Retracing Childbirth through Hagiographical Texts and Canonization Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Century

The aim of this contribute is to describe the childbirth scene in the Late Middle Ages by comparing canonization process miracles with medical texts of the same period. In particular, I will focus on the role of the midwives and the complications underwent by women in labour, among which disabilities due to childbirth, and of the newborns.From the religious perspective, childbirth entailed some far-reaching dilemmas connected to the death of the unborn infants in the maternal womb because of the impossibility to baptize them and thus save their soul. For this reason one of the most frequent miracle requested was that of à repit. This will be analyzed to explain the different behaviours of the faithfuls who were confronted with the death, or presumed death, of a child.It is usually rare to find in hagiographical sources the descriptions of some very spread ritual practices connected to healing and childbirth, which due to their characteristics, are sometimes reductively considered to be magic.Specifically I am referring to a group of objects and words that are ascribed to the “popular medicine” which were used in a precise ritual for the purpose of easing travail and hence enabling women to quickly and painlessly give birth.These practices, found in prescriptions, medical and even religious texts, though often regarded by scholars as magic, are attributed to the overlapping of medicine and religion. They were included in the frequent therapeutic actions present in childbirth scenes and for this reason they will be described in this text.