 1999) Sigal, Pierre André, ‘La Grossesse, l’accouchement et l’attitude envers l’enfant mort-né à la fin du Moyen Âge d’après les récits des miracles’, in Santé médecine et assistance au Moyen Âge: Actes du 110e Congrès national des Sociétés Savantes, Montpellier, 1985, Section d’histoire médiévale et de philo­logie (Paris: CTHS, 1987), pp. 23–41

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Signori, Gabriela, ‘Defensivgemeinschaften: Kreißende; Hebammen und “Mitweiber” im Spiegel spätmittel­alterlicher Geburtswunder’, Das Mittel­alter, 1.2 (1996), 113–34 Taglia, Kathryn Ann, ‘Delivering a Christian Identity: Midwives in Northen French Synodal Legislation, c.  1200–1500’, in Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, ed. by Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (York: York Medi­eval Press, 2001), pp. 77–90 Van Der Lugt, Maaike, ‘L’Animation de l’embryon humain dans la pensée médiévale’, in L’Embryon: Formation et animation. Antiquité grecque et latine, tradition hébraïque, chretienne et islamique, ed. by Luc Brisson, Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, and Jean-Luc Solère (Paris: Libr. Phil. J. Vrin, 2008), pp. 233–54 Vauchez, André, La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (Roma: École française de Rome, 1981) Wilson, Louise Elizabeth, ‘Miracle and Medicine: Conceptions of Medical Knowledge and Practice in Thirteenth-Century Miracle Accounts’, in Wounds in the Middle Ages, ed. by Anne Kirkham and Cordelia Warr (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 63–86 Ziegler, Joseph, ‘Practitioner and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine, 12 (1999), 191–225 Zuccolin, Gabriella, ‘“E cussì se fanno homicidiale I proprii fioli”: I  parti gemellari tra teorie mediche e implicazioni morali dall’Antichità al tardo Medioevo’, in Nascere: Il parto dalla tarda antichità all’età moderna, ed. by Alessandra Foscati, Costanza Gislon Dopfel, and Antonella Parmeggiani (Bo­logna: Il Mulino, 2017), pp. 77–93

Part 3 Lying-in and Holy Birth: Tradition, Icono­graphy, and Political Statement

Lying-in in High Medi­eval England and France Fiona Harris-Stoertz*

W

hile it is generally accepted that medi­eval women practised lyingin, a time of bed rest or seclusion after giving birth, the practice has received relatively little attention from medi­eval historians, despite the very active interest of early modern scholars and anthropo­logists in this topic.1 Aside from brief encyclopaedia entries, no books or articles focusing on the practice have been written to date, although it has been addressed to some degree by authors examining related topics.2 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio frequently mentions aspects of the practice in her study of the art associated with childbirth in Renaissance Italy.3 Likewise, Paula M. Rieder and Becky R. Lee, in their studies of the ritual of purification, the ceremony that ended the period of lying-in, discuss lying-in tangentially for northern France and England respectively.4 This essay seeks to help fill this lacuna by examining lying-in as it was   * An early version of this essay was presented at the 49th International Congress on Medi­ eval Studies, Western Michigan Uni­ver­sity, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2014. 1  Green, ‘Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease’, pp. 20, 22, in her historio­g raphical survey of work on women’s medicine, comments on the lack of work done on lying-in. 2  For one of the most comprehensive encyclopaedia articles on the subject, although based in large part on early modern practices, see Lee, ‘Lying-in’. 3  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, throughout. 4  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, esp. pp. 108–13, provides the most substantial discussion of medi­e val lying-in practice. Lee’s discussion of lying-in is more tangential; see ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, especially pp. 33–34 and 81–97, where she discusses length of the lying-in period and post-partal taboos respectively, and also ‘The Purification of Women after Childbirth’ and ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite’.

Fiona Harris-Stoertz received her PhD from the Uni­ver­sity of California at Santa Barbara

and is currently Associate Professor in the Department of History at Trent Uni­ver­sity, Canada.

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 227–248 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117824

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practised by women in England and France during the twelfth, thirteenth, and early fourteenth centuries. I will argue that the practice of lying-in could have very different meanings for participants and onlookers. For some, particularly clerical authors, it was a rite of segregation and exclusion, reflecting women’s impurity resulting from blood and lust and underlining the purity and power of the celibate clergy. Yet lying-in was also a time for celebration of new mothers through visits and gift giving, and a period of relaxation and recovery before women returned to their normal duties. It also served as an opportunity for men and women to assert family prestige, through display in the lying-in chamber and purification celebrations. Neglect of the subject of lying-in by medi­eval historians is particularly striking in light of the enormous literature produced on this topic by anthropo­ logists and early modern historians, who have viewed lying-in through a variety of lenses. Some, like anthropo­logist Mary Douglas in her groundbreaking work on pollution and taboo, associate lying-in, a time when women experience post-partal bleeding, with pollution taboos and interpret the practice as a way to segregate women, whose leaking bodies are perceived as a threat to society. Douglas argues that the body functions as a symbol of society with its powers and dangers, and that which it excretes is always marginal.5 Recent scholars who have built on Douglas’s work, such as the medi­e valists Peggy McCracken and Bettina Bildhauer and anthropo­logists Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, have taken a more nuanced perspective. While they agree that blood associated with childbirth and menstruation has often been considered polluting and taboo, they suggest that it has positive as well as negative purposes and meanings, even in the societies with the strongest taboos.6 Lying-in is also frequently understood by both historians and anthropo­logists as forming part of a rite of passage. Arnold van Gennep in his seminal study of rites of passage suggests that pregnancy, lying-in, and churching form a classic rite of passage, incorporating separation, transition, and reintegration into society.7 In his view transitional states like pregnancy and childbirth are threatening to society, and thus something that members attempt to control by ritual. 5 

Douglas, Purity and Danger, esp. pp. 115, 121. McCracken, The Curse of Eve, esp. pp.  61–91; Bildhauer, Medi­e val Blood, esp. pp. 84–119; Buckley and Gottlieb, ‘A Critical Appraisal of Theories of Menstrual Symbolism’. 7  Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, esp. pp. 41–47. Coster, ‘Purity, Profanity, and Puritanism’. Grimes, Deeply into the Bone, p. 14, suggests that birth should not necessarily be seen as a rite of passage, although it is marked by ritual. 6 

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Both these approaches, while important, consider lying-in as something imposed on women, an instrument of control or marginalization. A number of recent scholars, however, looking at the enthusiasm of women for lying-in in some periods, have preferred to think about lying-in as something women choose to do, improving their condition in some way. Early modern historian Natalie Zemon Davis sees lying-in, where men for a period must serve women and carry out women’s normal duties and responsibilities, as an inversion of the normal order, offering a temporary release from hierarchy and opportunity for redistribution of power.8 Adrian Wilson has built on this idea extensively to suggest that lying-in created a women’s space that empowered early modern women and undermined patriarchal power through female solidarity, and that many men accepted it only reluctantly.9 Gail Murray Gibson likewise argues that fifteenth-century women were empowered by their identification with the important celebration of the purification of the Virgin.10 This essay agrees with many recent scholars who argue that lying-in cannot be understood from a single perspective. Bell, in her studies of ritual, suggests beliefs relating to shared symbolic action are often not coherent or uniform, and may be understood and experienced by participants and onlookers in very different ways.11 Lee and Rieder for the medi­eval period, as well as Roper, Rublack, McPherson, and Cressy for the early modern period, argue that the practices of churching and lying-in were simultaneously manipulated by a variety of participants, women and men, clerical and lay, to promote their own agendas.12 Rublack, for example, argues that cultural understandings in Reformation Germany emphasized the fragility and unpredictability of the female body. While this defined women as inferior, it meant that men were obliged by the community to give women extraordinary care in their lying-in, and even gave women a privileged voice against political violence.

8 

Davis, ‘Women on Top’, p. 145. Wilson, ‘Participant or Patient’; Wilson, ‘The Ceremony of Childbirth’; Wilson, Ritual and Conflict, pp. 153–210. 10  Gibson, ‘Blessing from Sun and Moon’, esp. p. 147. 11  Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, esp. pp. 183–92. 12  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, esp. pp. 108–11; Lee, ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite’; Rublack, ‘Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany’; McPherson, ‘Dramatizing Deliverance and Devotion’; Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’; Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, pp. 211–18. Martin, The Woman in the Body, pp. 97–98, also recognizes the opportunities inherent in blood taboos. 9 

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In this essay I will argue that ideas about pollution by blood and lust were very much a part of the cultural context of lying-in, and parturient women were considered a threat by some members of society until cleansed by the religious rite of purification. Ideas about female pollution and the need for the ritual of purification to conclude lying-in likewise served to elevate clerical power and purity. Nevertheless, lying-in, as it was practised in the high Middle Ages, was also a celebration of mothers, and an opportunity for gifts, visits, and special care. Women do not appear to have been shunned or avoided, and, moreover, the practices associated with lying-in demanded a substantial cultural investment in gifts, special foods, new clothing, and decorations, which might serve to enhance the status of both husbands and wives. While the practices I describe appear to have been widespread, it must be emphasized that the conclusions of this essay reflect primarily the habits of elites. Prescriptive sources such as law codes and theo­logy were the products of literate elites, as was literature. The few available descriptive sources relating to individual practice virtually all come from privileged groups. We cannot know to what extent such habits and attitudes were shared by less privileged individuals.

Pollution and Impurity The origins of the custom of lying-in rested at least in part on beliefs regarding ritual impurity or blood pollution associated with menstruation and childbirth, and to some extent these beliefs would continue to colour perception of the practice as it evolved. Instructions about ritual impurity following childbirth can be found in the Old Testament. Leviticus 12 states that women should be considered unclean for seven days after the birth of a boy and fourteen days after the birth of a girl, and must refrain from sexual relations during this period. For a further thirtythree days, in the case of a boy, and sixty-six days, in the case of a girl, women are considered ritually impure, and must refrain from entering the temple. At the end of this period women are to go through a ritual of purification. While early Christians, following the vision of Peter, theoretically renounced Jewish cleanliness laws, anxiety regarding potential pollution from post-partal or menstruating women remained, fueled by Christian anxiety over sexuality and the body and Graeco-Roman literature that painted menstrual blood as dangerous.13 Our first record of a period of ritual impurity after childbirth being practised in the Christian West comes in a letter of advice written by Pope Gregory 13 

Rieder, On the Purification of Women, pp. 20–22.

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the Great (r. 590–604), in response to questions asked by Augustine, missionary to Kent. Among other questions, Augustine asked how soon after having a child a woman could enter a church. Gregory rejected ritual impurity, instructing Augustine that post-partal women should be permitted to go to church to give thanks, even in the hour of birth, arguing that there was no sin in the pain of childbirth.14 Gregory’s letter was widely read, appearing in at least two hundred manu­scripts. Nevertheless, Gregory’s position was not accepted without challenge. Manu­scripts containing his letter often also contain more restrictive penitential handbooks.15 Many early medi­eval penitential handbooks place restrictions on post-partal women, banning them from sexual relations and contact with holy things for a set period of time after birth, although the exact number of days varied and the periods of ritual impurity and sexual impurity were usually conflated.16 Thus the prescribed period of sexual impurity during the early Middle Ages was usually longer and ritual impurity shorter than the Levitical provision. In the twelfth century, Gratian incorporated Gregory’s position into his Decretum, which would become the basic textbook for canon law. Emphasizing that there was ‘no sin in giving birth’ and that the pain women experienced in birth was a punishment for the pleasures of the flesh, he ruled that women should not be barred from churches, even immediately following childbirth, although the Glossa Ordinaria, which circulated with the Decretum, notes that it was nevertheless customary for women to delay their return to church for the prescribed period.17 Thus the idea that post-partal women should not be excluded from church, except by their own choice, became the dominant position in medi­eval Europe, confirmed definitively by Pope Innocent III in the early thirteenth century, although contrary perspectives continued to circulate.18 14 

Gregory’s advice to Augustine is included in Bede, The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. by Miller, Bk. i, question VIII. 15  Meens, ‘Questioning Ritual Purity’, p. 175. 16  For more detailed discussions of the evolution of ideas about churching and ritual impurity, see Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 80–85; Rieder, On the Purification of Women, pp. 13–28; Flandrin, Un temps pour embrasser; McCracken, The Curse of Eve, p. 63; Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, pp. 24–25; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medi­eval Europe, pp. 156–57. 17  Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss, Dist. 5, part 2, case 1–2, ed. and trans. by Gordley, p. 16. 18  Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss, Dist. 5, part 2, case 1–2, ed. and trans. by Gordley, p. 17.

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Although the exclusion of post-partal women from sacred space was softened during the high Middle Ages, the idea that women were polluted by childbirth and potentially unsafe did not disappear. Canonists continued to forbid sexual relations before a ritual of purification (or churching as it was also known) was performed, a position increasingly bolstered by medical and scientific justifications.19 In the Decretum, while accepting that post-partal women could go to church if they wished, Gratian argued that they shouldn’t have sexual relations with their husbands before the ritual of purification.20 The gloss explained this by suggesting sickness and leprosy could result, and instructed men not to render the marriage debt to their wives before the rite unless they felt there was a risk of their wives fornicating.21 Likewise, a twelfthcentury homily on the purification of the Virgin Mary emphasized that Mary remained in her home for forty days following the birth of Jesus because of her unclean condition, handling only her own food. While the sermon emphasized that this was done under the ‘old law’, it also explicitly encouraged the faithful to follow Mary’s example.22 Concern about post-partal women was based not only on Levitical law, but also long-standing scientific traditions. Following Pliny the Elder’s first-century Natural History, scholars throughout the Middle Ages understood menstrual blood as a toxic substance that could sour wine, rust metal, kill plants and bees, and cause rabies.23 Christians by the fourth century appear to have added the idea that children conceived in menstruation or the lochial flow would be leprous or deformed. These ideas circulated in the work of scholars such as Isidore of Seville during the early Middle Ages and were widely repeated and embellished in the active intellectual climate of the high Middle Ages and beyond.24 Other ailments such as elephantiasis and epilepsy were added to the dire consequences, and it was argued that men were also likely to contract illnesses 19 

See for example Elliott, Fallen Bodies, pp. 2–6. Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss, Dist. 5, part 2, case 4, ed. and trans. by Gordley, pp. 17–18. 21  Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss, Dist. 5, part 2, case 4, ed. and trans. by Gordley, pp. 17–18. 22  Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century, homily 8, ed. and trans. by Morris, pp. 46–47. See also Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 73–74. 23  Bildhauer, Medi­eval Blood, p. 97. 24  McCracken, The Curse of Eve, p. 63. For this belief beyond the Middle Ages, see Niccoli, ‘Menstruum quasi monstruum’, p. 10. 20 

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or become infertile through sexual contact with menstruating or post-partal women. Proponents of this theory included medical writers, such as Bernard de Gordon, John of Gaddesden, William of Saliceto, and Lanfranc;25 writers of confessor’s manuals, such as Thomas of Chobham and Robert of Flamborough; and numerous other clerics and scholars, including Rupert of Deutz, Peter of Poitiers, William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. Pope Innocent III, in his treatise, De contemptu mundi, written at the end of the twelfth century, describes menstrual blood as a dangerous substance qui fertur esse tam detestabilis et immundus, ut ex eius contactu fruges non germinent, arescant arbusta, moriantur herbae, amittant arbores foetus, et si canes inde comederint, in rabiem efferantur. Concepti foetus vitium seminis contrahunt, ita ut leprosi et elephantiaci ex hac corruptione nascantur.26 [which is reported to be so detestable and unclean, that from contact with it plants will not germinate, vineyards dry up, grass dies, trees lose their fruit, and if dogs eat it they contract rabies. A foetus conceived from infected seed may be born with leprosy and elephantiasis from the corruption.]

The hugely popular Secrets of Women, probably written by a student of Albertus Magnus around 1300, claimed menstruating women infected the very air by their breath, causing health problems in men.27 Such views, although common among intellectuals, were far from universal, and it should be emphasized that ideas about women’s blood were rarely wholly negative.28 Menstruation was seen as a way for women to purge superfluous humours that would otherwise harm them.29 Albertus Magnus attributed women’s longevity to this function, a side benefit of Eve’s curse.30 Menstrual regulators were by far the largest category of medicine relating to women in standard medical texts, as regular menstruation was considered vital to women’s health

25 

Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, pp. 186–87. Innocent III, De contemptu mundi, ch. 5, ed. by Achterfeldt, p. 20. 27  McCracken, The Curse of Eve, p. 63; Niccoli, ‘Menstruum quasi monstruum’, p. 10; Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 67. 28  McCracken, The Curse of Eve, esp. p. ix; Bildhauer, Medi­eval Blood, pp. 84–94; Green, ‘Flowers, Poisons, and Men’; Wood, ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’. 29  On this, see also Johnson, ‘The Myth of Jewish Male Menses’, esp. pp. 288–89, and Wood, ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’, esp. pp. 723–24. 30  Youngs, ‘Life Cycle’, p. 115. 26 

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and fertility.31 The twelfth-century Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum, part of the Trotula ensemble, the most widely copied collection of gynaeco­logical texts of the high medi­eval period, emphasized the importance of regular menstruation to fertility: ‘Quia sicut arbores non afferent sine floribus fructus, sic mulieres sine suis floribus sue conceptionis officio defraudantur’ (‘Just as trees do not bear fruit without flowers, so women without their flowers are defrauded of the ability to conceive’).32 Both Galenic and Aristotelian theories of generation viewed menstrual blood as serving a key function in the formation of the foetus — as food for Galen and matter for Aristotle.33 Still, as a purging of superfluities, both menstrual blood and post-childbirth flow were considered toxic and dangerous, and this aspect was highlighted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is difficult to know to what extent these ideas coloured lay perceptions of post-partal women, but it is probable that lay people were exposed to them through confession and sermons, particularly sermons on the Purification of the Virgin, an important feast. One extreme is represented by a 1293 statute from Douai that prescribed banishment for women who did not lie-in for the prescribed period.34 Similarly the epic poem Jourdain de Blaye, written around 1200, portrayed one thousand men dying in a storm after a woman gave birth on board a ship, because the sea would not tolerate blood. Ultimately to calm the storm, her husband threw her overboard. Following her rescue, she announces: ‘Dis et nuef jours ou vint trestouz passéz | Voldrai jesir et puis a messe aler, | Selonc l’uzaige de la crestienté, | Que li mien cors n’en soit point encombréz’ (‘I want to lie in bed for nineteen or twenty full days and then I will go to mass according to Christian custom, so that my body will not be impure’).35 Such stories would, presumably, have reached a relatively wide audience, popularizing the idea of women’s impurity after giving birth. 31 

Harris-Stoertz, ‘Suffering and Survival’, pp. 108–09; Green, ‘Making Motherhood in Medi­eval England’, p. 173. 32  ‘Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum’, ed. and trans. by Green, pp. 72–73. 33  For a thorough consideration of medi­e val theories of generation, see Cadden, The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, throughout. Some contemporary authors argued that hemorrhoids served the same function for men. 34  Green, ‘Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease’, pp. 22–23, citing Espinas, La Vie urbaine de Douai au Moyen Âge, iii, 602–03. 35  Jourdain de Blaye, ed. by Dembowski, lines 2356–59. Translation is that of McCracken, The Curse of Eve, who discusses this story pp. 56–58. This story and the associated belief is explored by Ross, ‘Blood in the Sea’.

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Not only were post-partal women polluted by blood, but in the eyes of high medi­eval clerics they were also polluted by sin. Theo­logians in this period emphasized pollution through the lust and pleasure involved in conception.36 Hugh of Saint-Victor in the twelfth century commented: ‘Nequaquam partus dolorem afferret, si conceptus non sensisset libidinem’ (By no means would childbirth bring pain, if conception did not involve lust).37 A woman’s pain in childbirth was, in this view, a direct result of her lustful nature, and evidence of her need for purification.38 The impurity of women after childbirth was emphasized by rituals of purification. As Rieder, Green, and Lee have suggested, the liturgical rituals for churching that survive from the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, while including prayers of thanksgiving, also imply pollution: that women needed to be cleansed from blood pollution and the sin of lust. Most rituals required the woman to wait in the narthex to be blessed and sprinkled with holy water, before being led into the church by the celebrant, a ceremony that echoes the cleansing of baptism.39 The ability of celibate clergy to banish pollution, even in the presence of lochial flow, served to emphasize both their power and purity, a contrast to polluted women. Priests’ concubines were excluded from purification from the twelfth century onwards, underlining the clergy’s special status. The ceremony of purification therefore underlined the dangers presented by post-partal women, reinforcing pervasive ideas of ritual and sexual impurity in literature and religious ideo­logy. In this sense, then, lying-in was a means of segregation, practised for the good of society, protecting others from the dangerous secretions and manifest sinfulness of parturient women.

Lying-in in Practice The idea of lying-in as a means of segregation, though, is problematic when evidence of its practice in reality and literature is examined. While theo­logical discussions of the practice of lying-in and post-partal blood tend to reinforce the idea of lying-in as a way to segregate ritually and sexually impure women, 36 

Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 62. Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Beatae Mariae Virginitate libellus epistolaris, ed. by Migne, col. 872. 38  This point is discussed in detail by Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 62. 39  Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 33–36, 73. See also Pierce, ‘“Green Women” and Blood Pollution’. 37 

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descriptions of the practice in literature and reality often reveal a more flexible and woman-centred ritual, where women were cosseted and received gifts and visits from men and women, who show little fear of contagion. The length of lying-in, by the high Middle Ages, was quite different, and far more flexible, than that prescribed in Leviticus. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, whence most surviving evidence of lengths of lying-in periods comes, there was considerable variation in the length of time between birth and the ceremony of purification. Moreover, while in theory it was accepted that the lying-in period should be longer for the birth of a daughter than of a son, since the birth of a daughter had a more negative impact on the mother’s body, this distinction is not evident in actual practice.40 Lee’s examination of the proofs of age of feudal heirs finds that in nineteen cases between 1276 and 1360, where the gap between baptism (which usually took place within a day or so of the birth) and purification can be calculated, the length of this period could range from thirteen to 127 days, although ten of these fell within five days of a month. Other documentary and literary sources seem to support this picture. 41 Jehan Maillart’s Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (early fourteenth century) prescribed a lying-in period of at least three weeks. 42 Characters throughout express concern about a wandering mother with a baby under three weeks, although they do not shun her. Philippe de Remi’s Le Manekine (around 1230) stated a normal lying-in period to be thirty days.43 A statute from fourteenthcentury Cambrai refused churching to women within a month of the birth, unless their lives were at risk.44 Queens followed similar practices. According to John Parsons, the thirteenth-century English Queen Eleanor of Provence practised a lying-in period of approximately forty days for all her children, male and female. Her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Castile’s confinements were more varied, lasting forty days after the birth of her son John, but probably only about thirty days following the later birth of three daughters.45 Eleanor of Castile’s 40 

Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 112. Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 33, 193. 42  Maillart, Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou, ed. by Roques, line 4657. For discussion, see Desclais Berkvam, Enfance et maternité, p. 41; Gravdal, ‘Confessing Incests’, p. 337. 43  Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Sargent-Baur, line 3621. 44  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 34. 45  Parsons, ‘The Year of Eleanor of Castile’s Birth and her Children by Edward I’, pp. 256–57. 41 

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attendant Ermentrude de Sackville in 1277 and Eleanor’s daughter Elizabeth in 1304 both were purified thirty days after the birth of their sons.46 Such variations suggest that preference influenced the duration of lying-in, although it is possible that the actual length of the post-partal discharge, which can last anywhere from two to six weeks, played a role in some cases. In fact, the period of lying-in, and thus of impurity, could be dispensed with altogether in some cases. Ultimately, regardless of fears of sexual pollution, canonists gave priority to the marital relationship, a major preoccupation of the high medi­eval Church. As we have seen, despite the theoretical risk of leprosy, the Glossa Ordinaria circulating with Gratian’s Decretum advised men that they could have relations with their post-partal wife if they were afraid she would otherwise fall into sin. This privileging of the marital debt is reflected in many thirteenth-century confessors’ manuals, which attributed the potential for sin to both husbands and wives.47 Thomas of Chobham, around 1216, banned sexual activity before purification, but ordered women to arrange to be purified immediately, even if they were still experiencing post-partal bleeding, so that they could resume sexual relations if they feared their husbands would sin.48 John of Fribourg, c. 1298, likewise discouraged post-partal relations before the rite of purification but argued that a partner who submitted to relations before purification to fulfil the marital debt didn’t sin, although he, like Thomas, reminded readers of the option of early purification. Such tolerance was not universal. Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln in 1239 censured clergy who forced women suspected of engaging in sexual relations before their purification to make offerings at the purifications of all other women in the parish, a very substantial penalty.49 Still, the idea that purification could be performed at a time judged appropriate by a cleric, while elevating the power of the clergy, also weakened the idea of lying-in as a necessary time of seclusion. In some respects women (at least elites) were physically separated from the life of the household during the period of lying-in. Women appear to have remained in a chamber, away from the household, for the duration of the lyingin period. Descriptions of royal lying-in and churching practices from the four46 

Parsons, ‘The Year of Eleanor of Castile’s Birth and her Children by Edward I’, p. 257, n. 38. Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 93–97; Lee, ‘The Purification of Women after Childbirth’, pp. 43–44. 48  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p.  45; Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, pp. 88–89. 49  Lee, ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”’, p. 78. 47 

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teenth and fifteenth centuries suggest that the queen retreated to a set of rooms with an array of female attendants, and men were firmly excluded until the purification ceremony.50 Women in the English proofs of age of feudal heirs, who were all from the landholding elite, likewise gave birth in chambers separate from the general living space, for example a separate room in the upper part of the hall.51 That this was usually shut off by a door is indicated by William de Ferariis (rather unusually) asking his wife’s chamberlain to open the door of her chamber so that he could speak to her during her labour.52 This arrangement is echoed in fiction. For example in the thirteenth-century French romance Silence, Eufemie gives birth in a chamber, away from her husband and the rest of the court.53 Likewise, Gente, in Galeran de Bretagne, spends her period of lying-in in bed in a room with a door.54 In Philippe de Remi’s Le Roman de la Manekine, a woman undergoing her month-long lying-in is unaware of what is happening outside her room.55 That this seclusion was not complete is indicated by some women arranging to stay with their natal families when their children were born. Matilda, Duchess of Saxony, stayed with her father Henry II in Normandy and England for the birth of two of her children during the twelfth century.56 In the thirteenth century, Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England and wife of Alexander III of Scotland, insisted on staying in England for the birth of her first child so that she could be with her family.57 Such patterns were not limited to royal women. Ermentrude gave birth to Andrew de Sackville in a chamber at her brother’s house during the reign of Edward I,58 and Isabel, mother of Anketin Salvayn, after the death of her husband, went to stay with her brother in York for the duration of her pregnancy. Her sister joined them after the birth.59 It is note-

50 

Staniland, ‘Royal Entry into the World’, pp. 301–07, and Shenton, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings’. 51  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, nos 98 and 121. 52  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 149. 53  Silence, ed. and trans. by Roche-Madhi, lines 2003–07. 54  Jean Renart, Galeran de Bretagne, ed. by Foulet, lines 666–67. 55  Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Sargent-Baur, lines 3621 ff. 56  Roger de Hoveden, Chronica, 1181–82 and 1184, ed. by Stubbs, i, 270, 285. 57  Parsons, ‘Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power’, p. 70. 58  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 627. 59  Yorkshire Inquisitions, ed. by Brown, iv, no. L.

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worthy that women chose to be near male as well as female relatives when they had their children. The period of lying-in is one sometimes portrayed as being necessary for the well-being of parturient women. Fiction suggests that women during the period of lying-in were believed to require special care. In the twelfth-century story of Guillaume d’Angleterre, the king is reluctant to have his very pregnant wife accompany him into exile, as he fears she’ll die without the usual amenities of lying-in, which include chambers perfumed with laurel and myrrh, and attendants and nurses who will care for her child and feed the queen fine morsels of food. In fact, deprived of these amenities, she demands to eat one of her babies.60 As Rublack suggests for the early modern period, need for special care, while positive in some ways, could also signal inferiority. In Le Comte d’Anjou, as we have seen, characters repeatedly recognize that a mother hasn’t completed her lying-in (gesine) because of the age of her baby, and express concern for mother and child. It is clearly suggested in these stories that lying-in was considered best for mothers, although no concern was expressed about pollution.61 A particularly interesting real-life example is found in the twelfthcentury Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise. When an army storming a castle found the wife of Robert de Avessiaco in a tower room where she had recently given birth, they carried her on her bed to her husband’s house nearby, the chronicler states, since she was not ready to be churched.62 Rieder interprets this act as resulting from a fear of pollution, but personally picking up the bed of a post-partum woman does not necessarily indicate avoidance.63 Instead, I’d suggest that the men were concerned to get the woman to a place where she would receive proper care. As these examples suggest, special resources were directed to women in childbed, although again it must be noted that my sources reflect only the practices of elites. Women appear to have lain in bed for much of the lying-in period, waited on by servants or friends, and being fed special foods. Thus, as Wilson and others have suggested, lying-in represented a vacation from women’s normal duties, including, as we have seen, sexual relations. Elite women at least also appear to have had minimal responsibilities relating to their new child. It was normal to hire a nurse to care for the new baby, and according to 60 

Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume d’ Angleterre, ed. by Wilmotte, line 292–556. McCracken, The Curse of Eve, pp. 65–67, 76. 62  Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. by Halphen and Poupardin, p. 99. 63  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, pp. 29–30. 61 

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the accounts of witnesses in the proofs of age of feudal heirs, new babies often were kept away from mothers during the lying-in period, as witnesses report seeing the children in their cradle elsewhere in the house, sometimes specifically in the care of a nurse.64 For example, a member of the household, William de Fraxino, visited the nurse’s chamber on the day of the birth and saw newborn Elizabeth in her cradle.65 If there was a widespread fear of contamination by parturient women, one would expect to find systematic avoidance of them by men. This does not appear to have been the case. As I have argued elsewhere, while a wide variety of sources suggested that men should normally be excluded from the birth chamber during childbirth, men, including relatives, priests, doctors, and servants, did enter the birth chamber and might be present at births in emergency situations.66 In sources describing such situations, there is usually no implication of taboo or ritual uncleanness. This is also true of fictional literature. In twelfthand thirteenth-century fictional romances, women giving birth without female support sometimes preferred to have their male companions be elsewhere when they gave birth, as in some versions of Beves of Hamptoun,67 but sometimes, as in Guillaume d’Angleterre, they accepted the assistance of men.68 In neither case was contamination suggested as an issue, although it was emphasized in many sources that men were less knowledgeable about what needed to be done and that women might feel ashamed to be assisted by men. The birth of a child was cause for community celebration. Geoffrey de la Tour Landry in his conduct book for women urged couples not to have great feasts and celebrations, as was common, but instead to thank God piously.69 It is striking, in reading the proofs of age, how rapidly news of births was spread through the community.70 Husbands of parturient women and other members of the household shared the news of the birth with those they met and sent out messengers to inform particularly important individuals, including maternal

64 

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 62 and no. 542. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no 228. 66  Harris-Stoertz, ‘Midwives in the Middle Ages?’, pp. 74–78. 67  McCracken, The Curse of Eve, p. 86. 68  Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume d’Angleterre, ed. by Wilmotte, lines 450–92. 69  La Tour Landry, The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ch. 86, ed. by Wright, pp. 110–11. 70  For memories of birth, see Harris-Stoertz, ‘Remembering Birth’. 65 

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relatives.71 Women who had attended births would broadcast the news to their husbands, sons, masters, and neighbours.72 Neighbours learning of the birth of a child told the story at the tavern,73 in fields,74 at feasts,75 in church,76 in eyre of justices,77 to people who came to buy timber or hay or deliver ale, and even at burials.78 While post-partal women in twelfth- and thirteenth-century romances did keep to their rooms, when possible, and were represented as staying in bed, they nevertheless had both male and female visitors. In the romance of Silence, Eufemie was embarrassed when her husband visited her immediately after she gave birth,79 but in Galeran de Bretagne, Gente, a newly delivered woman, did not hesitate to send for her male servant to give him orders, although she was lying in bed and primarily attended by women. Likewise, her husband Brundoré visited her as soon as he heard of the birth and that she was unwell.80 Fifteenthcentury satires on marriage portrayed crowds of friends and midwives visiting the new mother during her lying-in, and consuming vast quantities of food and wine, as the harried husband attempted to provide for them and serve them.81 While the situations described in the literary evidence may be extraordinary, the fact that women were visited during their lying-in period by both men and women, despite theoretical ideas regarding ritual impurity, appears to be supported by other evidence. Rieder’s study of letters of remission in northern France indicates that visits were customary, both from women and sometimes from male relatives, although it is not clear from Rieder’s sources whether unrelated males also visited.82 In England during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as witnessed by the proofs of age of feudal heirs, both men and women appear to have visited women during their lying-in period. Many indi71 

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 202. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iv, no. 56. 73  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 754. 74  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iv, no. 328. 75  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iv, no. 436. 76  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 429. 77  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 487. 78  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, v, no. 421; vi, no. 190. 79  Silence, ed. and trans. by Roche-Mahdi, lines 2003–07. 80  Jean Renart, Galeran de Bretagne, lines 316–41 and 652–81. 81  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 108. 82  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, pp. 110–11. 72 

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viduals, male and female, visited after hearing news of a birth. Women of the neighbourhood came to talk to the mother in the days following childbirth.83 Men from the neighbourhood reported visiting to see the newborn heir, and at least one reported visiting the mother in childbed.84 Relatives were sent messengers, and sometimes subsequently travelled to visit mother and child. In the case of Isabel, mother of Anketin Salvayn, already mentioned, her sister and sister’s husband came for a visit as soon as they heard of the birth.85 Fathers of parturient women also visited their daughters and new grandchildren.86 The period of lying-in was a time of celebration, and individuals hearing of births often sent gifts in person or by messengers to the new mother or child. Sometimes gifts were sent to the mother by important people or family members. For example, a woman’s sister and her husband sent the new mother an unspecified gift upon hearing the news.87 Henry Tegoz sent a gift to a new mother by a servant, and a woman sent her son to deliver a present to Juliana de Clare, then in labour. 88 Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III, received a woolen robe from the merchants of the Bardi. 89 Gifts of food, including lampreys, a kid, and hens, to mothers imply a community concern that women in childbed be fed a special diet, receiving special treatment during the lying-in period. 90 In Italy women were given poultry and sweets, reflecting a belief that poultry was particularly good for new mothers. 91 The new baby also received gifts, often objects of value, such as gold rings or gold buckles or money. 92 In one case he received an ox and a cow. 93 It is striking that the gifts are specifically to mother or child, not to the father.

83 

Yorkshire Inquisitions, ed. by Brown, iii, no. XLVIII. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 62 and no. 123. 85  Yorkshire Inquisitions, ed. by Brown, iv, no. L. 86  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 123; see also iii, no. 437. 87  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 62. 88  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, iii, no. 214, and iv, no. 54. 89  Shenton, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings’, p. 108. 90  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 434. 91  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, pp. 40–41. 92  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, nos 62, 202, and 754; Yorkshire Inquisitions, ed. by Brown, iv, no. II. 93  Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vi, no. 190. 84 

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As the practices of paying visits and giving gifts to mother and child suggest, lying-in was an occasion for display for elite women, during which they advertised their wealth and status. Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III, for each of her twelve births, ordered elaborate clothing, lavishly embroidered and trimmed with furs. She additionally purchased new beds to lie in state, with silk mattresses and elaborate coverings. Her children received extravagant clothing, as well as painted and gilded cradles and beautifully worked quilts.94 The Countess of Flanders in 1281 received sumptuous bed coverings, decorated gowns, and candles.95 This echoes Musacchio’s study of Renaissance Italy, where considerable resources were expended on decorations for the birthing chamber and fine clothing and special foods and equipment for the new mother.96 Such decorations, of course, as Lee has argued, might also serve to emphasize a man’s status.97 Likewise, as Musacchio argues throughout her study of Renaissance birth, choices of décor might be intended to influence mother and offspring in positive ways.98 Still, it is clear that women received special treatment during lying-in, and were, to at least some degree, the focus of attention. As suggested by Lee and Rieder, the ritual ceremony of purification that ended the period of lying-in was to some extent a celebration of the mother and child. While the church ceremony emphasized purification and reintegration into the community after a period of impurity, churching was additionally celebrated at home with a lavish feast, to which all the notables of the community were invited. At such feasts, attended by both women and men, mother and child would have been the centre of attention. While women were to some extent segregated in the ritual of lying-in, they do not appear to have been treated as contaminated beings and had contact with both women and men. During lying-in, they were allowed luxury and leisure, and were the objects of visits, gift-giving, and community interest, and ultimately of a substantial celebration.

94 

Shenton, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings’, pp. 105–13. For these practices in later periods, see Staniland, ‘Royal Entry into the World’. 95  Rieder, On the Purification of Women, p. 109. 96  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, throughout, but especially pp. 35–57. 97  Lee, ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite’. 98  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, pp. 125–47.

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Conclusion As many anthropo­logists and historians of the early modern period have suggested, the practice of lying-in, as practised in the Middle Ages, is ambiguous in meaning. In both theory and reality it was, to some extent, a rite of segregation and exclusion. While by the high Middle Ages women had the canonical right to enter a church immediately after birth, Levitical ideas of ritual impurity resulting from blood and lust survived, bolstered by medical theories that presented women’s lochial flow as toxic and a threat to men. Women did customarily withdraw from the household behind closed doors for approximately a month, to be reintegrated only by a ceremony that emphasized their need for purification. In this, the power and purity of the clergy was accentuated, as priests had the ability both to cleanse women of impurity, but also to cut the period of lying-in short if they felt this to be necessary, overcoming the threat of women’s leaking bodies. Yet lying-in was also a time for celebration of new mothers, and a period of relaxation and recovery before women returned to their normal duties. Women received special treatment, sometimes receiving festive clothing, room decorations, and special foods, and had limited responsibilities, even in caring for the new baby. In England and France at least, some men associated with women during the period of lying-in and did not avoid them as theoretical understandings of the ritual might suggest. News of births was spread enthusiastically, and men joined with women in celebrating new mothers through visits and gifts to mother and child, and also through secular festivities associated with the ritual of purification. As such, lying-in was an opportunity for men and women to assert family prestige, through display of wealth in the lying-in chamber and purification celebrations. While to some degree lying-in was a ritual imposed on women, with negative implications, it was one that many may have welcomed and enjoyed in at least some of its manifestations.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bede, The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. by Thomas Miller (Cam­bridge, ON: In Parentheses Publications, 1999) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, vols i–xxiii (London: HMSO, 1904–55) Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume d’Angleterre, ed. by Maurice Wilmotte (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1971) Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. by Louis Halphen and René Poupardin (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1913) Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss, ed. and trans. by James Gordley (Washington, DC: Catholic Uni­ver­sity of American Press, 1993) Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Beatae Mariae Virginitate libellus epistolaris, in Patro­logiae cursus completes: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1844–64), clxxvi, cols 857–76, from Documenta Catholica Omnia, [accessed 12 January 2017] Innocent III, De contemptu mundi: sive, de miseria humanae conditionis libri tres, ed. by Johann Heinrich Achterfeldt (Bonn: Eduardum Weber, 1855) Jean Renart, Galeran de Bretagne, ed. by Lucien Foulet (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1971) Jourdain de Blaye, ed. by Peter F. Dembowski (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1991) La Tour Landry, Geoffroy de, The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. by Thomas Wright, Early English Text Society, o.s. 33, rev.  edn (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1906) ‘Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum’, in The Trotula: A Medi­eval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. by Monica  H. Green (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Penn­ sylvania, 2001), pp. 70–115 Maillart, Jehan, Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou, ed.  by Mario Roques (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1974) Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. by Richard Morris, Early English Text Society, s.s., 53 (London: N. Trubner, 1873) Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999) Roger de Hoveden, Chronica, ed. by William Stubbs, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, 51, 4 vols. (London: HMSO, 1868–71) Silence: A  Thirteenth-Century French Romance, ed. and trans. by Sarah Roche-Mahdi (East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1992) Yorkshire Inquisitions of the Reigns of Henry III and Edward I, ed.  by William Brown, 4 vols, Yorkshire Archaeo­logical and Topo­graphical Association Record Series, 12, 23, 31, 37 (York: J. Whitehead & Son, 1892–1906)

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Secondary Works Bell, Catherine, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992) Bildhauer, Bettina, Medi­eval Blood (Cardiff: Uni­ver­sity of Wales Press, 2006) Brundage, James, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medi­eval Europe (Chicago: Uni­ver­ sity of Chicago Press, 1987) Buckley, Thomas, and Alma Gottlieb, ‘A Critical Appraisal of Theories of Menstrual Symbolism’, in Blood Magic: The Anthropo­logy of Menstruation, ed. by Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1988), pp. 3–50 Cadden, Joan, The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1995) Coster, William, ‘Purity, Profanity, and Puritanism: The Churching of Women, 1500– 1700’, in Women in the Church, ed. by William, J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 377–87 Cressy, David, ‘Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, Past & Present, 141 (1993), 106–46 Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘Women on Top’, in Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1975), pp. 124–51 Desclais Berkvam, Doris, Enfance et maternité dans la litterature française des xiie et xiiie siècles (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1981) Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Lon­ don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966) Elliott, Dyan, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demono­logy in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) Espinas, Georges, La Vie urbaine de Douai au Moyen Âge, 3 vols (Paris: Picard, 1913) Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Un temps pour embrasser: Aux origines de la morale sexuelle occidentale (vie–xie siècle) (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983) Gennep, Arnold van, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1960); originally published as Les Rites de passage (Paris: Emile Noury, 1909) Gibson, Gail McMurray, ‘Blessing from Sun and Moon: Churching as Women’s Theater’, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed.  by Barbara Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis: Uni­ver­sity of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 139–57 Gravdal, Kathryn, ‘Confessing Incests: Legal Erasure and Literary Celebrations in Medi­ eval France’, in Medi­eval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children, ed. by Carol Neel (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 329–46 Green, Monica H., ‘Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medi­eval Women’s Medicine’, Studies in Medi­eval and Renaissance History, 3rd Ser., 2 (2005), 1–46 —— , ‘Flowers, Poisons, and Men: Menstruation in Medi­eval Western Europe’, in Men­ struation: A Cultural History, ed. by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie (Basing­stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 51–64

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—— , ‘Making Motherhood in Medi­eval England: The Evidence from Medicine’, in Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medi­eval Europe, 400–1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser, ed. by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (Farnham:Ashgate, 2011), pp. 173–203 Grimes, Ronald L., Deeply into the Bone: Reinventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley: Uni­ver­ sity of California Press, 2000) Harris-Stoertz, Fiona, ‘Midwives in the Middle Ages? Birth Attendants, 600–1300’, in Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. by Wendy J. Turner and Sara M. Butler (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 58–87 —— , ‘Remembering Birth in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England’, in Recon­ sidering Gender, Time, and Memory in Medi­eval Culture, ed. by Elizabeth Cox, Liz Herbert McAvoy, and Roberta Magnani (Cam­bridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 45–59 —— , ‘Suffering and Survival in Medi­eval English Childbirth’, in Medi­eval Family Roles: A Book of Essays, ed. by Cathy Jorgensen Itnyre (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 101–20 Jacquart, Danielle, and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. by Matthew Adamson (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1988); originally published as Sexualité et savoir medical au Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985) Johnson, Willis, ‘The Myth of Jewish Male Menses’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 24 (1998), 273–95 Lee, Becky R., ‘Lying-in’, in Women and Gender in Medi­eval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Margaret Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 500–501 —— , ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite: Medi­eval English Men’s Recollections Regarding the Rite of the Purification of Women after Childbirth’, Gender and History, 14 (August 2002), 224–41 —— , ‘The Purification of Women after Childbirth: A Window onto Medi­eval Percep­ tions of Women’, Florilegium, 14 (1995–96), 43–55 —— , ‘“Women Ben Purifyid of her Childeryn”: The Purification of Women after Childbirth in Medi­eval England’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, 1998) Martin, Emily, The Woman in the Body: A  Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston: Beacon, 1987) McCracken, Peggy, The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medi­eval Literature (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) McPherson, Kathryn, ‘Dramatizing Deliverance and Devotion’, in Performing Maternity in Early Modern England, ed. by Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn R. McPherson (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 131–41 Meens, Rob, ‘Questioning Ritual Purity: The Influence of Gregory the Great’s Answers to Augustine’s Queries about Childbirth, Menstruation, and Sexuality’, in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. by Richard Gameson (Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1999), pp. 174–86 Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999)

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Niccoli, Ottavia, ‘Menstruum quasi monstruum: Monstrous Births and Menstrual Taboo in the Sixteenth Century’, in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1990), pp. 1–25 Parsons, John Carmi, ‘Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power’, in Medi­eval Queenship, ed. by John Carmi Parsons (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 63–78 —— , ‘The Year of Eleanor of Castile’s Birth and her Children by Edward I’, Medi­eval Studies, 46 (1984), 245–65 Payer, Pierre, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto: Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Press, 1984) Pierce, Joanne, ‘“Green Women” and Blood Pollution: Some Medi­eval Rituals for the Church­ing of Women after Childbirth’, Studia Liturgica, 29 (1999), 191–215 Rieder, Paula M., On the Purification of Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994) Ross, D. J. A. ‘Blood in the Sea: An Episode in “Jourdain de Blaivies”’, Modern Language Review, 66 (1971), 532–41 Rublack, Ulinka, ‘Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany’, Past and Present, 150 (1996), 84–110 Shenton, Caroline, ‘Philippa of Hainault’s Churchings: The Politics of Motherhood at the Court of Edward III’, in Family and Dynasty in Late Medi­eval England: Proceedings of the 1997 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Richard Eales and Shaun Tyas (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), pp. 105–21 Staniland, Kay, ‘Royal Entry into the World’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), pp. 297–313 Wilson, Adrian, ‘The Ceremony of Childbirth’, in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, ed.  by Valerie Fildes (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 68–107 —— , ‘Participant or Patient: Seventeenth-Century Childbirth from the Mother’s Point of View’, in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Eng­ land, ed. by Roy Porter (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1985), pp. 129–44 —— , Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) Wood, Charles T., ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma: Sin Salvation and the Menstrual Cycle in Medi­eval Thought’, Speculum, 56 (1981), 710–27 Youngs, Deborah, ‘Life Cycle’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Middle Ages, ed. by Louise Wilkinson (Oxford: Berg, 2010), pp. 109–26

Mary and Eve: The Permanence of the First Mother in Armenian Apocryphal Infancy Gospels Valentina Calzolari

English translation by Dr Irene Tinti (Uni­ver­sity of Geneva)

T

he development of the representation of the Nativity is based to a degree on the contribution of various canonical and apocryphal narratives. This paper will deal primarily with the Armenian textual tradition, which contributes an especially interesting group of characters and perspectives to the Nativity scene. In these texts, the figure of the midwife, who is present at Jesus’ birth but does not play an active role in the delivery of the Child, is crucial. Moreover, according to the Armenian Infancy Gospel, Eve, the ‘mother of mankind’, was the first to witness Jesus’ birth, together with Joseph. Eve’s presence, which is attested only in the Armenian tradition, is meant to stress the importance of Mary as the antithesis of Eve herself. The theme of virginity is at the core of this juxtaposition: since Eve was a virgin at the time of her disobedience, it was necessary that the Redeemer of humanity be born from a virginal body. This juxtaposition is also attested in Armenian icono­graphy: in medi­eval Gospel illuminations, Eve is often portrayed close to the child and the Virgin Mary, while Joseph is normally farther away from the scene. A detailed analysis of Nativity icono­graphy in Armenian milieus would exceed the scope of the present contribution, which instead focuses on the principal themes borrowed from apocryphal texts. Valentina Calzolari is Professor of Armenian Studies at the Uni­ver­sity of Geneva. One of her

main fields of specialization is Christian apocryphal literature. She is currently President of the Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC).

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 249–284 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117825

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Early Narratives of the Birth of Christ Jesus’ birth is recounted, albeit with some differences, in both canonical and apocryphal texts.1 The apocryphal tradition provides more information and recounts not only the birth itself, but also episodes from Jesus’ childhood, as well as the stories of Mary’s birth and infancy. The origin of these apocryphal traditions can be traced back to the first centuries of Christianity. In a few cases, canonical and early apocryphal narratives may depend on the same sources.2 The earliest apocryphal Greek text (second century), known as the Protevangelium of James,3 was the source of many versions and revisions during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages — in Greek, Latin, and several Oriental languages, including Armenian. It was actually translated twice into the latter language, and that is in itself unusual.4 The Armenian tradition also includes a work known as Infancy Gospel, which is not otherwise attested, and whose origin is still disputed. The Armenian corpus includes two versions of the Protevangelium of James, 5 five brief narratives (on the Annunciation, the Birth of Jesus, the 1  For a synoptic presentation of the narratives on the birth of Jesus, in both canonical and apocryphal traditions, see Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, pp. 54–56. 2  This is the case of the narratives included in the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah 11. 2–18 (a Christian text dating back to the beginning of the second century), and in the canonical Gospel of Matthew 1. 18–25, which are probably based on a common Greek source. See Norelli, ‘Les Plus Anciennes Traditions sur la naissance de Jésus et leur rapport avec les testimonia’; cf. also Norelli, ‘Avant le canonique et l’apocryphe’; Winling, ‘Le Protévangile de Jacques’. 3  This title was chosen by Guillaume Postel, who discovered the Greek text and provided its first Latin translation (published in 1552 by Bibliander, Proteuangelium siue de natalibus Iesu Christi). Since James, ‘brother of the Lord’, is mentioned at the end of the work (ch. 25), the text was originally attributed to him. The original title is The Nativity of Mary (Γήννα Μαρίας): see Backus, ‘Guillaume Postel, Théodore Bibliander et le Protévangile de Jacques’. The Greek text of the Protevangelium was edited by de Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques. See also the commentaries by Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi, and Amann, Le Protévangile de Jacques. 4  The Armenian text of the Protevangelium of James was edited by Tayec‘i and translated into Latin by Hans Quecke, in de Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques, pp. 441–73. 5  One is preserved in a fragmentary state: textual form A (BHO 613, cf.  Protevangelium of James 1–24. 3, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 237–50); the other is attested in two forms of different length: textual form B (BHO 611, cf. Protevangelium of James 1–24. 4, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 250–64) and textual form C (BHO 614, Protevangelium of James 1–6, with 2. 2–3 omitted, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 264–67).

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Visit of the Magi, the Flight to Eg ypt), 6 and the Infancy Gospel, which is attested in four different forms.7 It is still unclear whether the Infancy Gospel is an original Armenian text, directly connected with the Protevangelium of James, or, rather, is a translation based on a lost source, either Greek or Syriac.8 Among the elements that could support (but not prove) a Syriac origin are the testimonies of some medi­eval Armenian chroniclers, who link these narratives to Nestorian groups of Syrian origin.9 In particular, Samuel of Ani’s testimony (c. 1100–c. 1180 ce), itself based on an earlier testimony by Yovhannēs Sarkawag (c. 1050–1129 ce), is often adduced. According to Samuel, at the end of the sixth century (c. 590/91 ce) Nestorian agents coming from Syria brought heretical texts to Armenia. Before being expelled from the country, they managed to recruit some proselytes, who translated their writings. Samuel lists sixteen texts, the identification of which is still mostly uncertain.10 A work 6 

(1) ‘On the Angel bearer of good Tidings and the Predication of the Pregnancy of the holy Virgin Mary the Mother of God’, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 267–77 (cf. Infancy Gospel A, chs 5. 1–10 and 11. 16–25); (2) ‘The Coming of the Magi to the Adoration of Christ’, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 278–84 (cf. Infancy Gospel A, ch. 11. 1–9, 12–21, 25); (3) ‘On the Kings Magi, how they came with their Soldiers to Jerusalem’, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 284–95 (cf. Infancy Gospel A, ch. 11. 1–20, 22–25); (4) ‘History of the Coming of the Kings Magi to the Adoration of the newborn King’, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 296–306 (cf. Infancy Gospel A, ch. 11. 1–25); (5) ‘History of the Escape of the Lord from Herod to Egypt’, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 306–12 (cf. Infancy Gospel B, ch. 16; A, ch. 16. 2, 3 (abbreviated), 4–5). 7  I follow here the description of the Armenian corpus provided by Abraham Terian on the basis of nearly forty unpublished witnesses (The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. xxvi, n. 51). The four recensions are known as recension A (CANT 59, 1), recension B (BHO 617; cf. Tayec‘i’s recension A, Infancy Gospel (Armenian Text), pp. 1–126); recension C (i.e. an extended version of recensions A and B), and recension D (CANT 59, 2; BHO 618; cf. Tayec‘i’s recension B, pp. 127–235). Cf. The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, pp. xxvii–xxx. 8  For an overview of the question, see Calzolari, ‘Les Récits apocryphes de l’enfance’, pp. 565–67, from which I borrow other evidence contained in this article. 9  This is a very complex question. On the basis of some theo­logical, linguistic, and textual elements, it may be argued that the extant text is the result of several modifications, most of which date back to the Middle Ages. See Évangiles apocryphes, trans. by Peeters, pp. xl–xliii and xlvi. On the theo­logical contents of the work, see also Dorfmann-Lazarev, ‘La Transmission de l’apocryphe de l’Enfance’, Dorfmann-Lazarev, ‘The Cave of the Nativity Revisited’, and The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, pp. xviii–xxv. 10  Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, pp. 109–14; see also Anasyan, Armenian Biblio­logy, i, p. xxxix; Stone, ‘Armenian Canon Lists VI’, pp. 487–89; Stone, ‘L’Étude du canon arménien’.

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called Infancy of the Lord is mentioned among others,11 but it is impossible to identify it with any certainty. In the twelfth century an Armenian Church Father, Sargis Šnorhali, mentioned a Book on the Infancy of Christ in a note devoted to admissible and inadmissible texts, added to the Preface to his Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles.12 Among the inadmissible texts he mentions ‘The Feast of Mary (and the Gospel called of Thomas),13 the Book on the Infancy of Christ, and other similar works. Under the pretence of truth’, he contends, ‘the promulgators wished to introduce what the Church of God had not accepted: the intoxication of wickedness and the evil noxious weed’.14 In the absence of precise textual quotations, it is impossible to ascertain which, if any, work on the infancy of Christ was known to Šnorhali in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century, a text called Infancy of Jesus figures in a list of non-canonical writings compiled by Mxit‘ar Ayrivanec‘i.15 As for the transmission and reception of the Armenian Infancy narratives, it is worth recalling that a copy of the Infancy Gospel, copied by the scribe Barunak of Erzinka in 1821, was burned by order of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople.16 Despite the Armenian Church Fathers’ reservations and the censure of ecclesiastical authorities, the Armenian tradition was heavily influenced by apocryphal narratives and particularly by the Infancy Gospel, whose impact can be seen in liturgical literature and in icono­graphy. Before addressing this topic, however, it is necessary to present the main features of these apocryphal narratives of Christ’s birth — especially of the Protevangelium of James — in order to determine which of these features are also present in the Armenian milieu, and which aspects differentiate the Armenian traditions from others, particularly the Greek.

11 

This witness has been added to the list of canonical and uncanonical writings compiled by Mxit‘ar Ayrivanec‘i (1222–c. 1290): see Stone, ‘Armenian Canon Lists III’ and Stone, ‘Armenian Canon Lists VI’, pp. 477–91. 12  Šnorhali, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, pp. 398–99 (in Armenian). The title does not exactly match the one mentioned by Samuel of Ani. 13  This is probably an allusion to the Paidika Iesou (or Infancy Gospel of Thomas), attested in Greek and Latin: see Burke, De infantia Iesu euangelium Thomae graece; Voicu, ‘Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha’. 14  Šnorhali, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, pp. 398–99. 15  See Stone, ‘Armenian Canon Lists III’ and Stone, ‘Armenian Canon Lists VI’. 16  Infancy Gospel (Armenian Text), ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. vii–viii.

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The Protevangelium of James and, to an even greater extent, the Infancy Gospel expound on the narrative of Jesus’ birth, adding elements that are not attested by canonical tradition.17 Although this study will not present a detailed analysis of textual differences or common elements between the canonical Gospels and the Apocrypha,18 it is important to remember that only Luke 1–2 and Matthew 1–2 provide any information on the birth of Jesus. According to Luke (2. 1–7), Mary puts the newborn into a manger, while according to Matthew (1. 24–25), the Magi — unmentioned in the other texts — find the infant in a house. In some early patristic and apocryphal traditions the baby is instead born in a cave.19 Furthermore, Luke stresses the role of Mary, adding the episodes of the Visitation and the Annunciation, whereas Matthew emphasizes the role of Joseph — who receives the announcement — and Jesus’ descent from David through Joseph himself. In the apocryphal tradition, on the other hand, Jesus’ birth narrative is enriched with further details and additional characters, such as a midwife and, occasionally, a second woman, friend of the former. The presence of a midwife in the Greek Protevangelium of James has been long remarked by scholars. According to this narrative, while Mary and Joseph are travelling towards Bethlehem, Mary goes into labour; Joseph places her in a cave and leaves to find a midwife. The text actually stresses the fact that he seeks a Jewish midwife. Having met with one, he asks her to accompany him back to the cave (19. 1): Καὶ εἶδον γυναῖκα καταβαίνουσαν ἀπὸ τῆς ὀρεινῆς, καὶ εἶπέν μοι· ‘Ἄνθρωπε, ποῦ πορεύῃ;’ Καὶ εἶπον· ‘Μαῖαν ζητῶ Ἑβραίαν.’ Καὶ ἀποκριθεῖσα εἶπέν μοι· ‘Ἐξ Ἰσραὴλ 17 

It should be pointed out that we are here using categories (and labels) that are chrono­ logically subsequent to the redaction of both the Gospels that would come to be considered as canonical, and the earliest apocryphal texts. Among the latter, the Protevangelium of James ‘continued to circulate widely among Greek-speaking Christians, without being defined as an apocryphal’ (Norelli, Marie des apocryphes, p. 34 n. 3). By the end of the second century, a canon of four Gospels already existed: see Koester, ‘From the Kerygma-Gospel to Written Gospels’; Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels; Stanton, ‘The Fourfold Gospel’; Stanton, ‘Jesus Traditions and Gospels in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus’. On the formation of the New Testament canon as a whole, see Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons; Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament. Among more recent studies, see at least those collected by Aragione, Junod, and Norelli, Le Canon du Nouveau Testament; Auwers and De Jonge, The Biblical Canons; McDonald, The Biblical Canon; Norelli, Recueils normatifs et canons dans l’Antiquité. See also Le Boulluec, ‘Le Problème de l’extension du canon des écrits aux premiers siècles’. 18  For such an analysis, see Brown, The Birth of the Messiah. 19  The element of the cave is already present in Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. by Marcovich, 78. 5; cf. Origen, Against Celsum, 1. 51.

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εἶ;’ Καὶ εἶπον αὐτῇ· ‘Ναί.’ Ἡ δὲ εἶπεν· ‘Καὶ τίς ἐστιν ἡ γεννῶσα ἐν τῷ σπηλαίῳ;’ Καὶ εἶπον ἐγώ· ‘Ἡ μεμνηστευμένη μοι.’ Καὶ εἶπεν μοι· ‘Οὐκ ἔστι σου γυνή;’ Καὶ εἶπον αὐτῇ· ‘Μαρία ἐστίν, ἡ ἀνατραφεῖσα ἐν [τῷ] ναῷ Κυρίου. Καὶ ἐκληρωσάμην αὐτὴν γυναῖκα, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν μου γυνή, ἀλλὰ σύλλημα ἔχει ἐκ Πνεύματος ἁγίου.’ Καὶ εἶπεν ἡ μαῖα· ‘Τοῦτο ἀληθές;’ Καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ Ἰωσήφ· ‘Δεῦρο καὶ ἴδε’. (Protevangelium of James, ed. by de Strycker, pp. 150. 20–154. 3) [And behold, a woman came down from the hill-country and said to me, ‘Man, where are you going?’ And I said, ‘I seek a Hebrew midwife.’ And she answered me, ‘Are you from Israel?’ And I said to her, ‘Yes.’ And she said, ‘And who is she who brings forth in the cave?’ And I said, ‘My betrothed.’ And she said to me, ‘Is she not your wife?’ And I said to her, ‘She is Mary, who was brought up in the Temple of the Lord, and I received her by lot as my wife, and she is not my wife, but she has conceived by the Holy Spirit.’ And the midwife said to him, ‘Is this true?’ And Joseph said to her, ‘Come and see’.]20

They both return to the cave to find it surrounded by a cloud of light. At this sight, the midwife acknowledges the miraculous birth, and cries out: ‘My soul is magnified today, for my eyes have seen wonderful things; for salvation is born to Israel’ (‘Ἐμεγαλύνθη ἡ ψυχή μου σήμερον, ὅτι εἶδον οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου παράδοξα σήμερον, ὅτι σωτηρία τῷ Ἰσραὴλ γεγένηται’: Protevangelium of James, ed. by de Strycker, p. 154. 9–13). The cloud gradually dissipates, leaving behind a bright light; in the middle of it the baby can be seen, being fed by his mother. Then the midwife adds (19. 2): ‘This day is great for me, because I have seen this new sight’ (‘Ὡς μεγάλη ἡ σήμερον ἡμέρα, ὅτι εἶδον τὸ καινὸν θέαμα τοῦτο’: Protevangelium of James, ed. by de Strycker, p. 156. 6a–8). Upon leaving the cave, the midwife meets a friend, Salome, and tells her about the virginal birth. Sceptical, Salome enters the cave, wishing to personally verify Mary’s virginity, but her hand becomes paralysed, as punishment for her incredulity. Salome immediately repents and recognizes the truth of the midwife’s words. She then implores the infant, and her hand is healed (19. 3). The episode of the midwife and her friend is also present, with a few variations, in other apocryphal narratives. Thus, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 13. 2–14. 5 (a Latin rewriting of the Greek Protevangelium of James, probably redacted in the early seventh century)21 mentions two midwives, Zelomi and Salome, without giving any information as to their ethnicity. In the Arabic 20  English translation by Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, p. 69. 21  Edition by Gijsel, Libri de Nativitate Mariae.

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Figure 10.1. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 206, ‘Bible of Gladzor’, fol. 443r (1318). Reproduced with permission of the Director of the Matenadaran, Vahan Ter-Ghevondian.

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Figure 10.2. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 212, ‘Gospel of Avag’, fols 20v–21r (1337). Reproduced with permission of the Director of the Matenadaran, Hratchia Tamrazyan.

Infancy Gospel 2. 5–3. 1, Joseph meets an old Jewish woman, originally from Jerusalem, and returns with her to the cave.22 The narratives attested in the medi­e val codex Hereford, Cathedral Library, O.3.9 and in London, BL, MS Arundel 404 also mention the midwife’s Jewish origin.23 The woman, called Zelam in Hereford MS O.3.9 and Zachel in MS Arundel 404 and often translated as Zelomi, confirms that Mary has remained a virgin throughout conception and childbirth and is still a virgin afterwards, as proclaimed by the Lateran Council of 649. Thus, these narratives insist on Mary’s virginal state ante par22 

On the Arabic Infancy Gospel, translated from Syriac, see Il vangelo arabo dell’infanzia, ed. by Provera; see Genequand, ‘Vie de Jésus en arabe’ (with a biblio­graphy). 23  BHL 5345 m and 5345 p; CANT 53; Liber de nativitate Marie, ed. by McNamara and Kaestli. The two MSS were identified and published for the first time by Montague Rhodes James in 1927 ( James, Latin Infancy Gospels).

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tum, in partu, and post partum to use a well-attested termino­logy, whereas canonical writings (Mt 1. 18; Lk 1. 35) only mention a virginal conception (virginity ante partum):24 Dominus Deus magne, miserere, quoniam hoc nunquam nec auditum adhuc nec uisum est, sed neque in suspicionem habitum, ut mamille plene sint lacte et natus masculus suam matrem uirginem ostendat. Nulla pollucio sanguinis facte est in nascente, nullus dolor in parturiente apparuit. Virgo concepit, uirgo peperit et postea quam peperit uirgo perdurat. (Liber de nativitate Marie, § 69, 12–18) [Lord, great God, have mercy, because never has this been heard, nor seen, nor even dreamed of, until now, that the breasts should be full of milk and a male child, after birth, should make his mother known to be a virgin. There was no offering of blood in the birth,25 no pain occurred in the parturition. A virgin conceived, a virgin has given birth and after she gave birth, she remained a virgin.]26

Early illustrations of the Nativity scene from the medi­eval period seem to bring attention to the two midwives from the apocryphal story. Many illuminations both in the East and in the West also include the washing of the Infant, performed by two women. The scene is meant to highlight Jesus’ human nature. Since it is not directly based on any apocryphal narrative, several hypotheses have been put forward concerning its origin;27 in any case, it can evoke the two midwives of the Apocrypha28 (for example, Figures 10.1–4). In an illumination from Vaspurakan one of the women is bald, and her face is in profile. This portrayal, normally reserved to Judas, is used to depict in a negative light the

24 

For a summary of the question of Mary’s virginity, see Mimouni, ‘La Virginité de Marie entre textes et contextes’. For a recent contribution on Mary’s purity, see also Vuong, Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James. 25  This aspect is not present in all the ancient sources that mention the birth of Jesus. For example, Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ, ed. by Mahé, 23. 2, 4) admitted the virginal conception, but not Mary’s virginity in partu: cf. Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, pp. 81–82; Mimouni, ‘La Virginité de Marie entre textes et contextes’, p. 45. 26  English translation by Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, p. 79. 27  Nordhagen, ‘The Origin of the Washing of the Child in the Nativity Scene’; Réau, Icono­ graphie de l’art chrétien, pp. 220–24. 28  See also — with a variation — the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 13 and the Protevangelium of James 19–20. The Armenian Infancy Gospel 9. 3 simply states that Eve took the child, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and placed him in the manger, without mentioning the washing.

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Figure 10.3. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 5786, ‘Royal Gospel of Sis’, fol. 17r (1336). Reproduced with permission of the Director of the Matenadaran, Hratchia Tamrazyan.

Mary and Eve

Figure 10.4. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 7736, ‘Mugna Gospel’, fol. 12 (c. 1357). Photo Hrair Hawk Khacherian from the archives of Dickran Kouymjian, Paris.

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midwife who had doubted Mary’s virginity.29 Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 212 ‘Gospel of Avag’, fols 20v–21r (Figure 10.2), dating from 1337, shows an older woman pouring water and essentially isolated outside the frame of the holy event, while Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 5786, ‘Royal Gospel of Sis’, fol. 17r (Figure 10.3), shows the child on the lap of an old woman with long, grey hair, bare breasted and wrapped in a sort of toga, while two women in contemporary clothes prepare the bath. The identification of these women needs further inquiries; however, it is interesting to mention that there is at least one illumination which adds the names of the two characters: the woman holding the baby is Eve and the other one is Salome, the midwife (Figure 10.4).30 Mary’s Virginity Several scholars have remarked upon the Jewish origin of the woman who confirms the miraculous character of Jesus’ birth. This detail has been examined in relation to the accusations made against Mary in some non-Christian Jewish circles.31 According to these rumours, Mary had engaged in an illicit relationship with a Roman soldier named Panthera, and thus conceived Jesus. The allegation was also bought forth by anti-Christian Polemicists such as Celsus.32 Specialists in Christian origins consider this connection with Jewish culture, already underlined by Tertullian (On Spectacles 30. 6), the Acts of Pilate (2. 3–5), and the Toledot Yeshu, likely to be intentional.33 Thus, the midwife’s Jewish origin reveals the probable apo­logetic intent of the Protevangelium of James: being Jewish, she can credibly attest as to Jesus’ virginal birth, and thus to Mary’s being innocent of the accusations made against her. 29 

Protevangelium of James 19–20; cf. the Armenian Infancy Gospel 9. See Zakaryan, ‘Les Miniatures du Vaspourakan et les apocryphes’, pp. 176–77 and pl. 6 (MS Mat. 5332, dated to 1357). 30  Quoted in Kouymjian, ‘Some Icono­graphical Questions’, pp. 122–24 and p. 135, pl. 5. Picture at the Index of Armenian Art, [accessed 9 January 2019]. 31  This accusation was also made by some non-Christian Greeks: see Mimouni, ‘La Virginité de Marie entre textes et contextes’, pp. 42–43. 32  Celsus, The True Doctrine (c. 170–80), ap. Origenes, Against Celsus, ed. by Marcovich, 1. 28, 32. 33  See Norelli, Marie des apocryphes, p. 51. On the Toledot Yeshu, see for example Alexander, ‘Jesus and his Mother in the Jewish Anti-Gospel (the Toledot Yeshu)’; Di Segni, Il Vangelo del Ghetto; Osier, Jésus raconté par les Juifs; Toledot Ieshu, ed. by Krauss.

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The Protevangelium, as well as other apocryphal texts, puts special emphasis on Mary’s purity.34 Its author recalls that Mary has been preserved from any contamination since her early childhood, first in her parents’ house, which had been turned into a sanctuary, then in the Temple, and, finally, after her wedding, in Joseph’s house. Because of her purity, Mary has the honour of spinning the scarlet and purple threads of the veil of the Temple. The topic of Mary’s virginity is an ancient one, as attested by Christian apocryphal texts such as the Ascension of Isaiah (second century), based on earlier sources (testimonia) on which Matthew’s Gospel also depends.35 Mary’s Painless Childbirth in the Apocryphal Tradition The absence of pain is an important element in the narrative and is present in other ancient apocryphal traditions, such as the Ascension of Isaiah and the Odes of Solomon, as well as in Christian authors such as Irenaeus (second century). According to Jennifer Glancy, despite the assumption that the pain associated with childbearing is a consequence of sin,36 transmitted by Eve to future generations, no links exist between the accounts of a painless delivery and an Eve– Mary parallelism.37 Instead, this particular description of childbearing should be linked to Jewish sources, such as ii Baruch (late first century) and Isaiah, as ii Baruch looks forward to the restoration of the messianic age. In this context, the author promises: ‘And women shall no longer have pain when they bear | Nor shall they suffer torment when they yield the fruit of the womb’ (73. 7). According to Glancy, ‘while the passage does not associate painless childbirth with the redemption of sin, it does associate painless childbirth with restoration of a primordial paradise, a return to an Edenic state’.38 She also points out another biblical quotation announcing a painless birth, that is, the prophecy of Isaiah 66. 7: ‘Before she goes into labour, she gives birth | before the pains come upon her, she delivered a son | Who has heard of such a thing?’. Comparing this passage with Isaiah 66. 8b (‘Shall a land be born in one day? | Shall a nation be

34 

Glancy (Corporal Knowledge, p. 81) described the Protevangelium of James as ‘a work obsessed by Mary’s purity’. 35  See above, note 2. 36  Gen 3. 66 (God to Eve): ‘In pain you shall bring forth children’. 37  Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, pp. 91–93. 38  Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, p. 91.

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delivered in one moment? | Yet as soon as Zion was in labour she delivered her children’), Glancy remarks: Isaiah does not speak to the guilt or innocence of a human mother, nor does he refer to sin or its redemption, nor does he evoke return to Eden. Rather, his emphasis in this passage is on rapid restoration and vindication of the people of Israel. Although he alludes to a painless birth, his emphasis is not the painlessness of the delivery so much as its speed.39

Glancy also states that Irenaeus, in the second century ce, had already established a link between Mary’s painless delivery and this passage from Isaiah, considering the former as fulfilling the prophecy expressed in the latter: Although Irenaeus elsewhere argues that Mary looses the knot first tied by Eve, he does not connect the Eve–Mary typo­logy to painless birth. Rather, his purpose in suggesting that Mary delivers Jesus without pain is to suggest that the nativity fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of a fast, easy delivery. Irenaeus emphasizes the unexpectedness of the birth of a child to a virgin. In accordance with prophecy, that unexpectedness was intensified by the speed of the delivery.40

Armenian Apocryphal Narratives The Armenian tradition includes all the elements addressed so far, and more.41 The Armenian Infancy Gospel (8. 10) includes the episode of the search for a midwife but adds an important detail to it. While walking back with Joseph, the woman reveals her identity: Ew ibrew gnac‘in nok‘a erkok‘ean, zčanaparhayn eharc‘ c‘na Yovsēp‘ ew asē. Kin du patmea inj zanuanē k‘ummē. zi gitac‘ic‘, t‘ē ov es du: Asē kinn. Zi harc‘anes zis zanuanē immē. es em naxamayrn amenec‘un Ewa, ew eki tesanel ač‘ōk‘ imovk‘ zp‘rkut‘iwn im, or gorcec‘aw inj. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 38. 10–15) [And as the two went together, Joseph asked her on the way and said: ‘Woman tell me your name that I may know who you are’. The woman said: ‘Why are you asking

39 

Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, p. 91. Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, p. 92. 41  This overview is not meant to be exhaustive. Among other common elements, it is worth mentioning at least the suspension of time during the birth of Jesus, which is attested both in the Protevangelium of James (see Bovon, ‘The Suspension of Time’ and Bovon, ‘La Suspension du temps’) and in the Armenian Infancy Gospel (8. 8). 40 

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me? I am Eve, the foremother of all, and I have come to behold with my own eyes the redemption that is wrought on my behalf.]42

Thus, the ‘foremother of all’ has the privilege of assisting at Jesus’s birth and being its first witness, together with Joseph (9. 1): Ew ibrew zayn teseal Yovsēp ew naxamōrn, ankeal yerkir eresac‘ paganēin ew gohanalov i jayn mec p‘aṙawor aṙnēin zAstuac ew asēin. ōrhneal es Tēr Astuac harc‘n meroc‘ Astuac Israyeli or ararer aysōr p‘rkut‘iwn ordwoc mardkan i galstean k‘um. Ew verstin norogec‘er ew kangnec‘er zis i glormanē anti, ew hastatec‘er yaṙaǰin p‘aṙs: Ayžm mecac‘aw anjn im ew c‘ncac‘aw yoys im Astuac p‘rkič‘ im. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 39. 1–10) [When Joseph and the foremother heard and saw this, they bowed down and fell prostrate, and raising their voices they blessed God saying: ‘Blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, who today wrought salvation to the children of men by your coming’. (Eve added) ‘And you restored me from that fall and established (me) in my former glory. Now my soul has been magnified and my hope has been gladdened in God my Saviour.]43

It is Eve who holds Jesus and swaddles him, before putting him into the manger (9. 3):44 Ew naxamayrn emut i yayrn, ew aṙeal zmanukn i girks iwr xandałatelov gguēr zna ew hamburēr ew ōrhnēr zAstuac. zi ēr manukn kari yoyž gełec‘ik tesleamb paycaṙ ew vayeluč‘, zuart‘ eresōk‘. ew pateal zna xanjarrovk‘ ed i msur ezanc‘. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 39. 21–26) [And the foremother entered the cave and took the infant into her lap, hugged him tenderly and kissed him and blessed God. The child looked beautiful, bright, full of grace, and happy in countenance. And she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger of the oxen.]45

It is still Eve who announces the miraculous virginal birth to Salome, ‘a woman who was coming from the city of Jerusalem’ (‘kin mi i k‘ałak‘ēn yErusałemē’, 42 

The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 44. The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 44. 44  According to another Armenian apocryphal tradition, Eve’s bones were buried at the entrance to the cave of the Nativity, whereas Adam’s are under Golgotha: see Stone, ‘The Bones of Adam and Eve’, pp. 241–44; cf. Dorfmann-Lazarev, ‘La Transmission de l’apocryphe de l’Enfance’, p. 565. 45  The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 45. 43 

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Figure 10.5. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 316, ‘Gospel of Artsakh’, fol. 3r (fourteenth century). Reproduced with permission of the Director of the Matenadaran, Hratchia Tamrazyan.

Mary and Eve

Figure 10.6. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4820, ‘Gospel of Artsakh (?)’, fol. 1r (fourteenth century). Reproduced with permission of the Director of the Matenadaran, Vahan Ter-Ghevondian.

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Figure 10.7. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4806, ‘Gospel of Berdak’, fol. 5v (1306). Photo by Hrair Hawk Khacherian from the archives of Dickran Kouymjian, Paris.

Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 40. 2): ‘I bring you recent good news: a virgin who had never known a man gave birth to a male child’ (9. 3; ‘K‘ez nor irs xndut‘ean awetis tam. or koys mi ałǰik manuk cnaw i yayrin, or bnaw wayr oč‘gitē’, Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 40. 4–6; cf. Protevangelium of James 19. 2). The presence of Eve, who overtakes and exceeds the Jewish midwife Zachel/ Zelomi’s role as she witnesses the birth together with Joseph, is not (only) meant to prove Mary’s innocence. The apo­logetic implications of the Protevangelium of James are not emphasized in the Armenian text, which dates back to a different time and addresses a different audience. The meeting of Eve and Mary should rather be read in light of its soterio­logical implications: this unprecedented element stresses Mary’s role in the redemption of mankind. It is not surprising that the character of Eve, which is central to Armenian apocryphal narratives, should also appear in illuminations. Eve is present in the Nativity scene in a few manu­scripts, where her face is close to the manger (Figures 10.5–6) and is sometimes accompanied by a caption clarifying her identity: the image in Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4820 has the legend ‘Eve’ (Figure 10.6), while MS 316 specifies ‘Eve’s head’ by the drawing (Figure 10.5).

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Figure 10.8. ‘Nativity’, Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 10670, ‘Gospel of Hovsian’, fol. 2 (13th–14th centuries). Photo by Hrair Hawk Khacherian from the archives of Dickran Kouymjian, Paris.

In these illuminations from the Gospel of Artsakh, Eve is represented by a disembodied head, set below the manger and opposite to Mary. Moreover, in at least two manu­scripts of the fourteenth century, Eve — the full figure and only the head — is between the Virgin with the baby and the Magi.46 In one case (Figure 10.7) she is leading the Magi,47 and in the other one (Figure 10.8), she is next to the Virgin and is followed by Joseph and the Magi.48 The representation of Joseph (or lack thereof ) is also significant.49 In the illuminations of several Armenian manu­scripts, he is not present in the Nativity scene. This might be a reference to his being absent from the actual birth, according to the Protevangelium;50 it can also underline the lack of any 46 

About the Magi, see below. Quoted in Kouymjian, ‘Some Icono­graphical Questions’, p. 122, n. 9 and p. 134, pl. 3. 48  Quoted in Kouymjian, ‘Some Icono­graphical Questions’, p. 122, n. 9 and p. 134, pl. 4. 49  Testini, ‘Alle origini dell’iconografia di Giuseppe di Nazareth’. 50  See Protevangelium of James 18. 2–19. 1. 47 

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earthly paternity in the conception and birth of Jesus. When he is included in the illuminations, he is pictured sometimes at the same level as Mary (Figure 10.5), and sometimes at the bottom of the scene, sitting, with his face tilted forward and supported by his hand. The origin of this representation of Joseph’s Distress is unclear; it is therefore not certain whether it is linked to the anxiety he suffered upon finding out about Mary’s pregnancy, as portrayed in apocryphal narratives (Figures 10.1–4, 10.6).51 Parallels between Eve and Mary, and Adam and Jesus, within the Plan for the Redemption of Mankind While Eve’s presence at the Nativity is a unique feature of the Armenian Infancy Gospel, the parallel between Eve and Mary is not. It is presupposed, albeit implicitly, by Joseph’s reaction upon learning of Mary’s pregnancy in the Protevangelium of James (13. 1): Ποίῳ προσώπῳ ἀτενίσω πρὸς Κύριον τὸν Θεόν; Τί ἄρα εὔξομαι περὶ αὐτῆς; Ὅτι παρθένον παρέλαβον ἐκ ναοῦ Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἐφύλαξα αὐτήν. Τίς ὁ θηρεύσας με; Τίς τὸ πονηρὸν τοῦτο ἐποίησεν ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ μου; καὶ ἐμίανεν αὐτήν; Μήτι ἐν ἐμοὶ ἀνεκεφαλαιώθη ἱστορία ; Ὥσπερ γὰρ Ἀδὰμ ἦν ἐν τῇ ὥρᾳ τῆς δοξολογίας αὐτοῦ καὶ ἦλθεν ὁ ὄφις καὶ εὗρεν τὴν Εὔαν μόνην καὶ ἐξηπάτησεν αὐτὴν καὶ ἐμίανεν αὐτήν, οὕτως κἀμοὶ συνέβη. (Protevangelium of James, ed. by de Strycker, pp. 122. 2–124. 16) [With what countenance shall I look towards the Lord my God? What prayer shall I offer for this maiden? For I received her as a virgin out of the Temple of the Lord my God and have not protected her. Who has deceived me? Who has done this evil in my house and defiled the virgin? Has the story of Adam been repeated in me? For as Adam was absent in the hour of his prayer and the serpent came and found Eve alone and deceived her, so also has it happened to me.]52

The parallel between Mary and Eve, alluded to in the Protevangelium and made explicit in the Armenian Infancy Gospel, is already present in Greek and Latin Church Fathers, such as Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, from the second century onwards.53 Relying on the teachings of Paul, these authors argue that, 51 

Testini, ‘Alle origini dell’iconografia di Giuseppe di Nazareth’, pp. 332–33. Armenian Infancy Gospel 6; cf. Protevangelium of James 13. 52  English translation by Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, p. 43. 53  Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. by Marcovich, 100. 4–5; Irenaeus, Against Heresies,

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since death has entered the world and affected all humanity because of one man, Adam, mankind must be redeemed from sin and delivered from death through one man, Jesus (Rom 5. 12, 17–19; i Cor 15. 21–22, 45–49). Since Jesus is the new Adam, come into the world to redeem mankind, Mary is the new Eve, who has accepted the word of God as related by the angel, conceived Jesus, and thus made the redemption of mankind possible through her obedience. The element of the virginal birth is central to this typo­logy: since Eve was a virgin when she disobeyed and let herself be tempted by the serpent, the Redeemer must be born of a virgin. The resulting image of Mary is thus closely linked to Christo­logy and Jesus’ redemptive work. In the Armenian Infancy Gospel, the theme of Mary’s virginity is enriched with other elements, not otherwise attested in the apocryphal tradition. The Annunciation episode is especially relevant from this point of view: the dialogue between the archangel Gabriel and Mary includes a long section focusing on Mary’s incredulity and fear when faced with the announcement. After doubting the angel’s words and justifying herself, upon further exhortation Mary finally acquiesces (5. 8): Asē hreštakn. Ov eraneli surb koys, lṙea i xōseloy ayti, ew i mti kal zasac‘eals yinēn, zi oč‘ ē i mardkanē gorcd ayd, ew oč‘ yumek‘ē ē bans zor xōsim ǝnd k‘ez, ayl Teaṙn ē or aṙnē k‘ez zayd, na karōł ē p‘rkel zk‘ez yamenayn nełut‘enē p‘orjanac‘: Asē Mariam. Et‘ē ayn ē band zor ases, ew ink‘n Tēr hačec‘aw xonarhel yałaxin caṙays iwr, ełic‘i inj ǝst bani k‘um: Ew gnac‘ i nmanē hreštakn. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 19. 7–15) [The angel said: ‘O blessed and immaculate Virgin, stop talking about that and keep in mind what I have said, that this act is not of man, and this thing about which I am telling you comes from none other than the Lord, who is doing it for you. He is able to deliver you from all calamities’. Mary said: ‘Since this message you are conveying to me is true, and the Lord himself is pleased to condescend to his maidservant, let it be to me according to your word (Lk 1. 38)’. And the angel departed from her.]54

At that moment, the angel leaves her, and the Word of God impregnates her. The Virgin listens to the Word, and the Word enters her through her ear, making her a Temple of the Word itself (5. 9):

ed. by Rousseau, 5. 19, 1; Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, ed. by Mahé, 17. 5–6; Aristo of Pella, Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus, ap. Origen, Against Celsus, ed. by Marcovich, 1. 32. 54  The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 25.

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Noyn žamayn ǝnd asel banin, ew xonarheal srboy kusin, Bann Astuac emut ǝnd unkn lseleac‘n i nerk‘s, ew srbec‘aw xorhurd bnut‘ean marmnoyn artašnč‘akan handerj amenayn zgayut‘eamb erkotasan andamōk‘n, ew mak‘rec‘aw orpēs zoski i hur. ew ełew tačar surb, anarat, ew bnakaran astuacut‘ean nora: Ew noynžamayn ełew skizbn yłut‘ean srboy kusin. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 19. 16–23) [At that very moment when this word was spoken, as the holy Virgin consented, God the Word penetrated through her ear. And her thoughts of a carnal, deadly nature were cleansed along with all the senses in the twelve members, purified like gold in the fire. And she became a holy and undefiled temple and a dwelling place for his divinity. And at that same time began the pregnancy of Mary.]55

This aural conception (conceptio per aurem) is not an Armenian invention. Parallels can be found in the Greek and Syriac literatures, notably in Ephrem (c. 306–373), whose work greatly influenced the Armenian tradition from the fifth century onwards. In the Byzantine milieu, the same element can be found in the fifth century in Proclus of Constantinople’s work.56 The theme of aural conception is linked to the parallel established between Eve and Mary,57 which is central to Ephrem’s representation of Mary,58 and is also attested in the Annunciation scene in the Infancy Gospel. Here, the dialogue between the angel and Mary can be read as the antitype of the exchange between the serpent and Eve. Mary’s acceptance of the angel’s announcement becomes ‘the antidote to Eve’s auditory reception of the venomous words spoken to her by the serpent’.59 In his Commentary on the Diatessaron 20. 32 — which is only attested in an Armenian translation based on Syriac (fifth century) — Ephrem writes: ‘Death had entered through Eve’s ear: that is why Life entered through Mary’s ear’.60 55 

The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 25. According to Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 279 n. 20 (with references), the conceptio per aurem was already presupposed by the Protevangelium of James 11. 2: [the angel to Mary] ‘You will conceive from his Verb’ (‘Συνλήμψῃ ἐκ Λόγου αὐτοῦ’: Protevangelium of James, ed. by de Strycker, p. 114. 9). 57  Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, pp. 273–313. 58  On the representation of Mary in the works of Ephrem, see for example Vergani, ‘Maria nell’area culturale siriaca nel iv secolo’, p. 329, about Aphraates; Ortiz de Urbina, ‘La Vergine Maria nella teo­logia di S. Efrem’. 59  Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 283. 60  Ephrem, Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant, version arménienne, ed. by Leloir, 20. 32–34; cf. Ephrem, Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant ou Diatessaron, trans. by Leloir, pp. 366–67. See Ephrem, On the Church, ed. by Beck, 35. 1–6 and 17–18, 46. 10–13, 49. 7; 56 

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The doctrine of the conceptio per aurem, attested in the Greek Church Fathers in the fifth century,61 is present in the Homelies of Proclus of Constantinople, who played a major role in the doctrinal decisions made by the Armenian Church against Nestorius. It was Proclus who warned the Armenians against the Nestorian heresy — which had been condemned at the Council of Ephesus — and against the writings of dubious content circulating in the Mesopotamian areas they frequently visited at the time of their own translation of the Bible and of Syriac exegetical texts.62 The aural conception is present in Proclus’s discourses against the doctrines of Nestorius, notably in the first Homily on the Theotokos, to which Cyril of Alexandria ascribed normative value, adding it to the official documents resulting from the Council of Ephesus and thus favouring its diffusion in official circles.63 The extended dialogue between Mary and the angel in the Infancy Gospel should therefore not be considered merely as a lengthy new elaboration of previous themes and narratives,64 but rather as perfectly fitting with the parallel between Eve and Mary. Through its very length, the dialogue emphasizes the differences between Eve and Mary. While the first woman had soon succumbed to the lure of the serpent, according to Genesis 3, Mary did not let herself be seduced by the angel’s glorious promises (e.g. 5. 3: ‘zi aha yłasc‘is ordi Hōr barjreloyn. ew na ełic‘i t‘agawor mec i veray amenayn erkri’; ‘Behold you shall conceive the Son of the Father Most High; and he shall become a great king over all the earth’, Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 15. 19–21). Her fear of deception is clearly shown in several passages. Mary is familiar with the example set by Eve and is afraid to incur the same danger (5. 6): Erknč‘im i k‘ēn, zi k‘ałc‘rut‘eamb bans barbaṙeal xōsis ǝnd is, ew kari yoyž zar­ mac‘uc‘anes zis yaseld k‘o ǝnd is. mit‘ē xabēut‘eamb baniwk‘ kamis patrel zis orpēs

Ephrem, On Virginity, ed. by Beck, 6. 9. See also Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, p. 184, n. to 5. 9. 61  This representation of the conception is also present in Theodotus of Ancyra († c. 446), Homily 4, ed. by Migne, col. 1392D, and in Pseudo-Athanasius, Quaestiones Aliae, ed. by Migne, cols 789 and 969D: see Conybeare, ‘Protevangelium Iacobi’. For other sources, see Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 280 n. 22 and p. 281. On this topic, see also Murray, ‘Mary, the Seconde Eve in the Early Syriac Fathers’. 62  Garsoïan, L’Église arménienne et le grand schisme d’Orient, ch. 2 and Appendices IV and VI. 63  Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, p. 280. 64  Cf. Norelli, Marie des apocryphes, p. 102.

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znaxamayrn Eway, or ǝnd asel banin k‘ałc‘r ew ołok‘akan xōsiwk‘ hawanec‘oyc‘ zna, ew yetoy zmah žaṙangeac‘. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, p. 17. 27–32) [I fear you, because you are employing your words pleasantly while talking with me and you are able to amaze me in that way you are speaking to me. Could it be that you intend to deceive me as the foremother Eve (was deceived)? For she was persuaded by beguiling and flattering words, and she inherited corruptibility and death.]65

The angel assuages Mary’s fears with reassuring words, exhorting her to have faith. He has come to announce and prepare the Work of God, and he is finally able to convince Mary (cf. above) (5. 6): Mi heṙac‘uc‘aner zsirt k‘o yasac‘eloc‘ banic‘ imoc‘ zor ayžm luar ew canear yinēn. zi oč‘ xabēut‘eamb iwik‘ patranōk‘, ew oč‘ xoramankut‘eamb ew nengut‘eamb eki xōsel ǝnd k‘ez, ayl yaṙaǰagoyn patrastel zk‘ez tačar ew bnakaran nora. (Infancy Gospel, ed. by Tayec‘i, pp. 17. 37–18. 7) [Let not your heart be scared by my sight, let not your thoughts make you doubt the Lord your God, and let not your heart be distant from the words I have spoken, which you now heard from me. For it is neither by deceitful beguiling nor by cunning and craftiness that I came to speak with you, but to prepare you beforehand to be the temple and dwelling place of his divinity.]66

The Parallel between Eve and Mary in Armenian Literature The parallels between Adam and Jesus and Eve and Mary are relevant and well attested also in the earliest Armenian literature, especially in Agathangelos’s History of the Armenians (fifth century), which relates the events surrounding the adoption of Christianity as state religion in the early fourth century.67 The element of Jesus’s virginal birth, a necessary counterpart to Eve’s sin, is present in Agathangelos’s text in a prayer attributed to Gregory the Illuminator, evangelizer of Armenia (§ 79): sireli Ordwovd k‘oy […], zor i k‘ēn aṙak‘ec‘er gal cnanel i kusēn srboy: Zi zor ōrinak i jeṙn kusin aṙaǰnoy Ewayi mah emut yašxarh soyn ōrinak ew i jeṙn aysr kusi keank‘ mtc‘en yašxarh: Zi zor ōrinak i jeṙn cnndean Ewayi Kaheyi anēck‘ ew k‘rtunk‘ ew ašxatut‘iwnk‘ ew erermunk‘ ew tatanmunk‘ mtin yašxarhn soyn ōrinak ew cnanelov 65 

The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 23. The Armenian Gospel, trans. by Terian, p. 24 n. 97. 67  On Agathangelos, see Calzolari, ‘La citation du Ps 78’; Winkler, ‘Our Present Knowledge’; see also the following note. 66 

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Ordwoy k‘oy i kusēn hangistk‘ ew keank‘ ew ōrhnut‘iwnk‘ mtc‘en yašxarh. (Agath­angelos, History of the Armenians, ed.  by Tēr Mkrtč‘ean and Kanayeanc‘, p. 45. 10–17) [your beloved Son, who was sent by you to come and be born of the holy virgin. For as through the first virgin, Eve, death entered the world, so through this virgin life will enter the world. For as through Eve’s giving birth, Cain’s curse and sweat and toil and agitation and troubles entered the world; so through the birth of your Son from the virgin, rest and life and blessings will enter the world.]68

This is the only mention of Mary in the whole text, and it underlines her role in the redemption of mankind. Furthermore, in Agathangelos, the Eve–Mary typo­logy enhances the importance of other virgins — Hṙip‘simē, Gayianē, and other religious women (the so-called Hripsimian Virgins) — whose martyrdom laid the basis for the conversion of the kingdom of Armenia, and who are also compared to Eve. This episode has been analysed elsewhere;69 here it is worth recalling that a long section of Agathangelos’s text is devoted to these virgins, and that the model of the holy virgin is based on St Thecla. She was the heroine of the apocryphal Acts of Paul and enjoyed great popularity in ancient Christian literature, both in Armenia and elsewhere.70 In fact, Agathangelos’s History contains many topoi that had already been associated with virginal women in ascetic and homiletic literature — in Greek, Latin, and Syriac — from the fourth century onwards. In these texts, virginity was presented as a form of endurance comparable with martyrdom. By preserving her chastity, the virgin, often described as ‘the betrothed of Christ’, shows her faithfulness to Christ, her groom. This theme is inspired by the parable of the Wise Virgins (Mt 25) as well as by the Song of Songs. As the betrothed of Christ, the virgins are often considered the ‘temple of the Word’ (cf. 1Cor 6: 18–19, Athanasius, Apo­logy to Constantius 33; Acts of Paul and Thecla 5; etc.), an expression that becomes especially meaningful in Mary’s case. In his History, Agathangelos presents the virginal body as a metaphor for the Church and as ‘temple of God’. He also reintroduces an idea already present in ascetic literature, namely that, because of their condition, virgins can be

68 

Agathangelos’s History of the Armenians, trans. by Thomson, p. 89; cf. Agathangelos, The Teaching of Saint Gregory, ed. by Tēr Mkrtč‘ean and Kanayeanc‘, § 387. 69  See Calzolari, ‘Le Sang des vierges et le plan de Dieu’. 70  On Thecla in Armenian literature, see Calzolari, Apocrypha Armeniaca; in English, see Calzolari, ‘The Legend of St Thecla in the Armenian Tradition’.

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compared to angels.71 Thanks to the proximity to God caused by their virginity, the Hripsimian Virgins are charged with the task of bringing the Armenians to him. Their death is presented as a necessary sacrifice for the redemption of the Armenians (§ 720): Ew vkayk‘s ays linic‘in jez ołormut‘eamb nora berd amur ew aštarak hzōr amrut‘ean ew verakac‘uk‘ barexōsut‘eamb, hełmamb areann k‘aǰac‘ealk‘, nahatakut‘eambn iwreanc‘ zjez aṙeal aṙ Astuac matuc‘anic‘en. (Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, ed. by Tēr Mkrtč‘ean and Kanayeanc‘, p. 375, 11–14)

[These martyrs, through his mercy, will be for you a strong fortress and a mighty tower, and your advocates by intercession; valiant by the shedding of blood, by their martyrdom they might bring you to God.]

Thus, in Agathangelos’s work, Hṙip‘simē’s virginity is seen in a soterio­logical perspective, as far as the Armenians are concerned. Moreover, in accordance with another common topos in Christian literature, the virginal condition is comparable with the state of the protoplasts before the fall. Agathangelos expands on this image and introduces a parallel between Hṙip‘simē and Eve. The trial faced by Hṙip‘simē is compared with the temptation of Eve; the pagan king trying to seduce her into breaking her vow of chastity is compared to the Enemy, that is, to Satan (§ 141). Unlike Eve, Hṙip‘simē does not succumb to the voice of the Enemy. As a woman charged with the task of preparing the redemption of the Armenian people, and whose martyrdom would bring the Armenians to God (§ 720 above), Hṙip‘simē is for Agathangelos the anti-Eve. The parallel between Eve and Hṙip‘simē, and the soterio­logical role ascribed to the latter and her sacrifice, are strengthened in the light of the Eve/Mary typo­logy mentioned above. Furthermore, this typo­logy, played out in the Infancy Gospel through the introduction of the character of Eve, is also alluded to in other Armenian literary traditions. In the sacred hymns (šarakan) and the panegyrics composed by learned poets, starting with Gregory of Narek († c. 1003), Mary is celebrated as a Virgin, archetype of virginity, Mother of God, advocate for mankind, abode of the vivifying Word, tabernacle of the

71  The only occurrence of the adjective isangeloi in the New Testament is in Luke 20. 35–36: ‘But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, / and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection’.

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Holy Spirit, dwelling of the Invisible, but also, and more pertinently for our purposes, as new Eve and ‘redeemer of sin’.72

Conclusion Despite the warnings of local chroniclers and Church Fathers, apocryphal Infancy narratives in Armenian literary and liturgical tradition never ceased to nurture the devotion of the Armenians. On the contrary, they even gained a place in collections of texts used in liturgical celebrations. In celebrations surrounding the Nativity, many sentences in the Synaxarion contain allusions to, or direct quotations from, apocryphal texts. The same is true for sentences related to Marian feast days. A  quick survey reveals that on 8  September (29 Navasard), the day on which Mary’s birth is commemorated, the Synaxarion of Kirakos Arewelc‘i (1269)73 reproduces one of the three textual forms of the Armenian Protevangelium.74 On 6 April (29 Areg), the reading devoted to the Annunciation75 refers to the aural conception mentioned in the Armenian Infancy Gospel: ‘The Word of God entered through the Virgin’s ear into her bosom, and created its own body out of the Virgin’s blood’.76 On 7 April, on the occasion of the same feast, the Synaxarion preserves a text that mixes together apocryphal motifs inspired from the Protevangelium or the Infancy Gospel and quotations from canonical narratives.77 The presence of apocryphal elements 72  On the veneration for Mary in the Armenian tradition, see several essays by T. Dasnabedian: for example Dasnabedian, Le Panégyrique de la sainte Mère de Dieu de Grigor Narekac‘i; Dasnabedian, Théotokos. While the works of the Greek and Syriac Church Fathers are often mentioned as sources for medi­eval poetry and hymnody, no systematic study has been conducted in order to evaluate the influence of apocryphal Infancy narratives on medi­e val poetry. Such an inquiry is still a desideratum in the field of Armenian studies. 73  This short inquiry is based on the edition established by G. Bayan (see following note). An investigation of the MSS of the Synaxarion and its different redactions is beyond the scope of this article. 74  Le Synaxaire arménien, ed. by Bayan, pp. 178–82 [pp. 522–26] (Navasard). 75  The Annunciation was celebrated mostly on 6 and 7 April; nevertheless, in some late MSS of the Lectionary (from the fourteenth century onwards), this feast is mentioned at the beginning of the Epiphany cycle: see Renoux, Le Lectionnaire de Jérusalem en Arménie, p. 467 n. 11. Cf. Renoux, ‘“Les Fêtes et les saints de l’Église arménienne” de N. Adontz’, pp. 103–09 nn. 5 and 30 on the Annunciation as an independent liturgical feast, celebrated the Wednesday after Easter week in thirteenth-century lectionaries. 76  Le Synaxaire arménien, ed. by Bayan, p. 1292 [p. 248] (Areg). 77  Le Synaxaire arménien, ed. by Bayan, pp. 1297–1304 [pp. 253–60] (Areg ). See also

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or texts alongside canonical ones in liturgical collections shows that the two categories were not inevitably competitive and mutually exclusive. The icono­graphy of Armenian medi­eval Evangeliaries also includes elements that can help to clarify the complex relation between canonical and apocryphal materials. In addition to the motifs mentioned above, examples from the apocryphal tradition are the cave,78 which is already attested in early Christian literature, and the ox and donkey79 (Figures 10.1–4 and, with only the donkey, Figures 10.5–6). The (three) Magi are also often depicted: this specific number depends on apocryphal narratives and is based on Matthew 2, where it is said that they brought three gifts. Their presumed royal origin, absent from Matthew’s narrative but mentioned, for instance, in chapter 11 of the Armenian Infancy Gospel,80 is underlined in the miniatures through the presence of crowns (Figures 10.1–5). Their names — Gaspar, Melk‘on (Melchior), and Balthazar — are attested only in the Armenian Infancy Gospel and in a Latin variant of the legend, namely the Excerpta Latina Barbari,81 among literary sources. However, they sometimes appear as captions in Armenian illuminations (Figures 10.5, 10.7).82 Ancient miniature painters, who introduced apocryphal contents into Armenian Evangeliaries, helped establish apocryphal motifs in the Christian imagery, especially as far as the Nativity is concerned. The earliest traditions on the birth of Jesus actually predate the division between canonical and apoc-

8 April (1 Ahekan): Le Synaxaire arménien, ed. by Bayan, pp. 1313–15 [pp. 269–71]. For more information, see Calzolari, ‘Les Récits apocryphes de l’enfance’, pp. 578–79. 78  Armenian Infancy Gospel 8; cf. Protevangelium of James 18. 1; already attested in Justin (see above, note 19). 79  Inspired by Isaiah 1. 3 (cf. Hab 2. 2 LXX) and attested for instance in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 14, in London, BL, MS Arundel 404, and in Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS O.3.9, § 86 (although its origin is probably earlier): cf. Grousset, ‘Le Bœuf et l’âne à la nativité du Christ’; Quacquarelli, ‘La conoscenza della natività dalla iconografia dei primi secoli attraverso gli apocrifi’; Réau, Icono­graphie de l’art chrétien, pp. 240–55. 80  Inspired by Psalm 71. 10 and attested as early as in Tertullian, Against Marcion, ed. by Braun, 3, 13, 8. Cf. the Syriac History of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. by Wallis Budge, pp. 35–38; Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, pp. 117–18, n. 10. 81  Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, p. 182, nn. 3–4. 82  In this list I have followed Calzolari, ‘Les Récits apocryphes de l’enfance’, pp. 579–82 (with plates). On the manu­scripts and illuminations reproduced herein, see Calzolari, Illuminations d’Arménie, Notices 4–5, 11–12, 14.

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ryphal texts.83 However, even during the Middle Ages, when this distinction was already well established, the painters kept blurring the lines between the two categories. Figures from the Old Testament, such as Eve, are juxtaposed to figures closely linked to the origins of Christianity, such as Mary. This choice is meant to underline the links between different stages of the historia sacra, from the beginning of mankind to the advent of Christ, which marks a new era in world history.84

83  84 

See above, note 2. Dorfmann-Lazarev, ‘La Transmission de l’apocryphe de l’Enfance’, pp. 563–65.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS O.3.9 London, British Library [BL], MS Arundel 404 Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 206, ‘Bible of Gladzor’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 212, ‘Gospel of Avag’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 5786, ‘Royal Gospel of Sis’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 7736, ‘Mugna Gospel’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4820, ‘Gospel of Artsakh (?)’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 316, ‘Gospel of Artsakh’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 4806, ‘Gospel of Berdak’ Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 10670, ‘Gospel of Hovsian’

Primary Sources Acts of Paul (Armenian Text), ed. by Valentina Calzolari, in Apocrypha Armeniaca, vol. i: Acta Pauli et Theclae, Prodigia Theclae, Martyrium Pauli, Corpus Christianorum. Series Apocryphorum, 20 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 230–409 (text and Italian translation) Acts of Pilate, ed. Constantin Tischendorf, in Evangelia apocrypha (Leipzig: Avenarius et Mendelssohn, 1853; 2nd edn, 1876, repr., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1987), pp. 203–65 and 266–311 of the 1853 edition; pp. 210–86 and 287–332 of the 1876 edition Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, ed. by Galust Tēr Mkrtč‘ean and Step‘an Kanayeanc‘, in Agat‘angełeay, Patmut‘iwn Hayoc‘ (Tiflis: Aragatip Mnac‘akan Martiroseanc‘, 1909; repr. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1980); English trans. by Robert W. Thomson, Agathangelos’s History of the Armenians (Albany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 1976) Agathangelos, The Teaching of Saint Gregory, ed.  by Galust Tēr Mkrtč‘ean and Step‘an Kanayeanc‘, in Agat’angełeay, Patmut‘iwn Hayoc‘ (Tiflis: Aragatip Mnac‘akan Martiroseanc‘, 1909; repr. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1980), pp. 134–372; English trans. by Robert W. Thomson, The Teaching of Saint Gregory: An Early Armenian Catechism (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1970) Aristo of Pella, Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus, ap. Origen, Against Celsus, ed. by Miroslav Marcovich, Origenes, Contra Celsum, libri VIII, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2001) Ascension of Isaiah, ed.  by Paolo Bettiolo and others, Ascensio Isaiae: Textus, Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols 1995) Athanasius, Apo­logy to Constantius, ed. by Jan M. Szymusiak, Athanase d’Alexandrie, Apo­ logie à l’empereur Constance, Apo­logie pour sa fuite, Sources Chrétiennes, 56 (Paris: Cerf, 1958)

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(Pseudo‑)Athanasius, Quaestiones Aliae, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series graeca, 167 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–76), vol. xxviii (1857) Bones of Adam, ed.  by Michael E. Stone, ‘The Bones of Adam and Eve’, in For a Later Generation: The Transformation of Tradition in Israel, Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed.  by Randal  A. Argall and others (Harrisbourg: Trinity Press Inter­ national, 2000), pp.  241–45; repr. in Michael E. Stone, Apocrypha, Pseudepi­grapha and Armenian Studies: Collected Papers, vol. i, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 144 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 141–45 Celsus, The True Account, ap. Origen, Against Celsus, ed. by Miroslav Marcovich, Origenes, Contra Celsum Libri VIII, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2001) Ephrem, Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant, version arménienne, ed. by Louis Leloir, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 137 and 145, Scriptores Armeniaci, 1 and 2 (Leuven: Peeters, 1953–64) —— , Commentaire de l’Évangile concordant ou Diatessaron, traduit du syriaque et de l’arménien, trans. by Louis Leloir, Sources Chrétiennes, 121 (Paris: Cerf, 1966) —— , On the Church, ed. by Edmund Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Ecclesia, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 198–99, Scriptores Syri, 84–85 (Leuven: Peeters 1969) —— , On Virginity, ed.  by Edmund Beck, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Virginitate, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 223–24, Scriptores Syri, 94–95 (Leuven: Peeters 1962) Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, ed. by Jan Gijsel, Libri de Nativitate Mariae: Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997) History of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ed. by Ernest A. Wallis Budge, in The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the History of the Likeness of Christ, Luzac’s Semitic Text and Translation Society, 4 (London: Luzac, 1899), pp. 3–146 Infancy Gospel (Arabic Text), ed.  by Mario L. Provera, Il vangelo arabo dell’infanzia ( Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1973); French translation by Charles Gene­ quand, ‘Vie de Jésus en arabe’, in Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, ed. by François Bovon and Pierre Geoltrain, vol. i, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 442 (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), pp. 207–38 Infancy Gospel (Armenian Text), ed.  by Esayi Tayec‘i, Ankanon girk‘ Nor Ktakaranac‘ (Venice: Saint-Lazarus, 1898); English trans. by Abraham Terian, The Armenian Gos­ pel of the Infancy with Three Early Versions of the Protevangelium of James (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008); French trans. by Paul Peeters, in Évangiles apocryphes, vol. ii: L’Évangile de l’enfance (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1914) Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Paidika Iesou), ed. by Tony Burke, De Infantia Iesu Evangelium Thomae. Graece, Corpus Christianorum. Series Apocryphorum, 17 (Turnhout: Brepols 2010) Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ed. by Adelin Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon, Contre les hérésies, livre V, Sources Chrétiennes, 153 (Paris: Cerf 1969)

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Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. by Miroslav Marcovich, Iustini Martyris Dialogus cum Tryphone, Patristische Texte und Studien, 47 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997; 2nd edn, 2005) Kirakos Arewelc‘i, Synaxaire, ed. by Georges Bayan, in Le Synaxaire arménien de Ter Israël: pp. 1–212 [Patro­logia Orientalis, 23 (5.3) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1909), pp. 350–556] (Navasard); pp.  1190–1304 [Patro­logia Orientalis, 102 (21.2) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1930), pp.  146–260] (Areg); pp.  1310–1460 [Patro­logia Orientalis, 103 (21.3) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1930), pp. 266–416] (Ahekan) Liber de nativitate Marie genitricis Dei et de infantia salvatoris Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum carnem, ed.  by Martin McNamara and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, in Apocrypha Hiberniae, vol. i.2: Euangelia infantiae, ed. by Martin McNamara and others, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 621–880; first edn and trans. by Montague Rhodes James, Latin Infancy Gospels: A New Text, with a Parallel Version from Irish (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1927), pp. 2–95 Origen, Against Celsum, ed. by Miroslav Marcovich, Origenes, Contra Celsum Libri VIII, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2001) Protevangelium of James (Armenian translation), ed. by Esayi Tayec‘i, Ankanon girk‘ Nor Ktakaranac‘ (Venezia: Saint-Lazarus, 1898) Protevangelium of James (Greek text), ed.  by Émile de Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques, Subsidia hagio­graphica, 33 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1961) Šnorhali, Sargis, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles [Meknut‘iwn eōt‘anc‘ t‘łt‘oc‘ kat‘ułikeayc‘] (Constantinople: Amira Abraham Aknec‘i, 1828; repr., Jerusalem: Saint-James, 1998) Tertullian, Against Marcion, ed.  by René Braun, Tertullien, Contre Marcion, livre III, Sources Chrétiennes, 399 (Paris: Cerf, 1994) —— , On the Flesh of Christ, vol. i, ed. by Jean-Pierre Mahé, Tertullien, La chair du Christ, Sources Chrétiennes, 216 (Paris: Cerf, 1975) —— , On Spectacles, ed. by Marie Turcan, Tertullien, Les spectacles (De spectaculis), Sources Chrétiennes, 332 (Paris: Cerf, 1986) Theodotus of Ancyra, Homilies, 4, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed.  by Jacques-Paul Migne, 167 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–76), lxxvii (1864), cols 1389–1412 Toledot Ieshu, ed.  by Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902)

Secondary Works Alexander, Philip, ‘Jesus and his Mother in the Jewish Anti-Gospel (the Toledot Yeshu)’, in Infancy Gospels, ed. by Claire Clivaz and others, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 281 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 588–616 Amann, Émile, Le Protévangile de Jacques et ses remaniements latins (Paris: Letouzey and Ané, 1910)

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Anasyan, H.  S., Armenian Biblio­logy, 5th–18th Centuries [Haykakan Madenagitut‘yun E-ƎŽ dd], vol. i (Erevan: Armenian National Academy of Sciences, 1959) (in Armenian) Aragione, Gabriella, Eric Junod, and Enrico Norelli, eds, Le Canon du Nouveau Testament (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2005) Auwers, Jean-Marie, and Henk J. De Jonge, eds, The Biblical Canons, Bibliotheca Ephe­ meridum Theo­logicarum Lovaniensium, 163 (Louvain: Peeters and Presses de l’Uni­ versité, 2003) Backus, Irena, ‘Guillaume Postel, Théodore Bibliander et le Protévangile de Jacques: Introduction historique, édition et traduction française du MS  Londres, British Library, Sloane 1411, 260r–267r’, Apocrypha, 6 (1995), 7–65 Bibliander, Theodor, Proteuangelium siue de natalibus Iesu Christi et ipsius matris Virginis Mariae sermo historicus diui Iacobi minoris, consobrini et fratris Domini Iesu, apostoli primarii et episcopi Christianorum primi Hierosolymis. Euangelica historia, quam scripsit beatus Marcus, Petri apostolorum principis discipulus et filius, primus episcopus Alexandriae. Vita Ioannis Marci euangelistae, collecta ex probatioribus autoribus per Theodorum Bibliandrum […] (Basel: Ioh. Oporinus, 1552) Bovon, François, ‘The Suspension of Time in Chapter 18 of Protevangelion Jacoby’, in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed.  by Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), pp.  393–405; French version: ‘La Suspension du temps dans le Protévangile de Jacques’, in François Bovon, Révélations et écritures: Nouveau Testament et littérature apocryphe chrétienne (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1993), pp. 253–70 Brown, Raymond E., The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, new updated edn, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1993) Burke, Tony, De infantia Iesu evangelium Thomae graece, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum, 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010) Calzolari, Valentina, Apocrypha Armeniaca, vol. i: Acta Pauli et Theclae, Prodigia Theclae, Martyrium Pauli, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum, 20 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) —— , ‘La Citation du Ps 78 [77], 5–8 dans l’épilogue de l’Histoire de l’Arménie d’Agathange’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, 29 (2003–04), 9–27 —— , ed., Illuminations d’Arménie: Arts du livre et de la pierre dans l’Arménie ancienne et médiévale (Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 2007) —— , ‘The Legend of St Thecla in the Armenian Tradition: From Asia Minor to Tarragona through Armenia’, in Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West, ed. by James  N. Barrier and others, Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha, 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), pp. 285–305 —— , ‘Les Récits apocryphes de l’enfance dans la tradition arménienne’, in Infancy Gospels, ed.  by Claire Clivaz and others, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 281 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 560–87 —— , ‘Le Sang des vierges et le plan de Dieu: Réflexions à partir de l’ancienne historio­ graphie arménienne (ve siècle ap. J.-C.)’, in Victimes au féminin, ed. by Agnès Nagy and Francesca Prescendi (Genève: Georg, 2011), pp. 178–94

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Constas, Nicholas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 66 (Leiden: Brill, 2003) Conybeare, Frederick C., ‘Protevangelium Iacobi’, American Journal of Theo­logy, 1.2 (1987), 424–42; repr. in The Armenian Church: Heritage and Identity. Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, ed. by N. Vrej Nersessian (New York: St-Vartan Press, 2001), pp. 356–70 Dasnabedian, Thamar, Le Panégyrique de la sainte Mère de Dieu de Grigor Narekac’i (Antélias: Catholicossat arménien, 1995) —— , Théotokos: Nouveau recueil d’articles (Antélias: Catholicossat arménien, 2008) Di Segni, Riccardo, Il Vangelo del Ghetto (Roma: Newton Compton, 1985) Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor, ‘The Cave of the Nativity Revisited: Memory of the Primaeval Beings in the Armenian Lord’s Infancy and Cognate Sources’, in Mélanges JeanPierre Mahé, ed. by Aram Mardirossian and others, Travaux et Mémoires, 18 (Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2014), pp. 285–333 —— , ‘La Transmission de l’apocryphe de l’Enfance de Jésus en Arménie’, in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen, ed. by Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 254 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 557–82 Elliott, James K., A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, New Testa­ ment Tools and Studies, 34 (Leiden: Brill 2006) Erbetta, Mario, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, vol. i.2 (Torino: Marietti, 1981) Garsoïan, Nina G., L’Église arménienne et le grand schisme d’Orient, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 574, Subsidia, 100 (Louvain: Peeters, 1999) Glancy, Jennifer A., Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ ver­sity Press, 2010) Grousset, Réné, ‘Le Bœuf et l’âne à la nativité du Christ’, Mélanges d’archéo­logie et d’histoire, 4 (1884), 334–44 Koester, Helmut, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990) —— , ‘From the Kerygma-Gospel to Written Gospels’, New Testament Studies, 35 (1989), 361–81 Kouymjian, Dickran, ‘Some Icono­graphical Questions about the Christ Cycle in Armen­ ian Manu­scripts and Early Printed Books’, in Le sacre scritture e le loro interpreta­ zioni: l’Enciclopedia dei fratelli della purità, ed. by C. Baffioni and others, Orientalia Ambrosiana, 4 (Roma: Bulzoni, 2015), pp. 121–41 Le Boulluec, Alain, ‘Le Problème de l’extension du canon des écrits aux premiers siècles’, Recherches de science religieuse, 92 (2004), 45–87 McDonald, Lee M., The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007) Metzger, Bruce M., The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)

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Mimouni, Simon C., ‘La Virginité de Marie entre textes et contextes (ier–iie siècles)’, in Infancy Gospels, ed. by Claire Clivaz and others, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 281 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 32–46 Murray, Robert, ‘Mary, the Seconde Eve in the Early Syriac Fathers’, Eastern Churches Review, 3 (1971), 372–84 Nordhagen, Per J., ‘The Origin of the Washing of the Child in the Nativity Scene’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 54 (1961), 333–37 Norelli, Enrico, ‘Avant le canonique et l’apocryphe: Aux origines des récits de la naissance de Jésus’, Revue de théo­logie et de philosophie, 126 (1994), 305–24 —— , Marie des apocryphes: Enquête sur la mère de Jésus dans le christianisme antique (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2009) —— , ‘Les Plus Anciennes Traditions sur la naissance de Jésus et leur rapport avec les testimonia’, in Infancy Gospels, ed. by Claire Clivaz and others, Wissenschaftliche Unter­ suchungen zum Neuen Testament, 281 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 47–66 —— , ed., Recueils normatifs et canons dans l’Antiquité, Publications de l’Institut Romand des Sciences Bibliques, 3 (Lausanne: Zèbre, 2004) Ortiz de Urbina, Ignacio, ‘La Vergine Maria nella teo­logia di S.  Efrem’, in Symposium Syriacum 1972, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 197 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1974), pp. 65–104 Osier, Jean-Pierre, Jésus raconté par les Juifs, ou l’Evangile du Ghetto: La Légende juive de Jésus du iie au xe siècle (Paris: Berg International, 1999) Quacquarelli, Antonio, ‘La conoscenza della natività dalla iconografia dei primi secoli attraverso gli apocrifi’, Vetera Christianorum, 25 (1988), 199–215 Réau, Louis, ed., Icono­graphie de l’art chrétien, vol.  ii (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957; 2nd edn, 1977) Renoux, Charles, ‘“Les Fêtes et les saints de l’Église arménienne” de N.  Adontz (fin)’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, 15 (1981), 103–14 —— , Le Lectionnaire de Jérusalem en Arménie: Le čašoc‘, vol. i: Introduction et liste des manuscrits, Patro­logia Orientalis, 44.4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989) Smid, Harm R., Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary, Apocriphae [sic] Novi Testamenti, vol. i (Assen: van Gorcum, 1965) Stanton, Graham N., ‘The Fourfold Gospel’, New Testament Studies, 43 (1997), 317–46 —— , ‘Jesus Traditions and Gospels in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus’, in The Biblical Canons, ed.  by Jean-Marie Auwers and Henk  J. De Jonge, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theo­ logicarum Lovaniensium, 163 (Louvain: Peeters and Presses de l’Université, 2003), pp. 354–66 Stone, Michael E., ‘Armenian Canon Lists III: The Lists of Mechitar of Ayrivank‘ (c. 1285 ce)’, Harvard Theo­logical Review, 69 (1976), 289–300 —— , ‘Armenian Canon List VI: Hebrew Names and Other Attestations’, Harvard Theo­ logical Review, 94 (2001), 477–91 Stone, Michael E., ‘L’Étude du canon arménien’, in Le Canon du Nouveau Testament, ed. by Gabriella Aragione, Eric Junod, and Enrico Norelli (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2005), pp. 283–95

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Testini, Pasquale, ‘Alle origini dell’iconografia di Giuseppe di Nazareth’, Rivista di Archeo­ logia Cristiana, 48 (1972), 271–347 Vergani, Emidio, ‘Maria nell’area culturale siriaca nel iv secolo: Efrem il Siro’, in Storia della mario­logia, ed. by Enrico dal Covolo, vol. i: Dal modello biblico al modello letterario (Roma: Marietti, 2009), pp. 328–36 Voicu, Sever J., ‘Ways to Survival for the Infancy Apocrypha’, in Infancy Gospels, ed. by Claire Clivaz and others, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 281 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 401–17 Vuong, Lily C., Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) Winkler, Gabriele, ‘Our Present Knowledge of the History of Agat’angełos and its Ori­ ental Versions’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, 14 (1980), 125–41 Winling, Raymond, ‘Le Protévangile de Jacques: Niveaux de lecture et questions théo­ logiques’, in Marie dans les récits apocryphes chrétiens, ed. by Jean Longère, vol. i, Études mariales (Paris: Médiaspaul, 2004), pp. 81–96 Zahn, Theodor, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur, vol. v (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1893) Zakaryan, Lilith, ‘Les Miniatures du Vaspourakan et les apocryphes’, in Apocryphes arméniens: Traduction, création, transmission, icono­graphie, ed.  by Valentina Calzolari Bouvier and others, Publications de l’Institut Romand des Sciences Bibliques, 1 (Lau­ sanne: Zèbre, 1999), pp. 171–78

Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras: The Political Message in the ­ raphy of the Birth of Mary I­ conog Antonella Parmeggiani

M

ystras is located in the southern inland part of the Peloponnese at the foot of Mount Taygetus and was founded by Geoffrey of Villehardouin after the Fourth Crusade.1 Its buildings were constructed between 1249 and 1460, but the complex programme of pictorial church decoration — or at least the frescoes that can still be admired today — dates back primarily to the rule of the first despot, Manuel Kantakouzenos (1349–80). Of particular interest is a specific set of late medi­eval frescoes in local churches depicting the Birth of Mary. The episode of the Virgin’s Nativity is part of the complete pictorial ‘cycle’ of her life in accordance with a tradition that was already well established both in western Europe and the Byzantine Empire by the thirteenth century. The historical and geopolitical framework surrounding the production of these frescoes is relatively unique and implies an ongoing attempt to merge powerful Western Latin families with Byzantine aristocracy. This context 1 

There has been an increase in the number of historical studies on the town of Mystras and, more generally, the Despotate of the Morea, particularly in the wake of Zakythènos’s impressive body of work. On this subject, see the extensive biblio­graphy, complete with additions and corrections, in the last edition, ed. by Chryssa. Maltézou: Zakythinos, Le Despotat grec de Morée, pp. 303–71.

Antonella Parmeggiani is Adjunct Professor of Medi­e val History at the Uni­ver­sity of

Bo­logna. She has a PhD in Medi­eval and Byzantine Studies and has published a critical edition of the Assizes of Romania, the feudal law code in use in the Venetian territories conquered from the Byzantines after the Fourth Crusade.

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 285–307 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117826

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requires an equally multidimensional approach, which is, however, yet to have been adopted: art historians analysing the Mystras frescoes have limited their studies to a classification according to pictorial styles and types, while historians have focused on historical aspects, thereby neglecting the ideo­logical foundations and original features of the Despotate, the governing system that also defines the area. Despite being founded as an offshoot of the Byzantine Empire, the Despotate was a complex and distinct region rather than a duplicate of the empire or a simple fragment of its political body. The present study attempts to consider the historical and political implications of this specific icono­graphy in terms of its local environment and ruling class, while also focusing on the situation of its female elite.

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin In order to understand the icono­graphy of the Birth of Mary within this unique setting, the pictorial convention needs to be framed within the theo­logical background of Byzantine and Latin traditions of Marian worship. The figure of Mary had been studied and interpreted with particular devotion by Fathers of the Church such as Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, and authors in the late patristic period and the early Middle Ages continued to express themselves on the matter in keeping with this tradition.2 The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin originated in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Accounts of Mary’s life taken from the Apocrypha were already known in the fourth century,3 while in the sixth century Romanus the Melodist took inspiration from the same sources to recount Mary’s childhood and composed a kontakion — a form of homily accompanied by music — about her birth.4 During the same century, the cult of Mary became predominant in Constantinople, and the Virgin gradually took over the role of Tyche (Fortune) as the town protector.5 At the beginning of the seventh century, 8 September was recognized as the feast day of the Nativity of Mary, but it was not consistently celebrated by the Latin Church: it spread to Gaul in 2 

For the texts of the Church Fathers I have referred to Testi mariani del primo millennio, ed. by Gharib and others. 3  Lafontaine-Dosogne, Icono­graphie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident, i, 16–17 and 26–27. 4  Hunger, ‘Romanos Melodos’, pp. 15–17; Grosdidier de Matons, ‘Liturgie et Hymno­ graphie’; Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the Mother’. 5  Herrin, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, p. 11.

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around 630 and was only observed in Rome at the end of the seventh century. In the Life of Pope Sergius (687–701) in the Roman Liber Pontificalis, the Nativity of Mary is listed as one of the four feasts of the Virgin that existed at the time.6 Emperor Maurice (582–602) instituted the celebration of this feast in the Byzantine Empire along with the other three Marian feasts of the Annunciation, Purification, and Assumption, while St Boniface introduced the feast in Germany. Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres,7 played an important role in spreading the feast of the Nativity of Mary throughout France with the responsories Solem iustitiae, Stirps Iesse, and Ad nutum Domini,8 in which he celebrated the mysterious star that generated the Sun,9 or Christ, the shoot that sprouted from the stump of Jesse. The liturgical texts and homilies composed to celebrate the Nativity of the Virgin feature some extremely symbolic descriptions and elaborate praise that exalt Mary’s unique saintly nature. Their adopted language borrows from the Holy Scriptures, such as in the case of an idiomelon, a hymn for the feast of the Nativity, where Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, states that Mary ‘became the animated temple of the Lord through her ineffable purity’. 10 Similarly, in his First Encomium for the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God, Andrew of Crete says, ‘today the created sanctuary of the Creator of all things has been built, and in an extraordinary way the creature is prepared for the Creator as his divine abode’.11 In his homily for the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, John of Damascus defines Mary as ‘most holy daughter that appears in the maternal arms and strikes fear into rebellious powers […] maiden worthy of God, beauty of human nature, a rectification of the progenitor Eve!’.12 In his second homily for the same feast, John moves from theo­logical thinking to ecstatic contemplation by describing her as ‘a young girl that obscures the rays 6  ‘Constituit autem ut diebus Adnuntiationis Domini, Dormitionis et Nativitatis sanctae Dei genetricis semperque virginis Mariae’: Liber pontificalis, ed. by Duchesne, i, 376. 7  Among the voices of the Latin Christian world, besides Fulbert of Chartres († 1028) one should also mention Odilo of Cluny († 1049) and Peter Damian († 1072). 8  Fassler, ‘Mary’s Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse’. 9  For the relationship between the Virgin and the Sun/Christ, see the study by Orselli, La donna e il sole, n. 3. 10  Padri e altri autori bizantini, 6.–11. sec., ed. by Gharib and others, p. 38. 11  Andrew of Crete, In Nativitate Beatae Mariae Virginis, ed. by Migne, col. 809. 12  John of Damascus, In Nativitatem B. V. Mariae, ed. by Migne, col. 672b. See also Padri e altri autori bizantini, 6.–11. sec., ed. by Gharib and others, p. 503.

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of the sun with her splendour; a baby girl born to a barren woman, as a most holy commemoration of virginity’.13 In the eighth century, the last Fathers of the Greek Church were particularly effective at developing Mary’s role as a mediator between man and God and a path leading to salvation. This was reiterated by Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who wrote that Christ said of his mother: Ἐγώ σε τεῖχος κοσμικὸν οἰκοδομήσω, γέφυραν κλυδωνιζομένων, κιβωτὸν διασωζομένων, βακτηρίαν χειραγωγουμένων, πρεσβείαν ἁμαρτανόντων, καὶ κλίμακα πρὸς οὐρανὸν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀναβιβάζειν ἰσχύουσαν.14 [I will build you up as a rampart for the world, as a bridge for those tossed about by the tides, as an ark for those who are saved, as a staff for those who are led by the hand, as an intercessor for sinners, and as the ladder that can conduct men to heaven.]

In order to underline the particularly Eastern Roman nature of the bond with the Virgin, Germanus acknowledged tangible and precise intervention by the Theotokos (Mother of God) in his homily commemorating the liberation of Constantinople from Muslim siege in 718. According to Germanus, the attempts to conquer the capital of the empire by the enemies of the faith had been doomed to fail, as the city benefited from the protection of an excellent supernatural defence system — the Mother of God.15 The icono­graphy of the Nativity of Mary, which becomes an extremely common subject from the thirteenth century onwards, owes its success to the spread of hyperbolic praise of the child-woman, the ever-virgin maiden. Yet, although the apocryphal books of the New Testament16 — above all the Protoevangelium of James — provide an account of the birth of Mary, they do not describe the scene or setting in which it occurs.17 Therefore, the icono­g raphy in question does not draw on a Christian literary model, but probably derives from preChristian images and texts that described the birthing room where important 13 

Padri e altri autori bizantini, 6.–11. sec., ed. by Gharib and others, pp. 639–40; John of Damascus, In Nativitatem B. V. Mariae, ed. by Migne, col. 680c. 14  Germanus of Constantinople, In Dormitionem Deiparæ, ed. by Migne, col. 361d. 15  Grumel, ‘Homélie de saint Germain sur la déliverance de Constantinople’, p. 194. 16  There is a vast biblio­graphy on the figure of Mary in the Apocrifi. Due to limited space, I will only mention a few texts: Norelli, ‘La Vergine Maria negli apocrifi’; Gharib, Maria di Nazaret secondo gli Apocrifi. 17  Protoevangelium of James 5. 2; cf. Vangeli, ed. by Moraldi, p. 127.

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figures were born. It is possible that the first depictions of the Birth of the Virgin can be found in a sixth-century diptych in St Petersburg and a fresco in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Forum Romanum.18

Byzantine Frescoes in Mystras: The Birth of Mary A survey of the wall paintings in Mystras, capital of the Despotate of the Morea, has shown a broad numerical parity between representations of the Birth of Christ and the Birth of the Virgin.19 Indeed, the latter seems to be an essential element in the icono­graphic framework of churches in Mystras. Although every fresco has some original elements,20 the modular depiction makes it possible to identify the subject. Anne, the mother who has just given birth to Mary, lies on a large bed and is tended by two maids. The baby girl is wrapped in swaddling clothes, although in one instance she is depicted wearing a maphorion,21 so she is portrayed as an adult. The maternity scene is always clear and majestic, and its regal tone is especially remarkable since most of the figures in the depictions of the Birth of the Virgin are female: when Joachim appears, he is placed in a peripheral position and plays a marginal role in the composition.22 This repetition of the same pictorial subject in most of the city’s churches is both surprising and fascinating. For purposes of clarity, I will provide a brief list of the churches in Mystras containing frescoes dedicated to the Nativity of Mary.23 18 

Brubaker, ‘100 Years of Solitude’; Brenk, ‘Papal Patronage in a Greek Church in Rome’. On this matter, I refer to Dufrenne, who studied the census, history, and art of the area in Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra. Unfortunately, in several cases the frescoes are only partially preserved (corrosion, graffiti, evanescence), so it is not always possible to identify the subjects portrayed. 20  Byzantine icono­graphy allows for variants. St Anne’s posture may vary; the infant may appear swaddled, recumbent, or cuddled (as she is in the Daphni mosaic near Athens, from around 1000). On this, see as an icono­graphic reference, Grabar, Bisanzio, p. 137; Schug-Wille, L’arte bizantina, p. 218. For the stylistic painting features from the Paleo­logue era, which will not be dealt with here, see Lazarev, Storia della Pittura bizantina, p. 406. 21  Maphorion: a garment covering the head and shoulders, probably worn by married women, mentioned in the fourth–sixth century. 22  Regarding the icono­graphy of Mary’s birth and the different compositions of the scene, see Lafontaine-Dosogne, Icono­g raphie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident, i, 89–121. 23  See also Parmeggiani, ‘L’iconografia della nascita della Vergine’, pp. 273–76. 19 

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Cathedral of Agios Demetrios (Saint Demetrius) The church dedicated to St Demetrius was a metropolitan cathedral built at the end of the thirteenth century, although it has been altered several times over the years. A marble epi­g raph is dated in the Byzantine calendar (1291/92), but there is doubt over its authenticity for both palaeo­graphical and historical reasons.24 The building has a three-nave structure, and in the south nave there is a depiction of the cycle of the Virgin’s childhood including her birth. Dressed in a red cloak, St Anne is curled up on a bed enriched with drapes and a decorative lily pattern. Mary is in the cradle wearing the maphorion, tended by a maid holding a small object that might be a rattle or a spindle (Figure 11.1). This item could be interpreted as a sign of anticipation of the most crucial event in Mary’s early life, the Annunciation, where the archangel appears to the Virgin as she spins purple and scarlet thread for the Temple veil.25 Church of Agioi Theodoroi (Saints Theodores) This is one of two churches at the Brontochion monastery, situated to the north of the hill by Mystras (the other is the church of the Hodegetria). It is one of the oldest buildings in the city. The date of foundation — about 1290 — is provided indirectly by a text on the frame of the iconostasis, now preserved in the museum.26 The upper part of the south transept has two episodes from the cycle of the Virgin’s childhood: to the south, the Virgin’s entry into the temple and, on the west wall, a probable depiction of the Nativity of the Virgin. It is only a fragment of a bathing scene ‘and because of the proximity of the depiction of the Entry of the Virgin into the Temple, it can be assumed that it formed part of a Nativity of the Virgin’.27 24  Manoussakas, ‘Η χρονολογία της κτιτορικής επιγραφής του Αγίου Δημητρίου του Μυστρά’. Andronicus and Michael’s co-regency did not begin until 1294, and Nikephoros was not present in Mystras until late 1304. 25  According to the tradition of the Protoevangelium of James, Mary was spinning purple and scarlet thread for the Temple veil. See Protoevangelium of James 10–11 in Vangeli, ed. by Moraldi, i. In reference to the ideo­logical values of the use of purple and its symbolism, see Carile, ‘Produzione e usi della porpora nell’impero bizantino’, in particular p. 274: Appendix, Apophthegma of Macarius ed. by Chiara Faraggiana di Sarzana, for a discussion of the parallel between imperial purple and the Body of Christ the ‘emperor’. 26  Chatzidakis, Mistrà, p. 3. 27  Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 4 n. 18.

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Figure 11.1. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth, Mystras, south nave of Agios Demetrios. Thirteenth–fourteenth century. Photo © Antonella Parmeggiani.

Church of Agia Sofia (Holy Wisdom) This church is located in the palace area in Mystras and served as the palace chapel. Manuel Kantakouzenos had the following engraved on the capitals of the pillars: ‘Manuel Kantakouzenos, Palaio­logos, Despot, Ktitor [founder]’.28 There was once a poem in the portico attributing the foundation and decoration of the church to Manuel. The church has been identified as tou Zoodotou Christou (Christ the Saviour), mentioned in a patriarchal document of 1365.29 The construction of the church can be dated to 1350–65; the figure of the Virgin Blachernitissa30 appears in the dome of the south-east chapel, while the 28 

Millet, ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, pp. 142–43. Acta et diplomata graeca, ed. by Miklosich and Muller, i, 472. 30  A Marian sanctuary had already been erected by the fifth century in the Palace of Blachernae in Costantinople, since tradition has it that Mary’s maphorion was kept there. The statue of the Praying Virgin was placed in one of the sanctuary’s chapels, constituting the iconic model of the Blachernitissa. See Sendler, Le icone bizantine della Madre di Dio, p. 103. On the 29 

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Figure 11.2. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth, Mystras, Hagia Sophia. Fourteenth–fifteenth century. Photo © Antonella Parmeggiani.

Birth of the Virgin can be recognized on the west wall (Figure 11.2). St Anne lies resting on a white bed dressed in a red cloak and observes the baby girl in white swaddling clothes, tended by two young maidservants. There is a procession of figures around Anne bearing gifts in large bowls. The most remarkable of these figures are three elegant ladies with knotted veils atop their heads. The setting is a house whose architectural structure can be seen in the background in accordance with the Byzantine icono­g raphic canon based on reverse perspective, which tended to show the outside of the house rather than the inside. The resulting impression is that of an equivocal space, both open and closed, showing both the inside and the outside of the room where the birth took place (Figure 11.3). However, the special feature of the Mystras frescoes is the astonishing dynamic vivacity of the procession of ladies paying homage to the incident of the relic of the maphorion and the imperial female commission regarding Marian sanctuaries, see James, ‘The Empress and the Virgin in Early Byzantium’, pp. 150–52; Angelidi, Pulcheria, pp. 62–63.

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Figure 11.3. Anonymous, Fresco of the Virgin’s Birth (detail), Mystras, Hagia Sophia. Fourteenth–fifteenth century.  Photo © Antonella Parmeggiani.

woman who has just given birth and the newborn baby girl. The women seem to be coming out of a closed building and entering a city square; some are even viewing the scene from windows looking onto the town square.31 Almost hidden from view on the right, Joachim holds the baby — who appears twice — in his arms in a familiar scene: the birth of a princess. Church of the Pantanassa (Queen of All) The church of the Virgin Pantanassa contains many inscriptions citing John Frankopoulos, whose very name possibly indicates that he descended from a mixed marriage between a Byzantine woman and a Frank. Frankopoulos was 31 

On this matter, it is interesting to point out the difference between these depictions of the Birth of the Virgin and those done in the West in the same century. For example, in both Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel and Giovanni da Milano’s Rinuccini Chapel (1365) the architectural elements of the frescoes unequivocally refer to an indoor setting.

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Theodore  II’s protostrator,32 which indicates his important position at the Despot’s court. The inscriptions mention the date of foundation as September 1428,33 although some maintain that Frankopoulos only financed the restoration of the church. Entire walls of the church are decorated with verses from the Akathist Hymn dedicated to Mary; scenes from the Virgin’s childhood are depicted in the narthex, and the theme of her birth appears in the vault. Church of Peribleptos (Admired by All Observers) This building, located on the western edge of the city, seems to have been built at the same time as Agia Sofia, although there are no definite indications regarding its date of foundation. A monogram on the wall of a vestibule on the south side mentions Leontos tou Mavropapa,34 a fully Greek name, but the presence of coats of arms featuring fleur-de-lis both inside and outside the church has led to speculation that the church was founded by a Frankish family.35 However, it is the emblem of two lions confronting each other, identified as the crest of Isabelle de Lusignan, ‘lady of the Despotate of the Morea’,36 that sheds light on the hypothetical date of foundation, as Isabelle was the first despot’s wife. The vault of the prothesis is dedicated to the cycle of the Virgin’s childhood, and the Birth of the Virgin also appears in this context on the north wall.37 32 

The name and the titles are painted on the western facade arches and carved on the capital of the church’s south-west column. Another inscription on the altar table, now lost but transcribed by Fourmont, indicates that the inauguration of the monastery dates back to 1426; see Chatzidakis, Mistrà, p. 95. Frankopoulos is known through a 1444 argyroboullon (an imperial diploma) by Despot Constantine Palaio­logos; see Acta et diplomata graeca, ed. by Miklosich and Muller, iii, 258–59. In the Cronaca by Sphrantzes, protostrator is translated as ‘marshall’; Sphrantzes, Cronaca, ed. by Maisano, p. 41. 33  Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 9. 34  Millet, ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, p. 133; Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­ graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 13. 35  The emblem was studied by Xyngopoulos, ‘Φραγκικὰ κρινάνθεμα εἰς τὸ Γεράκι καὶ τὸν Μυστρᾶν’. The emblem also appears in the Geraki castrum, and Xyngopoulos suggests that it should be dated to between 1249 and 1262, the period of William from Villehardouin’s rule. However, since they appear to be reusable objects, they give no indication about the foundation date. 36  Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 13 n. 63. 37  Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 15.

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Chapel of Agios Ioannis (Saint John) The only indication regarding the history of this building is provided by a portrait of its founders, identified by a caption, with a girl (Anna Lascarina), a little boy (Theodore Hodighitrianos), and a lady who is probably the children’s mother (Kalé Kabalaséa). It has been dated to the fourteenth century on the basis of the style of painting,38 as no historical references to these figures have been found. The basilica is a single-nave structure, and the frescoes are only partially preserved. A Nativity scene can be made out in the north-east vault — probably the Birth of the Virgin. It is the only example of this subject depicted on a central wall.

Latin Noblewomen in Mystras The Greek metropolitan see of Monemvasia acquired increasing importance after 1314, when it became the Exarchate for the whole Peloponnese.39 New religious establishments were founded, and Mystras also benefited from hefty donations for the construction of churches and convents,40 with an increase in the amount of Church property and the endowments of the Greek clergy. There was therefore both a resurgence of religious life in the Morea and a burgeoning of construction and art, which allowed the ambitious patrons that commissioned such works to use the frescoes as a visible sign of their power, as well as a symbolic emblem of their faith. According to custom but against the agreement with the popes, who had personally sanctioned all mixed marriages and warned brides to retain their Catholic faith in their new land, Latin noblewomen who married Byzantine nobles of the Despotate converted to Orthodoxy. Although this conversion could be interpreted as a result of court pressure, many inhabitants who were of Latin origin or born from mixed unions also abandoned the Catholic Church for the Greek rite, even in the Principality of Achaea, which was dominated by Westerners. This prompted Pope John XXII to address the issue by urging a strong reaction against the practice of conversion from the 38  Millet, ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, pp. 131–32; Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 18. 39  On thirteenth-century Monemvasia, see Kalligas, Bizantine Monemvasia. Andronicus II and Michael IX Palaio­logos issued four golden bulls or chrysobulls describing the properties of monasteries between 1314 and 1320; their text is transcribed on the wall of the Brontochion monastery in Mystras. Edition in Millet, ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, pp. 100–118. 40  Löhneysen, Mistra, p. 55.

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Catholic faith to Orthodox Christianity, as shown by a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Patras dated 1 October 1322.41 Several monasteries dedicated to St Anne and the cult of the Virgin had already been founded in the areas of the Holy Land conquered by the Franks during the crusades. After the First Crusade, the churches of Saint Mary the Great and Saint Anne were built in Jerusalem by the Latins in 1140 in the area of the Old City where Anne and Joachim’s house — Mary’s place of birth — was located according to the Protoevangelium of James.42 These events suggest that there was a strong connection between cities liberated from Muslim rule and the worship of the Virgin, a tradition previously identified by Germanus in his homily43 and his preamble to the Akathistos Hymn (Unseated Hymn), which describes the Virgin as an ‘invincible Champion with might unassailable’ to whom the city ascribes its victory.44 The Despotate of the Morea — and the Peloponnese in general at the time — was characterized by the exceptional political visibility of its elite ladies, which meant that Western noblewomen who had moved there by marriage acquired importance on the international stage. This was a time when the Greeks and the Franks were fighting the Turks, and mixed marriages were one of the signs of this collaboration. Indeed, most despots duly married Frankish princesses:45 Manuel Kantakouzenos (1349–80) married Isabelle de Lusignan; Theodore I Palaio­logos (1384–1407) married Bartolomea Acciaiuoli; Theodore  II Palaio­logos (1407–27) married Cleofa Malatesta; Constantine Palaio­logos (1427–42) married Maddalena (Theodora) Tocco and after her death he married Caterina Gattilusio in 1440;46 Thomas Palaio­logos (1443–49) married Catherine, daughter of Centurione II Zaccaria, Prince of Achaea.

41 

Bon, La Morée franque, p. 203. Hopf, Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittel­ alters bis auf unsere Zeit, i, 406. 42  Prawer, Colonialismo Medi­evale, pp. 208–09. 43  Grumel, ‘Homélie de saint Germain sur la déliverance de Constantinople’, n. 15. 44  ‘Invincible strategist, to thee songs of victory’; ‘But thou, possessing invincible strength’: see Toniolo, Akathistos, p. 197. Donadeo does not insert the text as a proem, but as a kontakion at the close of the hymn; see Donadeo, Inno Acatisto, p. 61. The city referred to in the Akathist Hymn is Constantinople, although it becomes the symbol of all liberated cities. 45  In this period, the term ‘Frankish’ is a synonym for ‘Western’ and also for ‘Latin’. 46  Caterina Gattilusio (who died in Mystras in July 1441), daughter of the lord of Lesbos, Dorino I Gattilusio; see Tzavara and Ganchou, ‘La principessa Caterina Paleo­logina’, pp. 80–84.

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Isabelle de Lusignan, daughter of Guy, King of Armenian Cilicia, married Manuel Kantakouzenos in 1341 and took the name of Mary or Margaret in the Morea after converting to the Greek ritual. Isabelle’s cousin was Guy of Lusignan, Prince of Galilee, who was the first husband of Marie of Bourbon, who then married Robert of Taranto and became the titular Empress of Constantinople and Princess of Achaea. There is no doubt that Isabelle’s presence at the Despot’s court contributed to good relations between Greeks and Franks. The princess is best known for an epi­g raph in Mystras that features her monogram. Despite being over fifty and childless when her husband died in 1380, she maintained her role as an intermediary between East and West. In a document from Rhodes dated 6 April 1382, she is still described as despina despotatus Amoree, the Lady of the Despotate of the Morea. This document relates Isabelle’s important role in contributing a significant sum for the ransom of John de Heredia, Grand Master of the Order of the Hospitalliers of Saint George, who had been captured by the Ottoman Turks during a military expedition.47 Bartolomea Acciaiuoli, daughter of Nerio, Duke of Athens, is called vasilissa or basilissa (Empress) in both Greek and Latin sources, while her husband bears the title of Despot. The question of titles deserves to be underscored, as it seems peculiar that in the fourteenth century — and indeed from the seventh century onwards — the despoina was not the despot’s wife or mother, but rather the wife or mother of the basileus, the Emperor, while the title basilissa defined the magnificence of the despot’s wife and not the wife of the basileus.48 While it is easy to understand that the title despoina aimed to highlight that the empress was subordinate to the emperor, it is not so clear what the epithet basilissa was supposed to underline when used for the wife of the Despot of the Morea, and 47  Published by Millet, ‘Inscriptions inédites de Mistra’, pp. 453–59. This princess is also known for an inscription in Longanikos ed. by Kuogeas, ‘Βυζαντινή επιγραφή Λογκανίκου’, p.  251. Zakythènos devoted a study to her, whose conclusions were discussed by Binon: cf. Zakythinos, ‘Une princesse française à la cour de Mistra’ and Binon, Guy d’Arménie et Guy de Chypre, Isabelle de Lusignan à la cour de Mistra, pp. 124–42. See also Bon, La Morée franque, p. 223. 48  This was also noted by Maisano in his edition of Sphrantzes’s works, cf. Sphrantzes, Cronaca, ed. by Maisano, p. 41. Latin sources quoting her as vasilissa are in Monumenta Peloponnesiaca, ed. by Chrysostomides, p. 272, State Archives of Venice, 1394.02.10: ‘che ‘l dicto miser lo despoti et la soa dona, madona la Vasilissa, et tuti li suo et le suo’ and p. 314, State Archives of Venice, 1394.11.17, last will and testament of Neri Acciaiuoli: ‘lasiamo a Bartholamia vasilisa nostra fia, nove milia e seteçento ducati d’oro, li qual lo dispoto suo marito pigl(i) ò da la Signoria de Venezia, a la qual nui avemo depositadi, li qual lo dito despoto è tenuto de renderli a nui integramente’.

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whether the title is likely to have assumed the exclusive meaning of the function that can be translated as ‘princess’, a royal designation that would have certainly enticed Western families. In true mercantile terms, defining marriage as a merger transaction with the danger of failure as well as the lure of success, Nerio Acciaiuoli explained the reasons that led him to become the Despot of the Morea’s father-in-law to his brother Angelo, the Bishop of Florence, who was worried about becoming related to Greek Orthodox Christians: lo parentado li ò fatto con danari, e Dio sa se si compierà, che ssono chose in erba, ma quando si compiesse credo sia onore e grandezza di casa nostra, più che mai io non pensai e a nullo non dovria dispiacere né biasimarlo. Ch’i’ ò udito che re di Ragona e conte di Savoia e conte di Franda e lo prenze di questa Morea ànno fatto parentado con issi e non li tenevano per eretici, a questo vi fo fine per vostra consolazione. [I created the kinship tie with money and God alone knows if it will be a success, as we are only at the beginning. However, if it is successful, it will be a great honour for our family: I have thought about this and it should not displease anybody. I have heard that the King of Aragon, the Count of Savoy, the Count of France and the Prince of the Morea have forged kinship ties with these people and did not see them as heretics; I am telling you this so that you will be persuaded.]49

However, the merger sometimes came to an early and tragic end. Maddalena Tocco, daughter of Leonardo Tocco, King of Epirus, assumed the name of Theodora and married Constantine Palaio­logos, the then Despot of Morea, in July 1428. However, just one year later, according to the late Byzantine historian and contemporary George Sphrantzes: ‘Princess Theodora died in the month of November while she was in Stameron [St Omer], leaving her husband and those of us in her entourage grief-stricken, as she was an extremely good person. She was buried for a while in one of the churches in Glarentza and was then moved to the Monastery of the Saviour in Mystras’.50 Sphrantzes continues: ‘In the month of January that same year, Master Thomas [Palaio­logos, brother to 49 

Library Medicea Laurenziana, Carteggio Acciauoli, I, no. 76, 1384.10.30, in Monumenta Peloponnesiaca, ed. by Chrysostomides, pp. 52–53. Acciaiuoli is referring to Lluís Frederic d’Aragó, who married Helena Asanina Kantakouzene, daughter of Matthew Kantakouzenos; to Anne of Savoy who married Andronicos III; to Theodoros I Laskaris who married Marie de Courtenay, niece of Baldwin, Count of Flanders; and, finally, to William of Achaea, who married Anna, daughter of Michael II Komnenos Doukas, ruler of the Despotate of Epirus. 50  Sphrantzes, Cronaca, xx. 9, ed. by Maisano, p. 69.

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John VIII, Constantine, and Theodore, and the last Despot of the Morea] got married in Mystras to Lady Catherine, daughter of the aforementioned prince [of Achaea, Centurione II Zaccaria]’.51 In 1442, another Caterina — daughter of Dorino I, Lord of Lesbos and a member of the prominent Gattilusio family from Genoa — followed her husband Constantine Palaio­logos to Constantinople even though she was pregnant. Constantine was bringing military support to his brother, Emperor John VIII, who was under Ottoman siege. In Sphrantzes’s words: ‘After the (Ottoman) fleet had left without any success, the princess, his wife (referred to in the Greek text as basilissa), who due to the danger of this intervention felt sick and miscarried, died and was buried at Paleocastro, on the same island of Lemno in August of the same year.’52 Four sons of Byzantine Emperor Manuel  II Palaio­logos — John  VIII, Theodore II, Constantine XI, and Thomas — took Italian brides, among whom Cleofa Malatesta, the Lord of Pesaro’s daughter, is the best known. Although there is no mono­graphic study of her, she is the most emblematic figure within the complex and controversial political project that tied noble Frankish women to the Despots of Morea. Cleofa has aroused the interest of modern historians,53 and she is also mentioned by earlier historians of the Malatesta family.54 Falcioni devotes a whole section of her study of Malatesta women to this intriguing figure, although she makes some fundamental mistakes, such as stating that Cleofa died in Pesaro rather than in Mystras.55 Cleofa was the sister of Pandolfo, Bishop of Patras, and became a distant relative of Pope Martin V, as Carlo Malatesta, Cleofa’s brother, had married Vittoria Colonna, daughter of Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, the pope’s brother.56 Cleofa had been adopted by her uncle Carlo Malatesta, who also adopted Sigismondo, the future Lord of Rimini and a famous humanist and warlord. 51 

Sphrantzes, Cronaca, xx. 10, ed. by Maisano, p. 69. Sphrantzes, Cronaca, xxv. 4, ed. by Maisano, p. 91. 53  Silvia Ronchey offered a sort of historical detective novel about Cleofa Malatesta, according to which she was initiated into a sect in Mystras inspired by the pagan mysteries of the philosopher Gemistus Pletho, as well as the victim of a dynastic plot within the ranks of the aristocracy: see Ronchey, L’enigma di Piero. 54  Clementini, Racconto istorico della fondazione di Rimini e dell’origine e vite de’ Malatesti; Tonini, Rimini nella Signoria de’ Malatesti, p. 334; Abati Olivieri Giordani, Notizie di Battista di Montefeltro moglie di Galeazzo Malatesta signor di Pesaro, pp. 77–79. 55  Falcioni, ‘Cleofe Malatesti nelle fonti epistolari mantovane’. 56  Runciman, ‘The Marriages of the Sons of the Emperor Manule II’, pp. 278–80; Runciman, Mystra, Bizantine Capital of the Peloponnese, p. 69. 52 

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When she was around fifteen, she married Theodore II Palaio­logos, Despot of the Morea, brother to Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor. Cleofa did not depart for the Morea alone and was accompanied by another princess, Sophia of Monferrat, who was destined to marry John VIII Palaio­logos, Theodore’s brother and the penultimate Byzantine emperor. In his history of the Malatesta family, the sixteenth-century historian Cesare Clementini described Cleofa’s departure thus: Alli XVIII d’Agosto Cleofe, figliuola di Malatesta da Pesaro, che per lo più stava in Rimino, montò nel porto sopra una galea, per andar à marito in Grecia al Dispoto della Morea, figliuolo dell’Imperatore di Costantinopoli.57 [On 18 August, Cleofa, daughter of the Malatestas of Pesaro, who generally lived in Rimini, boarded a galley in the port to travel to Greece to marry the Despot of the Morea, son of the Emperor of Constantinople.]

The wedding was celebrated with a mixed ceremony approved by Pope Martin V, and Cleofa only converted to Greek Orthodoxy at a later date.58 On the occasion of her marriage agreement in 1419, the fashionable composer Guillaume Dufay wrote the motet Vasilissa Ergo Gaude.59 The assignment of the name Vasilissa in a motet sung during festivities almost two years prior to the actual wedding — when the official title was bestowed — may seem premature, but shows how eager Latin families were to pursue an association with the Byzantine ruling dynasty. The wedding’s intended visibility — thereby bringing honour to the Malatesta and Gonzaga families — immediately launched fifteen-year-old Cleofa onto the international stage. Once in Mystras, instead of fading into oblivion she became an active member of Gemistus Pletho’s philosophical academy. This semi-pagan philosopher, who had rediscovered Plato and reintroduced Platonism into Mystras Academy, wrote that ‘she was of a great radiant beauty in her body, as well as in her soul, slender and with a fine figure’.60 She had a daughter, Helen, who became Queen of Cyprus,61 but she never 57 

Clementini, Racconto istorico della fondazione di Rimino e dell’origine e vite de’ Malatesti, ii, 101–02, 208. 58  Dabrowska, Lacinniczki nad Bosforem, p. 18. 59  Mila, Guillaume Dufay, p. 16. 60  Lampros, Παλαιολóγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, iv, 165–66. 61  Falcioni, ‘Cleofe Malatesti nelle fonti epistolari mantovane’, p. 961; Ronchey, ‘Bessarione poeta e l’ultima corte di Bisanzio’ p. 55.

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gave birth to a male heir to succeed her husband. In his Chronicle, George Sphrantzes tells us that Cleofa died in 1433, probably during a premature birth or because of a miscarriage,62 and was buried in the Monastery of the Saviour in Mystras.63 Bessarion composed a poem for her death,64 and even Pletho compared her to Mary, referring to her as ‘virtue that embodies salvation’,65 thereby adopting terms similar to those found in the Akathistos Hymn in celebration of the Virgin.66

Conclusion The unusual figures of the Latin basilisse, the despots’ wives, warrant further bio­g raphical study. They were described by contemporary historians like Zakythènos as playing an important but marginal (or at least secondary) historical role compared to their consorts. However, this is not the impression projected by the extensive use of Marian icono­graphy — especially the Birth of Mary — in the frescoes decorating the church walls. Here, the suggestion is that the ladies of Mystras were fully aware of their role as diplomatic mediators and that they identified with Mary and Anne when proudly assessing their political function as saviours and intermediaries within this geohistorical context. Although their specific role as basilisse was rooted in Byzantine tradition, their Western origin was an indication that the Greeks recognized the inevitability of looking to the Latin world as the only possibility of salvation against the Turkish enemy. In the Morea, noblewomen who married despots were the representatives of this Latin world, a fortress against barbarity, and identified with the worship of both Anne and Mary rather than the cult of female saints.67 The holy pair of mother and daughter were indeed the only female figures portrayed in the frescoes in Mystras, which are almost completely devoid of depictions of female saints.68 62 

Ronchey, ‘La mummia di Mistra’. Sphrantzes, Cronaca, xxi. 12. 64  The editio princeps of the verses on Cleofa’s death is in Lampros, Παλαιολóγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, iii, 278. 65  Lampros, Παλαιολóγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, iv, 164. 66  Donadeo, Inno Acatisto, pp. 50 and 58. 67  Regarding the model of Anne and Mary, mother and daughter, see Herrin, Unrivalled Influence, pp. 103–06. 68  Exceptions are the depictions of St Helen, and — perhaps, since the painting is faded 63 

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Powerful women in the Byzantine world saw themselves reflected in Mary, as evidenced in the icono­graphy as well as the imperial dress in which the Virgin is often depicted, where the rich decoration and majestic symbols that codify the role connected to royalty are the same as those worn by the empresses.69 This identification went beyond a rhetorical comparison, as there are also some well-known examples of actual female imperial sanctity, where the characteristics of the Virgin became an outright life model for some basilisse.70 The formalized verbal enhancement of Mary, so prominent in Byzantine sacramental and ceremonial ritual, stresses the individuality of a young woman who is both part of a community and at the same time an exception to it. The birth of Mary ‘from a barren woman’ is a miracle in itself, mirroring the exceptional event of the birth of Jesus.71 The association between Western princesses, the churches built during their tenure as basilisse, and the pictorial theme of the Birth of the Virgin in the decorative cycles within cannot be explained purely as a didactic need connected to the liturgy of Marian feasts.72 Even if this were the case, we would still need to question such a strong desire to celebrate this particular subject in every church in Mystras by narrating and meticulously describing the so-called ‘cycles secondaires’, especially the Virgin’s childhood, which features the birth of a princess honoured by the entire population of a city. In a land that was not theirs, the Latin noblewomen of the Morea acquired a pre-eminence that was unanticipated and yet immediately accepted, endorsed, and proclaimed even in icono­g raphy. The church frescoes expressed a model of salvation and redemption that became a vehicle of political ideo­logy. The

and difficult to interpret — St Mary the Egyptian in the Peribleptos. Other possible exceptions are the brief cycle on the life of St Catherine in Pantanassa and the group of the Pious Women at the Sepulchre. The latter is depicted in the Afendikò, in San Demetrious and in the church of the Saints Teodori, but it must be stressed that in this case they are fundamental elements in the evangelical quotation of the Resurrection. 69  See Brubaker and Cunningham, The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium. Carile, Immagine e realtà nel mondo bizantino, p. 128. 70  Pitsakis, ‘Sainteté et empire’, p. 214; Herrin, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’; Cooper, ‘Empress and Theotokos’; Carile, Immagine e realtà nel mondo bizantino, pp. 130–32, and pp. 147–48 for the biblio­graphy on the imperial sainthood. 71  Padri e altri autori bizantini, 6.–11. sec., ed. by Gharib and others, pp. 639–40. 72  Dufrenne, Les Programmes icono­g raphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra, p. 57. Following Dufrenne, a study on the icono­graphy of the Birth of Mary in Spanish Gothic paintings provides a theo­logical interpretation of the incredible success of this artistic module. See Salvador González, ‘Et vocavit nomen eius Mariam’.

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Byzantine world traditionally associates reigning political power with divine authority, encouraging the Emperor to view himself as an imitation of God; as a result, all liturgical areas, including their pictorial decoration, are conceived as an ideo­logical dimension that is rooted in a political strategy. In Mystras, this took the form of interpreting and repeating the edifying figures of Mary and Anne, the saviour and the mother who gave birth to her. The Despotate basilisse were valuable mediators of peace, ambassadors for an allied campaign against the common Turkish enemy. For Zampea nte Lezinao 73 (Isabelle de Lusignan), who, despite being the Despot’s wife, proudly displayed her family’s name and coat of arms in epi­graphs, and for Bartolomea Acciaiuoli, who was still a basilissa,74 even though she had not had any children with Thomas,75 power derived from being daughters, the representatives of their families of origin. The frequent use of the icono­g raphy of Mary’s birth could also be interpreted in this light, as Mary herself was a daughter before she became the Theotokos (Mother of God). In Mystras churches, built during a time of crisis in the Byzantine Empire, the salvific image of mother and daughter assumes characteristics similar to those of mother and son. Political marriages between Western noble ladies and Eastern despots were not necessarily aimed at producing a male heir, as both the despots and their subjects might have been wary of a ‘mixed blood’ successor. Instead, these marriages were meant to involve and engage the Latin world in the rebirth of the Byzantine state. From this viewpoint, the widespread use of the icono­graphy of the Nativity of Mary not only acted as a symbol of spiritual redemption from evil, but also projected a plan of political deliverance from the Turkish threat.

73 

This is an epi­graph on a marble architrave, retrieved near the Metropolis and now kept in the Mystras Museum. See The City of Mystras, p. 183 and n. 28. 74  Byzantine empresses would often only receive the title of augusta after giving birth: see Herrin, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, p. 23. 75  It appears that Bartolomea Acciauoli had no children with Thomas, but the latter did have an illegitimate child. See Monumenta Peloponnesiaca, ed. by Chrysostomides, p. 411 n. 2.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Abati Olivieri Giordani, Annibale degli, Notizie di Battista di Montefeltro moglie di Galeazzo Malatesta signor di Pesaro (Pesaro, 1782) Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, ed. by Franz Miklosich and Joseph Muller, 6 vols (Wien: C. Gerold, 1860–90) Andrew of Crete, In Nativitate Beatae Mariae Virginis, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed.  by Jacques-Paul Migne, 167  vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–76), xcvii (1860), cols 805–82 Clementini, Cesare, Racconto istorico della fondazione di Rimino e dell’origine e vite de’ Malatesti, 2 vols (Rimini, 1617–27) Germanus of Constantinople, In Dormitionen Deiparæ, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed.  by Jacques-Paul Migne, 167  vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–76), xcviii (1860), cols 339–72 John of Damascus, In Nativitatem  B.  V. Mariae, in Patro­logiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 167 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–76), xcviii (1860), cols 661–80 Liber pontificalis, ed. by Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne, 2 vols (Paris, 1886–92); repr. with integrations ed. by Cyrille Vogel, 3 vols (Paris: E. De Boccard, 1955–57) Monumenta Peloponnesiaca: Documents for the History of the Peloponnese in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. by J. Chrysostomides (Athens: Porphirogenitus, 1995) Padri e altri autori bizantini, vol. ii of Testi mariani del primo millennio, ed. by Georges Gharib and others (Roma: Città Nuova, 1989) Sphrantzes, George, Cronaca, ed.  by Riccardo Maisano (Roma: Accademia dei Lincei, 1990) Testi mariani del primo millennio, ed. by Georges Gharib and others, 4 vols (Roma: Città Nuova, 1988–91) Tonini, Luigi, Rimini nella Signoria de’ Malatesti: parte prima che comprende il secolo xiv, Storia civile e sacra riminese, 4.1 (Rimini, 1856–88; repr. Rimini: Ghigi, 1971) Vangeli, in Apocrifi del Nuovo testamento, ed. by Luigi Moraldi, 3 vols (Torino: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1994)

Secondary Works Angelidi, Christine, Pulcheria: La castità al potere (Milano: Jaca Book, 1998) Binon, Stéphane, Guy d’Arménie et Guy de Chypre, Isabelle de Lusignan à la cour de Mistra, Annuaire de l’Institut de Philo­logie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves, 5 (Bruxelles: Ed. de l’Université, 1937) Bon, Antoine, La Morée franque: Recherches historiques, topo­graphiques et archéo­logiques sur la Principauté d’Achaïe (1205–1430) (Paris: E. De Boccard, 1969)

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Brenk, Beat, ‘Papal Patronage in a Greek Church in Rome’, in Santa Maria Antiqua al Foro Romano cento anni dopo: atti del colloquio internazionale, Roma, 5–6 maggio 2004, ed.  by John Osborne, J.  Rasmus Brandt, and Giuseppe Morganti (Roma: Campisano, 2004), pp. 67–81 Brubaker, Leslie, ‘100 Years of Solitude: Santa Maria Antiqua and the History of Byzan­ tine Art History’, in Santa Maria Antiqua al Foro Romano cento anni dopo: atti del colloquio internazionale, Roma, 5–6 maggio 2004, ed.  by John Osborne, J.  Rasmus Brandt, and Giuseppe Morganti (Roma: Campisano, 2004), pp. 41–48 Brubaker, Leslie, and Mary B. Cunningham, eds, The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzan­ tium: Texts and Images, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, 11 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) Carile, Antonio, Immagine e realtà nel mondo bizantino (Bo­logna: Lo Scarabeo, 2000) —— , ‘Produzione e usi della porpora nell’impero bizantino’, in La porpora: Realtà e im­ maginario di un colore simbolico. Interdisciplinary conference at Istituto Veneto di Scien­ ze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice, 24–25 October 1996, ed. by Oddone Longo (Venezia: Isti­ tuto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1998), pp. 243–75 Chatzidakis, Manolis, Mistrà: La città medi­evale e la fortezza (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1956) The City of Mystras (Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, 2001) Cooper, Kate, ‘Empress and Theotokos: Gender and Patronage in the Christo­logical Controversy’, in The Church and Mary, ed. by Robert N. Swanson, Studies in Church History, 39 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 39–51 Dabrowska, Małgorzata, Lacinniczki nad Bosforem: Malzenstwa Bizantyjsko-Lacinskie li Cesarkieo Rodzinie Paleo­logou (xiii–xiv) (Lodz: Uni­ver­sity of Lodz Press, 1996) Donadeo, Maria, Inno Acatisto, in onore della Madre di Dio (Genoa: Marietti, 1991) Dufrenne, Suzy, Les Programmes icono­graphiques des églises byzantines de Mistra (Paris: Klincksiek, 1970) Falcioni, Anna, ‘Cleofe Malatesti nelle fonti epistolari mantovane’, in Le Donne di Casa Malatesti, ed. by Anna Falcioni (Rimini: Ghigi, 2005), pp. 955–68 Fassler, Margot, ‘Mary’s Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse: Liturgical Innovation circa 100 and its Afterlife’, Speculum, 75 (2000), 389–434 Gharib, Georges, ed., Maria di Nazaret secondo gli Apocrifi (Roma: Città Nuova, 2001) Grabar, André, Bisanzio: L’arte bizantina del Medioevo dall’ viii al xv secolo, trans. by Silvia De Cesaris (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964) Grosdidier de Matons, José, ‘Liturgie et Hymno­graphie: Kontakion et Canon’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 34/35 (1980/81), 31–43 Grumel, Venance, ‘Homélie de saint Germain sur la délivrance de Constantinople’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 16 (1958), 183–205 Herrin, Judith, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, Past and Present, 169 (2000), 3–35 —— , Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ ver­sity Press, 2013) Hopf, Karl, Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittel­alters bis auf unsere Zeit, 2 vols (New York: Franklin, 1977; facsimile of Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1867–68)

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Hunger, Herbert, ‘Romanos Melodos: Dichter, Prediger, Rhetor - und sein Publikum’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft, 34 (1984), 15–42 James, Liz, ‘The Empress and the Virgin in Early Byzantium: Piety, Authority and Devotion’, in Images of the Mother of God: Perception of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. by Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 145–52 Kalavrezou, Ioli, ‘Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became Meter Theou’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 44 (1990), 165–72 Kalligas, Harris A., Bizantine Monemvasia: The Sources (Monemvasia: Akroneon, 1990) Kougeas, Sokrates, ‘Βυζαντινή επιγραφή Λογκανίκου’, ‘Ελληνικά, 5 (1932), 250–54 Lafontaine-Dosogne, Jacqueline, Icono­graphie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident, 2 vols (Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1964–65) Lampros, Spyridon, Παλαιολóγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, 4 vols (Athens: privately printed, 1912–30) Lazarev, Viktor, Storia della Pittura bizantina (Torino: Einaudi, 1967) Löhneysen, Wolfgang Freiherr von, Mistra: Griechenlands Schicksal im Mittel­alter. Morea unter Franken, Byzantinern und Osmanen (München: Prestel, 1977) Manoussakas, Manousos Ioannou, ‘Η χρονολογία της κτιτορικής επιγραφής του Αγίου Δημητρίου του Μυστρά’, Δελτίον Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας, 4th Ser., 1 (1959), 72–79 Mila, Massimo, Guillaume Dufay (Milano: Einaudi, 1997) Millet, Gabriel, ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, Bullettin de Correspondance hellénique, 23 (1899), 97–156 —— , ‘Inscriptions inédites de Mistra’, Bullettin de Correspondance hellénique, 30 (1906), 453–66 Norelli, Enrico ‘La Vergine Maria negli apocrifi’, in Maria Vergine Madre Regina: Le miniature medi­evali e rinascimentali, ed. by Claudio Leonardi and Antonella Degl’Inno­ centi (Milano: Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 2000), pp. 21–42 Orselli, Alba Maria, La donna e il sole in Ap XII,1 tra esegesi e icono­logia (Bo­logna: Letture CISEC, 1992) Parmeggiani, Antonella, ‘L’iconografia della nascita della Vergine: un modello di femminilità (Gli affreschi di Mistrà, xiv–xv secolo)’, in Studi di Storia del Cristianesimo: Per Alba Maria Orselli, ed.  by Lugi Canetti, Martina Caroli, Enrico Morini, and Raffaele Savigni (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2008), pp. 269–81 Pitsakis, Konstantinos G., ‘Sainteté et empire: A propos de la sainteté impériale; formes de sainteté d’office et de sainteté collective dans l‘Empire d‘Orient?’, Bizantinistica, 3 (2001), 155–227 Prawer, Joshua, Colonialismo Medi­evale: Il Regno latino di Gerusalemme, trans. by Franco Cardini (Roma: Jouvence, 1982) Ronchey, Silvia, ‘Bessarione poeta e l’ultima corte di Bisanzio’, in Bessarione e l’umanesimo, ed. by Gianfranco Fiaccadori, catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Library of St Mark’s in Venice, 27 April – 31 May 1994 (Napoli: Vivarium, 1994), pp. 47–65 —— , L’enigma di Piero: L’ultimo bizantino e la crociata fantasma nella rivelazione di un grande quadro (Milano: Rizzoli, 2006)

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—— , ‘La mummia di Mistra: Bessarione, Cleopa Malatesta e un abito di damasco veneziano’, Thesaurismata, 31 (2001), 75–89 Runciman, Steven, ‘The Marriages of the Sons of the Emperor Manuel II’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Slavi, 1 (1980), 273–82 —— , Mystra, Bizantine Capital of the Peloponnese (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980) Salvador González, José María, ‘Et vocavit nomen eius Mariam: Aproximación iconográfica al Nacimiento de María en la pintura gótica española’, De Medio Aevo, 3 (2013), 121–52 Schug-Wille, Christa, L’arte bizantina (Milano: Rizzoli, 1969) Sendler, Egon, Le icone bizantine della Madre di Dio (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1995) Toniolo, Ermanno M., Akathistos: Saggi di critica e teo­logia (Roma: Centro di Cultura Mariana, 2000) Tzavara, Angeliki, and Thierry Ganchou, ‘La principessa Caterina Paleo­logina: À propos des βασιλισσαι de Morée (fin xive – début xve siècle)’, Εώα και Εσπέρια, 4 (1990–2000), 67–86 Xyngopoulos, Andreas, ‘Φραγκικὰ κρινάνθεμα εἰς τὸ Γεράκι καὶ τὸν Μυστρᾶν’, in Mélanges offerts à Octave et Melpo Merlier à l’occasion du 25e anniversaire de leur arrivée en Grèce, 3 vols (Athens: Collection de l’Institut Français d’Athénes 1956), ii, 205–11 Zakythinos, Dionysios A., Le Despotat grec de Morée: Histoire politique, rev. and enl. edn by Chryssa Maltézou (London: Variorum, 1975) —— , ‘Une princesse française à la cour de Mistra au xive siècle, Isabelle de Lusignan Cantacuzène’, Revue des Études Grecques, 49 (1936), 62–76

Holy Mothers and Vanished Nativities: Maternal Art as Female Visual Epic in Quattrocento Florence Costanza Gislon Dopfel Maternal Art Ever since Jacob Burckhardt established the parameters for Renaissance studies, historical humanism has been the main framework for discussing the culture of the period. Even in its multiple modern variations, this approach restricts the understanding of Renaissance art to the production aimed at an educated, male, and affluent sector of society. This privileged group espoused a radically innovative worldview, rejecting continuity with the preceding artistic period, establishing itself as the natural offspring of a highly prized classical antiquity, and elevating the concept of individuality and earthly success to extreme heights. While the humanist perspective perfectly fits the attributes of civic/ heroic art, this essay proposes an additional, alternative approach to understanding a specific segment of Renaissance religious art, prominently directed to a female public, that centres on images relating to motherhood, pregnancy, birth, and the relationship between mother and child. For the purpose of this study I will refer to this genre as ‘maternal art’. This type of artistic production evades the idea of novelty in favour of a very ancient tradition centred on the icono­graphy of birth, extolling the importance of continuity through procreation for the benefit of the community. Costanza Gislon Dopfel holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and Chair in the Department of Art and Art History at Saint Mary’s College of California. After receiving a doctorate in Italian literature from Stanford Uni­ver­sity, she started working on the intersection between literature and the social history of art. Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­ tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett, CURSOR 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 309–345 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.117827

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The careful consideration of the social forces of the period and of their philosophical, economic, urban, and medical circumstances reveals two distinct stimuli underlying the artistic explosion of the Quattrocento: the first is the intellectual influence of classical humanism, which supports and justifies the exaltation of male civic and military accomplishments; the second is the realistic understanding of the demo­graphic situation, which leads to the celebration of women’s role as procreators. If the former allows for a clear understanding of man’s place in contemporary history, comparing him to (while separating him from) ancient history, the latter denies such separation in favour of the timeless act of giving birth. A general evaluation of this genre immediately reveals a direct relationship between art, society, and the contemporary demo­graphic situation of fifteenth-century Florence, while a thorough inquiry of its origins exposes its close association with early Christian and medi­e val icono­g raphy, rather than with classical antiquity. The focus of this study is Florence in the fifteenth century, partly because the tax records of the Catasto of 1427, the death records contained in the Libri dei Morti, and the merchant diaries of the city (the Ricordanze) provide priceless demo­graphic data, collected and organized by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and David Herlihy.1 This information, which is key to the interpretation of maternal art, reflects a complex and dramatic situation resulting from the incessant waves of plague that decimated the population. These circumstances called for extreme decisions in family management that to our eyes may seem unnatural and even cruel. Such decisions included separating the newborn from the mother, preventing the mother from breastfeeding her child, and pressuring women to produce two to three times the natural number of children. Within this context, Renaissance maternal art appears to deviate from the original religious purpose of its medi­eval prototype and becomes a propaganda instrument supporting such new family practices: it becomes a female visual epic, justifying and normalizing a new idea of female duty and sacrifice geared to the goal of procreation. In spite of the unavoidable and obvious humanistic substratum, which reflects the cultural and intellectual male personae of both patron and artist, the message delivered by maternal art is explicitly female and confirms gender differentiation in both artistic production and consumption. The association of maternal art with female social duties is not new. In her seminal work on the art and ritual of childbirth in Renaissance Italy, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio demonstrated the link between material childbirth accesso1 

See Herlihy and Klapish-Zueber, Tuscans and their Families.

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ries, the mother’s psycho­logical needs, the family’s social status, and the demo­ graphic situation.2 She describes the painted trays and bowls produced to celebrate a successful childbirth as ‘material buffers in the face of mortality’ and ‘mediating devices between the real and the ideal worlds’.3 She further explains that ‘the psycho­logical outlook of the plague-decimated family clearly resulted in a rich and varied material culture to encourage, celebrate, and commemorate childbirth. These objects decorated the mother, the child, and the bedroom in honour of the event. They emphasized the family and procreation, and emphatically encouraged Renaissance women to fulfil their material role’.4 Although Musacchio recognizes the didactic role implicit in these objects’ decoration theme (often representing the births of the Virgin and of John the Baptist),5 her analysis specifically focuses on the private realm of household goods, motherhood’s circumscribed ‘natural’ environment. However, these same nativity images evade the limits of the home and reach monumental dimensions in public statements of family power. Maternal art pervades Quattrocento Florence, not just in the form of birth scenes, but also in what Stephanie Miller calls the ‘ubiquitous Madonna and Child’,6 whose pervasive presence in domestic as well as in religious interiors supports a new perspective on Renaissance art.

Quattrocento Art and the Humanist Tradition In Jacob Burckhardt’s view, Renaissance humanism was the movement through which the medi­e val ‘veil’ — woven of prejudices and illusions — was finally ripped apart by a new, objective perception of reality, a new, subjective individual consciousness, and a desire to discard the recent past in favour of a new, direct link with classical antiquity and the rediscovery of human dignity.7 His Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, which deeply influenced generations of social historians, favoured an idealized vision of a perfect Renaissance society 2 

See Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, p. 153. 4  Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, p. 15. 5  ‘When a woman saw childbirth objects in a sacred painting, she could recall her own pregnancies and could therefore anchor her devotion to personal experience. There was a degree of comfort and familiarity in these images that were intended to offer reassurance.’ Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, p. 10. 6  Campbell, Miller, and Consavari, The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, p. 72. 7  Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 129. 3 

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ruled by humanists, where men and women, equally educated, would live a life filled with intellectual inquiry and innovative art. The idealistic perception that the Renaissance did not differentiate the social culture surrounding men and women has long been challenged by feminist criticism.8 However, the feminist attention to women’s lives in socio-historical contexts has not paid sufficient notice to the message conveyed through the visual testimony of the historical period, and as a result, the traditional humanistic interpretation of Renaissance art has remained relatively unchallenged. Still, it is inconceivable that the artistic production would not reflect gender discrimination or at least gender allocation: the icono­g raphy of motherhood, openly directed at a specific female audience, permeated the century in terms so explicit that it demands to be separately interpreted within the context of social propaganda and of female agency. Some of the most eloquent examples of the contrast between male-oriented art, historically aware and humanistic, and female maternal art, where the prevalent humanism merges with family values, can be found in the great Dominican monastery church of Santa Maria Novella. On the outside, the impressive façade designed by Leon Battista Alberti conveys (almost with vulgarity) the wealth of Giovanni Rucellai, who had his name and that of his father inscribed in enormous letters across the marble façade he had sponsored with gold florins from the wool trade. It would be hard to find a better example of the new concept of the individual propounded by Burckhardt, or of his self-exaltation. This façade, which offers no religious reference, confirms in the controlled harmony of its proportions the classical aspirations of both patron and architect. Rather than being a symbol of the Dominican Order, the sun in the central pediment may refer to Neoplatonic heliolatry,9 stressing the connection between humanism and the Christianized paganism that would permeate so much of Florence’s artistic production, including the frescoes inside the church itself. Compared to its medi­eval predecessor, Renaissance art had shifted its propagandistic focus, espousing the secular rather than the holy. It seemed preoccupied more with the individual’s relationship to society on this earth than with God’s judgement at the time of reckoning. It is not surprising that the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, arriving in Florence shortly before 1486, wrote on the margin of 8 

Kelly-Gadol’s famous statement that ‘there was no Renaissance for women — at least, not during the Renaissance’ was set against ‘the widely held notion of the equality of renaissance women with men’. Kelly-Gadol, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’, pp. 175; Herlihy, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance? A Reconsideration’. 9  Ficino, Liber de Sole et Lumine.

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Figure 12.1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Annunciation of the Angel to Zachary, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. Source: Wikimedia Commons: . Image in the public domain.

one of his sermons that Florentines ‘non creditur Christo, sed omnibus aliis’ (‘do not believe in Christ, but in anything else’).10 The main chapel or Cappella maggiore of the basilica is known as Cappella Tornabuoni, frescoed by Ghirlandaio for one of the most important families in Florence. It contains the largest frescoes in the city, representing the cycles of the lives of Mary and John the Baptist interwoven with the display of Florentine men and women in an anachronistically contemporary reality. They confirm Eugenio Garin’s viewpoint, according to whom the humanistic discovery implies a historical sense of individuality, the awareness of time and memory, and the acknowledgement of the separation between the classical world and the modern through the seven dark centuries enumerated by Leonardo 10 

Verde, ‘Girolamo Savonarola e Firenze’, p. 147.

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Bruni.11 In the Tornabuoni chapel, wealthy Florentines invade the sacred narrative.12 They bring with them their clothes, their social position, their family relationships, and even their city, which is not just a background, but is an integral character in a tale that unites sacred and human history.13 Vasari explains that Ghirlandaio painted ‘the portraits of a large number of Florentine citizens who were at that time governing the state, and especially all those from the Tornabuoni family to render the scene more illustrious’.14 Among this urban crowd it is easy to identify what Alessandro Salucci describes as ‘a sort of theo­logical humanism’,15 where the faces of Florentine merchants and of their women usurp the space reserved to the faces of saints. Not surprisingly, Burckhardt was so influenced by this and similar images of Florentine life that he wrote that ‘the educated woman, just like her male counterpart, naturally tries to state her own individuality.16 The artistic image, as the visual and educational instrument of this new ‘humanistic theo­logy’, is an incomparable device for illustrating the symbiosis between religion and society. Within the fresco of the angel’s Annunciation to Zachary (Figure 12.1) in the Baptist’s cycle on the right wall, below the portraits of the Tornabuoni men, are the members of the Platonic Academy, while on the side of the Roman arch an epi­graph by Poliziano sets the year 1490 as the time in which ‘ Pulche[R]Rima [sic] Civitas Opibus Victoriis Artibus Aedificiisque Nobilis Copia Salubritate Pace Perfruebatur ’ (‘the city beautiful for wealth, victories, the arts and the noble buildings, enjoyed abundance, health and peace’).17 The Latin epi­ graph defines a precise moment in the history of Florence, a history that is equally civic and heroic, marked by the actions and by the success of those very Florentines it portrays: busy talking in groups and completely unaware of or uninterested in the sacred history developing in the background.18 As Salucci explains, ‘thus at the end of that century that saw Humanism reach its apex, the 11 

Garin, Italian Humanism, pp. 14–15. See also Cassarino, La Cappella Sassetti nella chiesa di Santa Trinita for Ghirlandaio’s other great cycle, the Stories of Saint Francis. 13  Rohlmann, Domenico Ghirlandaio, p. 9. 14  Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, trans. by Bondanella and Bondanella, p. 219. 15  Salucci, Il Ghirlandaio a Santa Maria Novella, p. 21. 16  Simons, ‘Women in Frames’. 17  Simons, ‘Portraiture and Patronage in Quattrocento Florence’, p. 176. 18  Razeto, ‘La Cappella Tornabuoni a Santa Maria Novella’, p. 92. 12 

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Figure 12.2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of John the Baptist, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. Source: Wikimedia Commons: . Image in the public domain.

subject of sacred narrative was reduced to simple pretexts […] the sacred subject was still necessarily present, but by now it was also subdued to a new hagio­ graphy, that of the noble families’.19 The new heroism is that of bankers and merchants, the shapers of history, the guarantors of peace. They do not conflate present and past, but rather confront both with full awareness of the historical moment in which they live, this specific year 1490, which marks the return of the Saturnia Tempora. The angel’s Annunciation to Zachary, besides informing of John’s future birth, could contain another message, already stated in 1404 by Leonardo Bruni’s panegyric of the city, the Laudatio Florentinae Urbis: it is not contemporary Rome, with its crumbling churches and abandoned temples, but Florence, splendid in marble and gold, that now claims direct descent from the Eternal City. And it is in this new, reborn Rome that the modern values of humanism can triumph, while sacred history recedes into the background.

19 

Salucci, Il Ghirlandaio a Santa Maria Novella, p. 19.

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Figure 12.3a. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. Courtesy of .

Figure 12.3b. Detail: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 1485–90. Source: . Images in the public domain.

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The corresponding scene in Mary’s cycle on the left wall is the Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple. Similarly majestic and theatrical, it contains the portrait of Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of the patron, as well as of his brotherin law Alessandro Nasi, his Medici friends, and a group of artists, including Ghirlandaio himself. The temple is an open loggia with no walls, so the viewer can clearly perceive behind it the depiction of an iconic modern Florentine building : the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the city’s first foundling hospital. Designed by Brunelleschi and completed in 1445, this expensive structure symbolized the new interpretation of classical style and architectural perfection as well as Florentine civic charity and commitment to demo­graphic increase.20

Dovitia and the Celebration of Abundance The ‘Expulsion’ and the ‘Annunciation’ scenes on the left and right chapel walls are followed by the depiction of the births of the Virgin and of John the Baptist respectively (Figures 12.2 and 12.3).21 The framework of the individual scenes within the two cycles immediately outlines the contrast between the icono­graphy of the two births, which are placed in an intimate, domestic, and exclusively female environment, and the public/political male scenes, which are placed in a civic and urban space or in a majestic natural environment. The two nativities, though different, share common elements: the mother in bed lies in a characteristically wealthy, comfortable, and contemporary room, surrounded by women, some visiting, some busy caring for mother and child. Two women are sitting on the ground or on low stools. By their feet a water basin is ready for the infant’s first bath. In the Baptist’s cycle, a woman brings food and drink to the mother on a tray, while three Tornabuoni women approach to congratulate the mother.22 Vasari thus describes the scene of the Birth of the Baptist: mentre S.  Elisabetta è in letto, e che certe vicine la vengono a vedere e la balia stando a sedere allatta il bambino, una femmina con allegrezza gnene chiede, per mostrare a quelle donne la novità che in sua vechiezza aveva fatto la padrona di casa; e finalmente vi è una femmina che porta a l’usanza fiorentina frutte e fiaschi da la villa, la quale è molto bella.23 20 

Gavitt, Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence, p. 82. The Visitation scene stands between the Annunciation to Zachary and the Birth of the Baptist. 22  Bargellini, Il Ghirlandaio del bel mondo fiorentino, pp. 208–09. 23  Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, p. 489. 21 

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[while St Elizabeth is in bed, and some neighbours come to see her and the wet nurse, who is sitting, feeds the baby, another woman asks (to hold) the baby, to show those women the novelty that in her advanced age the mistress had produced; and finally there is a female figure that in the custom of Florence brings fruits and flasks (of wine) from the country estate, and she is very beautiful.]

Vasari’s attention is chiefly on the classicizing image of the maid, whose antique costume, fluttering veil, and sandals provide an antiquarian note that allows the artist to situate the event within a proto-historical context. The white-clothed maid corresponds to another classicizing figure pouring water in the beautiful image of the Birth of Mary. Here too the costume, which contrasts directly with the contemporary clothing of all the other female characters, anchors the event in an unidentified past. The fruit-bearing peasant girl noted by Vasari is anything but a realistic portrait: it is an idealized image rooted in classical bas-reliefs, well known to Florentine artists such as Filippo Lippi and Botticelli. Donatello had introduced it to the Florentine public in the form of a statue of Dovitia (at times spelled Divitia or Dovizia), the personification of wealth or abundance, carrying a basket of fruit on her head and a cornucopia in her hand.24 The statue was installed by order of the city council in 1428 on top of an existing Roman column in the centre of Mercato Vecchio, representing the link between ancient Rome and Florence. The specific location of the image of Dovitia, in the heart of the city’s trade centre, was intended as a symbol of the correlation between Florence’s civic wealth and the liberality and charity of the Republic: its public caritas, as discussed by Poggio Bracciolini in his Dialogue on Avarice.25 The classical lines of Dovitia in the Tornabuoni fresco indirectly connect it to Roman culture, but the circumstance of Dovitia’s appearance within the context of a birthing chamber aligns the concept of abundance with the value of birth and away from the importance of commerce. Dovitia seems to be rushing into the room to partake of the birth of the city’s own patron, therefore linking the concept of childbirth as wealth and abundance specifically with the city of Florence.26 24 

This may have been Donatello’s invention, a modification of Roman Fortuna or Greek Tyche, symbol of civic prosperity. Both goddesses carry a cornucopia filled with fruit and have a crown, not a basket, on their heads. 25  Wilkins, ‘Donatello’s Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio’, p. 418. 26  The link between birth, wealth, and the city is embodied by the Baptistry of Florence, for which the city elders had ordered a second set of gilded brass doors of such magnificence

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Donatello’s statue of Dovitia was also the inspiration for the household artefacts that may have been quite common in wealthy households. From the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia, eight ceramic copies of the statue (dating from around 1480) have survived. They were apparently for private and domestic ornamentation, as they carry the inscription ‘Gloria et Divitia in Domo Tua’ (Glory and abundance in your home). A statuette now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the best documented. The figure of Dovitia is intact, but closer scrutiny reveals the existence of two tiny footprints on the base and of little hands on the skirt, identifying the height of a child of about eighteen months hanging on the woman’s skirt. At least five of the eight ceramic figurines, all dating from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, show a child in the same position, replacing the political denotation of Donatello’s statue with a clear domestic message. The full significance of the maid/Dovitia within the Birth of the Baptist fresco would therefore have been obvious to the viewer, who would have been familiar with the fashionable ceramic statuettes. Within the Baptist’s fresco narrative, this added layer of signification contributes to a shift in meaning. While Dovitia’s classical lines in the Birth match the classical architecture in the scene of the Annunciation, and her visual message of abundance corresponds to the verbal one in the Latin epi­graph, the two meanings do not exactly match. If the splendour of the year 1490, so triumphantly announced by the epi­graph, reconnects Florence to the height of Roman power in a well-defined historical reality, the maid in the fresco — as well as the Della Robbia statuettes — eludes historical specificity in favour of a message that connects fertility and abundance to the process of childbirth.27 The real wealth, they seem to say, consists in an abundance of children. The same message is repeated in the fresco of the Birth of Mary, also marked with an epi­g raph. It shows an exceedingly sumptuous room, with a wide and imposing staircase, on top of which is depicted the encounter between Joachim and Anne. The walls are decorated with putti in the Della Robbia style, who are dancing and celebrating the great event, as indicated by the epi­graph that runs below their feet: Nativitas tua Dei genitrix virgo gaudium annuntiavit universo mundo (Thy birth, O Virgin and Mother of God, brings joy to all the world). As in the Birth of the Baptist, Tornabuoni women come to visit and bring testimony to the birth, as if Anne were their neighbour or relative. The that Michelangelo called them the ‘Gates of Paradise’. Here all Florentine children would become at the same time Christians and citizens of Florence. 27  Wilk, ‘Donatello’s “Dovizia” as an Image of Florentine Political Propaganda’.

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joy that Mary’s birth brings to the whole world (universo mundo) is contained in this birthing room, which represents and encloses within itself the life cycle of female Florentines. Just as the epi­graph implies a double birth — the birth of Mary who is Christ’s genitrix — the procreative life of Florentine women is reflected in this artistic space. Among the visitors is the young Ludovica Tornabuoni, who was not yet married but who is nonetheless symbolically dressed like a new bride, showing off the expensive clothes purchased by her husband to be worn during the first year of marriage. Behind her are the young matrons, wearing less sumptuous clothes and with light veils covering their heads. They are followed in turn by a group of older women, enveloped in large cloaks and with their heads completely covered by heavy veils. In the background the mother is still resting in bed,28 where she will remain for the following six weeks under the care of the guardadonna, the woman originally hired to help the mother relax during the birth.29 Finally, sitting on the edge of the bed platform, two women are getting ready to bathe the newborn, while a third, dressed in fluttering clothing and reminiscent of the Dovitia in the Birth of the Baptist, pours the water for the baby’s bath. Ghirlandaio describes this world in minute details and with a Flemish-style realism that fills this enclosed female world with usual and recognizable elements (like that key left in the lock of the bed platform) that make the scene all the more credible.30 There are therefore two stories: the first is the contemporary story of a birth in the higher section of Florence’s merchant society, marked by the presence of Tornabuoni women, recognizable through their individual portraits. An abundance of objects are specifically placed within the scene to define the family’s social position and material wealth: Elizabeth and Anne are resting on sumptuous beds, which may well be copies of real beds that real neighbours could have seen inside the Tornabuoni home when visiting after the birth of a child. Next to this realistic contemporary story is another, possibly timeless story, which St Elizabeth and St Anne link to the Christian world and the two classical figures link to an unidentified ancient world. This second narrative anchors the scene of the birth it depicts to all the birth scenes that connect mother to mother, generation to generation, favouring continuity over innovation. Although at first glance the worlds of men and women may look very similar, a comparison between scenes depicting the Annunciation and Expulsion and these two 28 

For a discussion of lying-in, see L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, pp. 76–109. Haas, ‘Women and Childbearing in Medi­eval Florence’, p. 90. 30  See also Levey, Florence, p. 219. 29 

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birth scenes shows that they are conceptually and structurally different. If the male world is situated within a historical reality that is as modern as its new icono­g raphy, a further inquiry about the icono­g raphic history of images of holy births shows that they are rooted in a long artistic tradition, whose specific characteristics and arrangement never changed through the centuries.

Origins and Transformations of Birth Icono­graphy The images of the Birth of the Virgin that seem to proliferate everywhere in the frescoes, paintings, and objects of the Quattrocento begin to appear in Italy in connection with the publications of the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genova (1292–98).31 The special devotion to the Virgin, which had always been central to Byzantine Christianity, had recently become prominent in the West as the Cistercians, championed in France by Bernard de Clairvaux, developed a new veneration for the ‘Queen of Heaven’, who in the thirteenth century becomes principal mediatrix between man and God.32 Possibly influenced by this new piety, Jacobus de Voragine included in his collection of hagio­g raphies the Byzantine Marian tradition derived from apocryphal texts. The Legenda Aurea was immensely successful, and as the public interest in the Virgin peaked, her story was translated into images taken from the apocryphal narratives. Although notoriously absent from the synoptic gospels, these stories created a new Marian cycle that precedes the story of the Annunciation present in traditional gospels, and that includes the expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, the annunciation to Joachim, the meeting between Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate, the birth of the Virgin, the presentation of Mary at the Temple, and the marriage of the Virgin. Although all the depictions of the episodes in Mary’s life show some visual continuity, the icono­g raphy of the Birth of the Virgin — which includes the mother in bed, two women sitting on the floor washing the baby, and women visiting or bringing food to the mother — is so constant throughout the centuries that it must assume either the direct witnessing of a birth event or the use of an archetype. The male artists’ direct observation of the moments following the birth is not an acceptable possibility, since men had no access to the birthing chamber. According to the Belgian historian Louis Maes, ‘the act of spying on a 31  32 

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. by Maggioni. Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, p. 124.

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woman during the birth of her child was regarded as an infringement of morals’.33 In his lengthy treatise Chirurgia Magna of 1363, the French physician Guy de Chauliac offers plenty of obstetrical advice, but insists that the birth itself should be handled exclusively by women.34 Indeed, although the images show the aftermath of the birth, rather than the birth itself, no man is ever included in Mary’s Nativity scene.35 The ‘secrecy’ that surrounded the process of birth was such that men risked their lives to have a glimpse of what went on.36 If the icono­graphy of Mary’s birth is not based on direct observation, it is also not based on a narrative account. The wealth of detailed information supplied by the apocryphal gospels and by the Legenda Aurea on Mary’s early life does not include any detail about her actual birth. In fact, while each of the other scenes of Mary’s infancy cycle corresponds to specific descriptions, the birth itself does not.37 The archetype may therefore not be an ancient depiction of the Birth of Mary, but may have been inspired by the depiction of a different birth. One of the oldest Western representations of Mary’s Nativity is part of an Italian altarpiece dating from around 1280, now at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp (Figure 12.4). The style is influenced by Byzantine art, and it shows a central large panel, depicting the enthroned Madonna, with four scenes 33 

Louis Maes records a fine assigned in the fifteenth century to a husband ‘for having hid behind a staircase to eavesdrop upon his wife, she being in labour of childbirth, which thing doth not befit a man’. Maes, ‘Les Délits de moeurs’, quoted in Greilsammer, ‘The Midwife, the Priest, and the Physician’, p. 290. See also Florschuetz, ‘The Mother’s Mark’, p. 32. 34  Harris-Stoertz, ‘Suffering and Survival’, p. 110. 35  Byzantine depictions of the Birth of John the Baptist often include the figure of Zachary close to the bed where his wife Elizabeth lies. Zachary is often busy writing the name of his son John. However, in Italian and especially Florentine depictions of the same scene Zachary is not depicted within the confines of the lying-in room. 36  For a discussion on change of male physicians’ role during childbirth, see Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine. Helen Lemay points to the fact that ‘by the fifteenth century evidence of male doctors attending to female patients becomes more abundant’: Pseudo-Albert, De Secretis Mulierum, trans. by Lemay, p. 34. In 1522 Dr. Wertt from Hamburg decided to dress as a woman in order to observe the process of birth, and so disguised he followed a midwife through the town. He was eventually discovered and condemned to the stake, but it is not clear if the penalty was the result of his entering the birthing chamber or dressing in female clothes. Cassidy, Birth, p. 200. 37  The Legenda Aurea and the Pseudo-Matthew go from the description of Anne’s conception directly to the Presentation at the Temple, when the Virgin was already three years old. The Protoevangelium dedicates a few lines to Anne asking the midwife if the child was male or female, with no birth description.

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Figure 12.4. Anonymous (Simeone da Spoleto), Virgin enthroned with scenes from the life of the Virgin, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, inventory no. MMB. 0195. © Museum Mayer van den Bergh.1275. Courtesy of Museum Mayer van den Bergh.

of her life on either side. At the two opposite corners are two medi­eval nativities: they are very similar, almost identical, with the mother in bed and two midwives washing the baby, but the one on the upper left side is situated in an urban environment with a view of the townscape in the back, while the other in the bottom right side is in the wilderness. The second one is the Nativity of Christ, in accordance with a long existing tradition and Byzantine prototypes, while the first represents a relatively new subject in the West: Mary’s Nativity. There is clearly a continuance between the two scenes, one being almost an extension of the other, but chrono­logically reverse. Even Joseph’s position, excluded from the birth site and sitting in a corner with his head in his hand, finds continuation in the role of Joachim, who in later images can be found waiting outside the birthing room. The preservation of specific corresponding character roles in the two scenes, including the same inverted red and blue colours worn by the parturient, show that the icono­graphy of the Birth of Mary, which starts to appear in the thirteenth century and becomes extremely popular by the fifteenth, is anachronistically a development of the much older icono­ graphic tradition of the Birth of Christ.

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What truly links the two births, besides the depiction of the mother in bed, are the two midwives caring for the child.38 They are represented in essentially identical positions, with identical basins of water, similar in shape to a large cup on a pedestal. This is the shape of early Christian baptismal fonts, rather than of a basin used for a baby’s first bath, a clear reference to Mary and Christ washing the sins of humanity.39 This symbolism would still have been recognized by medi­eval observers, who were familiar with this type of baptismal font, substituted in later times with larger, square or octagonal fonts.40 The presence of two midwives at Christ’s birth may seem out of place to the modern viewer, but in fact the two women have a relevant position in the narrative of this holy event. Their story is rooted in the apocryphal tradition, revised by Jacobus de Voragine and popularized by Mystery Plays and songs, particularly in France and England.41 The women’s role at the site of the birth was to discover Mary’s virginity, and therefore reveal a true wonder. The proof of this miraculous birth was also evidence for the divine nature of both the child and his mother. According to the apocryphal Gospels, Joseph arrives after the birth with two midwives, Zelomi and Salome. Zelomi examines the mother and announces that Mary is still a virgin. Salome, in disbelief, tries to examine the mother, but her arm withers. Salome will be healed by touching the child’s swaddling clothes, and she will become a believer.42 This rather ­g raphic story appears originally in the second century in the Protoevangelium Jacoby,43 and in the sixth century in the Pseudo-Matthew.44 38  The presence of professional midwives in the early medi­eval period has been questioned by Monica Green, but their existence in sacred icono­g raphy is undeniable. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 34–36. 39  Similar baptismal fonts can still be seen in southern France and Spain, as well as in the Baptistery of the Arians in Ravenna. 40  Bloch, ‘The Two Fonts of the Florence Baptistry’, p. 85. 41  In Play 15 of N-Town, Mary challenges Salome to perform a gyneco­logical exam. Mary asks Salome to ‘Wysely ransake and trye the trewthe owth | Whethyr I be fowlyd or a clene may’: The N-Town Play 15, ‘The Nativity’, verses 252–53. 42  ‘Vangelo dello Pseudo-Matteo’, . 43  Also see Neumann, Vangeli Apocrifi e Testi Iniziatici, section 11, subsection XX. See Elliott, The Apochryphal New Testament, p. 65. 44  Elliott, ‘Mary in the Apocryphal New Testament’, pp. 57–61; also see Ehrman, Lost Christianities; Schneemelcher and Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha. Byzantine tradition transforms unbelieving Salome into a preacher and saint, Hagia Salome. See Cartlidge and Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha, p. 90.

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The Protoevangelium was initially rejected by the Latin Church, which may be the reason why early depictions of the episode are rare, generally limited to a few Byzantine ivory carvings that survived the two waves of iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries and found their way to the West. Among these Byzantine treasures the most notable is an insert in the so-called Throne of Maximian, a large ivory bishop’s throne in Ravenna, dating from the sixth or seventh century (Figure 12.5). The insert depicts a woman bending over Mary, not to attend to her, but to show her own hand — clearly referencing the story of Salome’s lack of faith, her examination of the Virgin’s womb, and the ensuing withered arm. This may be one of the earliest images of a nativity incorporating Mary and Joseph, a midFigure 12.5. Anonymous, Throne of Maximian, wife, and the ox and ass, which Museo Arcivescovile, Ravenna. Sixth century. Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Ravenna-Cervia. are mentioned for the first time in the Pseudo-Matthew. The icono­ graphy of the Birth of Christ will retain these specific elements for several centuries, but the midwives, who in the Apocrypha interact with Mary and provide proof of her virginity, change role and become involved with bathing the child rather than examining the mother. The ninth-century fresco of Castelseprio,45 in northern Italy, has already moved from the ivory archetype to a pattern that will be repeated for the following six centuries in Italian art: it shows the midwives in their new role, 45 

For the frescoes’ discovery, see Bognetti, Chierici, and De Capitani, Santa Maria di Castelseprio and Weitzmann, The Fresco Cycle of Santa Maria di Castelseprio.

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Figure 12.6. Anonymous (Maestro di Castelseprio), Nativity, Santa Maria Foris Partas, Castelseprio. Ninth Century. Courtesy of PDArt.

which parallels the future role of the midwives in the birth of Mary.46 The Castelseprio fresco depicts what medi­e val viewers would recognize as the Nativity, a moment of strictly female domestic action (Figure 12.6). This episode is completely separate from the depiction of the successive moment of Christ’s story, the Adoration, a regal moment of male homage to the child king and to his queenly mother, who has risen from her bed and sits enthroned in splendour. Rather than an independent artistic subject, the representation of the Nativity during the later part of the medi­eval period would become secondary to the main image of the Madonna enthroned. The Nativity would be small in size, relegated to the side of the main image or at the foot of the altarpiece, 46 

Although two women are in the foreground washing the baby, in the background, to the Virgin’s left, are a barely visible hand and half-figure, with the inscription EMEA, which means midwife, possibly a last reference to Salome’s story as the new icono­graphy takes root.

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the predella. Although faithfully reproduced over centuries, this image of the Nativity is entirely alien to the modern viewer. By the end of the fourteenth century it had almost completely disappeared in favour of a ‘purified’ birth narrative that negated the physical experience of childbirth and forever changed the image of Christ’s birth. The codification of this momentous change has a date and a place: Bethlehem, 13 March 1372. St Bridget of Sweden experiences a vision.47 She sees the Virgin, blonde and dressed only in her white undergarment, give birth to the Child while standing, absorbed in prayer. It is an immaculate birth, devoid of blood and pain, and the child is born completely spotless. In the saint’s description, even the placenta appears absolutely immaculate:48 Et tam subitus et momentaneus erat ille modus pariendi, quod ego non poteram aduertere nec discernere, quomodo vel in quo membro pariebat.  11  Verumptamen statim vidi illum gloriosum infantem iacentem in terra nudum nitidissimum. Cuius carnes mundissime erant ab omni sorde et immundicia. 12 Vidi eciam pellem secundinam iacentem prope eum, inuolutam et valde nitidam. [And so sudden and momentary was that manner of giving birth that I was unable to notice or discern how or in what member she was giving birth. 11 But yet, at once, I saw that glorious infant lying on the earth, naked and glowing in the greatest of neatness. His flesh was most clean of all filth and uncleanness. 12 I saw also the afterbirth, lying wrapped very neatly beside him.]49

The denial of the traumatic and bloody nature of birth, which is the reason for the mother’s isolation from male visitors both during and after the event, is the evident focus of St Bridget’s narration. The parturient womb immediately shrinks, leaving the Virgin looking like a woman who had never given birth, implicitly stressing her virginity without the need of gynaeco­logical examinations. The saint’s vision conveys a wealth of details, which will be incorporated later not only in the icono­graphy of the new Nativity, but also in new images of the Madonna and Child. Some of the details are both moving and visually enchanting, as the narrative shifts from the divine miracle that just occurred to an experience of purely human interaction between mother and child, creating a believable space that envelops an unbelievable event. The mother, seeing 47 

Also see Dopfel, ‘Bridget’s Vision and Jan Provost’s Nativity’. Schiller, Icono­graphy of Christian Art, p. 78. 49  Revelaciones, Book vii, Chapter 21, 10–12, in The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden, trans. by Searby, ed. by Morris, p. 250. 48 

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the child tremble for the cold, holds him close to her cheek in a very credible, tender image: ‘Then his Mother took him in her hands and pressed him to her breast, and with cheek and breast she warmed him with great joy and tender maternal compassion’.50 The real and the godly play with each other in this luminous birth, which requires no midwives to clean and check the mother, no water basin to bathe the child, no bed for the mother to rest on. The bed and the midwives and all indirect reference to a birthing room have vanished, and with them the ban of male presence. Joseph can finally be next to his wife inside the grotto where the birth has taken place, and he will soon be joined first by shepherds and later by kings. The moment Joseph is allowed into the birthing space the icono­graphy of the Nativity merges with that of the Adoration, and male characters finally enter — and eventually dominate — the image. In Gentile da Fabriano’s 1423 Nativity the two midwives have already metamorphosed into court ladies and are ready to leave the scene permanently. In Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of 1483 the only female left is the Virgin. The new icono­graphy does not open the door just to biblical characters, but also to any new merchant wishing to earn his way to Paradise by visually sharing the stage of Christ’s birth. The transformation of the Nativity scene initiated by Bridget’s vision would encourage a revolutionary change in the economics of art, within which individual patronage will become the driving engine behind the flowering of the Renaissance.51 Despite such dramatic evolution, the icono­graphy of the original Nativity does not fully disappear but survives in its medi­e val ‘alternate’ version as depicted in the Mayer van den Bergh altarpiece: the births of Mary and — more rarely — of the Baptist remain faithful to the icono­graphic structure of the early Nativity scene. But now the images of birth, previously limited to the smaller space in the predella or in side panels, develop as an independent subject and appropriate larger, if not central, spaces in the artwork. As they flourish throughout the fifteenth century, they claim an autonomous meaning and an independent narrative that releases them from the association with the traditional image of Christ’s birth. But the question remains, if the earlier apocryphal version of Christ’s Nativity was so hastily and completely abandoned, why did the icono­graphy of Mary’s birth, which so clearly recalls the early Nativity scenes, not only persist but also multiply in the 1400s?

50  51 

The Revelations of St. Brigida of Sweden, trans. by Searby, ed. by Morris, p. 251. Dopfel, ‘Bridget’s Vision and Jan Provost’s Nativity’, p. 10.

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Celebrating Childbirth and Self-Sacrifice The Tornabuoni chapel frescoes may once again suggest an answer. The shift of identity in the characters of the story necessarily marks a shift — and possibly a loss — in the symbolic values of each element within the painting: as the Birth of Christ is translated into the Birth of Mary, the basin of water, which in Christ’s Nativity symbolizes baptism, becomes just a basin of water, while the two midwives lose not only their names but also their value as symbols of faith, doubt, and conversion, becoming two anonymous, but very real, midwives. Set in contemporary upper-class homes, the frescoes provide positive encouragement to all mothers-to-be and are clearly trying to connect with the experience of pregnancy and birth that was one of the main duties of wealthy women. On the back wall of the chapel, the portraits of Giovanni and of his wife Francesca face each other. By the time of the fresco’s completion, Francesca had been dead thirteen years. Her marriage represented the typical Renaissance political union between powerful families. Here the Pitti and the Tornabuoni come together to solidify, among other things, the Medici power as papal bankers and Florentine magnates. The peace exalted by the Latin epigram in the Annunciation to Zachary was the result of just such carefully sanctioned unions. According to Eleonora Plebani, it was no coincidence that, after the marriage of Piero de’ Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni (sister to Giovanni), Giovanni Tornabuoni himself married Francesca Pitti, daughter to Luca di Buonaccorso Pitti, who, the previous year, had been at the centre of a failed coup against Piero de’ Medici. The union between Tornabuoni and Pitti and the fruits of their marriage were a way to re-establish the political balance in Florence.52 A generation later Francesca’s son Lorenzo would marry the beautiful daughter of another key political family, Giovanna degli Albizzi. Francesca and Giovanna would have a similar destiny: they would both die in the process of providing the Tornabuoni family with heirs. Lorenzo commissioned a posthumous portrait of Giovanna (Figure 12.7), who died in 1488 during the birth of her second child.53 This portrait, which would serve as the model for the full-length portrait in the fresco scene of the Visitation,54 remained in view in Lorenzo Tornabuoni’s bedroom even during Lorenzo’s second marriage, almost like a holy devotional 52 

Plebani, I Tornabuoni, p. 57. Kecks, Domenico Ghirlandaio, p. 241. 54  Christiansen and Weppelmann, The Renaissance Portrait, p. 68. 53 

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icon to the saintly first wife. Such was Lorenzo’s devotion to his first wife that soon after her death he commissioned masses ‘per spatio d’anni cento ogni settimana una volta una messa’ (for the space of one hundred years one mass a week).55 In the portrait Giovanna wears family jewels probably received at the time of the wedding, as well as a sumptuous giornea that sports Lorenzo’s initial on the shoulder, symbolizing her devotion to her husband. The splendid gowns worn by both Giovanna and her sister-in-law Ludovica in the Ghirlandaio frescoes represent the power and wealth of the family and are in direct contrast to the uniformity of male garb, which may be an expression of civic merchant solidarity. 56 The year Figure 12.7. Domenico Ghirlandaio, following the wedding Giovanna Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, Museum would provide the Tornabuoni Thyssen-Bornemisza. 1489–90. Source: with a male heir, and the follow. Image in the public domain. birth just like her father’s first wife, Albiera, and her mother-in57 law, Francesca. Francesca Pitti’s death is recounted by her husband in a famous and much quoted letter to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, his cousin: 55 

Simons, ‘Portraiture and Patronage in Quattrocento Florence’, p. 143. Also see Simons, ‘Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel’. 56  According to Nicholas Baker, the wardrobe of young patrician women in the first years of marriage had the specific function of representing the competition for political and financial pre-eminence among the great Florentine families. Baker, The Fruit of Liberty, p. 70. 57  Van der Sman, Lorenzo and Giovanna, p. 23.

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Carissimo mio Lorenzo. Son tanto oppresso da passione e dolore per l’acerbissimo e inopiato chaso della mia dolcissima sposa, che io medesimo non so dove mi sia, La quale, chome avrai inteso ieri, chome piacque a Dio a hore XXII soppra parto passò di questa presente vita, e la creatura, sparata lei, gli chavano di chorpo morta, che m’ è stato anchora doppio dolore.58 [My most dear Lorenzo, I am so oppressed by grief and pain for the most bitter and unforeseen accident of my most sweet wife, that I myself do not know where I am. As you will have heard yesterday, as pleased God, at the 22nd hour she passed from this life in childbirth, and the infant, having cut her open, they extracted from the body, dead, which to me was a double grief still.]

Francesca’s death is vividly described in a bas-relief by Verrocchio’s workshop on the pediment carved for her tomb, a very rare instance of depiction of death in childbirth.59 It shows the mother reclining, already failing, as women around her express the depth of their pain (Figure 12.8). Yet even this tragic moment does not escape the icono­graphy of the traditional birth scenes, as one of the servants sitting on a low stool holds a baby that is, tragically, lifeless. No such wretched scene is present in the Tornabuoni chapel. Within the two cycles celebrating Mary and John the Baptist, the Tornabuoni women are represented as participants of happy events connected with childbirth and pregnancy. While Giovanna degli Albizzi witnesses the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth,60 both pregnant, Ludovica Tornabuoni, only daughter to Giovanni Tornabuoni, visits St Anne in her birthing chamber, and a third Tornabuoni woman — possibly Giovanna once more — attends the birth of John the Baptist. Although Giovanna was already dead at the time the fresco was completed, she is inscribed within a visitation scene that points to two successful births. The younger Ludovica, portrayed in the fresco at the age of fourteen, was already promised to the noble Alessandro Nasi, whom she would marry in 1491. In the fresco, Ludovica wears clothes so similar to Giovanna herself that she becomes symbolic of her own sister-in law’s presence at the scene of Mary’s birth,61 while foreshadowing her 58 

ASF, MaP, filza XXXV, c. 746r, quoted in Plebani, I Tornabuoni, p. 58. 59  This famous marble pediment is now in Florence Museo del Bargello, and is the only surviving piece of Francesca’s tomb, originally in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Another moving description of death in childbirth is provided by Gregorio Dati, who lost his wife Ginevra in 1419 or 1420. See Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children, p. 53. 60  Vasari confuses Giovanna with Ginevra de’ Benci. Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, trans. by Bondanella and Bondanella, p. 217. 61  Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art, pp, 64–73.

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Figure 12.8. Andrea del Verrocchio, Death of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni, Florence, Museo del Bargello. Marble Relief. 1477–80. Courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber. . Image in the public domain.

own future experience of childbirth. Although the Tornabuoni chapel serves as a memorial for both Francesca and Giovanna, the scenes connected to motherhood are marked with a sense of social success and optimistic celebration, which makes the viewer forget that, in rooms similar to those depicted, and possibly on identical beds, these two women had died in childbirth. The social importance of the birth event, underscored by the wealth displayed in the room and by the clothes the visiting women wear, is reinforced by the presentation of gifts, generally in the form of food on a tray brought to the mother. This parallels the gift bearing in the Adoration. The idea of giftgiving associated with the icono­g raphy of birth produces in this period tangible objects, specifically the deschi da parto, birthing trays, to carry the first meal after the birth, and birthing bowls for serving capon broth, which was considered essential in strengthening the mother after the effort of childbirth.62 These objects become highly prized and beautifully decorated trophies, commissioned by wealthy husbands for their pregnant wives.63 In some cases the 62 

For an extensive study of objects related to birth and parturition and especially for the discussion on different types of birthing trays, see Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, pp. 59–89. The first mention of a desco da parto is in a 1382 inventory, solidly placing the item in the generation after the Black Death. 63  In the sixteenth century the desco was substituted by a decorated ceramic service set still

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celebration exceeds the traditional food offering to include pages carrying multiple laden trays as well as Florentine flags and trumpets.64 These expressions of abundance recall the concept behind the image of Dovitia and imply the connection between personal wealth and the well-being of the city, female fertility, and children.65 The birthing trays often depict the scene of Mary’s birth, following the same traditions as the large frescoes do. In some cases, the specific use of the tray and of the bowl dictate an unprecedented level of symbiotic relationship between the user of the object, the object itself, and the decoration thereon: the ‘real’ mother would be drinking from a cup carried upon a tray depicting a mother (St Anne) drinking from a cup carried on a tray supposedly repeating the same scene ad infinitum, erasing the differentiation between art and reality and inserting the user in the larger, timeless chain of motherhood.

Demo­graphic Crisis and Childbirth This message assumes an important role in the context of the demo­g raphic crisis following the first appearance of the plague in 1348. From 1348 until 1470, the plague would visit the city on a ten-year cycle,66 targeting the very young and causing a constant decrease in population.67 By 1427 the population of Florence had been reduced from 120,000 in 1300 to a mere 37,000.68 The immediate impact of epidemics was to age the population, as the survivors were in use in 1940. Mannini, ‘Dal desco da parto alla tazza da puerpera’, p. 7; also Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, pp. 90–123. 64  A tray by Masaccio from 1427 is a good example of the use and display of abundant gifts. 65  Musacchio compares the godparents bringing gifts to the mother and child to the image of the Magi, another devotional image that would find great success in the fifteenth century. Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, p. 49. 66  Artifoni, Storia Medi­evale, p. 558. 67  Herlihy, ‘Deaths, Marriages, Births and the Tuscan Economy’, p. 155. 68  The population of Florence never touched the height of its earlier numbers until last century. Two years after the great plague the population had shrunk to 42,000; it grew to 55,000 before the end of the Trecento, but shrunk back again to 37,000 in the first half of the Quattrocento, remaining under 42,000 until the end of the century. By 1552 it reached 60,000, while Venice, of equal size to Florence in 1300, rose to 180,000 inhabitants. Najemy, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, p. 89; Brucker, ‘Florentine Voices from the Catasto’; Takahashi, Il Rinascimento dei trovatelli, p. 45; Molho, Marriage Alliance, p. 262; Del Panta, Le Epidemie nella storia demografica italiana, pp. 128–37.

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often persons who had experienced the previous plague and recovered. While the disease killed mostly young children, it also raised fertility levels among the survivors, resulting in the formation of large cohorts of babies. According to the Catasto of 1427, 15 per cent of the population of Florence was under the age of five.69 This change is clearly marked in the Ricordanze, the merchants’ personal diaries. Luca Dominici comments on the effects of the plague of 1400, as in the following year ‘a great number of women became pregnant, who for a while had not been making babies, and others too who had never been pregnant before’.70 In 1411 the Florentine Giovanni Morelli notes that before the time of the great epidemics women would marry between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-six and produce four to six children. They were of healthy constitution and lived a long life,71 while in his day they would bear four times as many offspring, and both they and the children would be weak and died prematurely. His sister-in-law produced twenty-one children within twenty-four years. This ruthless rhythm had its price: from the partial data of the Libri dei Morti, the Florentine records of the dead, in 1424, 1427, and 1430 thirty-two women died giving birth, and another fifty-five experienced spontaneous miscarriages, often the cause of delayed death. In contrast, during that same period, which was marked by great violence, only twenty-eight men died of violent causes.72 A few rich men, such as the merchant Goro Dati, would ‘go through’ several wives: in 1390, his young wife Bandecca died after nine months of terrible pain as the result of a miscarriage during her second trimester. Three years later Dati married Lisabetta, who gave him eight children and then died in 1402; the following year he married Ginevra, who died in childbirth in 1419;73 his last wife, Caterina Guicciardini, survived him. The data from the 1427 Catasto reveal that the demo­g raphic pressure was felt more intensely among the rich than the poor. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, in their fundamental study of the Florentine population in the first half of the 69 

Herlihy, ‘Deaths, Marriages, Births and the Tuscan Economy’, p. 156. Dominici, Cronache di ser Luca Dominici, i, 274. 71  ‘E le fanciulle si maritavano allora nell’età d’anni ventiquattro o venzei, e aveano in tutto il più quattro o sei figlioli ed erano di forte natura e vivevano assai’. Morelli di Pagolo, Ricordi, Parte II, . 72  Herlihy and Klapisch-Zueber, Tuscans and their Families, p. 275. 73  Ginevra is described as a martyr in her long and painful death ‘con martirio di lunga infermita’ di parto’. Dati, Il Libro Segreto, ed. by Gargiolli, p. 93. https://archive.org/stream/ illibrosegretod01datigoog/illibrosegretod01datigoog_djvu.txt. 70 

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1400s, identify as ‘poor’ those citizens who do not declare even one florin as income, and as ‘rich’ those who declare 3,200 florins a year. Interestingly, the pressure to procreate and marry at a young age seems higher among the wealthy than among the poor, where women would marry later. The Catasto data shows a relatively steady percentage of female poor population during the childbearing years, indicating that women between the age of twenty and forty were surviving at a regular rate, as well as a consistent ratio between men and women, approximately 115 men per 100 women, with women exceeding men after the age of fifty.74 The records of wealthy women tell a different story. Instead of stabilizing after childhood, the death ratio for wealthy women seems to peak between the ages of fourteen and thirty-four, the childbearing years. Only a third of the fourteen-year-olds survived to reach age thirty-four.75 The available data also shows the increasing disparity between the number of living men and women in wealthy households. Starting at a ratio similar to the poor (115 men per 100 women), wealthy males increasingly become more numerous than their female counterparts during childbearing years, with the disproportion peaking between the age of twenty-four and thirty-four. Within the richest Florentine households, there were no fewer than 174 men in their thirties for every 100 women of the same age. As Klapisch-Zuber points out, on average three adult men for two adult women lived under the roof of rich Florentines.76 Wealthy women married earlier than poor ones, around the age of seventeen. This encouraged a very long breeding period, which generally slowed down after the age of thirty-five, but could continue for another ten years. In his diary, Antonio di Ser Tommaso Masi reports that his wife, who died in 1459 at the age of fifty-seven, had given him thirty-six children. Twenty-eight children had been sent to wet-nurse, and nine of her sons were present at her deathbed. The oldest living son, but not necessarily the first born, was forty-two years old, therefore born when the mother was only fifteen.77 This intense rhythm of pregnancies was possible only if the woman was not nursing, and as a consequence a new trend developed towards the end of the 74 

Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 168. While the percentage of wealthy women corresponds to 6 per cent of the entire population of the same social group, by age thirty-four it has reduced to only slightly over 2 per cent. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 168. 76  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 167. 77  ASF, Manoscritti, 89, 1455–59, fol. 18, Ricordanze di Antonio di Ser Tommaso Masi. 75 

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fourteenth century, possibly causing demo­graphic changes.78 At the beginning of the Quattrocento, Florentine women from households that could afford to pay one or more wet nurses, or balie, had completely stopped nursing their children. This social trend was harshly criticized by some of the most popular preachers: the Sienese preachers Bernardino and Cherubino not only encouraged mothers to nurse their own children,79 but categorically prohibited husbands from having sexual relations with their wives during the breastfeeding period, which lasted between one and two years.80 At the beginning of the Trecento, when mothers still nursed their children, births would follow every three to four years, instead of every year, and the prevention of pregnancy, partly offered by nature itself through lactational amenorrhea during the first year, was probably enhanced by vitatio prolis,81 the avoidance of offspring, in order to protect the integrity of the mother’s milk. The milk of a pregnant woman was thought to be not simply less nourishing, but actually harmful to the baby. The husband had to face a choice: either his wife would not become pregnant until after the weaning period, or the child had to be sent away to a balia. Since the quality of the nursing depended on the avoidance of impregnation, the contract was stipulated between the mother’s husband and the balia’s husband, the balio.82 After 1400 newborns were rarely kept with their family in Florence, but generally sent to balie that lived in the countryside. The 1427 Catasto shows that out of 234 children sent out to wet-nurse, only 34 remained in Florence.83 Given the high mortality rate among infants,84 the physical distance between the balia and the mother, probably already pregnant and unable to visit the child in the country, had the benefit of lessening the psycho­logical effects of the child’s death on the parents. In a way, after its departure the child would be somewhat forgotten until its return. 78 

Giovannini, Natalità, mortalità e demografia, p. 38. King, Women of the Renaissance, pp. 13–14; see also Miles, A Complex Delight. 80  Coon and Haldane, That Gentle Strength, p. 122. 81  For vitatio prolis according to medi­eval canon law, see Biller, The Measure of Multitude, p. 167, and Biller and Minnis, Handling Sin, p. 165. 82  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 132–64. 83  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 134. 84  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 151. Eighteen per cent of the children sent out to wet nurses would die within six months, but this number does not include newborns who died within two weeks of birth or from the plague. 79 

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Figure 12.9. Filippi Lippi, Madonna col Bambino, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 1466. Source: . Image in the public domain.

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Even in this case, maternal art seems to create a reality that justifies this absurd new tradition: the Quattrocento Madonne, beautiful and very young, enter Florentine homes as private and affordable devotional images. Thousands of such images, both painted pictures and three-dimensional terracotta reliefs, were made available to middle-class as well as wealthy Florentines.85 They are generally portrayed next to a child who seems to be just over one year old,86 the very age when the children that had been sent away to a wet nurse would get ready to come back to their mothers at the end of the weaning period.87 The Virgin, dressed according to the latest Florentine fashion, happily interacts with a developed toddler who seems to be able to stand on his own (Figure 12.9).88 It is an ideal image: the child has finally come back to his mother, whom he recognizes and accepts in spite of the many months spent away from her.89 The tragically cruel custom of separating the child from its mother seems to go against the very nature of motherhood, and yet it was accepted and integrated in the way of life of Florentine families within a few decades, and not just among the very rich. The spreading of wet-nursing from the most affluent social group to the artisan middle class shows a change in family custom throughout Florentine society: while at the end of the 1300s only 10 per cent of the recorded families that had sent children to a wet nurse were from the middle class, by 1450 the percentage had risen to half of the total.90 Ecclesiastical and humanistic writers discuss the new social practice of wetnursing, the baliatico.91 In his Easter Vigil sermon, Friar Girolamo Savonarola expressed his disapproval of mothers who forsook breastfeeding, because 85 

See Johnson, ‘Art or Artefact?’, pp. 1–12. Traditionally children nursed by their mothers would be weaned around the age of two, but the cost of a wet nurse accelerated the weaning time. The median age for children at termination of breastfeeding in the second half of the Quattrocento seems to be seventeen months. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 156. 87  Hairston, ‘The Economics of Milk and Blood’. 88  The Child of Quattrocento Madonne is bigger and heavier than the small child carried in one arm by the Gothic statues of the Madonna of the previous century, when mother and child seem to interact in art for the first time. 89  James Bruce Ross examines the connection between images of the Christ child in the home and the absence of the same, and questions the function of these images as emotional compensation to the mother for the absence of her child. Ross, ‘The Middle Class Child in Urban Italy’, p. 199. 90  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 134. 91  Martorelli Vico, ‘Madri levatrici, balie e padre’, p. 129. 86 

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‘by letting vulgar people nurse the children, they themselves will acquire a vulgar spirit, […] because that first milk gives the inclination for the child’s personality’.92 The humanists Leon Battista Alberti and Giovanni Dominici share the concern on the effect of inferior milk on the development of the child’s character, but at the same time they concede to the necessity of wetnursing with a list of the balia’s desirable qualities. For Alberti she must be honest, kind, and hard working,93 while for Dominici she must also not be too young.94 While serving at the court of the Este in Ferrara, Michele Savonarola, grandfather of Fra Girolamo, wrote a paediatric and gynaeco­logical manual in which he describes the ideal wet nurse, who must be in her mid-thirties, strong, with a thick neck and a prominent bosom.95 At the same time, images of wet nurses are very rare. The image of the breastfeeding nurse is the signal of the imminent departure of the newborn, who will grow, or die, away from his mother. As indicated by Patricia Simons, the balia breastfeeding the Baptist in the Tornabuoni chapel is an ‘icono­g raphic oddity’ as well as the embodiment of the perfect wet nurse described by Michele Savonarola.96 As Simons points out, both the balia and the female character next to her are dressed in the gold and green Tornabuoni colours and are therefore symbolic of the male line presence inside the birthing room. This may be an alteration of the Byzantine icono­graphy of the Birth of the Baptist, where Zachary is shown inside the birthing room writing his son’s name. While in Florentine images of the Birth of the Baptist Zachary is always intentionally excluded from the birthing space, the livery of two women in the Tornabuoni chapel symbolizes the father’s presence, as well as the importance of the family name perpetuation. The father’s implicit association with the balia also reminds us that the system of the baliatico, rather than a custom adopted to serve the needs of mother and child, was a strategy aimed at the survival of the family

92 

Camporesi, Le vie del latte, p. 18. Alberti, I libri della famiglia, ed. by Grayson, pp. 34–35; Takahashi, Il Rinascimento dei trovatelli, pp. 75–76. 94  Dominici, Regola del governo di cura familiare, p. 143. 95  Savonarola, Il trattato gineco­logico-pediatrico in volgare, pp. 145–46. The previous century Pseudo-Albertus stated that ‘the milk of a black woman is better’; see De Secretis Mulierum, trans. by Lemay, p. 101. Although wet-nursing was not a common custom in the early Middle Ages, the Trotula’s suggestion is to choose a woman ‘who is a little bit fat’; see The Trotula, ed. and trans. by Green, p. 84. 96  Simons, ‘The Social and Religious Context of Icono­graphic Oddity’, pp. 231–33. 93 

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lineage, and that the separation of the child from its mother was sanctioned by male authority.97 Art takes part in the debate with a new image, the Madonna Lactans or breastfeeding Madonna. In this new genre, which appears at the end of the Trecento, the Madonna exposes a breast as she prepares to nurse an infant Child. Soon the Madonna Lactans will metamorphose into the Madonna of Humility, dressed simply and often sitting on the ground instead of on a throne. By the middle of the Quattrocento this new Madonna will no longer be depicted breastfeeding, but rather interacting with an older child with the tenderness described by St Bridget in her vision. While dispensing with the intimate and natural action of breastfeeding, the depiction of Quattrocento Madonne paradoxically brings the humanization of the mother–child relationship to its apex, with only the hint of a halo denouncing the godly nature of the couple. The icono­graphy of maternal art soothes and consoles, offering an image not of the Madonna but of the young mother whose child was taken and has finally come back.

Conclusion Maternal art offers hope and inspiration in the fight for population survival, and the women of the closed Florentine upper class offer an extreme example of the result of this demo­g raphic struggle. The icono­g raphy of maternal art, both in its monumental expression such as frescoes and altarpieces, and in its more intimate form of household objects, was extraordinarily successful as propaganda to both celebrate the act of giving birth and to encourage women to subscribe to the unforgiving condition of constant gravidity.98 Although one woman in five died in childbirth,99 future mothers found in the visual experience of maternal art the justification for their sacrifice. As the icono­graphy of 97 

Klapisch-Zuber so envisions the negotiations between the balio and the husband: ‘His male voice dominates, echoed and amplified by the solo voice of the balio, who sells him “his” milk and negotiates with him. The mother, on the other hand, cuts an uncertain figure and appears even less important than the nurse’. Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 159. 98  As Musacchio points out, the recurrent epidemics inspired childbirth-related icono­ graphy and the production of objects that reinforced the idea of safety in the face of uncertainty. Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, pp. 32–33. For a further discussion of images related to children and motherhood, see Campbell, Miller, and Consavari, The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, pp. 67–88. 99  Herlihy and Klapisch-Zueber, Tuscans and their Families, pp. 276–77.

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birth intertwines sacred history and domestic events, Giovanna Tornabuoni resembles a saint, and the nativities of the Virgin and of the Baptist become a family event. The triumphant and optimistic representation of birth-giving that developed into new traditions and ritualistic objects is in fact a visual epic propaganda that performs through images what traditional epic does through poetry: it is a narrative in elevated style, focusing on high-born characters, who perform heroic deeds that impact their nation and family history. Maternal art extolls the honour and the status connected with the heroic action of giving birth, convincing women to accept their role and their duty to sacrifice their lives in the attempt to produce more children-citizens at a faster pace. Contrary to the humanistic values of individual exaltation, maternal art proposes that the highest honour for a woman is self-sacrifice and self-effacement for the greater good, even at the cost of denying the most human instincts of motherhood. At the same time, it proposes an alternative understanding of civic values that does not deny but complements the male representation of civic/heroic virtues. Within the context of the fight for the survival of Florence, the visual and propagandistic celebration of birth becomes female epic art, and through the exaltation of the privileges connected to procreation it creates a rich icono­ graphic tradition that is central to the study of Renaissance art.

Works Cited Manu­scripts Archivio di Stato Firenze [ASF], Manoscritti, 89, 1455–59, fol. 18: Ricordanze di An­ tonio di Tommaso Masi Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo avanti il Principato [ASF, MaP], filza XXXV, c. 746: Letter of Giovanni Tornabuoni to Lorenzo di Pietro de’ Medici The N-Town Play, London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian D VIII

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Index

abortion. See miscarriage Abbot Thiers: 209 Abraham Avenesre: 95, 98 Abraham Ibn Daud: 95 Abraham Ibn Ezra: 80–85, 90–99, 101 Liber Abraham Iudei de Nativitatibus: 86– 91, 93, 98 Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot: 90, 91, 93, 94, 96 Moladot: 81–83, 85, 86, 88–91, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101 Sefer ha-Ṭeʿamim: 88, 90, 93 Abraham Isbendeut: 94, 95 Abraham Iudeus: 86 Abraham of Beth Rabban, director of Nisibis School: 29 Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan b. al-Khaṣib: 83, 85 Abū Saʿīd Shādhān bin Bahr: 99 Acciaiuoli, Florentine banking family Angelo, bishop of Florence: 298 Bartolomea, despoina of Morea: 296, 297, 303 Nerio, duke of Athens: 297, 298 Achilles, mythological character: 80 Adam, biblical character: 272 Adelina, woman in a miracle tale: 213 Aetius of Amida, physician: 11, 18 Agathangelos: 272, 273, 274 Agathias: 29 Agnodice, character of a Hyginus’s fable: 3 Aḥūhdemmeh Antipatros (Pseudo-): 43, 44 Aizier (Eure): 112 Saint-Thomas d’Aizier, Leper house: 112, 116; see also leprosy al-Bīrūnī: 33, 83, 85

Albert of Armagh, archbishop: 198 Alberti, Leon Battista: 312, 339 Albertus Magnus: 233 Albizzi, Albiera degli: 330 Albizzi, Giovanna degli: 329– 332, 341 Albucasis: 23, 196 Albumasar in Sadan: 99 Alcmena, mythological character: 4, 5 Alexander III of Scotland: 238 Alexandria: 8, 30 Alice of Schaerbeek, mystic: 172 Alnwick, William, bishop of Norwich: 146 Ambrose of Milan, saint: 177, 286 amulets: 174, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 202, 215; see also charms Andrew of Crete: 287 Angers: 171 Anna Lascarina: 295 Anne, saint, Virgin Mary’s mother: 182, 215, 289, 290, 292, 301, 319–21, 322, 331, 333; see also Virgin Mary Anne of Savoy: 298 Antonio di Ser Tommaso Masi: 335 Apollonius of Citium, physician: 19– 23 Apt (Provence): 202 ʿArīb ibn Sa`d: 54, 59, 64, 67, 69, 70 Aristotle: 57, 58, 63, 234 Aristotelian conception models: 57, 59 Arma Christi. See Christ Armagilus, saint: 154, 155 Armenia: 251, 272 Arnulf of Leuven, abbot of the Abbey of Villers: 187 astrology: 64, 68, 80; see also horoscopes, moon

348

Athanasius: 273 Augustine of Hippo, saint: 206, 286 Augustine of Kent, saint: 231 Avessiaco, Robert de: 239 Avicenna, Ibn Sīnā, Abū `Alī al-Ḥusayn: 53, 196 Bacon, Roger: 175 Baldwin, count of Flanders: 298 Balia. See wet nurses Balthazar: 276 Bandecca di Bonaccorso Berardi, Goro Dati’s wife: 334 Banderoles: 157, 159, 162, 163 Bartholomaeus Anglicus: 110, 173 Barunak of Erzinka: 252 Bate, Henry (of Malines): 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 Battista di Montefeltro, wife of Galeazzo Malatesta: 299 Becket, Thomas, saint: 112, 182 Bergh, Mayer van den, museum: 328 beguines: 171, 184, 185, 186 Bernard de Clairvaux: 321 Bernard de Gordon, physician: 175, 210, 233 Bernardino of Siena, saint: 201, 204, 208 Bessarion, Basilius, cardinal: 301 Bethlehem: 253, 327 Bijloke (Ghent), Cistercian abbey of: 186 Birretus. See relics birth girdles: 136, 138–42, 146, 150, 151, 154–56, 158, 160, 164, 183; see also charms birthing chair: 8 birthing chamber: 135, 139, 141, 142, 163, 204, 216, 240, 243, 331 Boleyn, Anne, queen of England: 136, 140 blood; see also four bodily humours menstrual blood: 35 40, 41, 62, 63, 65, 228, 230, 232– 234 pollution: 228, 230, 235 Boniface, saint: 287 Botticelli, Sandro: painter, 318 Boulancourt: 186 Bracciolini, Poggio, Italian humanist: 318 Bridget of Sweden, saint: 205, 216, 327, 340 Brundoré, character of Galeran de Bretagne: 241 Brunelleschi, Filippo: 317

INDEX Bruni, Leonardo (Leonardo Aretino): 313–14, 315 Brussels: 171, 172, 184, 185 Buckingham, John, bishop of Lincoln: 146 Buddha: 34 Bundahišn, or ‘Primal Creation’: 45 Burzōy, physician: 32–39, 44, 45 Kalīlah wa Dimnah: 32, 33, 34, 35, 38 Byzantium: 29 Caelius Aurelianus, physician: 173 Caen: 112 Saint-Julien in Caen, church: 113, 120, 124, 128 Saint-Peter of Caen-Square Darnétal cemetery: 121, 128 Caesarean section, post-mortem: 196, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214; see also embryo, midwives Caetani, Francesca: 211 Cambrai: 236 Cambridgeshire: 138 Canterbury: 154 Caraka, physician: 35, 36, 45 Castelseprio: 325, 326 Catasto (land register) of Florence. See Florence Cateperotiana: 15 Catherina, character of a miracle tale: 202 Catherine, saint: 302 Catherine of Aragon, queen of England: 159 Celina, St Remigius’ mother: 178, 182 Celsus, anti-Christian polemicist: 260 Champagne (Champagne-Ardenne): 171 Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor: 148, 156 162; see also Charlemagne, charms Charles of Blois, saint: 208 charms; see also amulets, Christ, Virgin Mary Charlemagne: 142, 148, 160, 162 with the Magi’s names (‘Three Kings Charm’): 175, 180 with the name of Lazarus: 178, 215 with the name of the Virgin Mary and saints: 178, 182, 215 children; see also foetus baptism of: 138; see also baptism under Church sacraments born in eighth month: 67–69 resurrection of, 205, 208;

INDEX see also miracles à répit signs of life and death: 207–08, 210 stillborn: 73, 110, 119, 127, 136, 200, 201, 205, 206, 208, 209 in utero: 113, 114, 116, 121, 122, 124 Christ Arma Christi (arms of Christ): 143, 144, 145, 146, 155, 160, 187; see also charms as mother: 163 birth or Nativity: 249, 253, 260, 263, 268, 276, 289, 302, 323, 326, 327, 328, 329 healing miracles of: 176, 177 intercessor for parturient women: 137, 149 measure of (mensura Christi): 142, 151, 153, 160, 162, 187 Passion: 144, 145, 150, 153, 160, 163, 187, 189; see also Pietà wounds: 145, 150, 151, 153, 157, 160, 162, 163, 187 Christina Mirabilis, mystic: 172 Church, as Ecclesia Armenian: 271, 273 Church of the East: 30 Greek: 295 Latin: 128, 163, 198, 209, 215, 237, 286, 295, 325 Church sacraments baptism: 138, 139, 141, 159, 206, 217, 235, 236, 329 emergency baptism: 159, 173 confession and penance: 139, 141, 145 eucharist: 139, 141, 144, 147, 150, 151, 163, 188 extreme unction: 139, 141, 146 Cino of Pistoia, jurist: 211 Cipolla, Bartolomeo, jurist: 210 Cirice. See Quiricus Cirico. See Quiricus Citeaux: 186 Clairvaux: 186 Clare, Juliana de: 242 Clare of Montefalco, saint: 207 Clement VII, (Giulio de’ Medici), pope: 21 Clementini, Cesare: 300 Cleopatra: 17 Colonna, Roman noble family Lorenzo Onofrio, brother to Pope Martin V: 299

349

Vittoria, daughter of Lorenzo Onofrio: 299 conception; see also foetus, four bodily humours moon’s position at the time of: 86, 87–88, 89, 90–91, 92–93, 94–95, 96 two seeds theory of: 35–38, 40, 57– 58 Constantine, first Christian emperor: 148, 162 Cosenza: 216 Constantinople: 18, 252, 286, 299 Courcy (Calvados): 112, 118, 124, 128 Coventry (Warwickshire): 122, 153 Coverham Abbey, Premonstratensian monastery in Yorkshire: 154 Cristopher, saint: 155 Crusades First Crusade: 296 Fourth Crusade: 285 Ctesiphon, capital of Sasanian empire: 29 Cyriace. See Quiricus Cyril of Alexandria: 271 Damascius, Greek philosopher: 29 Damīrī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā: 72 Dati, Goro: 334 Dauphine de Puimichel, saint: 202, 215, 217 Della Volpe, Isabella: 196 delivery room. See birthing chamber demographic crisis in Florence: 333–36 Deschi da parto (birthing trays): 332 Despotate of the Morea, 285, 286, 289, 297; see also Mystras Diderot, Denis: 102 Dominici, Giovanni: 339 Donatello (Niccolò di Betto Bardi), painter: 318– 320 Dorothy, saint: 156 Dovitia (Dovizia, Divitia): 318, 319, 333 dreams, interpretation of: 72 Durandus, Andree, physician: 202 Edmund of Abingdon, saint: 200, 206 Edward I, king of England: 155, 238 Edward III, king of England: 136, 242, 243 Edward IV, king of England: 149, 157 Egypt: 17, 79, 82 Eileithyia, mythological character: 4 Eleanor of Castile: 236

350

Eleanor of Provence, queen of England: 136, 236 Elizabeth, saint, mother of John the Baptist: 178, 215, 317–18, 320, 322, 331 Elizabeth, Eleanor of Castile’ s daughter: 237 Elizabeth of York, queen of England: 137 Elizabeth of Hungary, saint: 172, 182 Elizabeth of Schönau, saint: 175 Elizabeth Sampson, Lollard: 139 embryo embryology: 172 embryotomy: 23, 196, 197, 213, 217 emergency baptism. See baptism under Church sacraments England: 136, 147, 150, 151, 154, 153, 155, 227, 238, 241, 244, 324 War of the Roses: 136, 153 Enoch’s balance: 81–87, 89–91, 97 Ephesus: 8 Ephesus, Council of: 271 Ephrem (the Syrian), saint, Syriac Christian deacon: 270 Esau, biblical character: 213 Eve, biblical character Eve’s curse: 206, 233 anti-type of Mary: 249, 261, 266–73, 275–77, 287 as witness at Jesus’ Birth: 260, 263, 266 Felicitas, saint: 69 Ferrara: 339 Flanders: 186, 243 Flines (Flines-lez-Raches), Cistercian Abbey: 186 Florence: 199, 312, 315, 318, 336, 341 Catasto of 1427: 310, 334, 335, 336 Ospedale degli Innocenti: 317 Santa Maria Novella, church: 312 Cappella Maggiore or Cappella Tornabuoni: 313, 314, 329, 332, 339 foetus, foetal; see also Caesarean section, children, embryotomy; obstetrics, women dead in womb: 23, 200, 202 eighth-month foetus: 68– 69 expulsion of: 65–66 200 malpresentation of: 11, 17, 200 seventh-month foetus: 67–68 skeleton: 117

INDEX surgical extraction of: 196, 199–00 twins: 64 four bodily humours: 38, 42; see also blood France: 175, 183, 197, 241, 244, 287, 324 northern France: 227 Frances of Rome, saint: 197, 204 Francis, saint: 150, 151 Francis I, king of France: 21 Francis of Paola, saint: 199, 200, 216, 217 Fraxino, William de: 240 Fulbert, bishop of Chartres: 287 Gabriel, archangel: 269 Galanthis, mythological character: 4– 6 Galen: 11, 19, 21, 22, 42, 45, 188, 234 Gaspar: 276; see also Magi Gattilusio, Genoese family Caterina, despoina of Morea: 296, 299 Dorino I: 223, 224, 299 Gayianē: 273 Genoa: 299 Gente, character of Galeran de Bretagne: 238, 241 Gentile da Fabriano: 328 George, saint: 155 Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople: 287, 288 Gersonides. See Rabbi Levi ben Gershon Ghirlandaio, Domenico, painter: 313, 314, 317, 320, 328, 330 Giotto di Bondone: 293 Giovanni da Milano, painter: 293 Ginevra di Antonio di Piero, Goro Dati’s wife: 334 Giuntini, Francesco: 101 Gondeshapur, medical school of: 31 Gospels Apocryphal Gospels Armenian Infancy Gospel: 249– 254, 256, 262, 263, 266, 268, 269, 271, 274– 276 Protoevangelium of James: 250– 254, 260, 261, 266–68, 275, 288, 290, 322, 324 Gospel of Nicodemus: 176 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew: 254, 324, 322, 325 Gospel of John: 177 Gospel of Matthew: 261

INDEX Gratian, jurist: 231, 232, 237 Gregory I, the Great, pope and saint: 230, 286 Gregory XI, pope: 141 Gregory of Narek: 274 Gregory the Illuminator: 272 Guicciardini, Caterina, Goro Dati’s wife: 334 Guidi, Guido, physician: 21 Guillaume Durand: 129 Guy de Chauliac, physician: 212, 322 gynaecology: 8, 172, 216 gynaecological disorders: 11, 196; see also women Hagin le Juif: 97 Hainaut: 186 Haute-Auvergne: 202 Heidon, Christopher: 102 Helen, queen of Cyprus: 300 Helen, saint, 301 Heliodorus, physician: 22 Henry I, duke of Lower Lorraine: 172 Henry II of Saxony: 238 Henry III, king of England: 136, 238 Henry VI, king of England: 146, 147, 151, 153, 154 Henry VII, king of England: 137, 140, 153, 154, 155 Henry VIII, king of England: 136, 156, 159 Henri de Mondeville, surgeon: 203 Hermann of Carinthia: 95 Hermaphrodites: 59 Hermes’ balance: 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 95; see also trutina Hermetis Hermes Trismegistus: 82 Hera, mythological character: 4 Heracles, mythological character: 4 Herofilos, physician: 11 Hildegard of Bingen, saint: 204 Hippocrates: 11, 45, 57, 58, 60, 61, 69, 175, 188 horoscopes: 79–80, 84, 89; see also astrology, moon Hṙip‘simē: 273, 274 Hugo de Santalla: 85 Humphrey, duke of Gloucester: 147 Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq: 30, 58, 75, 189 Hyginus: 3

351

Ibn al-Jazzār, Abū Ja`far: 60 Ibn-al- Muqaffa: 33 Ibn Māja, Muḥammad ibn Yazīd: 73 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīya: 53 Ibn Sīnā, Abū `Alī al-Ḥusayn. See Avicenna Ida of Nivelles, mystic: 172 Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils of Tarascon: 94 India: 33, 36, 44 indulgences: 145, 150, 155, 156, 162, 187 Innocent III, pope: 131, 233 Innocent VI, pope: 162 Innocent VIII, pope: 162 Iran: 30, 32, 36 Irenaeus: 261, 262, 268 Isidore of Seville: 232 Israel: 254 Italy: 197, 211, 325 Jacob, biblical character: 213 Jacobus de Voragine: 324 Legenda Aurea: 321 Jacques de Vitry: 184 Jāḥiẓ, Abū `Uthmān `Amr Baḥr: 61 Janus Laskaris, Byzantine humanist: 21 Jean Beleth: 129 Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, saint: 200, 212 Jehan Maillart: 236 Jerome, saint: 286 Jerusalem: 256, 263 Jesse, biblical character: 287 Jizō, Japanese deity: xi Joachim, saint: 289, 293, 317, 319, 320, 323 Job, biblical character: 93–94 Johanna, woman in a miracle tale: 213 Johannes Santorinus of Rhodes, physician: 21 Johannes Valerianus, surgeon: 201 John XXII, pope: 295 John de Heredia, grand master of the order of the Hospitalliers of Saint George: 297 John the Baptist, saint; 178 birth of: 196, 311, 313, 315, 317, 319, 320, 322, 331, 339, 341 John Frankopoulos, protostrator: 293, 294 John of Aron, physician: 18 John of Capua, translator: 32 John of Damascus, Syrian monk: 287 John of Ephesus, bishop: 30

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John of Gaddesden, physician: 233 John of Seville, translator, 96 John of St Trond, monk of Villers (Villersla-Ville Abbey): 187 Jonah, biblical character: 145 Joseph, husband of Mary: 249, 253, 256, 261, 262, 266, 267, 324, 325, 328 distress of: 268, 323 Judas Iscariot: 257 Julian of Norwich, mystic: 163 Julitta, saint: 138, 140, 142, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163 Julyte or Julite, saint. See Julitta Jupiter, mythological character and planet: 80 Justin (Martyr), saint and Church Father: 268 Kalé Kabalaséa: 295 Kantakouzenos, Byzantine family Helena Asanina, daughter of Matthew: 298 Manuel, despot of Morea: 285, 291, 296, 297 Matthew: 298 Katherine, saint: 156 Kempe, Margery, mystic: 138, 145, 160 Kerdīr, Sasanian archpriest: 31 Kirakos Arewelc‘I: 275 Komnenos Doukas, Anna (Anna Komnene Doukaina), princess of Achaea: 298 Koran, conception in: 55–56 La Cambre, female Cistercian community: 172, 176, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190 Lanfranc, surgeon: 233 Lateran Council of 649: 256 Lazarus (of Bethany), follower of Jesus: 178, 179, 215 Lemno (Lemnos): 299 Leonardo Tocco, king of Epirus: 298 Leprosy: 117, 232, 237 Lesbos: 299 Libri dei Morti (Records of the dead): 310, 334 Lichfield (Staffordshire): 153 Liège: 129, 187 Lilly, William, astrologer: 101 Limbo of children: 206 Lincoln: 146

INDEX Lippi, Filippo, painter: 318 Lisabetta, Goro Dati’s wife: 334 Lluís Frederic d’Aragó, count of Salona: 298 Lollards: 135, 140, 141, 144, 146, 147 London: 136, 142, 147 Westminster Abbey: 136, 153 Lothair II, king of Lotharingia: 177 Louis of Toulouse, saint: 202, 203, 209 Love, Nicholas: 146 Low Countries: 173, 184, 185, 188, 190 Lower Lorraine: 172 Lucina, mythological character: 4, 5 Lucius Afranius: 4 Ludford, Nicholas: 156 Luke, evangelist and saint: 253 Lusignan, de, Frankish family (noble dynasty originating in Poitou, western France) Guy, king of Armenian Cilicia: 297 Guy, prince of Galilee: 297 Isabelle (Mary or Margaret), despoina of Morea: 294, 295, 297, 303 Lutgard of Aywières, saint: 172 lying-in; see also women care, gifts, and food, 239, 241–43, 320 duration and room: 236–37, 241 impurity: 228 seclusion: 238–39 Maddalena (Theodora) Tocco, despoina of Morea: 296, 298 Madonna Lactans. See Virgin Mary Magi: 148, 156, 251, 267, 276; see also charms magic: 139, 146, 150 Maimonides, Moses: 71 Malatesta, leading family of the area between the Italian regions of Romagna and the Marche Carlo, uncle of Cleofa: 299 Cleofa, despoina of Morea: 296, 299, 300, 301 Galeazzo, lord of Pesaro: 299 Pandolfo, bishop of Patras: 299 Sigismondo, lord of Rimini: 299 Marcus Ulpius Amerimnus, physician and surgeon: 8 Margaret of Antioch, saint: 137, 138, 156, 180, 183

INDEX Margaret Contracta, saint: 172 Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England, queen of Scotland: 238 Marguerite of Oingt, mystic: 145 Marie de Courtenay, niece of Count Baldwin of Flanders: 298 Marie of Bourbon, empress of Constantinople: 297 Marquette, Cistercian Abbey, of Marquette: 186 Mars, mythological character and planet: 84 Martin V, pope: 299, 300 Mary; see also Virgin Mary Anti-type of Eve: 249, 261, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275–77, 287 aural conception (conceptio per aurem): 270 birth of. See birth or Nativity under Virgin Mary, illicit relationship: 260 virginal state (ante partum, in partu, post partum): 254–57, 261, 269, 327 Mary Magdalene, saint: 137, 172 Mary the Egyptian, saint: 302 Māshāʾallāh: 83, 85 maternal art. See Virgin Mary Matilda, duchess of Lower Lorraine: 172 Matilda, duchess of Saxony: 238 Matthew, evangelist and saint: 253, 276 Mattiotti, Giovanni: 197 Maurice, Byzantine emperor: 287 Medici, Piero de’: 329, 330 Melchior: 276; see also Magi Meletius, physician: 17 Melk‘on. See Melchior Meraleresse. See midwives Mercury, mythological character and planet: 84 Mesopotamia: 271 midwives; see also baptism under Church sacraments, foetus, obstetrics, women birthing kits: 137 early medieval disappearance: 195 experience in children’s resuscitation procedures: 207–08 medical education: 8 meraleresse: 173 obstetrical practice: 73, 74, 172–73, 185, 200, 201, 203

353

present at Jesus’ birth in apocryphal Gospels: 253, 254,-260, 324, 325, 328, 329; see also Salome, Zelomi ventriére: 173 vroedemoeder: 173 Milan: 177 Ministra. See assisting childbirth under women miracles à répit: 201, 206, 207, 209– 211, 217; see also baptism under Church sacraments Mirk, John: 136, 159 miscarriage: 69, 72, 177, 301, 334 antidotes for: 66, 69 causes of: 65–66, 72 moʾznei Ḥanok . See Enoch’s balance monstrosities: 57, 64 moon; see also astrology, horoscopes position at the time of birth: 84, 85, 89, 90–91, 92–93, 95 position at the time of conception: 86, 87–88, 89, 90–91, 92–93, 94–95, 96 More, Henry: 102 Morea, Despotate of: 285, 289, 294–97, 298–03 Morelli, Giovanni, 334 Moses, biblical character: 101 birth of: 92 Mount Taygetus: 285 Mulier. See assisting childbirth under women Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj: 71 Mustio or Muscio: 5, 6, 11, 12, 14–16, 18, 20–24, 171, 173 Gynaecia: 5, 6, 11, 12, 18, 22, 24, 171 Mutawwakkil (Abbasid caliph): 58 Mxit‘ar Ayrivanec‘I: 252 Mystras, capital of the Despotate of Morea: 286, 289, 295, 297, 299–03 admired by All Observers (Peribleptos): church, 294 Brontochion, monastery: 290 Holy Wisdom (Agia Sofia), church: 291–93 Monastery of the Saviour: 298, 301 Queen of All (Pantanassa), church: 293–94, 302 Saint Demetrius (Agios Demetrios), church: 290, 302 Saint John (Agios Ioannis), chapel: 295

354

Saints Theodores (Agioi Theodoroi), church: 290 Nasi, Alessandro: 317, 331 Nestorius: 271 Neville, Isabel, wife of Robert de Neville of Hornby: 138 Nicholas, bishop of Oxford, 147 Nisibis School: 29, 30 Nieuwenbos, Cistercian Abbey of Nieuwenbos: 186 Niketas, physician: 19 Nîmes: 129 Normandy: 238 North Africa: 11, 16 nuns: 172, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 204 nurses. See wet nurses obstetrics; see also embryotomy, foetus, midwives, Caesarean section care and practice: 172, 176, 179, 183, 187, 188 knowledge: 23, 172 male surgeon practice of: 196, 199–200, 322 Odilo of Cluny, abbot: 287 Odo of Sully: 205 Oldcastle, John, leader of 1414 Lollard uprising: 146 Oribasius, Greek physician: 19 Ostia: 8 Ovid: 4, 5 Metamorphoses: 4, 5 Oxford: 135, 141, 147 Palaiologos, Byzantin family Andronicus II, Byzantine emperor: 290, 295 Andronicus III, Byzantine emperor: 298 Constantine XI, despot of Morea and Byzantine emperor: 294, 295, 298, 299, 300 John VIII, Byzantine emperor: 299, 299, 300 Manuel II, Byzantine emperor: 299 Michael IX, Byzantine emperor: 295 Theodore I, despot of Morea: 296 Theodore II, despot of Morea: 296, 299, 300

INDEX Thomas, despot of Morea: 296, 298, 299, 303 Paleocastro: 299 Panthera: 260 Paris: 97 Patras: 299 Paul, saint: 142, 268 Paul V, saint: 212 Paul the Persian, physician: 30 Paulus Egineta, physician: 19 Pausania: 5 Peloponnese, region in southern Greece: 285, 295 peperit charms. See charms Perceval, monk of Coverham Abbey: 154 Persia: 34 Pesaro: 299 Peter, apostle and saint: 142 Peter Damian: 287 Peter of Poitiers: 233 Peter of Luxembourg, saint: 201, 216 Petrus Plaisant, physician: 199 Phanostrate, midwife: 8 Pharmacides (witches or herbalist): 5 Philip Neri, saint: 202, 208 Philip of Bourges, saint: 206, 213 Philippa of Hainault, queen of England: 136, 242 Philippe de Chantemillan, saint: 207, 209, 210, 211 Philippe de Remi: 236, 238 Pietro d’Abano: 100, 101 Pietà, 156; see also Christ Pierozzi, Antonino, bishop of Florence and saint: 198–00, 216 Pitti, Francesca, Giovanni Tornabuoni’s wife: 329–32 Pitti, Luca di Buonaccorso: 329 plague: 311, 333 Plauto (Titus Maccius Plautus): 3 Pletho, Gemistus, philosopher: 299, 300,301 Pliny the Elder: 65, 232 Poliziano, Agnolo: 314 Pontano, Giovanni, Italian humanist: 101, 102 Pontigny: 200 post-mortem Caesarean section. See Caesarean section pregnancy. See women

INDEX Priscian of Lydia, philosopher: 29 Proclus of Constantinople: 270, 271 Protoevangelium Jacoby. See Protoevangelium of James under gospels Ptolemy: 81–83, 86, 88, 101 Ptolemy (Pseudo): 83, 94, 101 Purvey, John, Lollard: 144 Qazwīnī, Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī: 70 Quiricus, saint: 138, 140, 142, 153, 155–58, 160, 162, 163 Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, `Alī ibn Sahl: 53, 61, 65, 66, 71 Rabbi Levi ben Gershon, or Gersonides: 93, 94 Ranieri dal Borgo, saint: 208 Ratdolt, Erhard: 101 Ravenna: 325 Rāzī, Abū Bakr: 58, 59 relics: 135, 137, 139, 140, 176, 182, 185, 188, 189, 197, 204, 216 birretus: 200, 216 girdle relics: 135, 137 religious orders, monastic and mendicant Augustinian: 137 Benedictine: 137 Cistercian: 185, 186 Dominican: 156, 312 Franciscan: 151 Premonstratensian: 137, 154 Remigius, saint: 178, 182 Renaissance humanism: 311–12 Repingdon, Philip, bishop of Lincoln: 146 Rhodes: 297 Richard III, king of England: 153, 157 Ricordanze (Florentine merchants’ personal diaries): 310, 334 Rimini: 299 Robbia, Giovanni della, artist: 319 Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln: 237 Robert of Flamborough: 233 Robert of Taranto, prince: 297 Rodolfi, Niccolò (Florentine cardinal): 21 Romanus the Melodist: 286 Rome: 3, 8, 11, 287, 318 Santa Maria Antiqua in the Forum Romanum, church: 289

355

St. John Lateran, church: 160 Rond, Jean d’Alambert le: 102 Rösslin, Eucharius: 24 Rucellai, Giovanni: 312 Rupert of Deutz, Benedictine monk: 145, 233 Sackville, Andrew de: 238 Sackville, Ermentrude de, Eleanor of Castile’s attendant: 237 Saint of Savigny: 213 Salome, midwife presents at Jesus’s birth: 254, 260, 263, 324, 325; see also midwives Salucci, Alessandro: 314 Salvayn, Anketin: 238, 242 Salviati, Francesco: 21 Samuel of Ani: 251 Santa Lucia dell’Aquila, female convent: 204 Sargis Šnorhali: 252 Satan: 274 Saturn, mythological character and planet: 64, 65, 68, 80; see also astrology Savonarola, Girolamo, Dominican friar: 312, 338, 339 Savonarola, Michele, physician: 339 Schöner, Johannes: 101 Scipione Mercurio, physician: 196 Scribonia, midwife: 8 Sectio in mortua. See Caesarean section Sergius of Rešʻaina, priest: 30, 45 Shaxton, Nicholas, bishop of Salisbury: 147 Simplicius of Athens, philosopher: 29 Sixtus IV, pope: 150, 156 Sophia of Monferrat, Byzantine empress: 300 Soranus of Ephesus: 6, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Gynaikeia: 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18 Sphrantzes, George, Byzantine historian: 298, 299, 301 Susannah, biblical character: 145, 177 Suśruta: 36, 45 Swynderby, William, Lollard: 146 Syria: 251 talismans. See amulets Tegoz, Henry: 242 Ter Arken, beguine community in Brussels: 185 Tertullian: 260, 268

356

Thaʽālibī: 33 Thecla, saint: 273 Theodoros of Karkh Juddan, bishop: 30 Theodore Hodighitrianos: 295 Theodoros I Laskaris, Byzantine emperor: 298 Theodorus Pricianus, physician: 173 Theodorus Priscianus (Pseudo), physician: 178 Theotokos. See Virgin Mary Theutberga, queen of Lotharingia: 177 Thomas, apostle and saint: 136 Thomas Aquinas, saint: 233 Thomas of Cantimpré: 171 Thomas of Chobham: 233, 237 Thomas of Fayreford, physician: 176 Thomas, William, servant to Henry VIII: 159 ‘Three Kings Charm’. See charms Throne of Maximinian: 325 Timotheos I, patriarch: 31 Tornabuoni, Florentine banking family Giovanna. See Albizzi, Giovanna degli Giovanni: 329, 331 Lorenzo: 317, 329, 330 Lucrezia: 329 Ludovica: 320, 330, 331 Tour Landry, Geoffrey de la: 240 Tours: 199, 216 Trent, Council of: 206, 212 Treveris, Peter, London printer: 142 Trotula: 171 trutina Hermetis: 80, 81, 87– 92, 94, 95–02; see also Hermes’ balance Tudor, dynasty: 159; see also Henry VII, Henry VIII Urban V, pope and saint: 201 Ursula, saint, 176, 188 uterine suffocation: 175; see also womb, children vagina, fumigations of: 69 Valesco de Taranta, physician: 175 Vallambert, Simon de, physician: 208 Vasari, Giorgio: 314, 317, 318 Vaspurakan: 257 Venice: 101 Ventriére. See midwives Venus, mythological character and planet: 84 Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro): 176, 178 Verrocchio, Andrea del: 331

INDEX Vettius, Valens: 83, 85 Vienna: 176 Villehardouin, Frankish family (noble dynasty originated in Villehardouin, France) Geoffrey, prince of Achaea: 216 William II, prince of Achaea: 294, 298 Villers (Villers-la-Ville), Cistercian abbey of: 172, 187 Virgin Mary Annunciation: 141, 142, 250, 253, 287, 290, 317, 319, 320 Assumption: 136, 287 birth or Nativity: 182, 196, 250, 275, 285–89, 290, 291, 294, 295, 301–03, 311, 313, 317–23, 326–28, 331, 333, 341 breast feeding, Madonna, Madonna Lactans: 340 childhood: 290, 294, 302, 313, 321 maternal art: 338, 341 girdle relics: 136, 137 grief: 145, 157 Immaculate Conception: 150 intercessor: 158, 163, 178 measures: 147, 148, 155, 156; see also charms model for basilisse: 302 mother of Jesus, mother of God, Theotokos: 69, 274, 288, 303 parturient: 175, 253, 262 purification of: 159, 160 229, 232, 287 veneration of: 139–40 Visitation: 253, 329 Vroedemoeder. See midwives Vrouwenpark, Cistercian monastery: 187 Wales: 138 Wardā, Gewargis: 44 wet nurses: 173, 240, 317, 336, 338, 339; see also women, children William de Ferariis: 238 William of Achea: 298 William of Auvergne: 233 William of Saliceto, surgeon: 233 Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram: 42, 45, 46 Woodville, Elizabeth, queen of England: 157 Worde. See Wynkyn de Worde

INDEX women assisting childbirth: 5, 6, 136, 173, 200 death in labour: 110, 111, 73, 115, 127, 315, 331–34 diseases of: 196, 204 and labour: 177–79, 182–84, 187, 188, 200, 205, 211, 328 and pregnancy: 136, 137, 141, 142, 159, 177, 181, 187 purification: 129, 159, 235, 237 See also foetus, lying-in, midwives, obstetrics womb divine control over: 64 faulty nature of: 63, 64 morality ascribed to: 63, 64 Wyche, Richard, Lollard: 139 Wyclif, John, Oxford theologian: 135, 141 Wynkyn de Worde: 136, 142 155, 156 Xusraw I, Sasanian king: 33, 39, 45 reign and court of: 29, 30, 32 Yorkì: 136, 137 Yovhannēs Sarkawag: 251 Yves of Tréguier, saint: 205 Zaccaria, Genoese merchant family Catherine, despoina of Morea: 296, 299 Centurione, prince of Achea: 296, 299 Zacchia, Paul: 199 Zachariah Rhetor: 30 Zachary, biblical character: 314, 315, 322, 329, 339 Zachel. See Zelomi Zādspram: 44, 45, 46 Zakythènos: 301 Zelam. See Zelomi Zelomi, midwife attending Mary: 254, 266, 324 Zophyros, physician: 18 Zoroastrian philosophy: 30–31 Zosimos of Panopolis, physician: 20, 21, 23 Authentic Memoirs: 20 Zwijveke, Cistercian abbey of Zwijveke: 186

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Cursor Mundi All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Chris Jones, Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in LateMedieval France (2007) Simha Goldin, The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom (2008) Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (2008) William G. Walker, ‘Paradise Lost’ and Republican Tradition from Aristotle to Machiavelli (2009) Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Material Restoration: A Fragment from Eleventh-Century Echternach in a Nineteenth-Century Parisian Codex (2010) Saints and their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000–1200), ed. by Haki Antonsson and Ildar Garipzanov (2010) Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, ed. by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson (2011) ‘This Earthly Stage’: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. by Brett D. Hirsch and Christopher Wortham (2011)

Alan J. Fletcher, The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author, and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks (2012) Vehicles of Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture, ed. by Robert Wisnovsky, Faith Wallis, Jamie C. Fumo, and Carlos Fraenkel (2012) Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Chris­ tian Thought (2012) The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World, ed. by Maijastina Kahlos (2012) Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (2012) Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, c.1350 – c.1650, ed. by David A. Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (2013) Luigi Andrea Berto, The Political and Social Vocabulary of John the Deacon’s ‘Istoria Veneticorum’ (2013) Writing Down the Myths, ed. by Joseph Falaky Nagy (2013) Charles Russell Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (2013) Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medi­ eval England (2013) Tanya S. Lenz, Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer (2013) Viking Archaeology in Iceland: Mosfell Archaeological Project, ed. by Davide Zori and Jesse Byock (2014) Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient (2015) Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy (2015) The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed by Nancy M. Frelick (2016) Ilan Shoval, King John’s Delegation to the Almohad Court (1212): Medieval Interreligious Interactions and Modern Historiography (2016) Ksenia Bonch Reeves, Visions of Unity After the Visigoths: Early Iberian Latin Chronicles and the Mediterranean World (2016)

Ersie C. Burke, The Greeks of Venice, 1498–1600: Immigration, Settlement, and Integration (2016) Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire (2017) Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the Chronica Polo­ norum, ed by Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński (2017) Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and In­ fluence, ed. by James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres (2018) James L. Smith, Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture: Case Studies from Twelfth-Century Monasticism (2018) Visions of North in Premodern Europe, ed. by Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (2018) Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. by Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken (2018) Andreas Vesalius and the ‘Fabrica’ in the Age of Printing: Art, Anatomy, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, ed. by Rinaldo Fernando Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella (2018) Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000–1500, ed. by Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (2018) Mythical Ancestry in World Cultures, 1400–1800, ed. by Sara Trevisan (2018) Geoffrey Symcox, Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy (2019)