The Interpretation of Childbirth in Early Modern Spain

Childbirth is shaped by culture and calls for interpretation. Procreation, in its prominence in daily life, has often been overlooked and has not yet been fully explored from a cultural-anthropological perspective. Pregnancy and birth generate strong hopes, fears and expectations. But what differentiates the birthing scene of a 21 st century Western parturient woman from one of Golden Age Spain? How is childbirth related to wider cultural forms and concepts, gender relations and the definition of personal, cultural and religious identities? Then and now, cultural values are created, negotiated and affirmed, in short, put to the test. The historical close-up allows insights into early modern perspectives on the formation and first stages of human life through images, provided by myth, religion and fiction. Our sources generate a polyphonic corpus to expose implicit concepts, values, tensions and contradictions by featuring voices of mothers, fathers, doctors, midwives, jurists, painters, playwrights, priests and others. They direct our view towards the cultural dimensions of medicine and midwifery religious debates (Immaculate Conception, emergency baptism and cultural strain between Christians and Moriscos) legal debates (duration of pregnancy, the prevention of fraud and posthumous birth) complemented by legal practice (e.g. recognition of paternity) and semantics of childbirth. Uncharted areas of Spanish history hold promising insights into cultures of childbirth yet to be uncovered. Contributing to the investigation of historical changes in birth, we hope to encourage discussions on cultural foundations of present-day concepts of procreation.

Inés de Ayala could lend the most compelling voice to our undertaking. Yet she lived in Madrid between 1590 and 1663. Inés served as midwife to two queens. She had learned her craft from her mother, in a world of the spoken word, of which scarcely any record endures. There, young women were taught by their elders, honoring their experience and deferring to their judgment. Physicians, for their part, recognized the midwife's authority within the birthing chamber. In the early years of her marriage, Inés lost several of her own children; after one miscarriage, her life itself hung in the balance. When she recovered, she did not credit physicians, but rather a close and trusted figure: Mariana de Jess, later beatified. Like Mariana de Jess, Inés was familiar with every Marian altar in Madrid. It was to these altars that queens and maidservants, and artisans alike would go during pregnancy, praying for a safe and fortunate delivery. The Virgin Mary was the woman in whose own story of birth every woman was meant to recognize herself. In the baptismal register of the parish of San Justo y Pastor, the birth of Inés' granddaughter, Jernima Francisca, is recorded under the year 1645, along with the note that Inés herself administered emergency baptism to the infant. The child likely died soon afterward. In the 1650s, Inés attended Queen Maria Anna of Austria. At fifteen, the young Habsburg princess had traveled from Vienna to Madrid, accompanied by the Spanish midwife who had served the Spanish empress in Vienna. Maria Anna's labors themselves ended well; it was what came before and after that bore the shadow: miscarriages, premature births, and the early deaths of infants. Birth was everywhere; it was not an event that disrupted women's lives; pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing constituted their lifetime. Birth belonged to women, yet the appointment of a midwife to the royal court was a matter of diplomacy. Difficult births found their way not only into medical accounts, but into stories of miraculous intercession. To give birth was to complete God's work; birth was an act of defiance against death. Many children were given the names of dead siblings; thus the midwife did more than guide new life into the world - she often ensured that it did not depart without the grace of baptism. Birth was not merely shaped by culture; it was itself a force that created culture. Would Inés have thought any of this worth remarking upon? Surely, the notion that birth concerned the body only would have seemed alien to her. Our most significant findings are presented in the book Childbirth in Early Modern Spain and in the online journal Avisos de Viena.