Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis thesis examines the therapeutic texts and objects that women used in childbirth in England from 1400 to 1580. Faced with the dangers of parturiency, women employed a set of practices which they believed would ensure their survival. Using an interdisciplinary approach influenced by histories of the senses and emotions, the thesis investigates childbirth and its relationship with devotional trends, concepts of domestic and church space, and the impact of the English Reformation on these beliefs and practices. While most relevant scholarship has focused on obstetrical manuscripts, wider discussions of childbirth practices have emphasised their exclusivity and separation from broader aspects of late medieval religion and medicine. Using a rich array of devotional and medical texts, including prayers, saints’ lives, charms and textual amulets, the thesis relocates and contextualises childbirth therapeutics within late medieval devotion and healing practices. The childbirth space, often considered static and enclosed, is argued here to be dynamic and porous, allowing for a transmission of texts and objects between the domestic and church space. Through evidence in wills, churchwardens’ accounts, and visitation returns as well as extant visual and material culture, the thesis contends that childbearing women were able to express customs, relationships, and devotion associated with parturiency in their parish churches. Childbirth practices are investigated from the beginning of the fifteenth century through to 1580, encompassing the beginning of the English Reformation. Contributing to current Reformation scholarship, the thesis argues that while many devotional practices associated with childbirth were inevitably impacted by the Reformation, there were notable continuities in practice and materials, as objects and texts were adapted to meet the religious demands of the period. Therefore, childbirth provides a valuable research context with which to test how far initial Reformation strictures were moderated in practice. This thesis sits at the crossroads of histories of devotion, space, and material culture. It makes new contributions to medieval and early modern histories of medicine, devotion, and the body, and offers new insights into the changing social, religious, and medical landscape of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Donohoe, Roisin
- Advisors dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Laven, Mary
- Watkins, Carl
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- Author Identifier
- 0000-0001-8779-2853
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/384734