Childbirth in Early Modern Spain

Zusatztext

If we could step into one of Murillo's paintings and join in the hurly-burly of life in Golden Age Spain, childbirth would be all around us: we would hear beggars peddling spells and prayers for a safe delivery; we would see a maid running to fetch a midwife and women carrying gifts to a neighbor in childbed; we would pass the door of the foundling home where newborns were deposited every night. And all too often we would hear the lamentations of mothers laying a prematurely deceased infant in its grave. The rhythm of life was set by pregnancies, births, and baptisms. And if we asked people which sacred images they loved and venerated most, the likely answer would be those depicting Mary as a pregnant woman and as a mother. Childbirth demanded care and resources - as it does today - but it was also a foundational and a sacred moment in the life of a community.  The voices of the midwives, doctors, lawyers, playwrights, nuns, parents and grandparents gathered here, tell of a world in which the carrying, bearing and caring for infants was woven together with religion, culture and the rules governing family bonds.   A close study of childbirth, then, can add new colors to the painting of the past. It can help us better understand a time when the birth of one child was often a consolation for the loss of another, when every birth was an act of rebellion against the triumphs of death.

Weitere Details