Maternal Materialities

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

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

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

Introduction

Part I: The Iconography of Birth
Mati Meyer, Too Real to Behold: Vandalizing Childbirth Images in Sacred Texts
Emilie L. Bergmann, Pregnancy and Pilgrimage in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa María
Constanza Gislon Dopfel, Reality and Imagination in the Iconography of the Lying-in Room

Part II: Pregnant and Parturient Bodies
Elisa Tosi Brandi, A Dress for the Mother in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Feeding the New Mother: Rules and Exceptions
Constanza Gislon Dopfel, Gifts for the Motherl Medieval and Early Modern Trays and Ceramics Celebrating Childbirth
Nina Kremmel, Ten Privileges for Pregnant Women in Early Modern Spain
Antonella Parmeggiani and Constanza Gislon Dopfel, The Economics of Fertility: Female Slaves and their Children in Italy and in the Venetian Colonies

Part III: Inside the Birthing Room
Róisín Donohoe, ‘My best shete’: Linen and Childbirth in England, 1450–1650
Sara Read,The Materials of Midwifery in Early Modern England in Five Groups of Objects
Alison Klairmont Lingo,The Material Culture of the Birthing Room in Seventeenth-Century France: The Hand and Other Instruments

Part IV: Childbirth’s Ritual Objects
Wolfram Aichinger and Alice Dulmovits, Obstetrics Shaped by Ritual: Water and Emergency Baptism in Spanish Birthing Scenarios, 1500–1800
Sabrina Grohsebner, Nuestra vida una tela: Threads, Cloth, and the Fabrication of Life in Early Modern Spain
Fiona Harris-Stoertz, The Use of Saints’ Clothing in High Medieval Childbirth
Mary Morse, Birth Girdles as Metric Relics of the Virgin and Christ in Late Medieval England

Part V: Death in Childbirth
Fiona Harris-Stoertz, Foetal Death in High Medieval Pregnancy
Mirko Traversari and Giorgio Gruppioni, Twin Births and Emergency Baptisms in Northern Italy from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
Gaia Gabanini, Elisabetta Cilli, and Mirko Traversari, Double Burials: Are They Always Mother–Child Couples? A Multidisciplinary Study from an Early Modern Hospital Cemetery

Part VI: Childbirth and Fertility Rituals across the Millennia: From Prehistory to the Postmodern Era
Luigi Canetti, The Frog, the Toad, and the Womb
Svea Vikander, Rituals of the Afterbirth: Postmodern and Biomedical Health Models in Placentophagy