Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel et al. (review)

The essays collected in Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance follow a multi-disciplinary approach—an increasingly popular critical method that often becomes a metonym for originality. However, for the flexible thinking required for such complex subject matter, the premodern world is also expanded culturally and geographically beyond the Anglo-Saxon norm.

Part 1, 'Cultural Exchanges and Transmission of Knowledge', shows the influence of Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle throughout the premodern world. The essays also demonstrate how patriarchal control over the maternal body is a major concern across all cultures.

In the opening essay, Francesca Marchetti's examination of Graeco-Roman obstetrical manuals reveals the condescending male physician behind the industrious midwife. Marchetti's account of Mustio's Gynaecia from the fifth or sixth century reveals a gynaecological manual for midwives written in a simplified question and answer format with illustrations.

Kathryn Kueny's contribution also reveals a mistrust of midwives. She shows how Muslim physicians used Greek medical literature to police the maternal body in order to produce the perfect baby. Shlomo Sela's essay examines the influence of the trutina Hermetis on the Hebrew astrologist and theologian Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167), who measured the length of pregnancies. Ezra's calculations further demystified the maternal body.

Paolo Delaini's analysis of culture diversity in the Sasanian Empire demonstrates how medical knowledge 'on pregnancy and birth physiology' was valued more than religious differences (p. 39). The merging of the Galenic humoral theory with different Syriac cultural beliefs produced fascinating explanations of how the human embryo is formed.

The four essays in Part 2, 'Birth, Death and Magic', are Eurocentric, but use widely different methodological approaches. The first essay, by three academics based in the Centre Michel de Boüard, investigates childbirth deaths in medieval Normandy. They comb archaeological evidence to verify scant historical sources confirming the deaths of young and middle-aged women from various Norman sites. The critics pioneer a grisly extended search to women buried with their babies either in utero or following delivery.

In medieval England, women wore sacred birth girdles in the belief of preventing deaths during pregnancy and childbirth. Mary Morse examines the conflict between the Church, which sanctioned birth girdle relics, and Lollardy (a heretic group led by the Oxford cleric John Wyclif), which viewed them as superstitious magic.

Birth charms have not received much critical attention. Instead, countless studies have focused on diagnosing and alleviating premodern womb disorders. Therefore, Sara Ritchley's essay on four Latin birthing charms found in a thirteenth-century Cistercian manuscript in Brussels is invaluable. It gives an insight into the obstetric practices of the Cistercian La Cambre nuns—a solely female community promoting the wisdom and expertise of midwives.

Alessandra Foscati's contribution analyses accounts of childbirth miracles in largely neglected hagiographical texts from premodern France and Italy. She shows how childbirth miracles attributed to saints privilege female knowledge of childbirth, rather than male-dominated medical sources.

Part 3 begins with the largely overlooked English and French medieval women's practice of lying-in (the period of seclusion and bedrest for mothers following childbirth). Fiona Harris-Stoertz identifies the popular view of lyingin as an imposed marginalization of a woman following childbirth, a necessary seclusion designed to purge the polluting impurities from her post-natal leaky body. Though Harris-Stoertz discovers that lying-in was actually a period of relaxation, where the new mother is pampered by her husband, family, and friends.

Valentina Calzolari's essay examines Nativity scenes in the Armenian textual tradition. She shows that Eve was included in Nativity scenes as an antithesis to the virgin mother Mary. Antonella Parmeggiani examines Byzantine frescoes...