Little woman I want to comfort you with these words / although your child ended up dead / either it emerged dead from the womb or it was born with faint life / so that it could not receive baptism in the font or at home / no one should doubt the salvation of that child / and it must not be buried in mounds or in unconsecrated [pagan] ground / but in the churchyard / though without the presence of the minister / tolling of the bells / singing / and such things / so that baptism will not be degraded / and it should be buried with other baptized children / in good hope that our Heavenly Father has gracefully received it. For He is powerful enough to save a child in the womb of the mother / and to let it be baptized in its own blood / if he wants to.1
âµ
Birth and death are passages, openings, gateways, beginnings, and endings. For some individuals, birth is simultaneously an entrance and an exit. Emerging dead from the womb or failing to survive the first critical hours or days, they never enter the world of the living. They disappear suddenly and quietly, leaving behind ambiguous memories and feelings of emptiness, bereavement, failure, and sometimes, relief.
The history of early modern European fetal and infant health care remains marked by the manifest presence of casualties and loss. The deep impact of fetal and infant mortality on early modern families, populations, and societies has thus long been observed and analyzed by scholars in cultural history and demography.2 Representations of fetuses and infants were fundamentally
The common experience of infant death was portrayed in early modern art and science. Swedish physician Lars Roberg included this image of Death carrying a child in the frontispiece of his anatomical treatise Lijkrevnings tavlor. The figures in the image had been copied from one of the etchings in the Italian engraver Stefano della Bellaâs Les cinq Morts (ca. 1648). Uppsala University Library.
Obstetric intervention in medieval and early modern Europe was characterized by a diversity of strategies shaped by religious, medical, and legal concerns.5 Strategies related to the preservation of fetal and infant life and health in historical contexts are, to some degree, the result of valuations that are articulated and enacted through practices.6 This chapter focuses on intervention strategies in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Sweden that resulted from the influence of a Lutheran baptismal framework over religious and medical approaches to childbirth. The time period studied, ca. 1530â1720, covers two major transformations in birth intervention: the religious context of the introduction and consolidation of the Lutheran Reformation and the gradual emergence of the mechanistic paradigm in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century obstetrics. The aim is to trace how the simultaneous presence of conflicting values related to prospects of physical and spiritual survival for fetuses and infants, in combination with concern for the life of the mother, shaped the contours of a specific configuration of the unborn: the fully grown child in the liminal, âperinatalâ period before, during, and after birth.7
The term âperinatal,â though not present in the early modern period, will here be used to highlight that birth is a protracted and gradual process that
Managing perinatal loss means coping with emergences and partings, transitions between worlds. In the following, close reading of selected birth manuals, devotional literature, and religious and legal tracts will be used to examine how narratives, concepts, and imagery related to late fetal and infant life, health, and salvation were linked to practices that produced and defended attachment and vitality, or the reverse. First, the problem of baptism and perinatal loss in Lutheran Sweden is introduced. Second, oscillations between inclusion and distance in representations of perinatal children are described, stressing the implicit imperative to secure (at least) a temporary live birth, yet accepting the conditional status of unborn entities as well as the limits of human and medical art and endeavor. Finally, some tentative conclusions are presented, framing the strategies of birth intervention in Lutheran Sweden as a compromise between Catholic and Calvinist readings of the sacrament of baptism: a process encouraging essentially utilitarian solutions and arguments.
The Book of Wisdom says: The righteous / though he dies early / yet is he in peace. Now when unbaptized children / through prayer and the virtue of Christ are commended to God / they are justified by Christ / and the righteousness of Christ will by grace be attributed to them. Therefore are they / regardless if they die early / in the hand of God / and no torment of death shall touch them.9
The first Concern of Parents is this: as soon as possible help their new-born Child to [baptism], if they do not want to assume a firm responsibility and place themselves in grave danger.10
Early modern Swedish birth discourses testify of the constant pressure exercised by the presence of stillbirth, when death and birth coincide. In this context, religious practices, and baptismal practices in particular, exerted a dominant influence over the difficult processes of preventing, making sense of, and coping with perinatal loss.
During the period under consideration here, the Swedish nation-state was founded, the church was nationalized, and the Protestant (Lutheran) reformation was introduced and consolidated. Recurring wars from 1560 onward gradually transformed Sweden into a dominant power in northern Europe: a position it finally lost after the Great Northern War (1700â21). The practice of midwifery in urban and rural contexts remained relatively constant, and was to a large degree characterized as a manual trade dominated by female practitioners, surgeons and physicians generally being called upon to intervene only in desperate emergencies.11 In the 1690s, the public training of midwives was instituted in Stockholm, to be formalized in an official set of regulations for the profession in 1711.12 At this time, however, birth practitioners had long been surveilled by the church, with regard to the specific matter of birth-related survival and baptism.13
Baptism is a central sacrament in Christianity. Essentially, it removes original sin and establishes a crucial union between human individuals and God.
To early modern Europeans, the baptism of infants functioned as a transition rite. The ceremony of baptism effected social birth, which granted the child a name and a Christian identity. If baptized infants died, they had access to the next dimension, where they were supposedly reunited with their family at the end of time. But the unfortunate individuals who died before they had received the sacrament remained lost forever, hovering in the darkness between worlds, among outsiders, pagans and non-Christians.15
Traditional solutions to the urgent problem of saving the souls of endangered fetuses and infants focused on emergency interventions securing the ritual: postmortem cesarean section, baptism in utero, and baptism of stillborn infants who seemingly displayed temporary âlife signs.â16 Among these practices, postmortem cesarean section was the most problematic. The use of mutilating surgery on supposedly deceased mothers to secure the baptism of their living unborn children had important legal motives and consequences, since if the child survived the operation, however temporarily, the father inherited the property of his wife through the child. The operation was increasingly advocated and performed in Catholic Europe from the late medieval period onward, despite the difficult inherent ethical considerations.17 The two latter practices, having the benefit of not affecting maternal survival, still remained questionable because of the potential violation of the sacrament that resulted from baptizing nonhuman or dead entities. The Reformation changed practices related to baptism and birth intervention. The essential Protestant response to the problem of birth-related death was to urge parents to place their unborn in the hands of God and appeal to his mercy. Since God was omnipotent, he could save whomever he wanted, and since he was loving and merciful, he would most likely respond to the prayers of pious parents. The destiny of stillborn and unbaptized children was thus to some degree placed outside the realm of
Stressing the fact that scripture made no reference to many aspects of the traditional baptismal ceremony, Protestant theologians warned parents not to depend on them to âsecureâ the childâs salvation. Instead of relying on these pointless manipulations, parents should concentrate on their relationship to God. Not trusting in divine grace was nothing less than blasphemy, and a manipulated sacrament, a simulacrum of the sacrament, was completely worthless.20
This inclination to entrust doubtful cases to the judgement and mercy of God conformed to the general Protestant strategy in questions where scripture remained ambiguous or silent.21 To the parents of stillborn, the crucial change was that unbaptized children were allowed burial in the churchyardâan important sign that these unfortunate family members were no longer categorically excluded and abandoned.22 But since they were buried with separate, and muted, rituals, the desire to pursue baptism did not abate. In popular belief, unbaptized children were described as lost souls, since they had met with a bad death and had been deprived of proper death rites. They belonged to the errant, or placeless, dead, whose ultimate destiny remained an open question. This lingering uncertainty regarding the status and dwelling place of the unbaptized dead, conforming to Catholic tradition, is reflected in Scandinavian folk belief that persisted for centuries.23 Protecting and appeasing these entities by aiding their spiritual transformation remained a necessary priority, not only to individual families but to society at large, hence the need to continuously accept and cultivate emergency solutions.
Memorial portrait of Carl Gustavsson Horn, by Joachim Neimann. Horn lived for less than twelve hours, yet long enough to be baptized. âC.G.S.H. was born on the 27th Febr. in the morning between 9 and 10 and fell blissfully asleep in the Lord the same Date at 9 in the evening. Anno 1662.â He was buried in à bo/Turku Cathedral (in Swedish Finland) wearing a gown in exclusive fabrics to show that he was a member of the high nobility. Object 68825, Nordic Museum, Stockholm.
Emergency baptism is a performative act that involves liquid (preferably water) and a Christian person uttering the words, âI baptize thee [name] in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.â The haste and desperation inherent in the situations where it was performed, in combination with the absence of religious representatives, gave rise to the dangerous possibility that it might be invalid. Defending the status of the sacrament, Protestant theologians banned the Catholic usage of baptism âon conditionâ (âIf you are alive,
Though the reformation process had begun in Sweden in 1527, it was the Church Council of Uppsala that ratified the first reformed Swedish Church Order (1572). This document stated that emergency baptism must be conducted at home when children are âtoo weak and cannot suffer the delay to take them to church.â No child must be baptized until it was âcompletely bornâ and distinctly alive, not even in cases of extreme need. All present shall instead âwith earnest prayers commend both mother and child in the gentle hands of God.â âFor one shall have good hope that God will embrace such prayer and service as a complete baptism. For He cares less for external deeds, which may by many means be hindered, than for the will and the heart.â Finally, emergency baptism must be strictly limited to cases of âperfect reasonâ; that is, when the life of the child was in imminent danger.26
The security of baptism was, however, demanded by parents, who also pursued the social advantages of publicly celebrating their new family member. When the new Church Law (1686) stated that all children must be baptized in church within eight days after birth, it was a response to a growing custom favored by the elite: instant emergency baptism followed by âchristeningâ in connection with lavish baptismal feasts weeks or months later.27 Underlining the importance of restricting emergency baptism to evade âabuse, security and carelessness,â all postponement of baptism in church would henceforth lead to punishment for negligence.28
The Lutheran position evidently rested on a difficult dilemma: defending the status of the sacrament of baptism made statements about the effects of prenatal intercession prayers less convincing, yet such statements were necessary for both theological and practical reasons. And since baptism in any form demanded that the child survive birth, the importance of ensuring at least temporary survival continued to frame practices related to late fetal health, obstetric emergencies, and infant care. As demonstrated by Anne Løkke, parents in eighteenth-century Lutheran Denmark, who were able to accept stillbirth with equanimity, remained profoundly disturbed by their failure to secure the baptism of live-born infants.29
These changes in the configuration of the perinatal child, informed by new baptismal practices, were influenced by the introduction of new medical birth practices and technologies in the last decades of the seventeenth century. This was caused by the gradual abandonment of humoral ideas in favor of a mechanical framework in obstetrics, producing contradictory and complex concepts and imagery related to fetal and infant activity, vitality, and decay. In the following, some strategies in this process that either reached out and strengthened the bonds with the unborn, or created distance and detachment, will be identified and described in some detail.
2 Reaching Out
Since she helps them Alive to the World, she also promotes them to the holy Baptism, so that these little ones, begotten in Sin, are washed clean from original Sin in the precious Blood of the Savior. Which is such a great Benefaction that it cannot be described by the Pen.32
Representations of the fully grown fetus in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Swedish religious and medical discourses were inseparable from the assumed precedence of spiritual survival and human potentiality. The weight of the demands that this entity directed toward parents and birth practitioners granted a distinct presence to the unborn, demarcating it as a person, a member of the family and of the community of Christians.
Devotional tracts often included specific prayers to be recited during pregnancy and delivery, and regular prayers for the unborn were described as part of the antenatal care practiced by responsible parents. The prayers typically stress the courage, vulnerability, and subjectivity of the mother, and place her in a parent-child relation toward God. The unborn entity is described in emotionally charged terms as âmy little child,â âmy dear child/fruit,â âmy poor fruit.â37
As indicated by recurring narratives, fear of eternal loss fueled a sense of danger, urgency, and vulnerability that added emotional weight to the unborn, alternately denominated âchild,â âfruit,â or âfetus.â But the child itself is principally absent: eclipsed by the mother and her self-absorbed discourse with her Maker and Guardian. The physical conditions that determined and sustained the precarious liminality of unborn entities remained, if not entirely invisible, at least opaque and indistinctly conveyed.
The Midwife shall comfort / ease / pray / and admonish the sickly Woman / and the other present Goodwives / so they together with her fall to their Knees / call upon God and recite the Lordâs Prayer / and plead him sincerely from the bottom of the Heart / that he will be present with his holy Spirit and Grace / and extend help and succor / so that there will be blissful prosperity in the actual events. And when this has passed / the Midwife shall place the sickly Woman on the chair [â¦]38
Before the second half of the seventeenth century, the process of birth was explained within a humoral framework, and complications were primarily treated with medication and spiritual and emotional support. Focusing on regulating the internal flux and supporting the âforces,â birth practitioners preferably abstained from manipulations in utero. Separation in obstetric emergencies was usually restricted to the expelling of fetal remains with drugs and remedies or, in rare cases, performing postmortem cesarean section. The first method saved the life of the mother; the purpose of the second was to save living children in case of maternal demise. By waiting until one of the participants was clearly dead, birth practitioners avoided accusations of ârashness,â cruelty, and murder. Henrik Smid advocated attentive inspection of the mother before any intervention took place. If she displayed âsigns of deathâ she must be left in peace, âcommended in the hands of Godâ; if not, the midwife might expel the (supposedly) dead fetus with purging remedies. Smid hinted that it might also be possible to extract dead children âwith Hooks and Pinchers that are convenient.â But since he anticipated censure from âirrational women,â he prudently omitted descriptions of such dangerous practices, and closed the chapter with the less provocative method of performing postmortem cesarean section in cases of âliving Fetuses.â39
In Een nyttigh Läkare Book (A useful book for physicians; 1578), Benedictus Olai described how to detect fetal weakness and death through exterior signs of maternal ill-health. Stating that âabortusâ is critical between the fourth and the seventh month of gestation, after which âthe child is strong in the womb,â Olai used an analogy with trees that bear fruit: âWhen [the fruit] is ripened, she
Some sixty years later, physician Andreas Sparrman described birth intervention to some degree in Sundhetenz Spegel (A mirror for health; 1642). If the child (âfetusâ) does not emerge headfirst, the midwife must force back the limbs and guide the head to the exit. Sparrman also made the specific claim that dead children are to be delivered feet first: âpulled to the Earth [grave] feet first [â¦] so as to separate the Entrance and Exit of this Life.â44 Yet how these manipulations were to be effected was not explained in his brief outline.
The comparative absence of hands-on descriptions of internal manipulations of unborn bodies in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century manuals distinguishes them from the specialized birth manuals of the last decades of the seventeenth century, in which such manipulations are prominent. The increasing circulation of the interventionist practices described in these manuals was connected to a mechanistic conceptualization of birth, which favored the use of surgical methods, podalic version in particular. By turning the child and pulling it out by traction, birth practitioners interacted directly with unborn bodies. In the first Swedish birth manual describing podalic version, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jordgumman (The well-trained Swedish midwife; 1697), a major part of the text is devoted to detailed descriptions of manipulations of fetal bodies, fully grown and ready to be born.
These new intervention practices reached out to the unborn in several ways. First, by closing in on and manipulating the unborn in utero, birth practitioners observed and described numerous details and phenomena related to fetal health and decay. Second, by attributing the agency exerted during birth to uterine contractions, the child was reconceptualized as passive and vulnerable, in need of assistance. If the unborn in the humoral paradigm seems obscure because its positions, limbs, and body parts remained undescribed, it
The manifestations of compassion and attachment emanating from obstetric discourses and practices were not limited to fetuses that were alive. Living or dead, unborn needed help to complete their transition. But since available
Loosening the arms in podalic version. This was a critical moment for the fetus. The circulation in the umbilical cord must be preserved, and the head had to follow correctly. Visualizations of this new way of intervening in the pregnant bodyâs processes were key how to practice midwifery. From the first midwifery book in Swedish; von Hoornâs, Den Swenska Wälöfvade Jordgumman, 191, fig. F. Unknown artist. Hagströmer Library, Karolinska Institute.
3 Distancing
Out of a dead Fetus is nothing but evil to expect for the Mother.46
Death is a process, and dead bodies often show vague symptoms of life in the hours and days after the circulation of the blood and the motion of the heart have stopped. Similarly, living bodies may appear like corpses, deprived of all vital signs. These, and other phenomena in the borderland between life and death, are characteristic features of the liminal state in which perinatal children reside before and after they complete the transition of birth.47
Cross-cultural and historical scholarship has shown that a kind of âontological thickeningâ occurs as pregnancy progresses: the child is growing more tangible, conceivable, and present. In medieval and early modern Europe, the defining moment in the social recognition of the unborn was in mid-pregnancy
Early modern obstetric discourses tend to mediate a cautious, muted, conditioned view, exuding reservation and premonition of loss. The reason for this bias lay partly in the fact that birth manuals focused on complicated, obstructed, and deviant cases. But descriptions of pregnancy care contributed as well by underlining narratives of procreation as a struggle toward fulfilment and completion, where the unborn gradually emerges from a dark multitude of chaotic alternatives and failed prospects: âfalse conceptionsâ; mola or moon-calves; tumors; windy and watery illusions; shapeless, unfinished, and deformed drafts; remnants and leftovers; and, intensifying the fear and abjection, horrible and destructive dreams of monstra and the ever-presence of creative and intrusive evil forces.50
Being a ritual of transformation and inclusion, the baptismal ceremony by definition accentuated the alienation of outsiders. The first reformed Swedish ritual of baptism (1529) contained recurrent elements of exorcism: statements that marked out the newborn as a person who must dissociate him or herself from darkness and evil.
Look upon this your servant [name] that you have called to faith, purge him [her] from all the blindness of his heart, and tear apart the ropes with which the Devil has tied him, open your door of benefaction to him, so that he may be marked with the sign of your wisdom; all dark desires vanish in him, and he may follow your holy commands and joyfully serve you in holy Christianity, transformed to the best, and be ready to come to your holy baptism and there receive true healing in Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.51
Success in this quest was conditional on deciphering and analyzing signs of life, strength, weakness, and decay in hidden, inaccessible, and mute entities. All close investigation of unborn bodies was impeded by the general aversion toward internal examinations, except in extreme emergency.55 In this process, religious narratives investing motherhood with heroism, resolution, and self-sacrifice tended to delay the moment when obstetric intervention was attempted, to the detriment of the health and survival of both mother and child.56
Early modern birth intervention evolved around the difficult problem of how to save both mother and child in complicated and obstructed birth. The status of the unborn in this process was living, dead, or âunknown.â Whenever it was possible to declare the unborn dead, because of explicit fetal corruption, there was no delay in helping the mother to relieve herself of âthis useless and harmful burden.â57 When in doubt, birth practitioners, family, and friends hesitated to use methods of intervention that harmed, mutilated, or destroyed the unborn body, particularly if the mother was severely weakened. In this
As long as it was believed that the child contributed actively to birth, fetal death was deeply feared, since being unable to release themselves from fetal remains, pregnant mothers had to be purged of the matter of failed pregnancies. The very notion of âpurging,â by definition, evokes images of purifying, and discarding of nonhuman, shapeless, and unsolidified growths. Medical authors before around 1650 included numerous remedies to expel âdead fetusesâ in their manuals, which in combination with their silence on the subject of how to detect signs of fetal life and intervene manually, produced discourses that evoke images and notions of distance, detachment, failure, and decay.59
Mechanistically informed manuals, by contrast, generated detailed observations of fetal corporality: a focus that grants a powerful presence to the unborn. The birth manuals of obstetric surgeon Johan von Hoorn (1697, 1715, 1719) devote several chapters to the examination of signs of fetal vitality and decay. The author recommended mutilating surgery in case of fetal demise and defended the priority of the mother. Yet being a supporter of podalic version, his genuine concern was advancing early intervention, thus saving both mother and child. In his publications the promotion of manual intervention techniques is combined with methods to revive and resuscitate weak infants.60
Preparing for intervention in obstetric emergencies meant anticipating the need for emergency baptism. Von Hoorn initially observed that slow and obstructed delivery often results in weak and lifeless infants. To escape censure the midwife was obligated to state this to the attendant family. She would then prepare necessary objects and remedies and a bowl of clean water, proceed with the delivery, and if the child was not manifestly dead, she would put it in her lap and examine it closely. If there âseem[ed] to be some hope of life,â she helped it to start breathing. If she then noticed âdistinct signs of life,â she immediately proceeded to baptize it. But if in doubt, she had to revive the child further by irritating and provoking it with substances and manipulations until it demonstrated explicit vitality. The decision needed to be approved of by other
Given that available intervention practices were hazardous and difficult to master, obstetric narratives in mechanistic birth manuals radiate distance, danger, and death. In fact, they clearly testify to the conditional state in which unborn entities resided, even as fully grown children, and regardless of the importance of their physical survival to the performance of religious transition rites. They also reveal the extent to which considerations and valuations were affected by the desperate imperative to save the mother. Once it became evident that she was in mortal danger, the child was viewed in a new light. Perhaps it was not viable at all. And if so, had not this passing traveler, failing to cross the final border, been promised a safe path to the next world through intercession prayers? Was it fair that this unknown creature, immobile, noncompliant, and passive, or decomposing, faceless, and lost, was to determine the fate of its suffering mother? If the childâs survival was set against the survival of the mother, the child must be sacrificed. And sacrificing the child, of course, was facilitated if it was visibly dead. The loss was made acceptable by discourse that repressed notions of personhood and attachment and conjured up distance, decay, and defeat.
4 Conclusion
Religious and medical discourses, concepts, and images of unborn entities are the result of intervention practices that enact, articulate, and negotiate values. This chapter has explored strategies that attributed or denied attachment and vitality to perinatal children in early modern Lutheran Sweden, and tentatively outlined some possible consequences of the complex interplay between religious and medical priorities for the configuration of the unborn in this context.
The urgent problem of stillbirth and baptism displays, as argued above, constant adjustment not only to changing religious doctrine, but also to negotiations between theological priorities and obstetric emergency practices and technologies. This supports the view that the development of early modern Swedish birth intervention was intimately connected with religious responses to fetal and infant loss, and with shifting arguments about how to equally secure physical survival and salvation of mother and child in obstructed and complicated deliveries.
It may be suggested that the particular strategies governing Swedish baptismal practices from late sixteenth century onwardâinsisting on and securing infant survival before baptism, yet accepting the prospect of salvation for the unbaptized stillborn through divine interventionâinfluenced representations of the perinatal child in two specific ways. First, by demanding that infants survive birth and demonstrate explicit signs of life before baptism took place, the Lutheran framework strengthened narratives that attributed individuality and potentiality to the fully grown unborn, as well as fostering birth practices that led to the improvement of birth-related survival. Since distinct signs of life were a sine qua non, birth practitioners were forced to perfect examination and resuscitation techniques, and gradually succeeded in persuading mothers to allow earlier intervention, employing utilitarian arguments to further their cause. This pragmatic position becomes further visible in more generous attitudes toward death rites for the stillborn, as well as in arguments about the priority of securing maternal survival. Second, and paradoxically, loosening the link between baptism and salvation opens up the possibility of a less condemnatory attitude toward the deliberate termination of dangerous and unsafe pregnanciesâthat is, the practice of induced abortion. The liminal child might be rejected in this world since it is not being denied a continued existence in the next. This solution to the enduring problem of obstetric loss did not result in articulated changes in attitudes toward abortion or infanticideâbut it provided birth practitioners with room to maneuver in desperate cases, when the life of the mother could only be saved by using mutilating surgery on the obstructed child. Yet in obstetric discourses the forwarding of the pragmatic solution of sacrificing such children continuously rested on the concealment of the dubious nature of signs of fetal life and decay. Ultimately, securing survival and managing loss in the birth transition meant intervening at some time, regardless of the conditions and the outcome. All the
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Erik Philip-Sörensen Foundation and à ke Wiberg Foundation.
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Lupton, Deborah. The Social Worlds of the Unborn. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.
Olai, Benedictus. Een Nyttigh Läkere Book ther uthinnen man finner rÃ¥dh / hielp och Läkedom til allehanda menniskiornes siwkdomar bÃ¥dhe inwertes och uthwertes [â¦]. Stockholm, 1578.
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Park, Katherine. âThe Death of Isabella Della Volpe: Four Eyewitness Accounts of a Postmortem Caesarean Section in 1545.â Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 1 (2008): 169â87.
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Pentikäinen, Juha. The Nordic Dead-Child Tradition: Nordic Dead-Child Beings; A Study in Comparative Religion. FF Communications 202. Helsingfors: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1968.
Petri, Olaus. Een handbock påå swensko / Ther doopet och annat mera uthi stÃ¥r [1529]. In Samlade skrifter af Olavus Petri, edited by Bengt Hesselman, 4 vols., 2: 311â367. Uppsala: Sveriges Kristliga Studentrörelses förlag, 1915.
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Rodhe, Edvard. Dopritualet i svenska kyrkan efter reformationen. Lunds universitets årsskrift N.F. Part 1, vol. 7, no. 1. Lund, 1910.
Schwartz, Louis. Milton and Maternal Mortality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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Wagner, Johann. HWSBIBLIA: Ther uthi Alle nÃ¥dhehungrighe / torstighe och bekymradhe hierta/ sÃ¥som j itt Panacea Spirituali / Eller Andhelighit skadhefördreff / thet retta himmels brödh / och then liufligha Gudz barns miölk haffue til at finna / ther medh the bÃ¥dhe sina och andre bedröffuadhe siälar / spijsa och wederquekia kunna [â¦]. Translated by Samuel Olai. VästerÃ¥s, 1623.
Whiteley, Rebecca. Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.
Wiesner, Merry E. âThe Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy.â In The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe, edited by Hilary Marland, 77â94. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
Woods, Robert. Children Remembered: Responses to Untimely Death in the Past. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.
Woods, Robert. Death before Birth: Fetal Health and Mortality in Historical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Huberinus, Tuende merckelige Tractater, [38â39].
Ariès, Centuries of Childhood; Imhof, Lost Worlds; Gélis, Les enfants des limbes; Woods, Children Remembered; Woods, Death before Birth.
Duden, âZwischen âwahrem Wissenâ und Prophetien,â 46â47; Lupton, Social Worlds of the Unborn, introduction.
Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death; Duden, Schlumbohm, and Veit, Geschichte des Ungeborenen; Gélis, Les enfants des limbes; Law and Sasson, Imagining the Fetus; Crowther, Adam and Eve; Park, âBirth and Deathâ; Løkke, âResponsibility and Emotion.â
See, e.g., Foscati, ââNonnatus Dictus,ââ 466; Van der Lugt, âFormed Fetuses and Healthy Children,â 167.
Dussauge et al., âOn the Omnipresence,â 1â2.
All definitions of the term are shaped by factors influencing fetal and infant survival prospects and development in various contexts. According to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, the time period begins at twenty-two completed weeks of gestation and ends seven days after birth.
Whiteley, Birth Figures, 62.
Wagner, HWSBIBLIA, 155.
Collinder, Nödig Tröst och Underwisning, 98.
Lundqvist, Svenska barnmorskor, 14â15.
Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 58; Paulsson Holmberg, Onaturlig födelse, 95â96.
Lundqvist, Svenska barnmorskor, 25. For the European development, see Park, âBirth and Death,â 21â22.
Davies, Death, Ritual and Belief, 182.
Imhof, Lost Worlds, 132â33; Gélis, Les enfants des limbes, 39â42.
For strategies related to perinatal survival and baptism in early modern Catholic contexts, see Gélis, Les enfants des limbes. See also Van der Lugt, âFormed Fetuses and Healthy Children,â 171â72.
Keupper Valle, âCesarean Operationâ; Park, âDeath of Isabella Della Volpeâ; Foscati, ââNonnatus Dictus.ââ
Rodhe, Dopritualet, 37.
Grell, âProtestant Imperative,â 53; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 123; Gélis, Les enfants des limbes, 216â21.
Gélis, Les enfants des limbes, 220.
Ferngren, Medicine and Religion, 156.
Duden, âZwischen âwahrem Wissenâ und Prophetien,â 35.
Pentikäinen, Nordic Dead-Child Tradition, 356â57; Gélis, Les enfants des limbes, 42.
Faehn, âDÃ¥p,â 414.
Wiesner, âMidwives of South Germany,â 83.
Laurentius Petris kyrkoordning av år 1571, 58.
Sjölin, Dopsed i förändring, 56â60.
Kyrkio-Lag och Ordning, Chap. III, §2.
Løkke, âResponsibility and Emotion,â 198â99.
Duden, âZwischen âwahrem Wissenâ und Prophetien,â 36.
LaFleur, Liquid Life, chap. 12.
Hoorn, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jordgumman, 5.
Estborn, Evangeliska svenska bönböcker; Lindquist, Studier i den svenska andaktslitteraturen, 384; Gleixner, âTodesangst und Gottergebenheit,â 76; Veit, ââIch bin sehr schwach.ââ
Gleixner, âTodesangst und Gottergebenheitâ; Veit, ââIch bin sehr schwachââ; Lindgärde, âHon dog en Rakels död,â 178â79.
Wagner, HWSBIBLIA, 155.
Wagner, HWSBIBLIA, 154.
Collinder, Nödig Tröst och Underwisning, 42â43.
Smid, Fierde Urtegaard, 36â37.
Smid, Fierde Urtegaard, 23â24.
Olai, Een Nyttigh Läkere Book, [343â44].
Olai, Een Nyttigh Läkere Book, [346â47].
Olai, Een Nyttigh Läkere Book, [340].
Olai, Een Nyttigh Läkere Book, [345].
Sparrman, Sundhetzens Speghel, 361.
Gélis, La sage-femme ou le médécin, 358â59.
Hoorn, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jordgumman, 238.
Gélis, Les enfants des limbes, 17; Woods, Death before Birth, 14â27.
Park, âBirth and Death,â 19; Van der Lugt, âFormed Fetuses and Healthy Children,â 170â71. For legal discussions on miscarriages and abortion in early modern Sweden, see Runessonâs chapter in this volume.
Runesson, chap. 2 in this volume.
See Bondestamâs chapter, on early modern Swedish legal and medical discourses on fetal monstrosity, in this volume.
Petri, Een handbock påå swensko, 318.
Rodhe, Dopritualet, 82â85.
Huberinus, Tuende merckelige Tractater, 2.
Burjam, Den skandinaviska folktron, chap. 1.
Siegemund, Court Midwife, 84; Paulsson Holmberg, Onaturlig födelse, 170â79.
Schwartz, Milton and Maternal Mortality, chap. 3.
Hoorn, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jordgumman, 90.
Smid, Fierde Urtegaard, 14.
Olai, Een Nyttigh Läkere Book, [347].
Paulsson Holmberg, Onaturlig födelse, 229â31.
Hoorn, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jordgumman, 271â72.