Protecting body and soul in medieval childbirth

Although she was confined, the woman did not lose connection with her community. Prayers would be said for the labouring woman during Mass in her parish church and she would be visited by her neighbours. Friends, mothers, sisters and aunts would rush to and fro, gathering linen for the childbed, herbal concoctions for the mother, and a basin of warm water for the newborn. This was all done under the ever-present authority of the midwife (sometimes a professional, but more often an experienced local woman).

Alongside the anticipation, there was an understanding that giving birth in late medieval England was a dangerous and frightening affair. With limited surgical intervention, births could last for days, due to problems such as the position of the baby or a narrow birth canal. Contemporary medical texts warned of additional risks, such as vaginal tearing, postpartum haemorrhaging, and the dreaded childbed fever.

Women were expected to produce as many children as possible to mitigate the high infant mortality rate, further compounding these dangers. And the physical hazards they faced were only equalled by the potential spiritual dangers believed to be inherent in pregnancy and childbirth.

Risk of spiritual pollution

The influential cleric John Mirk (who died around 1420) urged pregnant women to go to confession and receive communion before their labour. This preparation was crucial, he warned in ‘Instructions for Parish Priests’ (c. 1403), “for dread of peril that may befall / in her travailing that come shall”.

In medieval Christianity and in accordance with the Bible (Leviticus 12), the female body was in a state of pollution during and after giving birth. An infant dying unbaptised, or a mother dying without purification, fell into the category of a mors improvisa, or sudden death without last rites. This would see the child going to Limbo and the mother to Purgatory. 

After the child was born, it would quickly be taken to be baptised in the local parish church (usually without the mother). Immersed in holy water and anointed with consecrated oil, the child would be rid of original sin.

After a number of days or weeks (depending on her postpartum health and social status), the new mother would also return to her parish church for the rite of ‘churching’. She would take the hand of her priest and cross the threshold of the church door before being anointed with consecrated oil. A mass would then be said in her honour.

It was only after the child was baptised and the mother was churched that they were ritually purified, thus their souls would be saved in the event of death.

The intersection of religion and medicine

Fear of loss or death and damnation were constant companions at the childbed. Women and their communities relied on a variety of texts, objects and practices that would protect, treat and comfort them through pregnancy and childbirth.

The manuscript roll MS.632(view in catalogue), held by Wellcome Collection, is an example of one such object, commonly referred to as a ‘birth girdle’ or ‘birth scroll’. These rolls of parchment, categorised as textual amulets, were used to ward off evil or give protection in dangerous situations such as childbirth, war and pestilence.

Light and transportable, the scrolls featured popular religious texts and images, including common prayers (such as the ‘Pater noster’ and ‘Ave Maria’), devotional symbols and indulgences. While some rolls were owned by the rich and powerful (one belonged to a young Henry VIII), others, like MS.632, had relatively crude decoration, indicating cheaper production.

Similar birth girdles exist in French and Italian contexts, but the survival of nine English girdles indicate there was a demand for them in 15th-century England, with evidence suggesting that they were produced both commercially and in religious houses.

Applying religious texts to skin as a form of healing was common in the late medieval period. Such amulets could be applied like a bandage, carried into battle like a shield, or tucked into a purse when travelling. In the case of childbirth, the ribbon-like roll could be lain or fastened around the body of a woman in labour, hence the term ‘birth girdle’.

As well as protection from death for mother and child, rolls such as this one promised protection against numerous other calamities leading to sudden death – including dying in battle, or from murder, drowning, fire and pestilence – for anyone who used it.

An object like MS.632 is difficult to categorise in that it is neither firmly religious nor exclusively medical. It is an object that sits at the intersection of religion, medicine, magic and other intangible cultural beliefs that made up the very specific character of late medieval healing.

Therapeutic rituals

The woman in pregnancy and childbirth was closely regulated. Medical authorities like Aldobrandino of Siena (died around 1299) and Eucharius Rösslin (d. 1526) wrote extensively about the relationship between the childbearing woman and her environment – what she saw, ate, felt and experienced would decide the outcome of her pregnancy, as well as the physical and spiritual health of her child.

Prayer was an integral form of therapeutic treatment, used to moderate emotions and, by extension, balance the four humours responsible for ill health, according to medieval medical theory.

For the labouring woman, wearing a textual amulet like MS.632 during childbirth would have been one element in a host of dynamic healing practices. She and her attendants said prayers, sang hymns, gestured and genuflected; they blessed herbal remedies and placed precious stones in holy water; they ate apples or cheese carved with charms, and placed amulets on their bodies.

These intricate rituals assuaged fears, affirmed devotion and forged the deep communal bonds that were so integral to medieval childbirth practices. The damage and staining on Wellcome MS.632 suggests that it was witness to many births. Mothers could have passed it down to daughters, friends could have lent it to each other, the local parish church may have held it for the community, or midwives could have travelled with it from birth to birth as part of their kit.

Piety and prayer as medicine

Contemplation of religious imagery and words was considered both physically and spiritually healthful. Conversely, reading sinful words or looking at sinful imagery could cause illness or inflame the emotions. The imagery and the texts of MS.632 are indicative of a form of affective piety, in which people would relate Christ’s suffering directly to their own experiences.

Viewing or touching imagery of the crucifixion, Christ’s blood, the instruments of his torture and his sacrifice was considered healing. As the inscription on another medieval talisman, the Coventry Ring, proclaimed: “The five wounds of God are my medicine, the holy cross and passion of Christ are my medicine.”

Highlighting the horror of the Christ’s Passion also prompted introspection in the viewer and encouraged penitence. In this broader religious culture of sin and sacrament, penance and absolution, MS.632 not only offered hope and comfort during the birth, but the promise of salvation and purification afterwards.

Whether MS.632 would have been perceived as orthodoxy or superstition by religious and medical authorities is a matter of debate. The monk and scholar Bede (d. 735) and Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), authors of two key medical works, celebrated the use of amulets for healing, while the bishop Alcuin of York (d. 804) worried that people wanted “to carry every sacred thing around their necks, not in their hearts”.

Girdles as religious relics

Girdles or belts were an integral part of women’s dress in the medieval period, and fabric girdles also played an important part during childbirth. They were used to anchor a woman to her birthing stool, as leverage for squatting, or tied under the breasts to help reposition a foetus. In later stages of pregnancy, the girdle was adjusted to sit below the abdomen for support.

The girdle also relates to the presence of prayers to the Virgin Mary in birth scrolls. Mary was said to have dropped her girdle from heaven to Jesus’s disciple Thomas, thus providing him with proof of her own Assumption to heaven.

Religious relics inspired by Mary’s girdle were widespread across late medieval Europe and were considered to be particularly powerful childbirth aids. The most famous English girdle relic was held by Westminster Abbey. It was lent out for only the highest-status childbirth events in England, including to Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence (d. 1291). It was by no means the only English girdle relic, with many religious houses owning their own.

On a local level, women bequeathed their own girdles to statues of Mary in their parish church, thus creating makeshift holy girdles that could be lent out to their community. Scrolls like MS.632 almost certainly speak to this holy girdle relic tradition.

As one of only nine surviving English birth girdles, MS.632 is not only very rare, but its well-worn state and traces of bodily contact make it quite extraordinary. This was a working text, not meant for ornament or as a status symbol. It was used a bandage applied directly to the labouring body (or the wounded body).

The scroll guarded against the core fear of sudden death by appealing to prayers and imagery that would have been very recognisable for the late medieval user. It was not a text that would have been hidden away. It could be adapted to the needs of a community – used by any individual, household or group in a variety of ways: therapeutic, spiritual and protective.

Medieval childbirth practices were not secretive or personal but, instead, part of mainstream culture, ensuring community support for the pregnant woman. In a time when the peril of childbirth loomed large and the childbed could so easily transform into the deathbed, for the woman in childbirth, an object like MS.632 facilitated access to much-needed reassurance and communal care.