Capturing the Wandering Womb: Childbirth in Medieval Art
In the Middle Ages, the event of childbirth was a process witnessed and experienced almost exclusively by women, as the birthing chamber was the only secular space from which men were systematically absent.
A Case of Indifference? Child Murder in Later Medieval England
Infanticide was a felony in the Middle Ages and neither jurors nor royal officials treated child murder with indifference. Nevertheless, it is clear that both gender and marital status guided the courts in their decisions throughout the legal process in terms of indicting, prosecuting, and sentencing defendants in cases of child murder.
Advice Concerning Pregnancy and Health in Late Medieval Europe: Peasant Women’s Wisdom in The Distaff Gospels
Of the more than 200 pieces of advice contained in The Distaff Gospels, a mid-15th-century Old French collection of women’s lore recently available for the first time in modern English, almost half concern aspects of health: pregnancy, predicting the sex of the foetus and ensuring the future wellbeing of the child, as well as practices to avoid sickness and cures for various ailments.