Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Premodern Views on Childlessness 3031089766, 9783031089763

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Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Premodern Views on Childlessness

Regina Toepfer

Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe “Toepfer’s meticulous delineation of the emergence of (In)fertility as a cultural construction in medieval and early modern Europe is an important, timely intervention that refines our understanding of what “childlessness” meant in the past and, by placing the past and the present into lively conversation, demonstrates the centrality of reproductive ideology in the shaping of the social subject.” —Christine Neufeld, Eastern Michigan University, USA “This excellent study offers intriguing insights into the extensive discourse on (in)fertility and childlessness (involuntary or voluntary) in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. By considering (in)fertility and childlessness as a category of identity that shapes people’s positions, behavior, and self-perceptions, Regina Toepfer applies an innovative approach and creates a transdisciplinary dialogue between the premodern world and today.” —Dina Aboul Fotouh Salama, Cairo University, Egypt

Regina Toepfer

Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Premodern Views on Childlessness

Regina Toepfer Institut für deutsche Philologie University of Würzburg Würzburg, Germany Translated by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson Jyväskylä, Finland

ISBN 978-3-031-08976-3 ISBN 978-3-031-08977-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: National Library of France This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

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Contents

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Introduction The Relevance of Infertility: Current Complaints and Historical Cases Analytical Perspectives: Questions of Identity and Critique of Normativity Key Concept: On the Plurality and Diversity of (In)Fertility

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Theology: Salvation Stories of (In)Fertility Hebrew Bible Stories: Infertility as Disgrace New Testament Statements: Critique of Family Patristic and Scholastic Doctrine: Sex and Sin Luther’s Doctrine of Marriage: Fertility as an Urge Prospects

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Medicine: Body Concepts of (In)Fertility Premodern Notions of Reproduction: Seed Theories and Teachings on Sex Medical Diagnoses: Physical Causes of Childlessness Methods of Promoting Fertility: Hormone Therapy and Fertility Girdles The Medicalized Sex: ‘Being a Woman’ Equals ‘Being Ill’ Prospects

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Jurisprudence: Laws on (In)Fertility Ecclesiastical Marriage Law: Impotent Men and Women Who Want Children Inheritance Law: Childless Testators and Chosen Children Criminal Law: Castrated Men and Complaining Women Prospects

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Demonology: Metaphysics of (In)Fertility Demonic Magic: Impotence from Love’s Revenge Demonic Means: Legal and Illegal Ways to Have a Child Demonic Infertility: The Devil’s Reproductive Techniques Demonic Fertility: The Devil’s and Witches’ Children Prospects

131 132 140 145 151 158

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Ethics: Ideals of Life with (In)Fertility Marriage Laments: The Fortune of the Childfree Wedding Speeches: The Fortune of Parents Infertility Catechesis: The Misfortune of Childless Women Prospects

167 168 179 189 197

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Epilogue Uneven Visibility: Childless Men and Childless Women Narrating Childlessness: Stories Told and Stories Untold Comparative (In)Fertility Research: Analogies and Differences

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Bibliography

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Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

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Fig. 6.1

Conception of a childless couple. Jean Mansel, Vita Christi, ou livre lequel entre aultres matieres traitte de la nativité Nostre Seigneur Jhesu Crist […] (fifteenth century), ca. 17.3 × 11.8 cm, Paris Biblioteca de l’Arsenal: Ms. 5206, fol. 174r Hannah’s suffering. Köthener Historienbibel (c. 1475), 19.7 × 11 cm, Dessau Anhaltische Landesbücherei: Georg Hs. 7b, fol. 187v The ‘diseased woman’. Pietro [de Tossignano], Fasciculus medicinae (Venice, 1500/1501), 22.7 × 33.0 cm, Munich BSB: 2 Inc.c.a. 3894, fol. 7r Accused of impotence. Gratian, Decretum (c. 1280–90), dimensions of the initial: 5.6 × 7.1 cm, dimensions of the page: 27.5 × 42.0 cm, Walters Art Museum Baltimore: MS W. 133, fol. 277r Union with the devil. Ulrich Molitor, Von den unholden und hexen (Augsburg: Johan Otmar, 1508), ca. 14.7 × 20.7 cm, Munich BSB: Res/4 H.g.hum. 16 o, fol. [bvv] The burden of parenthood. Woodcut by the Petrarch master from Francesco Petrarca, Von der Artzney bayder Glück, ed. by Sebastian Brant (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532), lib. 2, chap. 12, fol. XVIr, ca. 17.7 × 11 cm, Munich BSB: Rar. 2266

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Fig. 7.1

Fertility appeal. Image from Florian Prokop, ‘Sexistische Kampagne: Italien erinnert Frauen daran, Kinder zu kriegen und feiert “Tag der Fruchtbarkeit”’, ze.tt (31 August 2016), https://ze.tt/sexistische-kampagne-italienerinnert-frauen-daran-kinder-zu-kriegen-und-feiert-tag-derfruchtbarkeit/ (accessed 31 March 2022)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

As a medievalist I do not usually expect my research to interest others beyond my own discipline. In the past few years, when I told people about my research project, I realized again and again how deeply people are concerned about infertility, childlessness, and parenthood. In a very short time, small talk developed into intense conversations. The issue is relevant for some because they wish to have a child in the foreseeable future, for others because they cannot have children, and still others because they have made a conscious decision not to do so. People who do have children pity or envy their acquaintances who do not, some of whom are considering whether they could or should have a child. Through the questions of my interlocutors, which often had little or nothing to do with medieval culture, my own research interest shifted. While I was initially only concerned with the historical perception of infertility, I soon became more and more interested in the parallels and differences between medieval times and today. This led me to a method of literary analysis that I would like to call comparative studies in historical context: in this book, I relate and compare present and past phenomena. Many disciplines—above all biology, sexology, and reproductive medicine—have made such great advances that we may think our current understandings no longer have anything to do with the Middle Ages. Yet, we can observe structural parallels with historical knowledge and narratives of childlessness. In my © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_1

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cultural-historical investigation, therefore, I am able to include current issues such as adoption, sperm donation, or regretting motherhood. My aim is not to draw a teleological line of development, but to initiate a dialogue between contemporary recipients and premodern texts. While we cannot trace an unbroken line of continuity from the present back to the Middle Ages, they are not as distant as we might think. Some ways of reasoning are completely alien to us, yet other patterns of interpretation still make their mark today. This oscillation between closeness and distance makes dealing with stories of ages past particularly fascinating. Hindsight is enlightening for several reasons. Firstly, continuities can be identified that show us the long tradition of some arguments and the contexts in which they originally arose. For involuntarily childless people, the knowledge that they are not alone and that others before them have longed for a child since Antiquity can even be comforting. Secondly, historical distance makes it easier for us to get an overview, to reveal competing interests, and to identify different strands of discourse. Neither in the past nor in the present does everyone want to have a child: some refuse to reproduce; mothers and fathers may question their parenthood. Thirdly, differences and ruptures in the perceptions of infertility help to put commonly held beliefs into perspective. It is easier to see the ambiguity in positions taken today when you know that evaluation criteria have changed in the course of history. Our current concepts are strongly influenced by reproductive medicine—just one phase in the history of interpretation of fertility and infertility—and they will continue to change, in some cases coming closer to premodern ideas than is generally assumed.

The Relevance of Infertility: Current Complaints and Historical Cases Childlessness is a much-discussed issue in politics, the media, and society. Both commentators and researchers often draw a sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary childlessness. Couples who are unable to have the child they long for are advised to go to a fertility clinic and subject themselves to medical treatment. In contrast, women who do not want to have children are often harshly criticized for failing to fulfil society’s expectations. This is coupled with grave concerns about the birth rate in Europe, which is the lowest in the world. Europe is also the continent with the world’s oldest population; more than half of European countries, including Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, had negative rates

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of natural increase in 2021, as more people died than were born.1 While experts argue about the reasons for reproductive reticence, governments try to set incentives to counter it. In addition to inducements, such as birth premiums or child benefit, parental and family allowances, sanctions are being considered, especially financial levies on childless people. The low birth rate in Europe conjures up threatening future scenarios: entire regions are being depopulated, the balance between the generations is increasingly out of kilter, and it is barely possible to care for ageing populations. Unless we can stem the shortage of young people, our economic growth and prosperity are at stake. Many such forecasts are accompanied by the sometimes covert, sometimes overt accusation that childless people are enriching themselves at the expense of society and are not prepared to contribute to securing our future. Medical developments, which have created a specialized fertility industry, reinforce this negative assessment. Failure to reproduce seems neither justifiable from a social perspective nor excusable on biological grounds. Concern about a future into which not enough children are being born is nothing new. Although the state has only been interested in population regulation since the eighteenth century,2 reproductive behaviour had great political relevance long before that. In the Middle Ages, producing offspring was one of a ruler’s most important duties. The survival of a dynasty depended on whether the succession to the throne was assured: the need for an heir is the overriding theme of medieval imperial history. ‘Woe to the peoples who have abandoned hope of being ruled by the descendants of their masters,’ laments the bishop and historian Thietmar of Merseburg in his chronicle (1012–1018).3 In the matter of children, political and religious motifs were closely interwoven. The fertility of the royal couple was interpreted as a sign from God and associated with the well-being of the empire. The correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen testifies to the concern about the ruling couple being without issue. In the early 1160s, Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122–1190) and his wife Beatrix of Burgundy (c. 1140–1184) asked the respected nun and naturalist for intercession. After the death of their young sons, they feared remaining childless and sought religious help. By her merits, Hildegard was to intercede with God to ensure that Beatrix ‘may become fertile and, having borne a child, present the blessed fruit of her womb to Christ.’4 Hildegard rejected the urgent request. She declared that she was not competent and could not bring a child into

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being. But Barbarossa and Beatrix were fortunate—unlike many other couples—that their hopes for offspring were fulfilled. Infertility could have dramatic consequences in the Middle Ages, leading to divorce proceedings, the end of a dynasty, and conflict over succession to the throne.5 Early on, when a couple did not have children, the woman was held primarily responsible. Again and again, women of the high and lower-ranking nobility were cast out if they did not fulfil feudal political expectations.6 The Frankish King Lothar II (855– 869) was known for the marital strife that dominated his reign. When his wife Thietberga had not borne him an heir, he wanted to separate from her and resume an earlier relationship that had produced a son. King David of Scotland (d. 1370) disowned two wives because neither bore him the longed-for heir to the throne. The most notorious case is that of Henry VIII of England (1491–1547), whose six marriages can partly be explained by his desire to produce a male heir. After his sons were born dead or died shortly after birth leaving only one surviving daughter, Henry had the marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), annulled. His example also suggests that childlessness in the Middle Ages had a different meaning than it does today that was dependent on both gender and the lifespan of the offspring. Among the high nobility, a marriage was considered barren if it did not produce male heirs. Statistically, childlessness was more widespread in medieval and early modern Europe than it is today. Whereas today, about 10% of all married couples are childless, the proportion in premodern times was nearly twice as high.7 Detailed studies conclude that 16% of husbands and 17% of wives in English ducal families were childless. In Florence in the fifteenth century, 25% of households remained without issue, and in Basel the rate exceeded 40% for certain professions such as tanners. In the city, the proportion of marriages without children seems to have been generally much higher than in the countryside, as a study of the Farnsburg dominion in northwestern Switzerland suggests (34% vs 19%).8 Thus, childlessness was a problem across all classes in the Middle Ages, but nobody was concerned about society ageing or pension systems collapsing. Instead, people worried about provision for themselves in old age or passing on their inheritance. Infertility was stigmatized among the high nobility and bourgeoisie, peasants and craftsmen; it led to social exclusion, as is vividly expressed in a proverb from Mecklenburg: ‘The ones who do not multiply, outside the churchyard they must lie.’9

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Childless people—like suicides—were denied the right to be buried on consecrated ground. Not even death ended this discrimination. Statements and stories about people who do not have children are plentiful in premodern literature: in the Bible and its exegesis, the works of the early church fathers and Doctors of the Church; in theological tracts, penitential books, aphorisms and sermons; in marriage law and acts of canonization. Proposed explanations for reproductive incapacity can be found in medical works conveying ancient, Byzantine, and Arabic knowledge, as well as in tracts on gynaecology, pharmacopoeias, medical compendia, and historiographical sources. Infertility plays a role in religious miracle narratives in biblical poetry, legends, saints’ vitae, and books of miracles, but it also appears as a motif in a wide variety of other literary genres: courtship and heroic epic poetry; ancient and Arthurian romances; fairy tales and novellas; songs, poems, and letters; marriage tracts, autobiographies and occasional poems, all tell stories of people who long for a child, but also of others who decide not to be parents. The assumption that childlessness is taboo and therefore rarely mentioned in historical sources10 can rapidly be refuted. Infertility is a ubiquitous theme in medieval and early modern Europe, as the plethora of genres shows. Despite its striking significance, childlessness has long received little attention in historical research. The German historian Claudia Opitz noted in Evatöchter und Bräute Christi (Daughters of Eve and Brides of Christ, 1990) that regarding the ‘plight and misery, hope and struggle of supposedly or actually sterile women of the Middle Ages, [we] are still largely in the dark.’11 This is due to the erroneous assumption that children are born ‘naturally’; so, for cultural historians, only the obstacles to reproduction are remarkable. This research gap has closed somewhat since Gabriela Signori’s key historiographical monograph on testators without issue or family in late medieval Basel (2001)—and especially in the last ten years. Infertility, sterility, and impotence are the subject of encyclopaedia entries, papers of the history of sex, and survey articles, even of edited works on gynaecology and published medical history studies. While I was working on this book and examining medieval discourses of infertility, early modern historians Jennifer Evans (2014) and Daphna Oren-Magidor (2017) published their important monographs on fertility and infertility in early modern England, exploring the relationship between medicine, morality, gender, and sexuality.12 Other research worth noting includes Daphna Oren-Magidor’s and Catherine Rider’s special issue of Social History of Medicine, on infertility in medieval and

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early modern medicine (2016), in which they explain ‘Why the History of Infertility Matters,’ and the childlessness issue of the German medievalist journal Das Mittelalter (2021), edited by the pharmaceutical historian Bettina Wahrig and myself, with archaeological, literary, and historical contributions. The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History (2017), whose chronology extends from Antiquity to the present, pays significant testimony to this burgeoning research interest. In their introduction, Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran urge us to discuss infertility not only in the context of reproduction, motherhood, and family, but as a distinct issue. The medical historian at the University of Edinburgh and historian at the University of Essex see their handbook as a corrective to previous research on infertility in contemporary societies and ‘as an attempt to illuminate this historical blind spot.’13

Analytical Perspectives: Questions of Identity and Critique of Normativity To have or not to have children is fundamental to one’s self-image. Therefore, I consider fertility as a category of identity in its own right, though it is inextricably linked to other categories such as gender, sexuality, body, and disability. How little biological and social, natural and cultural aspects can be separated from one another has been shown by the French discourse analyst Michel Foucault for sexuality and the US queer theorist Judith Butler for gender.14 Their approaches can be transposed to another category—fertility. Following Foucault and Butler, I understand infertility as a factor that shapes language and structures our thinking, determines our doing, and creates legal and institutional frameworks for interpreting bodily phenomena. Talk about infertility is based on the following observation: many heterosexual couples have offspring if they have regular vaginal sex during their childbearing years and do not use contraception; other couples do not procreate under the same conditions. Although the category fertility undoubtedly has a bodily dimension, the perception and experience of the body are shaped in discourse. We need linguistic terms to even be able to comprehend and investigate biological phenomena; these terms are linked to certain ideas, notions, and concepts. While we are usually unaware of it, our perception, thinking, and describing are thus controlled by previous cultural patterns of articulation.

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The term infertility itself only became common in the twentieth century, and its use has increased dramatically since the 1980s. It is no accident that this coincides with the development and spread of modern reproductive technology; infertility is clearly conceptualized in medical terms. The older term, ‘barrenness,’ can still be found in Englishlanguage literature of the nineteenth century and is semantically broader; but it is hardly used today. Like the categories unvruhtbære or unbërhaft in the German literature of the Middle Ages, barrenness refers to the fact that a couple cannot have a child, thus indicating a physical incapacity or biological deficiency without seeing it as a disease.15 The terms are used to refer to people and animals in the same way as to plants or farmland that do not produce fruit or seeds, but can also be used in a metaphorical sense for ‘a lack of anything useful.’16 Childlessness, in contrast, does not describe the physical inability to give birth, but the family life situation, although this is also marked as deficient. As a term, ‘childlessness’ presupposes the imaginary reference point ‘child’ and describes its absence as a lack or loss. For this reason, people who have made a conscious decision not to be parents today sometimes prefer to describe themselves as childfree. Remarkably, there is no equivalent for the term ‘childlessness’ in medieval literature, possibly because people in the Middle Ages were integrated into larger social contexts—family ties, work and residential, urban and religious communities of young and old—so a life without bodily issue certainly did not have to mean a life without children. But even in Middle High German texts, the terms unfruchtbarkeit and unberhaftigkeit, which refer to the body and its reproductive capacity, are only used to mark a void in the lives of individuals, married couples, or the structure of entire branches of a family tree. Biological and social aspects of infertility in medieval and early modern Europe cannot be separated, not least for reasons of historical semantics. To even perceive something as a lack requires a desire or counterimage. This connection can be illustrated with the bed scene depicted in the fifteenth-century Vita Christi (Life of Christ) by Jean Mansel, which takes up more than half a page of the Paris manuscript (Fig. 1.1). The spouses, lying chastely next to each other in bed, are identifiable as a couple seeking children by the fact that a tiny naked person is flying towards them. Follow the bright connecting line linking the child with the figures of the Trinity in the upper left of the picture to complete the story of infertility. A childless couple has offspring through support from on high. The Latin banner separating the Father, Son and Holy

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Fig. 1.1 Conception of a childless couple—miniature from the Vita Christi by Jean Mansel (fifteenth century)

Spirit from the bedroom scene identifies God himself as the author of new life by quoting Gen 1:26: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’17 As in the well-known iconography of the Annunciation to Mary, a miracle of fertility is visualized by a ray of light coming from above. In comparison with Annunciation scenes, the presence of the man is almost disturbing. With open eyes he looks towards the child, while his wife seems to sleep through the conception. His slightly enlarged slippers placed in front of the bed also draw the eye. The shoes are askew, indicating that something is awry in the couple’s lives. Both artistic representations and medical diagnoses of infertility rely on cultural interpretations. People who cannot reproduce are declared infertile through hermeneutic, discursive, and aesthetic procedures; by definition, the attribution has negative connotations. Being labelled ‘childless’ devalues a person, not least because others’ perceptions shape our own identities. Like gender identity, people’s fertility identity is forged by different institutions, practices, and discourses of disparate origin. A cultural history of infertility examines the factors that have influenced how

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people without children saw themselves and how others viewed them in the past, which may still impact on the present. My study critiques normativity: I do not understand infertility as a deviation from a natural, normal state, but as a social category shaped by discrimination. Instead of perpetuating marginalization guised as emancipatory self-help, I enquire into the mechanisms that justify the unequal treatment of people who do and do not have children. What causes the binary of fertility and infertility? In what ways is the difference between parents and non-parents constructed, legitimized, and established? What influence do social factors have on the desire to become a mother or father? Critique of normativity does not mean denying the painful experiences and negative emotions of those who long for children. Instead, it is about the cultural patterns that shape these perceptions and cause deep suffering. People who are not parents do not form a homogeneous group, as the grand narrative of their misfortune and incapacity would have us believe. Not everyone wishes to have children; throughout history, some have always wanted to lead a life without a partner or family. They, too, draw on established arguments to explain this choice, to arrive at different subject positions. The distinction between parents and non-parents falls short for another reason: when fertility intersects with other categories such as gender, race, and class, this leads to very different forms of up and down valuation. Fertility is valued differently for women and men; for Black and White people; for foreigners, immigrants, and natives; for Christians, Jews, or Muslims; for people with lower or higher levels of income and education; for people who do or do not conform to the common ideals of health, beauty, and mobility. All the intersections of these categories create a complex of multiple discriminations, as intersectionality theorists have pointed out on demarginalizing of women of colour.18 When we fail to differentiate between social conditions, we neglect the experience of people who belong to multiple minorities. In contrast, the parenthood of privileged people tends to be more politically promoted and socially valued. My central thesis is that infertility is not simply a biological fate or a natural defect, but culturally constructed. This has various consequences, as I intend to indicate with the spelling of my key term: (in)fertility. The brackets signal that there are different ways for those affected to deal with childlessness, which can change over the course of a lifetime.19 Fertility identity is not fixed once and for all, as the historical example of Frederick

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Barbarossa and Beatrix of Burgundy proves. People who do not have a child yet can still do so; people who have one can lose that child; people who do not have a biological child can be social parents; people who are childfree by choice can change that choice; people who are involuntarily childless can come to terms with their life situation, and be happy. Even the political weakness of a childless monarch can become a strength if they skilfully use the open question of succession to play powerful princes off against each other and secure loyalties. For these reasons, I do not limit my study to those who cannot have children, but also consider those who do not want to. The ‘(in)fertility brackets’ also make it clear that the same issue can be evaluated very differently in different contexts and that processes of marginalization and prioritization are inseparable. Although childlessness in the Middle Ages was judged very negatively from the perspective of power politics, it was viewed completely differently from behind the cloister walls. Infertility may be accompanied by increased fertility, socially, religiously, or intellectually. If we let go of an essentialist understanding of fertility and infertility, their opposition becomes relative; they are closely interrelated. Indeed, my book reveals that fertility and infertility are two sides of the same coin. People are called infertile if they do not achieve the reproductive norm. Because they deviate from the norm, the childless minority are devalued by the majority with children. This increases the perceived value of those who claim to be ‘normal.’ Ultimately, then, the only way to establish this ideal of fertility is by excluding the people who do not live up to it.20 This intricate link might also explain the heated discussions about the choice not to have children and the social division between parents and non-parents today. For population policy, it could even be counterproductive to overcome the ‘deep rift’21 between people with and without children. Devaluing childless women is a prerequisite for defending the ideal of reproduction. By distinguishing between desired, refused, and regretted parenthood, I attempt to break down the binary between parents and non-parents, voluntarily and involuntarily childless people. My concept of (in)fertility includes two levels. One is a kind of meta-discourse that contains the wealth of all possibilities of how to think about, speak about and deal with childlessness. The other is a category of identity that determines a person’s self-conception, but without definitively fixing it. Thus, the term (in)fertility includes the entire spectrum of doing, being, and selfunderstanding.

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Key Concept: On the Plurality and Diversity of (In)Fertility As a literary scholar, I am less interested in facts and figures than discourses and narratives. This book is not about what it was ‘really like’ to be childless in the medieval and early modern Europe, nor how many couples in certain regions have been affected by infertility. It is generally difficult to collect statistics, as premodern historical sources provide only limited information and that is mainly about the situation of the high nobility. But even if we could determine the reproductive behaviour of different social groups, what would we do with the statistics? We need other testimonies and information to reconstruct their cultural significance. My aim for this book is to understand how, in different eras, the category of (in)fertility shapes people’s positions, behaviour, and selfperceptions. How do authors in medieval and early modern Europe talk about fertility and infertility? What evaluations and patterns underlie their interpretations? By answering these questions, I seek to classify and clarify contemporary debates in the light of cultural history. In the book, I draw on texts from Antiquity to Early Modernity, focusing on German-language sources from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, since the demand for fiction and nonfiction has been growing steadily throughout Europe since the late Middle Ages, and with it the number of written, translated, and surviving texts.22 The abundance of material makes it impossible to examine every source, so I focus on Christian literature, excluding Islamic discourses, and selecting only a few Jewish narratives. Instead of claiming to be exhaustive, I provide examples. To this end, I distinguish five areas of knowledge that decisively shaped medieval evaluations of childlessness and which changed, sometimes strikingly, in the early modern period: theology, medicine, law, demonology, and ethics. Although these areas partly overlap and are by no means internally homogeneous, this approach draws major lines of enquiry along which to interpret the past. My aim is to make visible the plurality, heterogeneity, and diversity of views on (in)fertility in medieval and early modern Europe and thus to relativize the dominance of reproductive medical approaches today. A cultural history of childlessness will emerge from this overview of arguments and discourses of (in)fertility; it is not monolithic, but a mosaic of diverse, intertwined, and contradictory interpretations. The categories of gender, race, and class are not treated

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separately, but encountered again and again in all chapters in new power constellations. The study begins with theological controversies and their biblical foundations, in which longing for and refusing parenthood compete. In the Bible, assessments of childlessness are contradictory. Genesis is dominated by a negative attitude towards childless couples, since they do not fulfil the creation mandate to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen 1:28). The suffering this causes, especially for wives, is repeatedly addressed in the Hebrew Bible; infertility is considered a misfortune and a disgrace. In the New Testament, the commandment to procreate is not abolished, but it is devalued. For Paul, the main purpose of marriage is to avoid fornication. Those who want to order their desires should marry, but chastity is considered a greater good. This critique of family and the tensions between the call to reproduce and the ideal of chastity are reflected in the writings of the late ancient and medieval clerics. From a theological point of view, infertility appears to be primarily a problem for women, since they do not seem to fulfil their divine destiny. While high medieval theologians privileged the model of Joseph’s marriage and idealized a life of chastity, this changed fundamentally during the Reformation. In Luther’s view, the sex drive compelled humans to be fertile, so the only choice was ‘marriage or fornication.’ Medical writings did not highlight the noble ideal of chastity, but the physical constitution of childless people. Sterility was a theme in medical compendia, pharmacopoeias, and treatises on gynaecology, based on teachings about procreation in Antiquity and the gynaecological medical writings of the Latin and Arab Middle Ages. In vernacular recipe collections and treatises, infertility was explained by a constitution that is too cold or too hot, too fat or too lean—or by too frequent or infrequent sexual intercourse. Physical illness, problematic sexual behaviour, and demonic magic were also considered to prevent conception. Ways to promote it included moderate eating, massages, stimulating substances such as animal testicles and breast milk, and certain body positions. Recipes for herbal potions, baths, and incenses have been handed down. But in the Middle Ages, ritual practices were also recommended to conceive a longed-for child, so the transitions between medicine, religion, and magic were fluid. A clear imbalance between men and women is emerging: in medical contexts, wives without children were pathologized. Every effort was directed to making them fruitful in a narrower

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physical sense, as evidenced by the medicine bill of the infertile Queen Anne of Bohemia. If infertility proved untreatable, a biological phenomenon could become a legal case. Childlessness was discussed in the context of marriage, inheritance, and criminal law. According to Catholic canon law, a marriage still cannot be dissolved because of its sacramental character, even if a couple does not have children. But impotence is considered a fundamental impediment to marriage, so that a marriage can be retroactively annulled after an exhaustive review process. The decisive factor is usually a woman’s desire to become a mother. Medieval court records document various marriage trials in which men had to endure the shame of examinations to prove their potency. Only in the early modern period did it become possible for people who did not have children to legally adopt, but social kinship remained secondary to biological kinship in adoption or ‘chosen family.’ Fertility had high value, as can be seen from the early medieval schedules of fines, but by no means counted equally for all. As a category, (in)fertility received much attention in early modern discussions about witches and demons. Heinrich Kramer focuses intensely on the sexual and reproductive practices of alleged witches in his sinister Hammer of Witches (Malleus Maleficarum, 1487), accusing them of devil worship and penis stealing, and blaming them for impotence and stillbirths. In the context of witch hunts, (in)fertility became a matter of metaphysics, with inquisitors carefully distinguishing between permitted and non-permitted ways to reproduce. Demonologists disputed whether and, if so, how women could become pregnant from sex with the devil. Since demons were generally believed to have no procreative power of their own, some authors indulged in bold speculations as to how the devil could obtain and transfer male semen by means of a sophisticated technique. These considerations caused other problems such as how to deal with devil children, changelings, or witch children. Some specific issues debated in the demonology literature of early modern times have returned with a vengeance via modern reproductive medicine. Besides desired and refused parenthood, demonologists also narrated cases of people who regretted their motherhood or fatherhood and took drastic measures to release themselves from this bond. Ethics discusses how people should live a good life, including whether or not parenthood is preferable. While ancient philosophers, early and medieval church scholars emphasized the advantages of a life without

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marriage and warned against the heavy burden of having children, praise of the family dominated the early modern age. Marriage tracts, wedding speeches, and Reformation sermons sketched out an ideal which equates marital and parental happiness. In these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts, children were praised as a gift from God, pledge of love, and ease of all burdens. They provided support for their parents in old age, ensured they would be remembered, and demonstrated their state of grace. The spouses’ obligation to procreate went so far that the meaning of life seemed dependent on the existence of children. This idealization of parenthood led to the formation of a specific infertility catechesis in Protestant congregations. While women who did not have children were offered comfort, they were confined to the role of the unhappy would-be-mother. In the epilogue, I outline prospects for future research. What conclusions can we draw from the unequal visibility of women and men around (in)fertility? How can stories of childlessness and longing for parenthood be analysed if the tellers adhere to accepted narratives and want to make things easier for their listeners? Comparative (in)fertility research proposes answers to questions that have been asked far too rarely. This book is based on the first, discourse-historical part of my German-language monograph Kinderlosigkeit. Ersehnte, verweigerte und bereute Elternschaft im Mittelalter (Childlessness: Desired, Refused, and Regretted Parenthood in the Middle Ages), which was published by Metzler/Springer in 2020 and which I have revised for publication by Palgrave, especially to integrate more English literature. I sincerely thank all those who have made it possible for this work to be published in English: Sam Stocker and Supraja Ganesh, who oversaw this publication at Palgrave Macmillan, Nadine Lordick, who gave me great support in all the editorial work, and especially Kate Sotejeff-Wilson, who discussed many detailed linguistic issues with me and translated the entire book into English.

Notes 1. ‘PRB’s World Population Data Sheet 2021’, URL: https://interactives. prb.org/2021-wpds/europe/#intro (accessed 31 March 2022). On the impending dangers of an ageing society see, e.g., Frank Schirrmacher, Das Methusalem-Komplott (München, 2004); Thomas Straubhaar, Der

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3.

4.

5.

6.

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Untergang ist abgesagt: Wider die Mythen des demografischen Wandels (Hamburg, 2016). Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, transl. from the French by Robert Hurley (London etc., 1981, Reprint 1998), pp. 103–104. Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronicon I 19, ed. by Robert Holtzmann, 2nd ed (Berlin, 1955) (MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, NS 9), p. 24: Ve populis, quibus regnandi spes in subsecutura dominorum sobole non relinquitur […]. See also the intercessory prayer in the 960 Mainz coronation ordo: Frugiferam optineat patriam, et eius liberis tribuas profutura, in Le pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle: Le Texte I , ed. by Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze (Città del Vaticano, 1963) (Studi e Testi, 226), pp. 246–261, here p. 250, lines 15–16. See also Cordula Nolte, Frauen und Männer in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 2011) (Geschichte kompakt), pp. 120–121. ‘Letter 70: Five Abbots to Hildegard’, in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen: Volume I , transl. by Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (New York and Oxford, 1994), pp. 152–153, here p. 153. For a thorough discussion of the problem, see Karl Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König: Ein Testfall für die Ausdifferenzierung des Politischen im 11. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 292 (2011), pp. 323–363. Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Lothar II.’, LexMA, 5 (1991), cols. 2124– / 2125; Sebastian Münster, Cosmographei oder beschreibung aller herrschaften/ fürnemsten stetten […], Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1553, p. lxvij. In contrast, Edward the Confessor’s (c. 1004–1066) attempt to separate from his wife Edith failed because her family resisted, argues Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König’, p. 336. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983) (Studies in Literacy, Family, Culture and the State), pp. 43–44; Britta-Juliane Kruse, Verborgene Heilkünste: Geschichte der Frauenmedizin im Spätmittelalter (Berlin and New York, 1996) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte N.F., 5), pp. 155– 156; Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, transl. by Chaya Galai (London and New York, 1992), p. 36; Gabriela Signori, Vorsorgen – Vererben – Erinnern: Kinder- und familienlose Erblasser in der städtischen Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters (Göttingen, 2001) (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 160), p. 361; James A. Schultz, The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia, 1995) (Middle Ages Series), p. 108. According to a recent survey, 12% of married couples in Germany between the ages of 40 and 69 are childless—whether intentionally or not. Carsten Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer: Ungewollte oder gewollte Kinderlosigkeit im

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

Lebenslauf und Nutzung von Unterstützungsangeboten (ed.), Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (Paderborn, 2014), p. 32. Mireille Othenin-Girard, Ländliche Lebensweise und Lebensformen im Spätmittelalter: Eine wirtschafts- und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung der nordwestschweizerischen Herrschaft Farnsburg (Liestal, 1994), pp. 69–70. Bernhard Kummer, ‘Kindersegen und Kinderlosigkeit’, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 4 (1932), cols. 1374–1385, here col. 1378: Wer de Welt nich vermihrt, is’n Kirchhof nich wiert. Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis, ‘Introduction: Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives’, in Loughran and Davis (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (London, 2017), pp. 1–25, here p. 10. Claudia Opitz, Evatöchter und Bräute Christi: Weiblicher Lebenszusammenhang und Frauenkultur im Mittelalter (Weinheim, 1990), p. 61. See also Signori, Vorsorgen. Jennifer Evans, Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2014) (Studies in History); Daphna OrenMagidor, Infertility in Early Modern England (London, 2017); OrenMagidor and Catherine Rider, ‘Introduction: Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine’, Social History of Medicine, 29:2 (2016), pp. 211–223, here pp. 215–216; Regina Toepfer and Bettina Wahrig (eds), ‘Kinderlosigkeit’, Das Mittelalter 26:2 (2021). Loughran and Davis, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. See also pp. 5, 10. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York, 1990), pp. viii–ix; Foucault, Will to Knowledge, pp. 23–24, 151–152. See also Philipp Sarasin, ‘Subjekte, Diskurse, Körper: Überlegungen zu einer diskursanalytischen Kulturgeschichte’, in Wolfgang Hardtwig and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (eds), Kulturgeschichte Heute (Göttingen, 1996) (Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft 16), pp. 131–164, here p. 159. My approach corresponds to historical disability studies, see, e.g., Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London and New York, 2006) (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture); Cordula Nolte et al. (eds), Dis/ability History der Vormoderne: Ein Handbuch. Premodern Dis/ability History: A Companion (Affalterbach, 2017); Joshua R. Eyler (ed.), Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations (London and New York, 2017). On interpreting infertility as disability, see Sally Bishop Shigley, ‘Great Expectations: Infertility, Disability, and Possibility’, in Davis and Loughran (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility, pp. 37–55; Cordula Nolte and Alexander Grimm, ‘Fruchtbarkeit/Unfruchtbarkeit’, in Nolte

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19. 20.

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(ed.), Dis/ability History, pp. 448–454; Regina Toepfer, ‘Unfruchtbarkeit/Kinderlosigkeit in der höfischen Gesellschaft: Deutungen und Wertungen der mittelalterlichen Literatur’, in Nolte (ed.), Dis/ability History, pp. 228–229. Oxford Learner’s Dictonaries (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries. com/). For the occurrence and frequency of the terms ‘infertility’, ‘barrenness’, and ‘childlessness’ see Google Ngram viewer (https://books.goo gle.com/ngrams/). On the importance of semantic differences see also Loughran and Davis, ‘Introduction’, p. 8: ‘Explaining these linguistic differences is essential to historicizing infertility’. Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, mit Benutzung des Nachlasses von Georg Friedrich Benecke ausgearb. v. Wilhelm Müller und Friedrich Zarncke, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1854–1866; Reprint Stuttgart, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 140–141; vol. 3, p. 428. Figure 1.1: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram. The abbreviations are written out in full. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine’, The University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), pp. 139–167; Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review 43:6 (1991), pp. 1241–1299; Gabriele Winker and Nina Degele, Intersektionalität: Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten (Bielefeld, 2009). Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer, pp. 6–7; 170–172; Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König’, p. 337. On the relationship between the normal and the pathological, where the abnormal logically comes second but in reality comes first, see Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, with an introduction by Michel Foucault, transl. by Carolyn Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen (New York, 1991), p. 243; Anne Waldschmidt, ‘Warum und wozu brauchen die Disability Studies die Disability History? Programmatische Überlegungen’, in Elsbeth Bösl, Anne Klein, and Anne Waldtschmidt (eds), Disability History: Konstruktionen von Behinderung in der Geschichte: Eine Einführung (Bielefeld, 2010) (Disability Studies: Körper – Macht – Differenz, 6), pp. 13–27, here p. 25. Susanne Garsoffky and Britta Sembach, Der tiefe Riss: Wie Politik und Wirtschaft Eltern und Kinderlose gegeneinander ausspielen (München, 2017). See also Oren-Magidor and Rider, ‘Introduction’, here pp. 220, 222.

CHAPTER 2

Theology: Salvation Stories of (In)Fertility

In many religious communities, ‘I do’ in marriage at the same time means ‘I do want a child.’ In a Catholic marriage ceremony, brides and grooms are still asked today: ‘Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?’1 Two basic assumptions of the church’s doctrine of (in)fertility are contained in this formulation. Firstly, the willingness to reproduce is a condition of a valid marriage: anyone who marries must also want to have children. Secondly, children are referred to as gifts that the faithful receive from God. Such a view can relieve spouses because they are not themselves responsible for the emergence of new life, but also exacerbates the problem. If a marriage remains without issue, religious people ask themselves the painful question of why God does not give them, of all people, any children. In books like Barren Among the Fruitful (2014) or Empty Womb, Aching Heart (2001), Christians talk about how they deal with their unfulfilled longing to have children.2 Many feel more than misunderstood by friends and relatives; at times, they feel abandoned by their God. The religious appreciation of fertility has deep biblical roots extending to the first account of creation. The Judeo-Christian history of salvation is composed of many individual stories in which, as a category, (in)fertility plays a decisive role. Because a life with children corresponds to the divine mandate to multiply, people without children are devalued and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_2

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marginalized by their social environment, starting from the first pages of Genesis. But although the Hebrew Bible as a whole is dominated by a negative assessment of childlessness, there are contrary voices that put the (in)fertility hierarchy into perspective. The New Testament reverses these values dramatically. The norm of reproduction is replaced by the ideal of chastity. The different statements in the Bible create tensions, which the early and medieval church scholars seek to resolve theologically. They discuss different vocations—procreation is by no means seen as the sole purpose of marriage. It is not until the Reformation that these ideals narrow again, confining the faithful to just one choice: marriage and family.

Hebrew Bible Stories: Infertility as Disgrace The key criteria that influence the perception of childlessness in the Middle Ages and in religious circles up to the present day are shaped decisively by the Hebrew Bible. In the very first story about the origin of the world and humanity, the biblical narrator is preoccupied with the category of (in)fertility. In Genesis, the divine mandate to multiply sets a standard against which people without children are measured, and measure themselves. But fertility is marked by the fundamental ambivalence that having children is both a human duty and a divine gift. This tension between lack and abundance, availability and unavailability, rejection and grace characterizes all biblical salvation stories of a long phase of childlessness culminating in a late pregnancy with divine help. Enormously influential ever since, this story arc underlies numerous legends, saints’ lives, and accounts of miracles, but also novels and other works of literature. Moreover, this narrative led to the formation of a material culture of piety in medieval and early modern Europe, to which pilgrimage churches, votive tablets, poor boxes, altarpieces, relics of Mary’s milk, and prayer books bear witness; we will return to this in the next chapter. Divine Mandate to Multiply The first creation account (around 550 BCE) declares procreation to be humanity’s central task. After creating light and darkness, heaven and earth, flora and fauna, as the last act of creation, God makes humans. The narrator highlights two essential anthropological features: humans are created firstly in the image of God and secondly as sexual beings.3

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Man and woman are called into life together, related to and blessed by God. Both human creatures are commissioned by the Creator: ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’ (Gen 1:28). It is the divine will that human beings fulfil two basic functions: they are to reproduce and rule. By naming fertility first, the biblical God gives it special significance. In the chronology of the biblical stories, these are the first words that God addresses to people, to establish a relationship. The most important divine message to humans is that they should have children. Following on from the first creation account, procreation is often emphatically referred to as continuing God’s work—humans advance to become the creators of others. In contrast, the term ‘reproduction’ emphasizes neither the creative nature of coitus nor the power of the procreator, but points to the latter’s analogy with the procreated. Not only human beings are reproduced through procreation, however, but also the ideal of fertility. Crucially to the biblical evaluation of childlessness, the mandate to multiply is not based on social contract, but on creation itself. Procreation is thus both sacralized and naturalized; it is part of humans’ natural destiny as God created them. In terms of critique of normativity, the mission of the Creator God can be interpreted in reverse: begetting and bearing are by no means so self-evident as to merit no comment. According to the first creation account, human procreation is a cultural mandate, not an instinctive urge. From the beginning of human history, (in)fertility has thus been discursively shaped, that is, controlled by an agreement formulated in language. The divine command to multiply is so significant that it is repeated. After almost completely destroying humanity through the flood, God renews the covenant with Noah and his sons: ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ (Gen 9:1). A gender-sensitive reading reveals that, in this story, only male addressees are encouraged to procreate. A second time, humans are given dominion over all other living beings, over the animals of the earth, the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea. After God has strictly forbidden them to kill those made in the divine image and even to shed the blood of a human being, God reiterates the initial command. Almost identical wording literally inculcates Noah and his own: ‘and you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it’ (Gen 9:7). Thereupon God makes a covenant with Noah, his sons, and their descendants, and promises to spare them another flood. The

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mandate to multiply, the renewed covenant, and the promise of salvation are inseparable. The category of (in)fertility also plays an important role in God’s next covenant with a human being. Abraham is called and commissioned to go to the land of Canaan. God promises to make him a great nation, to bless him, and to make his name great. When Abraham reaches the promised land, God repeats this promise several times: his offspring will be as numerous as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven (Gen 13:16; 15:5). This promise stands in stark contrast to Abraham’s life situation, as his marriage remained without issue into old age. While Abraham and Sarah had resigned themselves to their childlessness and have come to terms with making their Egyptian maid Hagar their surrogate, God still keeps his promise and allows the patriarch’s wife to conceive after menopause (Gen 18:11; 21:2). God’s blessing is expressed in fertility in many other biblical passages. The Lord assures the people of Israel that he will love, bless, and multiply them if they respect the divine precepts (Deut 7:13). Ezekiel received a prophecy that the people of Israel would soon return, rebuild their homes, multiply, and be fruitful (Ezek 36:11). Although fertility always has a positive connotation, the nuances of the Hebrew Bible statements differ. While in the creation mandate humans are charged with reproduction, in promises of salvation to patriarchs and prophets, offspring are a divine gift; humans can and must contribute to their increase through godly behaviour. Rachel’s and Hannah’s Childlessness Equating fertility with divine blessing devalues those who do not fulfil the reproductive norm. While men usually receive promises of fertility, women are discriminated against because of infertility. The suffering they experience when they do not have children is repeatedly addressed in the Hebrew Bible. Childlessness means unhappiness and disgrace, as the stories of Rachel and Hannah show. Rachel demands of her husband Jacob: ‘Give me children, or I shall die!’ (Gen 30:1). Infertility, in her view, leads not only to social death but also to physical death. Her words imply that a woman who does not fulfil the divine mandate to multiply has forfeited her right to life. Yet, Rachel holds her husband jointly responsible and threatens her own death if Jacob does not remedy the situation. Only sons, not daughters, will console her in her grief. Rachel’s narrative

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demonstrates the pain of a would-be mother and shows how such a sense of loss comes about. The decisive factor for Rachel’s negative self-perception is comparison with her sister Leah. In Jacob’s family, (in)fertility plays out as a contest in which two sisters compete for the favour of their shared husband. While Jacob loves his second wife, Rachel, his first wife, Leah, who was foisted on him on their wedding night, bears him son after son. Rachel tries to portray her childlessness as a form of marital disadvantage, which Jacob angrily rejects: ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?’ (Gen 30:2).4 With his answer, Jacob emphasizes that fertility is not dependent on human ability, but in the hands of Almighty God. This might be a relief for Jacob, but is a burden for Rachel: why does God give her sister numerous sons and leave her womb empty? When Rachel finally conceives a son after many years, the authorial narrator justifies this with divine mercy, confirming Jacob’s interpretation. The negative view of infertility is consolidated when Rachel comments on her late pregnancy with the words: ‘God has taken away my reproach’ (Gen 30:23). Although Rachel is rehabilitated, the difference between fertility and barrenness is reinforced. Rachel exemplifies the general rule in the Hebrew Bible: who bears sons is blessed by God; who remains childless is stricken by God. This rule is confirmed in the birth of Samuel, another tale of two women competing for love and fertility. The pious Elkanah is married to two women; one has children, but the other does not. The social consequences of her childlessness are difficult for Hannah to bear. Admittedly, she does not have to fear being rejected or even disowned by her husband. On the contrary, as Jacob is to Rachel, Elkanah is especially devoted to Hannah and gives her a double portion when he offers his sacrifice in the temple. But Hannah is heavily devalued in the context of the family: ‘and her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb’ (1 Sam 1:6). Because infertility is considered a flaw, Peninnah can exploit Hannah’s childlessness to strengthen her own position. For Hannah, annual pilgrimages to offer sacrifice are times of torment. On the journey to the temple, she is exposed to slights, which is why Hannah cries and does not eat. Tears and fasting serve as a sign: while they expose how the family peace is disturbed, they are also a way of pleasing God.

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A half-page miniature in the Köthener Historienbibel (manuscript of an illustrated vernacular Bible from Köthen, probably around 1475) visualizes the difficult family construct (Fig. 2.1). Elkanah is sitting with his two wives on a bench that juts into the picture from the left. The children playing in front of him indicate his paternity. Through her posture, the painter makes it clear that Peninnah derives her self-confidence entirely from this fertility. She possessively extends her right hand to her youngest child, who seems to be running towards her. With her head raised and a disparaging look, she points at Hannah with her left hand. She crosses her arm in front of her chest, making her hostile, defensive attitude all the more obvious. Although the drapery of the two women’s dresses touch, above the bench there is a gap between them; Hannah is literally portrayed as a marginal figure. The master of the house watches the goings-on with wide eyes. The red caption unifies the gestures through commentary: ‘Here sits Elkanah with his wives and children, and Peninnah mocketh Hannah.’5 The latter has nothing to say in response to the insult. She keeps her head lowered, looks down at herself, and wipes her eyes with a kerchief.

Fig. 2.1 Hannah’s suffering—miniature from the Köthener Historienbibel (c. 1475)

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In Samuel, Elkanah does not remain an observer. He responds empathetically and comforts Hannah by trying to put the cause of her grief into perspective: ‘Am I not more to you than ten sons?’ (1 Sam 1:8). Yet Hannah remains focused on her suffering. Since she considers her infertility a serious problem, Elkanah’s declarations of love come to nothing and Peninnah’s taunts increase her pain. In desperation, Hannah finally takes the initiative, comes before the Lord and, weeping, makes a vow. If God perceives her misery, does not forget her, and gives her a son, she will consecrate him to the Lord. Hannah is observed in prayer by the priest Eli, who sees her lips moving silently, thinks she is drunk, and rebukes her. In the conversation with Eli, Hannah is given the opportunity to emphasize the magnitude of her suffering, without giving the reason for it. For Hannah, infertility is so shameful it seems unspeakable. She only describes herself as an unhappy woman who had poured out her heart to the Lord for so long out of deep sorrow. Hannah convinces the priest that she is sincere and he assures her that God will grant her request; she accepts his blessing. This turns her doom into salvation, and Hannah becomes pregnant. The exceptional birth story is recorded in the name of her son: Hannah ‘called his name Samuel, for she said, “I have asked for him from the Lord”’ (1 Sam 1:20). Due to her passion and redemption story, women with an unfulfilled longing for children still identify with Hannah today, and one Christian self-help group has even deliberately taken the name of Samuel’s mother. Have ‘Hannah’s sisters’ done themselves a favour with this decision? According to their homepage, they want to learn to live with and consciously face their childlessness.6 Yet Hannah’s story does not show how pious women can lead a fulfilled life without a child; rather, it confirms the reproductive norm. Here, different strategies are intertwined: Hannah’s suffering shows how a childless woman may be thoughtlessly reviled, because a counter-figure is needed to define standards of fertility. Nevertheless, Hannah’s grief demonstrates that there is no adequate substitute for a child, not even the loving affection of a husband who makes no demands for one. What is more, Hannah’s redemption suggests that God answers a pious woman’s prayer for a child. The other side of this experience of salvation is that those who do not receive divine help are devalued. If late fertility can be interpreted as a sign of divine grace, permanent infertility can be understood as a sign of divine rejection. Childless people are not only discriminated against socially, but

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also devalued in a religious context: some may speculate that they probably did not turn to God. Perhaps they did not pray hard enough or were not prepared to make a sacrifice—such as later renouncing their child. The birth miracle stories in the Bible thus contribute to the idealization of fertility and stigmatization of infertility, as will become abundantly clear when we examine the catechesis for childless women (Chapter 6, pp. 189–196). Onan’s Refusal to Reproduce Having children is such an important obligation in the Hebrew Bible that it holds beyond death. This is illustrated by the practice of levirate marriage, which is vividly described in Genesis. A man should marry his widowed sister-in-law in order to provide his childless brother with posthumous offspring. Onan only partially fulfils this mandate to multiply, which is imposed on him by his father Judah. He does enter into a relationship with his brother’s wife, but does not want to father children with her. Because Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, the narrator explains, ‘he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother’ (Gen 38: 9). It remains unclear how his wife feels about this contraceptive technique, whether she wants to become a mother and suffers from the childlessness of their marriages. In this story, only the man has the power to beget children—or not. Although he appears in a mere three Bible verses, Onan has achieved some fame in the history of sex. He is considered the inventor of coitus interruptus, is the eponym for onanism, and has been associated with various non-procreative sexual practices.7 Onan adds a facet to the biblical salvation stories of (in)fertility. Childlessness can be the will of not only God, but humans. Within Genesis, Onan’s choice not to have children clearly contradicts both the divine creation mandate and his father’s command to reproduce. Therefore, Onan is made an example of, to show everyone the wickedness of his actions: ‘and what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death,’ the narrator laconically adds (Gen 38:10). In the religious hierarchy of values, intentional childlessness occupies the lowest rank. Those who are responsible for their own infertility, this story suggests, go against the will of God and deserve to die.

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Promises for the Barren Understanding fertility as a divine blessing and infertility as a curse is a grand narrative grounded in the discrimination stories of the Hebrew Bible and handed down for millennia through the Judeo-Christian religion. But the Bible contains other statements, too, in the prophets and wisdom literature. While these do not set the general value of parenthood aside, they do expand the understanding of (in)fertility through metaphorical interpretation and question the link between childlessness and depravity. In the second part of Isaiah, Zion is compared to a barren woman (Isa 49:21). This is the prophet’s image to illustrate her grief at being left alone while the people of Judah are in Babylonian exile (586–538 BCE). He contrasts the pain of an outcast and abandoned woman with the divine promise to save God’s people and bring them home again. In contrast to the stories of the patriarchs, God’s promise is made to a female figure. Zion is assured that her suffering will be overcome, albeit only in an undefined future.8 Even in the present tense, the barren woman is called upon to rejoice, to burst into song, and to exult (Isa 54:1). The biblical prophecy presupposes the interpretation of infertility as a misfortune; yet the aim is not the birth of physical offspring, but the redemption of a people. Through this metaphor, Deutero-Isaiah makes it clearly possible to talk about (in)fertility in both the physical and spiritual sense. Childlessness does not only affect a marginalized group, but the whole of society. Being forsaken by God and finding grace is not a matter of biological parenthood. The connotations of fertility as positive and infertility as negative are questioned even more in Wisdom (80–30 BCE; one of the books that the Reformers made apocryphal to the Bible).9 The author does start from the familiar dichotomy between those who have children and those who do not. However, he stresses that procreation is not a religious given. Parents are not blessed with children simply because they lead a pious life or fulfil their duties towards God. The author challenges this view by beatifying a childless woman who has committed no sins. On the Last Day she will be honoured like a mother. Like this barren woman, the righteous eunuch is praised and promised special favour (Wis 3:13f.). While in the Hebrew Bible salvation stories the childlessness of the patriarchs’ wives and prophets’ mothers remains a temporary obstacle overcome with divine help, the author of Wisdom addresses people who

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remain childless permanently. This speech is addressed to two genders, so infertility is not located solely in the female body. Both childless men and women are promised rich rewards if they lead godly lives. To be sure, the implicit ideal against which women are measured remains motherhood. But the author establishes a new hierarchy of values in which piety replaces fertility as the guiding category. The ‘prolific brood’ of the wicked brings neither benefit nor recognition, as the wise speaker makes clear: ‘better than this is childlessness with virtue, for in the memory of virtue is immortality, because it is known both by God and by mortals’ (Wis 4:1). The widespread assumption that having many children is an honour and childlessness is a punishment from God is declared invalid in Wisdom.

New Testament Statements: Critique of Family The high esteem in which the Christian churches hold marriage and family is astonishing when one takes a closer look at the New Testament. With his childhood narratives, the evangelist Luke at first gives the impression that he is confirming the Hebrew Bible hierarchy of (in)fertility, but this impression is revised by the words of Jesus. With his statements on marriage, kinship, and childlessness, Jesus seems to turn the values of his fellow Jews upside down. The writings of Paul have the same thrust, valuing chastity more than fertility. Although contrary positions can be found in isolated instances in the books and letters of the New Testament, the overall tenor is strikingly different from that of the Hebrew Bible. A life without children, whether wanted or unwanted, is freed from all disgrace; abstinence is declared the preferred way of life. Miraculous Birth in Luke The Gospel of Luke (c. 80–90 CE) begins with a double birth miracle. The evangelist supports the unbelievable story of the virgin birth by first recounting another miracle whose narrative pattern is familiar from the Hebrew Bible: the late birth of an extraordinary child. Until their old age, Zachariah and Elizabeth remained childless and—as is typical for biblical stories of (in)fertility—this is blamed on the wife. Luke is succinct: ‘Elizabeth was barren’ (Luke 1:7). God’s help makes the inconceivable possible, as the angel Gabriel reveals: Zachariah’s prayer has been heard, Elizabeth will bear him a son. While Zachariah is literally speechless, either as

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punishment for his doubt or out of amazement at the miracle, Elizabeth interprets her pregnancy as a sign of divine mercy: ‘thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, who take away my reproach among people’ (Luke 1:25). Infertility is thus once again interpreted as a flaw at the beginning of Luke’s gospel. However, Elizabeth distinguishes between the gracious gaze of God and the merciless looks of men. Only from a social perspective does childlessness appear as a stigma; God sees the couple in a different light. Transforming Elizabeth’s infertility into fertility in her old age confirms, yet again, the common view of children as a sign of divine benevolence. The promise of the birth of John the Baptist is immediately followed by another annunciation that undermines all previous arguments about (in)fertility. Like Zachariah, Mary learns from an angel of the birth of a son, which contradicts all biological probabilities. Unlike Elizabeth, Mary is not too old to conceive; she has not had the sexual experience to make it possible. Without having slept with a man, according to human understanding, Mary cannot be pregnant. For Elizabeth and Zachariah, the child is an unexpected blessing; for Mary and Joseph, it is initially a challenge, if not even an imposition. In the Judeo-Christian culture, illegitimate fertility is even more shameful than the infertility of a married woman. While Mary quickly accepts her vocation as the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:38), in Matthew (Matt 1:19), Joseph must first come to terms with the new situation. Because Mary’s conception is attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit, the causal connection between divine mandate and human procreation is broken. Reproduction loses its religious relevance when God allows his Son to come into the world in a different way. People’s salvation no longer depends on their fertility. Jesus’ Critique of Family The critique of genealogy inherent in the birth of Jesus develops later. Jesus negates his family ties and chooses a different way of life.10 The synoptic gospels recount how Jesus rejects his relatives and renounces them. The spatial semantics are characteristic of this situation: Jesus and his followers are in a house, whereas his mother and brothers remain standing outside it. This division between inside and outside reflects the relationship between the people involved. The family tries to bring Jesus back into their midst. In Mark, however, the mother and brothers are not willing to cross the threshold of the house and enter the circle of disciples;

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instead, they have Jesus called out (Mark 3:31). Luke is half explanatory, half apologetic—they could not get to him because of the crowd (Luke 8:19). In both gospels, Jesus responds equally radically. He is not willing to fulfil his relatives’ request and cross the threshold to meet them. With the provocative question: ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ Jesus declares the claims of his birth family null and void. Instead, he defines a new family model in which genealogy is replaced by love of God and allegiance. Looking at the people surrounding him, he proclaims: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother’ (Mark 3:34f.). The woman who gave birth to Jesus is thus subsequently denied the role of his mother. Childlessness in the gospels is not the result of a physical impairment or biological incapacity. Instead, having or not having a son depends on socioreligious behaviour. Jesus elevates his conviction of the irrelevance of genealogical relationships to a basic principle of discipleship. He demands that his disciples also distance themselves from their biological families. Those who want to join him must give up all other ties. Only the one who ‘hates’ his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, can be his disciple (Luke 14:26). These anti-family features of Jesus’ teaching undermine the basis for the Hebrew Bible discussions about (in)fertility. The mandate to multiply is not explicitly rejected, but it is rendered invalid by the call to discipleship. The aim of a Christian life is not to beget children, but to take up one’s cross (Lk 14:27). Before his crucifixion, Jesus even explicitly reverses the common (in)fertility hierarchy. On the way to Golgotha, he turns to the wailing women, but demands that they shed tears out of remorse rather than pity: ‘do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children’ (Luke 23:28). Jesus’ way of the cross thus includes a biblical primal scene of regretting parenthood. While the women of Jerusalem do not themselves regret becoming mothers, they are encouraged to question their family life situation. In anticipation of his death, Jesus announces that one day the childless will be praised: ‘For behold, the days are coming when they will say, “Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!”’ (Luke 23:29). For Jesus, having children is neither merit nor grace, but engenders the risk of losing sight of essentials. From an eschatological perspective, infertility is valued more highly than fertility.

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Paul’s Ideal of Chastity Critique of family in the Jesus movement caused uncertainty in the early Christian communities. Was it still legitimate to contract marriages? Were Christian couples allowed to sleep together at all? At the request of the church in Corinth, Paul (53–56 CE) dealt at length with questions of Christian sexual morality. He developed a theology of marriage which largely excluded the aspect of procreation. For him, the key factor was not an appeal to fertility, but fear of fornication. Paul declares marriage to be legitimate and helpful in principle. Every man should have a wife and every woman should have a husband to order her desires, so partners are only allowed to withhold from each other temporarily and by mutual agreement. Marital sexuality does imply bearing children, but the apostle does not renew the mandate to multiply. Rather, he clarifies that there is no Christian commandment to marry. Marriage was merely a concession to human weakness, not a divine command (1 Cor 7:6). In general, Paul prioritizes a different way of life: he regards celibacy as a greater good and justifies this weighting with the different interests of married and unmarried Christians. While the former wanted to please their partner, the latter could focus on God. Paul does emphasize that marriage is not associated with any sin and that it is better to marry than to be consumed by lust. Nevertheless, he considers celibacy the best Christian vocation: ‘he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better’ (1 Cor 7:38). Parenthood appears religiously relevant in Paul when he deals with the hierarchy within congregations and between genders. The First Letter to Timothy calls for the subordination of women and justifies this with the female seductiveness in this reading of the Fall (1 Tim 2:8–15). Here, Paul ascribes salvation historical significance to childbearing and sees motherhood as a way in which women can be saved. In his recommendations on how to deal with widows, Paul even formulates what he believes ought to happen: younger widows should remarry, bear children, and take care of the household. The members of the young Christian community should conform to the social norms of their environment so that they do not give ‘occasion for slander’ (1 Tim 5:14). How do such reproductive demands sit with a man who is otherwise clearly in favour of renouncing marriage and family? Possibly these contradictions contributed to doubts about authorship. Recent research has shown that the pastoral epistles were only written in the second century and subsequently attributed to

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Paul.11 For the apostle, abstinence was always at the top of the religious scale of values, as proven by his concept of grace (1 Cor 7:7): while in the biblical birth miracle narratives a woman’s fertility is interpreted as a divine gift, Paul understands his celibacy as a gift of grace. Consequently, in the New Testament, different values concerning (in)fertility coexist. Three basic forms of parenthood are played out in the gospels and epistles: beginning with the desired parenthood of Elizabeth and Zachariah who have children at an advanced age, to the regret for motherhood that Jesus suggests to the lamenting women of Jerusalem, to the refused fatherhood that Paul indirectly propagates with his ideal of chastity, which Jesus and his disciples exemplify. Highlighting this plurality and diversity and contextualizing it historically are the aims of the illuminating study by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden, Reconceiving Infertility (2015). The two exegetes deal with the biblical perspectives on procreation and childlessness in much greater detail than I am able to in a book that includes four more areas of knowledge in medieval and early modern Europe. The American expert on the Hebrew Bible and the English professor of New Testament studies share my basic assumption that—even in medical terms—childlessness is culturally constructed.12 For biblical (in)fertility research—similarly to early modern medical history—important foundations have already been laid.

Patristic and Scholastic Doctrine: Sex and Sin The tensions between the Genesis mandate to multiply and the Pauline ideal of chastity are reflected in the exegetical commentaries of the early church fathers and the writings of medieval theologians. Christian authors face the difficult task of developing a coherent theology out of the contradictory biblical tenets. Between 1100 and 1160, the Christian understanding of marriage was intensely discussed in the schools of Laon and Paris, as the German moral theologian Hans Zeimentz has shown in his study Ehe nach der Lehre der Frühscholastik (Marriage according to the Doctrine of Early Scholasticism, 1973),13 on which my selection of sources is largely based. Scholars such as Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, Hugh of Saint Victor, Walter of Mortagne, and Peter Lombard related their evaluation of (in)fertility to their understanding of sexuality. Many patristic and Scholastic authors found sexual desire a particularly thorny issue, and Christians were best advised to avoid it

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altogether. Married couples who abstained from sex by mutual consent were, therefore, admired: almost unnoticed, this meant that deliberate childlessness became an accepted way of life. Reformulations of the Mandate to Multiply Starting from the New Testament, Christian authors reinterpreted the (in)fertility pericopes of the Hebrew Bible and, rather than abandoning it outright, reformulated the mandate to multiply. The most important approach to harmonizing the first creation account with the Pauline statements was to distinguish between the prelapsarian state of grace and life after the Fall. Following the early church fathers, the Scholastics held that marriage was instituted by God in paradise and was intended to be fruitful.14 The mandate to multiply thus corresponded to divine design and human destiny. After the Fall, however, marriage was rededicated. It was to fulfil the purpose that Paul ascribes to it in 1 Corinthians: as a cure for desire, to prevent fornication. This fundamental distinction between marriage before and after the Fall has several implications that are significant for the theological evaluation of (in)fertility. Firstly, procreation is seen as a prelapsarian ideal and is charged with religious significance. The early and medieval theologians see the multiplication of the human race not as an anthropological end in itself, but as a divine mandate that connects procreators to the creator. Begetting children both increases the numbers of the faithful and magnifies the praise of God. Married couples should sleep together in the hope of offspring, receive children in love, and bring them up to worship God.15 In this view, childlessness can be regarded as a violation of the divine order in two respects: the creation mandate is not fulfilled and the work of God on earth is not continued. However, the Christian understanding of (in)fertility extends to both physical and spiritual phenomena.16 Marriage is paralleled with the priesthood as an office established by God; as parents give God physical children, priests provide spiritual children. This comparison again reveals that the mandate to multiply does not have to be interpreted in the literal sense and related to biological reproduction; the divine commandment of creation is fulfilled by all who contribute to the increase of God’s children. Children should not be born, but reborn, explained the 1120s author of the Sententiae Magistri A (Sentences of Teacher A). Fruitfulness is to be

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understood in the religious sense, insofar as the deeds of Christians are to bear spiritual fruit. Secondly, the theologians took the mandate to multiply as an opportunity to explain the creation of man and woman. The direct connection made between human beings’ likeness to God and (dual) sexual nature in the first creation account was of great concern to the first biblical commentators. The spiritual principle of the divine and the material in human form seemed to be in contradiction.17 However, if one related sex to reproduction, the designation of man and woman as the image of God appeared plausible. Augustine (354–430 CE) went so far as to justify not only the mention but also the creation of woman with the mandate to multiply. In his commentary on Genesis, he asked rhetorically what task woman should be created for, if not procreation. After all, any other activity, be it agricultural work or a friendly conversation, better suited a male partner. The church father pondered why God did not form a second man from the rib of the first: ‘For these reasons I cannot work out what help a wife could have been made to provide the man with, if you take away the purpose of childbearing.’18 Augustine’s view chimed in with the general theological conviction in the Middle Ages.19 Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) also justified the creation of woman by saying that man could not do without her in reproduction. From their indispensability for reproduction, their nature was inferred. While man was considered the human norm and was assigned a variety of tasks, male authors linked the mission to reproduce with woman. This interpretation explains why unwanted childlessness could be such a heavy burden for Christian women. If they did not bear children, they did not fulfil their divine destiny and might struggle with their gender identity. Even if Augustine paints a positive picture of the marital union in his teaching on marriage and appreciates the woman as a companion of the man, he still creates the impression that women— except as childbearers—are replaceable and have to define themselves above all through their reproductive capacity. Thirdly, the Fall irrevocably links coitus with sinful passion, which has a negative effect on the theological evaluation of procreation. In line with 1 Cor 7, the early and medieval Doctors of the Church argued that the marital union of man and woman acquired a new function after the Fall—avoidance of fornication. The starting point of this theological discussion was sexual desire, as indicated by the key concept of concupiscence (Latin concupiscentia, vehement desire). Since the Christian authors

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fundamentally viewed the sex drive negatively, they distinguished between procreation before and after the Fall. In their view, in paradise, coitus was not connected with desire: sexual activity did not differ from other bodily movements, and the sex organs were dominated by the mind. After the Fall, however, coitus was perverted by lust: the genitals could no longer be directed by the will, so the sex drive became uncontrollable. Christian theologians branded sexual desire because for them it was both a consequence of the Fall and its continuation. Following Augustine, the dominant doctrine was that original sin was passed on through concupiscence in coitus. The Scholastics considered sexual desire to be the source of evil, the gateway to evil, even the ‘kindling of sin’; sometimes original sin was directly identified with concupiscence.20 Recommendations for Reducing Pleasure Christian theologians saw marriage as a remedy for concupiscence, but did not see its consummation as untinged by shameful desire. In their marriage treatises, the Laon and Paris schools discussed whether and how far sexual intercourse in marriage was sinful.21 Several early Scholastics held that coitus between spouses was still a sin, although they classified it as venial. According to Anselm of Laon (1050–1117), sexual pleasure was regrettable but unavoidable and its sinfulness diminished by the sacrament of marriage. In contrast, William of Champeaux (c. 1070–1121) did not allow the sacramental nature of marriage to be the sole excuse; he considered sex a forgivable sin only if the spouses slept together to produce a child. Two canonists from Bologna held a particularly rigorous position.22 Because coitus was always connected with lust, it could never be performed without sin, claimed Gandulph of Bologna (d. after 1185). His disciple Huguccio (d. 1210) declared that Mary was the only woman to conceive her son without sin. He carefully distinguished between different sexual motivations. The behaviour of married couples who slept together to meet their partner’s needs was considered acceptable by Huguccio. If they felt lust during sex, it was a venial sin. Sexual intercourse for one’s own pleasure was another matter; Huguccio saw the pursuit of sexual satisfaction as a grave sin. In his effort to reduce physical desire, he went so far as to give specific advice on marital sexual practice: a man could place his body at the disposal of his wife, satisfy her, and then withdraw without reaching orgasm himself. Whoever had unselfish and

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controlled intercourse with their partner remained abstinent and thus free from sin. Coitus interruptus, which is strongly condemned in the Hebrew Bible, does not serve here to prevent conception, but to reduce pleasure. Fertility is also subordinated to abstinence in coitus, since the main concern is not to feel lust. Other theologians had a more positive view of marital sexuality. While they also considered sexual intercourse reprehensible because it was associated with concupiscence, coitus could be excused by the goods of marriage, which included fidelity, descendants, and sacrament.23 If the spouses had intercourse to create children or to fulfil their marital duty, their sexual desire was not sinful, according to Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1097–1141). He even defended the sex drive, declaring the sensation of pleasure natural as long as it was not immoderate. In the Scholastic concupiscence debate, the biblical mandate to multiply loses its original meaning. Begetting and bearing children is no longer a divine task, but a consequence of sexual sin. Because of its connection to original sin, procreation has fundamentally negative connotations. Instead of (in)fertility, for the Scholastics, as for Paul, the leading category was fornication. Therefore, Christian spouses are not allowed to withdraw from each other, but must satisfy the desire of their partner. In this context, the medieval authors assume an equal relationship between the spouses; both women and men must fulfil their conjugal duty (debitum). Required Reproductive Readiness Despite their hostility to lust, the theologians recognized that the sex drive is a basic anthropological need. This context rekindled the significance of bringing forth children. In their marriage treatises, the Scholastics did not interpret procreation as a divine commandment, but as a justification for humans to engage in sexual activity. Producing children was thus considered a legitimate reason to enter into marriage.24 Thus procreation remained an implicit norm for Christian spouses, though Paul did not renew the Hebrew Bible mandate to multiply. But as long as such norms were not made explicit, the devaluations associated with them were not questioned. Parenthood appeared as a matter of course, childlessness as abnormal. According to the Scholastics, all Christians were not obliged to reproduce, but those who were married and wanted to sleep together: the universal requirement to multiply had

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long since been abolished and would only have been valid at the beginning of human history. After a sufficient number of people had been begotten to worship God adequately, Peter Lombard (c.1095/1100– 1160) commented, procreation became superfluous and marriage served only to avoid fornication.25 Through the Pauline silence on procreation and the theological conviction that the number of saints was already completed, Christian theologians were able to arrive at a new assessment of marital sexuality. The early church fathers had dealt with the question of how to evaluate sex without procreation.26 Jerome (347–420 CE) strongly condemned the enjoyment of sexual pleasure in marriage, arguing there was nothing more shameful than to love one’s wife like one would a harlot. Augustine took a more moderate view: he conceded that partners could marry out of sexual interest and not just to have children. However, Augustine had one condition—a Christian couple should not actively prevent procreation. If the sexual intercourse of Christian spouses was not open to conception, it was a violation, ‘contra naturam’ (against nature). Walter of Mortagne (before 1100–1174) agreed, as did Peter Lombard, who considered sex without the possibility of conception to be detestable and gravely sinful. The Hebrew Bible condemnation of sexual practices that could not lead to conception extended from Onan to all married couples. For the theological evaluation of (in)fertility, therefore, the objective facts were less decisive than the subjective intention. Unwanted childlessness appeared unproblematic from the church’s perspective as long as the key purpose of marriage—avoidance of fornication—was fulfilled, but moral theologians strongly condemned deliberate childlessness and considered it a grave sin against God and a perversion of God’s creation, human nature. The insistent demand for procreation and conception during marital sexual intercourse was transposed from moral theological theory into religious practice, through sermons and conversations in the confessional.27 The medieval penitentials testify to the clergy’s concern about the sexual life of the faithful. During confession, spouses were to be questioned in detail as to whether their sexual intercourse conformed to church expectations and could always have resulted in children. Potential fertility became the key factor in distinguishing between licit and illicit sexual practices. According to the Catholic churchmen, spouses who used contraception, same-sex couples, and masturbating individuals all committed a grave sin in the same way, because the satisfaction of their lust excluded conception from the outset. This basic assumption continues to shape

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the sexual morality of the Catholic Church today. The restrictive attitude towards non-reproductive sexual practices, still officially advocated in clerical circles, is in this sense genuinely medieval. Josephite Marriage as a Model Theologians made another attempt to harmonize the creation account with the Pauline ideal of chastity in the context of Mariology. The church scholars presented the exceptional marriage of Mary—who combined the roles of virgin, mother, and wife—as a model worthy of imitation. Several early church fathers held that the union of Mary and Joseph could be described as a marriage, even if it was not a sexual union.28 Ambrose of Milan (339–397 CE) argued that Mary is explicitly referred to as Joseph’s wife in the Gospel of Matthew. Since both the validity of this marriage and Mary’s lifelong virginity were to be assumed, Ambrose concluded that marriage does not necessarily have to be based on a sexual union. Through his disciple Augustine this judgement gained widespread validity: not coitus, but love, is essential for a marriage. The question of the physical consummation of a marriage was reopened in the Middle Ages. Hincmar of Reims (800/810–882 CE) had to take a stand in a marriage dispute in 860 CE: he came down firmly on the side of sexual union.29 In his view, a marriage was only valid and indissoluble when it was sexually consummated. In contrast to most theologians who stressed the depravity of the sex drive, Hincmar even attested to the sacramental character of the conjugal act: the intimate relationship between Christ and the Church was only symbolized by those spouses who lived in sexual communion. Hincmar remained largely alone in his view that sexual consummation was necessary, and later theologians repeatedly distanced themselves from it. The principle behind the Scholastics’ treatises was that marriage is brought about by the consent of the bride and groom. Consent, not copulation, constitutes the marriage. Yet, not all Scholastics denied the relevance of sexual union. Rather, in many writings of the School of Laon, consummation was seen as a way of perfecting a marriage. Some authors taught that spouses had to agree to sexual union, but did not have to execute it: this was replaced by their readiness in principle. The case against which all approaches was tested remained the marriage of the Mother of God. If the consent of the spouses to sleep together was indispensable for the validity of a marriage, this had to apply to

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Mary.30 The anonymous author of the treatise Cum omnia sacramenta (Because all Sacraments; second quarter of the twelfth century) explained that Mary would have granted Joseph his conjugal rights, but would have trusted in his consideration. Walter of Mortagne offered a slightly different perspective: Mary and Joseph had decided to lead an abstinent life only after the Annunciation and by mutual consent. Hugh of Saint Victor, however, emphasized that such ideas were not compatible with Mary’s intact virginity. He honed Walter’s reflections and thus created an aporia: either Mary had not consented to coitus, in which case she would not have been a true wife, or she had, in which case she would not have remained a true virgin—at least in spiritual terms. Consistently, Hugh ruled out physical consummation altogether.31 His criteria for marriage include the exclusivity and indissolubility of this bond, but do not include volitional or lived sexual union. Spouses only have to have sexual intercourse with each other if they have specifically agreed to it beforehand. Sex in marriage is therefore a voluntary addition, not a matter of course. Hugh made the marriage of the Blessed Mother the standard for all Christians and derived his doctrine of marriage from the belief in the perpetual virginity of the God-bearer. In Hugh’s view, if a husband and wife did not share their bed, this certainly did not mean that their marriage was deficient, let alone invalid. Rather, he saw a chaste marriage as clearly superior to a sexual union: it was truer and holier because it is not based on lasciviousness, but on love. The author of In primis hominibus (Concerning the First Humans; 1120s), who wanted to encourage married couples to abstain, made a similar case: the more they decided to renounce, the stronger their bond. They would no longer be bound together by physical lust, but by inclination of heart.32 Through Josephite marriage, the Scholastics succeeded in combining two Christian callings that had previously been in competition with each other and considered incompatible: chastity and marriage. They abandoned this binary and supplemented it with a third vocation. In chaste marriage, the religious advantages of both ways of living could be combined. Spouses who did not have sexual intercourse did not taint themselves with the sin of concupiscence. Of course, one might ask why Christians should marry at all if they can control their desire. When neither Paul’s main purpose of marriage, to avoid fornication, nor the mandate to multiply any longer applied, marriage could still be justified by the mutual love and faithfulness of the spouses. Patristic and Scholastic theologians were convinced that God had instituted the state of marriage;

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it was the only way of life that could be traced back to paradise and was to be understood as a sacrament. The relationship between husband and wife served as a sign and symbol of the communion of Christ with his Church or of God and the loving soul.33 Chaste spouses could thus both receive the sacrament of marriage and fulfil the Pauline ideal of chastity. The idealization of Josephite marriage lifts the commandment to reproduce even within a marriage and replaces it with a new goal: chastity. Spouses who follow this rule and remain celibate are on the surest path to preventing procreation. From a Scholastic perspective, therefore, physical (in)fertility is not a category according to which the faithful are hierarchized. For these churchmen, the problem is not failure to reproduce, but sinful sex. This theological background is important if one wants to understand why people in the Middle Ages decided against parenthood out of deep religious conviction. The Marian model was widely disseminated through literature on the lives of the saints. Religious writers developed a narrative of chaste marriage in which spouses could even achieve sainthood because of their deliberate childlessness and abstention from sex. Ebernand von Erfurt argued this way in the Middle High German verse legend of Emperor Henry II and Kunigunde (c. 1220)— whereas from a historiographical perspective the couple’s infertility gave rise to numerous political conflicts—as did the witnesses in the canonization process of the Dauphine de Puimichel (1363), who had been married against her will at the age of fourteen, but is said to have persuaded her husband Elzeario di Sabrano, who was two years younger, to accept her wish for lifelong chastity.34

Luther’s Doctrine of Marriage: Fertility as an Urge The biblical tensions between the mandate to multiply and the ideal of chastity were mostly resolved in favour of abstinence in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The early and medieval Doctors of the Church based themselves primarily on Paul did not (any longer) consider begetting and bearing children necessary, and regarded celibacy as a godlier, higher vocation. This evaluation changed fundamentally with the Reformation. Martin Luther (1483–1546) drew on some patristic and Scholastic ideas, but broke with church tradition decisively: he declared marriage to be the

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only true vocation desired by God and suitable for humans. His salvation story of (in)fertility directly challenged the conceptions of medieval theologians and led to a privileging of parenthood. The Elemental Urge Luther presented the essentials of his doctrine in Vom ehelichen Leben (The Estate of Marriage) in 1522. His biblical starting point is the first creation account, from which he quotes the verse ‘be fruitful and multiply’ over and over again. From the divine mandate, Luther concludes that man and woman belong together and must multiply. He relates two biological sexes with procreation to present both as ontological facts that are mutually dependent: just like their sex, human beings cannot choose their vocation. For the reformer it is not a free or arbitrary decision, but a natural necessity that every man must have a wife and every woman must have a husband.35 His sermon is a prime example of how heteronormativity is born: Luther starts with two sexes, which he orders as complementary based on their sexuality. Heterosexual union is naturalized by Luther, who declares it a necessary and natural fact. Man and woman or woman and man are the only possible combinations. The exegete justifies his interpretation by quoting Gen 1:28 once more, equating the divine order with the natural order. The call to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ is more than a commandment, it is ‘a divine work’ that no human being can let or hinder.36 Even the Scholastics believed that sex drive was barely controllable. Luther considered their case that it is better to abstain from sexual activity altogether to be impracticable, inhuman, even impious. He conceded that some people are born with physical impairments or have lost their ability to procreate later on—for example through castration—and hypothetically concedes that others could remain celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet he considers their number to be vanishingly small; not even one in a thousand. Luther denies most people the ability to control their sex drive and even interprets the biblical mandate to multiply as an inner compulsion: ‘For the Word of God which created you and said, “Be fruitful and multiply,” abides and rules within you; you can by no means ignore it.’37 The reformer emphasized that the urge to reproduce could not be stopped by force, neither by oaths and vows nor by commandments and laws, not even by fetters, iron locks, and bars. For this reason, he considered the vows of chastity made by

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priests, monks, and nuns to be void; their adherence to the religious life to be the work of the devil; and their deeds to be unchristian, futile, and shameful. Luther confirms his scenario of the divine and natural elemental force of the sex drive by repeating the mandate to multiply like a mantra. He virtually hammers it home to his recipients: fertility and procreation are unstoppable; God’s work will find its way.38 Concepts of Marriage and Gender From the anthropological urge to multiply, Luther derived a Christian commandment to marry. Since there was no way for people to control their sex drive, he argued, Christians should marry early in order not to commit fornication. Luther took this purpose of marriage from Paul, but assumed a different alternative. While the apostle left the decision between marriage and celibacy to the Corinthians, Luther confronted readers with a stark choice: marriage or fornication. Since the seed will out, Christians could only work to shape their sex life in a godly way and get married. Like the medieval theologians, Luther emphasized that marriage is instituted by God; the Lord values all marital works. Fornication, on the other hand, Luther warned, not only endangers the soul, but also corrupts the body, property, honour, and friendship. To justify the renunciation of medieval abstinence laws, the reformer argued that limiting when married couples were allowed to sleep together would only encourage fornication. For Luther, the sex drive was so important that it not only motivated marriage, but was decisive in whether that marriage would continue. If one partner denied the other his or her body, Luther considered this a ground for divorce. In this respect, too, he linked to the medieval discourses on marriage, but reached completely different conclusions. Although the Scholastics emphasized that spouses had to honour their partner’s request for sexual intercourse, they regarded a valid marriage as fundamentally indissoluble. Luther interpreted withdrawing sex as robbery, in which one spouse deprives the other of his or her property. He concluded that this was contrary to marriage and destroys marriage.39 While for the Scholastics coitus was not even needed to constitute a marriage, for the reformer it was a condition to sustain a marriage. As a result, canonical marriage law was reformulated in crucial places in the Protestant legislation of the sixteenth century. In a departure from the Scholastic tradition, Luther interpreted human sexuality primarily as a natural reproductive instinct, not as a desire

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perverted by the Fall. He could not completely remove himself from the concupiscence debate and concluded that his praise of conjugal life did not mean that marriage was without sin; as descendants of Adam, people are conceived and born in sin.40 But in this very brief final commentary, Luther did not expound on the idea that original sin is transmitted through procreation. He stressed again that God created marriage, gives grace to the spouses, and works good even through sin. While procreation and avoidance of fornication were long considered alternative purposes for marriage, Luther inseparably intertwined the two: the urge to be fruitful, triggered by the creation mandate, found its fulfilment in Christian marriage and parenthood. The very best thing about married life, in Luther’s view, is that it bears fruit; God gives the couple children and commands them to be brought up in his service. Luther recognizes the birth and upbringing of children as the most noble work and ascribes priestly functions to parents; there is no more important task than to redeem souls. This appreciation of bodily parenthood, which should always include spiritual education, decisively raises the value of those who have children. Whereas abstinence was the guiding paradigm in the Scholastic discourse of the Middle Ages, Luther elevated fertility to become the central category: the fact that human beings multiply corresponds—even after the Fall—to the will and order of God. Thus, procreation is not only declared the social norm, but human nature. In Luther’s concept of sexuality, there is no space for intended childlessness and refused parenthood. Instead, he draws a connecting line between fertility and physical health, so that his argumentation touches on medical understandings. If a person cannot multiply, the body consumes itself; one lives unhealthily and must become ill from it. Infertile women are, therefore, ‘weak and sickly,’ Luther claimed, while fertile women are ‘healthier, cleaner, and happier.’ Although the Wittenberg theologian applied his ideas on the urge to procreate to all human beings, he set a gender-specific tone. While he acknowledged that births are a great risk for women, Luther encouraged them not to be deterred: he went so far as to state that bringing forth children was such a noble work, women should cheerfully lay down their lives for it in obedience to God. The patristic idea of woman as man’s reproductive helpmeet reappears in Luther; her crucial function is childbearing, which corresponds to both her biological and her religious destiny. ‘It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health’ is Luther’s statement on womanhood.41 Women’s lives are thus

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subordinated to the ideal of fertility. We will see (in Chapter 6) how this conviction is reflected in Protestant marriage doctrines, wedding sermons, and catechesis, with particular implications for childless women.

Prospects The biblical and theological statements about (in)fertility are polyphonic and contradict each other. Family can be both appreciated and renounced on Christian grounds. The contradictions in the binary of vocations to which the Catholic Church still seeks to adhere are reflected in the discussion about the voluntary decision not to have children. In February 2015, Pope Francis accused people who made this choice because of ‘the lure of a “culture of wellbeing”’ of being selfish.42 Critics reproached the Pope for his negative judgement, as it also applied to priests and religious. Francis responded in December 2017 by distinguishing—as the medieval canonists did—between material and spiritual fruitfulness. One does not have to be married to give life; clergy (and religious) can also be fruitful with good works.43 But why should the argument of spiritual parenthood not apply to laypeople who choose not to have children? While the Catholic Church continues to adhere to its fertility requirement for married couples, Germany’s Protestant church is gradually becoming more open. In an aside, the authors of the pamphlet on family, Zwischen Autonomie und Angewiesenheit (Between Autonomy and Dependence 2013), concede that intentionally childless couples can nevertheless ‘shape their generational relationships creatively and responsibly.’44 The major Christian churches unanimously classify involuntary childlessness as harmless. ‘Spouses to whom God has not granted children,’ according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) ‘can nevertheless have a conjugal life full of meaning, in both human and Christian terms.’45 Infertility is interpreted neither as a reproach nor as a sign of religious rejection, but is flagged as a deviation from the norm by adversative linguistic markers such as the little word ‘nevertheless.’ An unfulfilled desire to have children is rarely addressed as an individual problem or religious challenge; in fact, it hardly ever appears in the churches’ field of vision—unlike in the Hebrew Bible. The pastor Hanna Jacobs described it in her column for German broadsheet Die Zeit in March 2019 as ‘almost absurd’ that there are now church services for all kinds of target groups, but none for people who are involuntarily childless.46 Church communities, with their appreciation of marriage and family, contribute decisively

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to the fact that people with an unfulfilled desire to have children can feel excluded or even inferior. Drawing on the biblical salvation stories and the theological debates about (in)fertility since Antiquity, completely different positions would be conceivable.

Notes 1. Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference Liturgy Office of England and Wales, The Order of Celebrating Matrimony, #60, http://www.liturgyof fice.org.uk/Resources/Marriage/ (accessed 31 March 2022). 2. Amanda Hope Haley, Barren Among the Fruitful: Navigating Infertility with Hope, Wisdom, and Patience (Nashville, 2014); Marlo Schalesky, Empty Womb, Aching Heart: Hope and Help for Those Struggling with Infertility (Ada, 2001). See also Maria Roßner and Anne-Kathrin Braun (eds), Keine Kinder?! Ungewollt kinderlos als Christ: Erfahrungen und Denkanstöße, 2nd edn (Lage, 2013 [2012]). 3. Regina Götz, Der geschlechtliche Mensch – ein Ebenbild Gottes: Die Auslegung von Gen 1,27 durch die wichtigsten griechischen Kirchenväter (Frankfurt a.M., 2003) (Fuldaer Hochschulschriften, 42). The Bible quotations are taken from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (2001), https://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/online-bibeln/englishstandard-version/bibeltext/ (accessed 31 March 2022). 4. Before Rachel turns to Jacob, she demands that her sister’s eldest son give her the mandrakes he found in the field. On mandrakes as a remedy for infertility see Annette Josephs, Der Kampf gegen die Unfruchtbarkeit: Zeugungstheorien und therapeutische Maßnahmen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1998) (Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie, 74), pp. 123–124. 5. Figure 2.1: Hie sitzet Elkana mit sinen wiben und kinden und Peninna spottet Annen. 6. The German-language initiative ‘Hannahs Schwestern’ (Hannah’s Sisters) was founded in 2007, belongs to the right-to-life organization Kaleb e.V. and is organized by married couples for married couples, which is why it was renamed ‘Hannah’s initiative for married couples longing for a child’ in 2019, see https://hannahs-initiative.de/ueber-uns/werwir-sind/ (accessed 31 March 2022). The members are aware of the problem of the name, as they also refer to the prophet Hannah (Lk 2:36– 38), who remained childless. See Anne-Kathrin Braun, ‘Gott füllte leere Hände – zwei Frauen namens Hannah’, in Braun and Roßner (eds), Keine Kinder?!, pp. 11–16. See also Hannah’s Prayer Ministries, that ‘provides Christian-based support and encouragement to married women around

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

the world who are struggling with the pain of fertility challenges’, http:// www.hannah.org/#?page=about (accessed 31 March 2022). Konrad Hilpert, ‘Onanie’, 3 LThK, 7 (1998), cols. 1052–153; Ludger Lütkehaus, ‘O Wollust, o Hölle’: Die Onanie – Stationen einer Inquisition (Frankfurt a.M., 1992), pp. 15–18, 63–64. On the eschatological significance see Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden, Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness (Princeton and Oxford, 2015), pp. 103–139. References to the Book of Wisdom are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/? search=wisdom+4&version=NRSVCE (accessed 2 December 2021). On critique of family in Jesus’ teaching see Christian Kiening, Unheilige Familien: Sinnmuster mittelalterlichen Erzählens (Würzburg, 2009) (Philologie der Kultur, 1), p. 19; Albrecht Koschorke, The Holy Family and Its Legacy: Religious Imagination from the Gospels to Star Wars, transl. by Thomas Dunlap (New York, 2003), pp. 13–16. On spatial semantics see Jurij M. Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, transl. by Ronald Vroon (Ann Arbor, 1977) (Michigan Slavic Contributions, 7), pp. 217–230. Jens Herzer, ‘Pastoralbriefe’, Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (WiBiLex) (April 2013), https://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/ 53866/ (accessed 31 March 2022). Moss and Baden, Reconceiving Infertility, pp. 4–5, 16–20. Hans Zeimentz, Ehe nach der Lehre der Frühscholastik: Eine moralgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Anthropologie und Theologie der Ehe in der Schule Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux, bei Hugo von St. Viktor, Walter von Mortagne und Petrus Lombardus (Düsseldorf, 1973) (Moraltheologische Studien, 1). On the objective purposes of marriage see Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 147– 155. See also Michael Müller, Die Lehre des Hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe und ihre Auswirkungen in der Sexualethik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas von Aquin (Regensburg, 1954) (Studien zur Geschichte der Katholischen Moraltheologie, 1). ‘Sententiae Berolinensis’, ed. by Friedrich Stegmüller, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 11 (1939), pp. 39–61, here p. 57: Spes prolis, quia ob spem prolis debent convenire, et susceptos filios in Dei lege cum reverentia enutrire et regere. See also Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 175. ‘In primis hominibus’, Clm 22 307, fol. 125r, quoted after Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 147, note 41: Et sicut sacerdotium quibusdam hominibus est officium generandi spirituales filios, sic coniugium officium est homini generandi carnales filios. ‘Sententiae Magistri A (29)’, Clp 3881, fol. 199r, quoted after Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 176, note 74: Proles, non ut nascatur tantum, sed ut renascatur, nascitur enim ad penam, si non renascatur ad uitam.

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17. Götz, Geschlechtlicher Mensch, pp. 92–97. 18. St. Augustine, On Genesis, introduction, transl. and notes by Edmund Hill, ed. by John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY, 2002) (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, I/13), p. 380. 19. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I qu. 92.1, ed. by Petrus Caramello, 3 vols. (Rome, 1952–1956), pp. 450–451; St. Augustine, ‘De bono coniugali 1 u. 3’, CSEL, 41, pp. 185–231. See also Kari E. Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Mode of Woman in Augustinus and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, 1981). On similarities between the marriage treatises of the schools of Laon and Paris and the Summa of Alexander of Hales see Rüdiger Schnell, Frauendiskurs, Männerdiskurs, Ehediskurs: Textsorten und Geschlechterkonzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1998) (Geschichte und Geschlechter, 23), p. 152; Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 91. 20. Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 58, 68–74. 21. Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 79–84. 22. Rudolf Weigand, ‘Die Lehre der Kanonisten des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts von den Ehezwecken (1967)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe im Mittelalter (Goldbach, 1993) (Bibliotheca eruditorum, 7), pp. 3*–36*, here pp. 27*– 30*. 23. Weigand, ‘Lehre der Kanonisten’, pp. 31*–33*; Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 83– 84. On the sacramentality of marriage see Rudolf Weigand, ‘Liebe und Ehe bei den Dekretisten des 12. Jahrhunderts (1981)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe, pp. 59*–76*, here pp. 73*–76*; Hugh of Saint Victor, ‘De sacramento conjugii’, PL, 176, cols. 153–174, here col. 156: Si autem opponit aliquis dicens omnem carnis delectationem esse malam et peccatum sine qua non potest fieri coitus conjugalis, respondemus equidem quod talis delectatio mala est […]; sed tamen non omnis carnis delectatio peccatum est. […] Similiter delectatio quae sentitur in coitu naturaliter, nisi sit immoderata, non videtur esse peccatum in conjugibus qui causa prolis coeunt vel debitum reddunt. 24. On the subjective purposes of marriage see Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 155–162. On the debitum see ibid., p. 231. 25. Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 153, note 84. William of Champeaux, ‘De coniugio’, makes a similar argument: in Franz Bliemetzrieder, ‘Paul Fournier und das literarische Werk Ivo von Chartres’, Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, 115 (1935), pp. 73–79, here pp. 74–75. See also Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 149, 204. 26. St. Jerome, ‘Ad Jovinianum 1,49’, PL, 23, cols. 205–338, here cols. 280– 282; St. Augustine, ‘De bono coniugali 5’, CSEL, 41, pp. 193–194. On their reception in early Scholasticism see Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 155–160, 230–232.

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27. Schnell, Frauendiskurs, p. 91; Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 1977), pp. 186–208. See also John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, MA, 1986). 28. St. Ambrose, ‘De institutione virginis 6,41’, PL, 16, cols. 305–334, here col. 316: […] quod ait: Quia Joseph accepit conjugem suam […]; desponsata enim viro conjugis nomen accepit. Cum enim initiatur conjugium, tunc conjugii nomen adsciscitur; non enim defloratio virginitatis facit conjugium, sed pactio conjugalis. St. Augustine, ‘Sermo 51,13’, PL, 38, col. 344. See also Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 105–106. 29. Hincmar of Reims, ‘Epistola 22 (De nuptiis Stephani et filiae Regimundi comitis)’, PL, 126, cols. 132–153. See also Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 107–109, 114. 30. ‘Cum omnia sacramenta’, in Franz Placidus Bliemetzrieder, Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen (Münster, 1919) (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 18, 2–3), pp. 147–148: Maria […] nupsit Joseph, proponens ex una parte, quod si ille debitum posceret, solueret ei—aliter enim non pariter consentirent—; confidebat etiam ex alia parte in domino quod ille numquam requireret, sicut nec fecit. See also Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 127, note 124. 31. Hugh of Saint Victor, ‘De beatae Mariae virginitate’, PL, 176, cols. 857– 876, especially cols. 857–858; Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 132–133. 32. ‘In primis hominibus’, Clm 22 307, fol. 137v, quoted after Zeimentz, Ehe, p. 129, note 141: Quibus uero placuerit ex consensu ab usu carnalis concupiscentie in perpetuum continere, absit ut uinculum inter eos rumpatur. Immo firmius erit quo magis ea pacta secum inierunt, que carius concordiusque seruanda sunt, non voluptariis corporum nexibus sed voluntariis affectibus animorum. 33. On the valuation of marriage and its goods see Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 163– 203. 34. Ebernand von Erfurt, Heinrich und Kunigunde, ed. by Reinhold Bechstein (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1860) (Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National-Literatur von der ältesten bis auf die neuere Zeit, 39). See also Karl Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König: Ein Testfall für die Ausdifferenzierung des Politischen im 11. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 292 (2011), pp. 323–363; Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel Comtesse d’Ariano, ed. by Jacques Cambell (Turin, 1978), Art. 7–18, pp. 34–42, pp. 212, 242–243. Cf. André Vauchez, ‘Two Laypersons in Search of Perfection: Elzéar of Sabran and Delphine of Puimichel’ and ‘The Virginal Marriage of Elzéar and Delphine’ in Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious beliefs and devotional practices, ed. and introduced by Daniel E. Bornstein, transl. by

2

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41.

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Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame, IN and London, 1993), pp. 73–82 and pp. 191–203. Martin Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben (1522)’, WA, 10, 2, pp. 267–304, odder radt, ßondern eyn here p. 276: Denn es ist nitt eyn frey naturlich ding, das alles, was eyn man ist, muß eyn weyb haben, und was eyn weyb ist, muß eyn man haben. [‘For it is not a matter of free choice or decision but a natural and necessary thing, that whatever is a man must have a woman and whatever is a woman must have a man’; Martin Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage, 1522’, transl. and ed. by Walther I. Brandt, in Luther’s Works Volume 45: The Christian in Society II (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 17–49, here p. 18]. See also Klaus Suppan, Die Ehelehre Martin Luthers: Theologische und rechtshistorische Aspekte des reformatorischen Eheverständnisses (Salzburg and München, 1971). Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 276: Denn diß wort, da gott spricht: ‚Wachsset und mehret euch’, ist nicht eyn gepot ßondern mehr denn eyn gepott, nemlich eyn gottlich werck, das nicht bey uns stehet tzuverhyndern odder noch tzulassen […]. [‘For this word which God speaks, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ is not a command. It is more than a command, namely, a divine ordinance [werck] which it is not our prerogative to hinder or ignore’, Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 18]. On critique of heteronormativity see Andreas Kraß, ‘Der heteronormative Mythos: Homosexualität, Homophobie und homosoziales Begehren’, in Mechthild Bereswill, Michael Meuser, and Sylka Scholz (eds), Dimensionen der Kategorie Geschlecht: Der Fall Männlichkeit (Münster, 2007) (Forum Frauenund Geschlechterforschung, 22), pp. 136–151. Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 19. Luther: ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 277: Wachß und mehre dich, das bleybt und regirt ynn dyr, und kanst yhm dich mit nichte nehmen […]. Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 301: ‚Wachßet und mehret euch ‘, das wachßen unnd mehren kanstu widder wehren noch hallten, es ist gottis werck und gehet seynen weg. [‘You can neither escape nor restrain yourself from being fruitful and multiplying; it is God’s ordinance and takes its course’, Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 45]. Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 290: das ist denn eygentlich widder die ehe unnd die ehe tzuryssen. [‘This is really contrary to marriage, and dissolves the marriage’, Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 34]. Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 304 [Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 49]. Luther: ‘Vom ehelichen Leben’, p. 301: Daher man auch sihet, wie schwach und ungesund die unfruchtbar weyber sind, die aber fruchtbar sind, sind und tzu letzt gesunder, reynlicher und lustiger. Ob sie sich aber auch todt tragen, das schadt nicht, laß nur tod tragen, sie sind drumb da. Es ist besser kurtz gesund denn lange ungesund leben. [‘Hence, we see how

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42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

weak and sickly barren women are. Those who are fruitful, however, are healthier, cleaner, and happier. And even if they bear themselves weary— or ultimately bear themselves out—that does not hurt. Let them bear themselves out. This is the purpose for which they exist. It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health’, Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage’, p. 46]. On the Protestant ‘ideology of maternity’ see Patricia Crawford, ‘The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Valerie Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (London etc., 1990), pp. 3–37. Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Pope Francis: not having children is selfish, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/11/pope-francis-thechoice-to-not-have-children-is-selfish (accessed 31 March 2022). Linda Bordoni, Pope Francis: ‘Fruitfulness is a blessing’, https://www.vat icannews.va/en/pope-francis/mass-casa-santa-marta/2017–12/pope-fra ncis-santa-marta-homily.html (accessed 31 March 2022). Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, Zwischen Autonomie und Angewiesenheit – Familie als verlässliche Gemeinschaft stärken: Eine Orientierungshilfe (June 2013), https://www.ekd.de/22588.htm (accessed 31 March 2022), chap. 5, no. 51: ‘ihre Generationenbeziehungen dennoch schöpferisch und verantwortlich gestalten’. The statement is made in the context of the question of blessing homosexual couples. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City, 1993), no. 1654, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P55.HTM (accessed 31 March 2022). On children as the crowning glory of marriage and conjugal love see ibid, no. 1652 and Gaudium et Spes, 48.1. Jacobs cites services for bikers, the deaf, in easy language, and for jazz lovers as examples. Hanna Jacobs, ‘Kinderlosigkeit: Ein Leben ohne Kinder’, Die Zeit, 18 March 2019, https://www.zeit.de/2019/12/kin derlosigkeit-ungewollt-wunschkind-kirche (accessed 31 March 2022).

CHAPTER 3

Medicine: Body Concepts of (In)Fertility

People with an unfulfilled desire to have children can be helped; that is the central message of the current discourse around (in)fertility. If heterosexual couples do not use contraception and there are no signs of pregnancy despite a period of regular sex, they can seek reproductive medical treatment. Fertility centres provide services everywhere in larger towns and cities. The usual repertoire includes hormone treatment, insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF), possibly with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), but also procedures to fulfil future wishes for children, such as social freezing (preventive freezing of eggs or sperm for future use). The extent of the demand for these services is indicated by the German IVF register. For 2017, 105,049 treatments are documented; around 20% of recipients fulfilled their dream of becoming parents. In the preceding two decades (1997–2016), 275,452 children were born via ‘artificial’ insemination in Germany alone.1 Even in premodern times, people sought medical help in order to have a child. Although there are no historical statistics on how often such measures were taken, the extensive written tradition attests to their fundamental importance. (In)fertility has been the subject of natural philosophy discussions, pharmacopoeias, medical compendia, and treatises on gynaecology. The history of infertility in Early Modern England has been well researched by Jennifer Evans (2014) and Daphna OrenMagidor (2017), whereas the discourses written in German are still © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_3

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largely unknown internationally.2 Insights into the German gynaecological treatises of the late Middle Ages are provided by the literary scholar Britta-Juliane Kruse in Verborgene Heilkünste (Hidden Healing Arts, 1998): this chapter focuses on sources from that collection.3 Of course, medieval treatment methods can hardly be compared with hightech reproductive medicine, but the historical discourses are based on patterns of interpretation that continue to shape perceptions and practices today. Teachings on procreation and the medical scholarship in Antiquity were handed down into modern times. Influential medieval authors—such as Hildegard of Bingen, Albert the Great, or Arnald of Villanova—drew on the observations of Hippocrates, Galen, and their successors, seeking to reconcile these with biblical and theological knowledge. Since the late Middle Ages, scholarship, supplemented by empirical experience, was no longer written only in Latin, but increasingly made accessible to readers in the vernacular. Collections of remedies for infertility and tracts on conception were produced, aimed at women with an interest in medicine, bathers, surgeons, apothecaries, and physicians. Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when new knowledge about the human body had long been available, practising physicians continued to rely on ancient and Arabic authorities.4 Men, due to their greater access to literacy and the knowledge contained in books, gained increasing influence in all branches of medicine including women’s health care from the twelfth century onwards, as Monica H. Green, professor of history at Arizona State University, shows in her award-winning book Making Women’s Medicine Masculine (2008).5 The discourse on infertility in medieval medicine and pharmaceutics is divided into two parts. One focuses on those who are pregnant but do not want to have a child; the other, on those who want to become parents but cannot. In research, measures to prevent birth have so far received much more attention than measures to promote conception. Infertility is thus primarily perceived as forcibly suppressed fertility. As important as studies on abortion, contraception and birth control are,6 they contribute to creating normativity. The discrimination experienced by married couples without children in the Middle Ages continues through their marginalization in historical research. Therefore, in this chapter, I primarily deal with medical aspects of involuntary childlessness and the view of infertility as a—gender-specific—disease. The medical literature does reflect the fact that men, too, can be responsible for a lack of offspring, as Catherine Rider, a medieval historian at the University of Exeter, has pointed out

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in several papers on male infertility in late medieval and early modern England.7 But, in both diagnosis and treatment, practising doctors usually focus on women’s bodies. The sources are silent about the feelings of the women who were treated. Only medical measures have survived from the Middle Ages, but no autobiographical reports by people who longed for a child.

Premodern Notions of Reproduction: Seed Theories and Teachings on Sex In the last century and a half, knowledge about the origin of human life has expanded rapidly. The fact that a sperm and an egg fuse during fertilization was proven in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; how the female menstrual cycle proceeds and when conception can occur remained largely unknown until the 1930s. Even the pioneers of modern reproductive medicine were committed to biological and gender-specific ideas that had been formed in Antiquity and developed in the Middle Ages.8 Regarding assisted conception, for instance, there was intense debate about whether insemination had to be integrated into coitus. Without a female orgasm, the whole procedure seemed to have no effect. Ancient Knowledge of Procreation In Antiquity, two contrasting theories were developed to explain how human beings are engendered.9 Both agree that a child is conceived through the sperm of a man, but differ on the role of the woman. Hippocratic medicine perpetuated a two-seed theory that held into the eighteenth century. Its adherents assumed that women also produced seed and that this was indispensable for procreation. Only when male and female seeds mixed could a child be created during sex. The Hippocrates distinguished three different phases in reproduction. The prerequisite is that a woman can even receive the man’s sperm. A lack of procreative organs, erectile dysfunction, a sealed vagina, or different-sized genitals made procreation impossible from the outset. The seed reception phase is followed by seed retention. The woman must be able to absorb the man’s semen and keep it in her uterus. A uterus that is too smooth or slippery was considered an obstacle to reproduction in premodern medicine. Even this did not guarantee pregnancy, because inside it, the male seed could rot.

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Aristotle (384–322 BCE) advocated the one-seed theory. Even his teacher Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BCE) had compared female reproductive organs to a field into which the male seed had to be sown. The differentiation between male donor and female recipient of this seed meant that the two sexes appeared unequal in procreation. The man was played the active part, while the woman was reduced to passivity. Aristotle took up Plato’s idea and developed it by arguing that the human body temperature needed to be balanced and distinguishing between form and matter. Due to his greater inner warmth, the man alone is able to produce procreative sperm. Although the woman contributes her menses to procreation, the blood is only a precursor to the man’s semen. Aristotle considered this to be both the triggering impulse (causa efficiens ) and the form-giver (causa formalis ) in reproduction. The woman merely provided the material (causa materialis ) from which the male seed formed a child, like an artisan creates an artefact. Aristotle’s conception of the different contributions each sex makes to procreation is clearly associated with a value judgement; the woman is the imperfect variant of the man, who represents the highest form of development and is therefore the desired goal of every procreative act (causa finalis ). Galen (129–c. 210 BCE) took a position somewhere between those of Hippocrates and Aristotle. He subscribed to the two-seed theory, but with a hierarchy. Galen considered the seed of the woman to be inferior, which he also justified with the principle of warmth. The male and female genital tracts are built in the same way, but they differ in shape. While the procreative organs turn outwards in the man, they remain inside the body in the woman, which Galen ascribed to her lack of warmth. The female testicles, that is, the ovaries in today’s understanding, were smaller than the male ones. Therefore, they produced a colder, thinner, and weaker seed, which served to nourish the man’s seed. Like Aristotle, Galen regards the female body as imperfect, but—unlike his predecessor—he ascribes a form-giving role to the menstrual blood; the male seed must enter into the substance of the female germ in order to bear fruit. Galen’s statements are not entirely consistent, but very widely influential. His influence can still be seen, for instance, in the ‘diseased woman’s’ two-horned uterus in the woodcut of the Fasciculus Medicinae (Bundle of Medicine; 1500/1501, Fig. 3.1).

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Fig. 3.1 The ‘diseased woman’—woodcut from the Fasciculus medicinae (1500/1501)

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Medieval Knowledge of Conception The medieval authors made their own marks on the reception of ancient theories. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) advocated the Aristotelian position in Causae et Curae (Medicinal Causes and Cures; c. 1150– 1158)10 that only the man produces seed; the woman secretes a thin and scant foam. The natural scientist describes in detail how she imagines the development of a human being. The man’s blood is cooked through during sexual intercourse and turned into foamy sperm, which attracts the woman’s menstrual blood. The warmth of the maternal tissue causes the cold foam to coagulate and mix with the blood. Hildegard reiterates the ancient agricultural comparison that ascribes only a nurturing function to the woman: like a field that is ploughed through, she serves as the receptacle for the male seed. Hildegard explains the hierarchy and different reproductive tasks of the sexes in terms of creation theology: only male blood could turn into seed because the male body was created from the earth and was, therefore, stronger. By comparison the woman, who according to the second creation story was created from the rib of the man (Gen 2:7, 22), seemed too weak. She primarily served as a vessel for the male seed. A key concept for Hildegard’s understanding of natural infertility is viriditas (lit. ‘greenness,’ vitality), the ability to be fruitful and multiply.11 Viriditas results from a human being’s inner warmth; it enables men to produce semen and women to menstruate. Inner coldness leads to infertility in Hildegard’s view, referring to the problem of old age. As they aged and became physically weaker, men no longer had sufficient strength for procreation and women were no longer be able to absorb men’s seed. Hildegard considers a woman’s viriditas to last between the ages of twenty and 50, and a man’s fertility from the age of seventeen to 60 or 70. If a male does not have the viriditas and the ventum (virile wind) that erects the stem to its full strength, he is no longer be able to produce offspring. The naturalist compares such a man to a farmer whose plough is blunted and can no longer till the soil. In De animalibus (On Animals), Albert the Great (1200–1280) followed Galen more closely and emphasized the parallels between the reproductive organs of men and women.12 He believed that both sexes had testicles for the purpose of conceiving and nourishing children. In men, Albert distinguishes between the procreative members, which mature and store the semen, and those which transport it into the female

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uterus, where they pour it out. In his view, women possess both external genitals, which suck the seed in, and internal genitals, which absorb and nourish it. In contrast, Arnald of Villanova (1235–1311) argued that the fluid secreted by women only nominally corresponded to male semen: while her discharge is described as semen, it is in fact white menstrual blood. Although the Scholastics had no unified theory of procreation, most authors were convinced that semen originates from blood and passes from the brain, loins, or kidneys to the genitals. Albert the Great saw the lack of circulation of bodily fluids as a possible reason for sterility. Male infertility could be caused by vascular weakness behind the ears that prevents the semen from reaching the testicles from the brain. If the veins are too weak, pinched, or even cut, a man cannot have offspring.13 The consensus was that women made a less important contribution to reproduction. If medieval natural philosophers advocated the two-seed theory, they considered the female seed to be less relevant than the male. If they proposed a one-seed theory, they conceded only a passive or a purely material significance to the menstrual blood. Dissenting voices were heard even in the Middle Ages. Thomas of Cantimpré (1201– 1270/72) declared that all parts of men’s and women’s bodies were equal—with the exception of the uterus and penis. He explicitly rejected the view that male seed is sufficient for conception. Those who claimed that no female seed is necessary for reproduction were mistaken.14 The disagreement among ancient and medieval scholars means that their concepts of the body are controversial in women’s and gender studies. Selective citations can be used to support completely different theses. Yet plurality, heterogeneity, and openness are characteristic of the medical discourses of (in)fertility before Modernity. Compilers, editors, and translators had no difficulty in allowing different theories of procreation to coexist.15 Thus, the editor of the German Problemata (Problems; 1509) of Pseudo-Aristotle reported two divergent conceptions of reproduction: for Aristotle, the child originated in the seed of the man, whereas according to Averroes, the seed of the man and woman had to work together. Both agreed that the material basis of procreation was menstrual blood. The author of Von der Natur der Frauen und ihren Krankheiten (On the Nature of Women and Their Diseases, second half of the fifteenth century) refers to Galen to explain semen production. The semen comes from the brain, liver, and all the limbs, flows through the veins, and heats up in the testicles, which are on the outside in men and on the inside

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in women. In the Middle Ages, the fact that all knowledge about reproduction and (in)fertility was based on the work of learned predecessors was never forgotten. By engaging with earlier authorities, insights were gained, expanded, classified, and legitimized. Sex as Preventive Health Care Without sex there is no offspring. This connection was so self-evident before the development of modern reproductive technology that it would hardly need to be mentioned if abstinence did not have a broader medical significance. According to medieval doctors, lack of sexual intercourse impacted on family planning in the future, too. They believed that when reproductive organs are not used, they begin to function less well, which prevents a couple from ever having progeny. This is caused by their seed being blocked, which makes people ill and infertile. To ensure that putrid substances did not form, the body had to be regularly cleansed of harmful fluids by ejaculation. So if you wanted to stay healthy and procreative, you had to engage in regular sexual activity. Medical scholars considered both men and women in their sex therapy advice. From a medical point of view, it seemed advisable for young women to marry early to open the uterus by penetration and allow harmful bodily fluids to flow out. Some physicians admittedly warned that men should not make this task too easy for themselves. Women should not only be slept with but also experience pleasure in order to achieve a health-promoting effect. The author of Sieben Erklärungen zur weiblichen Sexualität und Reproduktion (Seven Declarations on Female Sexuality and Reproduction, second half of the fifteenth century) states that wives often fell ill because their husbands did not know how to pleasure them properly.16 If a man gets to the point too quickly and shows too little consideration for his partner, he can only discharge his own seed. In this case, the woman’s womb does not open, so that her seed remains inside the body. Based on the two-seed theory, the author describes the dangerous consequences of such a blockage: the liver and uterus swelled up; the woman felt stitches around her navel and in her side. As the disease progressed, she might suffer from shortness of breath, loss of appetite, fainting—and infertility. If a woman did not feel physical pleasure, she exhibited the symptoms of a phantom pregnancy: the accumulated body fluids developed into an apple-sized ulcer that moved back and forth in her abdomen.

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The author of the Sieben Erklärungen severely warns against letting this disease go untreated: affected women wither internally. As a precaution, he advises checking their capacity for arousal even before marriage.17 Only if young women found their partners attractive and desired them sexually could they stay healthy in marriage and have children. The author considers the danger that women can become infertile and even die due because they are unable to release their seed to be utterly underestimated. Thousands and thousands of women lost their lives because they were not treated as their nature requires, despite being married. This is why, in the medical literature of the Middle Ages, men are instructed to arouse their wives by talking, kissing, and embracing so that their seed can flow out. This view of sexuality contrasts sharply with the Scholastic ideal of chastity. In the medical context, the term ‘unchaste’ does not have a negative connotation, but merely describes a physical act. Unchastity is defined in the Problemata of Pseudo-Aristotle as a union of man and woman accomplished by means of those instruments that nature has created for procreation.18 For physicians, sexual pleasure is not a sin, but the consequence of ‘natural’ and vital sexual behaviour. Divergent guiding principles are reflected in the different value placed on sex and abstinence. While the church scholars used chastity and fornication as evaluation criteria, the medical profession judged sexuality in terms of health and disease. The medical teachings on sex raise further questions. If sex is indispensable to health, how should people behave when they do not have a spouse?19 Galen recommended onanism—masturbation—in such cases, to bring the body relief. Of all things, the sexual practice that had been condemned as ungodly in the Hebrew Bible and that Christian theologians considered a grave sin was proposed as medical therapy. Galen was such an authority that in isolated cases his recommendation was even applied in church life. The case of Johann von Wesel (1425–1481) shows what can happen when divergent strands of discourse are woven together. He argued that clerics and religious should also empty out their seed for medical reasons. He justified his position with the Christian duty to protect human life. No one is allowed to deprive their body of what it really needs. Since people would be poisoned internally if they did not purge their seed, Johann even placed abstinent clergy in the same category as suicides. He sought to appease his critics by arguing that the key was motivation. Ejaculation was permitted if it was not primarily for sexual

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pleasure. The good end of health care was intended to justify the theologically questionable means. Von Wesel’s attempt to derive moral imperatives from medical findings failed miserably. The ecclesiastical position in the late Middle Ages was still far too strongly influenced by the fornication paradigm, so Johann von Wesel was brought before the heretic court in Mainz in 1479 to recant his teachings on sex. It was not until the Reformation that medical theories found their way into theology. The medical warnings about blocking the seed could be used in the dispute over the godly way of life. Luther’s doctrine on the fertility urge provides the best example. In his Vom ehelichen Leben (The Estate of Marriage, 1522), Luther draws on medical considerations in a polemic against clerical abstinence, to present it as an unnatural way of life. If one suppresses the human sex drive and stops the work of nature, this has a massive effect. The body becomes weak, consumptive, and begins to stink.20 Luther’s plea for sex and fertility did not go so far as to dispense with religious requirements. He argued for libido to be released within the context of marriage and for all people to be married, not for seed discharge regardless of marital status. More far-reaching conclusions were drawn by the Basel physician Alexander Seitz (c. 1473–not before 1545). For medical reasons, he advocated that even singletons should sleep together.21 At a disputation in May 1533, he emphasized the danger people were in when their seed had no outlet. They would be poisoned internally, faint and, in the worst case, could even die without making their final confession. With this horrific scenario, Seitz tried to convince his opponents that he did not break with moral conventions lightly: the very salvation of the soul was at stake, which is why every man had to show Christian love of their neighbour by providing sexual aid. The agency of the genders is clearly distributed in Seitz’s model. Although women and men can get into a state of sexual emergency, only the latter is ascribed the role of saviour of body and soul. If a woman suffers a hysterical fit, a man must provide her relief with his instrumentum naturale. To Seitz, failure to help seemed as reprehensible as murder. The doctor’s theses were just as unconvincing as Johann von Wesel’s a century before; Seitz was expelled and had to leave Basel. The medical and theological discourses, which differ fundamentally in their assessment of sexuality, are strikingly similar in their conception of gender. Patristic and Scholastic views that women were created for procreation find their counterpart in the idea of penetration to promote health. Both concepts intertwine, confirm, and reinforce each other. Just

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as women are theologically defined solely by childbearing, from a medical perspective their physical well-being, indeed life and limb, also seems to depend on their reproductive activity. In the other fields of scholarship, we encounter comparable ideas of female gender identity. To dismiss these concepts of the corporeal as outdated is to fail to recognize their cultural impact. We will return to the consequences of this narrow association of femininity and (in)fertility in the last section of this chapter.

Medical Diagnoses: Physical Causes of Childlessness People who do not want to accept being unable to conceive can consult a fertility expert. Only by judging it does a social situation, a life without children, become a medical indication. Since Antiquity, scholars have been enquiring into the physical causes of childlessness. The common concern of doctors and patients is to identify biological factors and overcome obstacles to reproduction. Before the modern era, infertility was of course not only explained by a lack of sexual activity or satisfaction; rather, physicians considered numerous reasons. As the process of conception is described in more detail and more body parts are involved in sperm production and reception, fertility proves to be less of a matter of course. Conceiving offspring appears to be a highly disruptive process involving the entire body. Imbalances in the Body Medieval ideas about sexuality, health, and reproduction were based on ancient humoral pathology. Physicians and natural philosophers assumed that the human body consists of blood (haima), phlegm (phlegm), black bile (melaine chole), and yellow bile (chole). People’s constitutions and the inner balance of their bodies depended on the relationship between these four humours. On this basis, scholars distinguished four types of people: sanguine (moist and warm), phlegmatic (moist and cold), melancholic (dry and cold), and choleric (dry and warm). Gender-specific distinctions were drawn in humoral pathology; women were generally considered colder and wetter, and in reproductive medicine this was believed to be reflected in their ‘seed’ production. According to medieval physicians, infertility, like many other conditions, could be caused by an imbalance of the bodily fluids (dyscrasia) or

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an insufficient supply of heat (distemper). Many treatments in reproductive medicine aimed to rebalance the body. In the treatise Von der Natur der Frauen und ihren Krankheiten (On the Nature of Women and Their Diseases) lack of warmth is given as a reason for infertility.22 According to the author, if a woman is born with a cold uterus, she cannot have children. It is also possible that the cause lies with the man if he has naturally cold semen. The author mentions several symptoms by which such men could be identified: they are physically weak and lethargic, easily get cold, cannot withstand the cold, and show little sexual interest. Such medical explanations even became legally relevant in the late Middle Ages. In a marriage case in Basel at the end of the fifteenth century, Elsa Gruderin petitioned for separation from her husband Johannes Hammerschmitt because he was ‘by nature cold and was impotent for coitus.’23 The inner balance can also be upset if the body temperature is too high. In medieval medicine, excessive heat was considered to prevent conception, as the seed would be burnt in the heat. Accordingly, both partners needed to have a moderate temperature and a stable constitution in order to conceive a child. Women were to ensure that their loins were neither too wet nor too dry. They were also not supposed to get too hot and feel too much desire if they wanted to become pregnant. For this reason, the German gynaecological recipe collections contain recommendations on how to curb desire.24 To male scholars, a high level of female passion seemed dangerous and harmful. Sterility Tests Today, medical fertility treatment is usually preceded by a thorough examination of the woman’s reproductive organs and the man’s sperm. Even before the modern era, people who had difficulty conceiving were examined, but physical abnormalities were often read in a symbolic way. While the completeness of men’s genitalia could be quickly checked by physical inspection, diagnosing women was more difficult and time-consuming. Displacement, inflammation, and weakness of the uterus, or closure and gaping of the cervix could only be detected using instruments, running the risk of injury.25 Perhaps this is why the authors and translators of German-language treatises refrained from even mentioning examinations of, or surgical interventions in, women’s internal sexual and reproductive organs. It was much easier to look at excreted body fluids and make a

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diagnosis based on this. Sperm, blood, and urine could be used for this method, so it was suited to diagnosing both women and men. Even in Antiquity, sperm was tested for quality and quantity.26 According to Aristotle, one could draw conclusions about a man’s fertility from the way his sperm reacted in water. If the sperm spread on the surface of the water, the semen was thin and cold; its donor could not have any offspring. However, if the semen sank, it was warm and ‘cooked through,’ which proved the man’s potency. Other scholars also attributed infertility to poor sperm quality. Isidore of Seville, for example, explained that if semen was too thin, it could not adhere to the uterus, but if it was too thick, it could not mix with the nourishing menstrual blood. In the Middle Ages, such sterility tests were highly controversial. Since sperm had to be obtained through stimulation, which the church condemned as a grave sin, Christian authors usually rejected this method. When investigating women’s infertility, medical practitioners and natural scientists relied on menstrual blood to provide information about their ability to conceive. Hildegard of Bingen considered menstruation to be an indication of a woman’s viriditas, which decreased with age. On the one hand, menstruation was considered impure because it contained harmful juices and thus purified the body; on the other, it was considered life-giving because during pregnancy it nourished the foetus and allowed it to grow. Too much and too little bleeding were interpreted by some authors as a cause and by others as a symptom of infertility.27 In both cases, an implicit norm was assumed that women were to conform to in order not to be considered ill. Heavy bleeding was taken as an indication that there were many toxins inside the body. Light bleeding, the scholars said, meant that the body was not being properly cleansed. The putrid blood clung to the uterus from the inside, weakening the woman, and making her infertile. The colour of the blood was also used to read the woman’s body. The author of Von der Natur der Frauen formulated this rule: ‘The redder the discharge, the healthier the woman.’28 While blood and sperm samples both provided an explanation for infertility, urine samples were only used to detect it, regardless of sex.29 To find out which partner was unable to reproduce, the author of the vernacular Beitexte zum Situsbild einer Schwangeren (Explanations of the Situs of a Pregnant Person, early sixteenth century) recommended the following procedure: take a urine sample from both spouses, store them separately, add bran, and wait a few days. If worms or maggots form in the vessel, this indicates the ‘infertility’ of the donor. The power of the medieval

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sterility tests lies in their symbolism, which is fed by everyday experiences. Although life emerges from the urine-soaked grain, worms and maggots cannot be interpreted positively; they only appear when food is spoiled. Another recommended method was to place beans, wheat and barley grains (one of each for each day of the week) in a pot and pour urine over them. If the grain dried up within a week, the person who had given the urine sample was considered infertile. In the treatise Von Empfängnis und Geburt (Of Conception and Birth, end of the fifteenth century) another method of urine examination is described, for women only. One should ask a woman to refrain from eating that day and to urinate on field mint. If the mint remained green for three days, the woman was fertile. The concept of withering viriditas, Hildegard of Bingen’s explanation for infertility, takes physical form in this experiment. Dying plants and shrivelled grains are paralleled with underdeveloped reproductive capacity. Urine samples have survived in diverse variants in both Latin and vernacular literature, which suggests they were very popular. This method was simple to apply, morally unobjectionable, and easy to evaluate. Urine tests were a common procedure in medieval medicine, but different interpretive traditions overlap in reaction testing with herbal products.30 The urine-on-grain test fed on archaic and mythical concepts of fertility, as indicated by the number of days and products in one of the recipes: seven beans, seven barley and seven cereal grains were to be observed for seven days. The symbolic significance of the urine sample should not be underestimated. The barrenness of a human being could hardly be illustrated more drastically than in the images of withering, decay, and death of natural products that should be germinating, nourishing, and growing. Of course, there were also critical voices in the medical literature of the Middle Ages. Albert the Great thought little of sterility tests: ‘all this seems pointless to us.’31 Seven Barriers to Reproduction Easy as it was to diagnose infertility, when heterosexual couples failed to have a child despite regular sexual intercourse, it was difficult for physicians and midwives in the late Middle Ages to pinpoint a definite cause. The anonymous author of Von Empfängnis und Geburt identifies seven factors that can prevent conception.32 The first of these is ‘too much illness’ in men and women; a severe physical condition of whatever kind also affects reproductive capacity. As a second cause, the author cites lack

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of sexual maturity; in childhood and adolescence, people cannot have children because they have not reached reproductive age. This reasoning may sound banal, but it is not unimportant in medieval living conditions. Children of the upper nobility were sometimes married so young that it was advisable to wait a few years before consummating the marriage and not to hope for offspring too early. The third explanation focuses on diet; when people eat or drink too much, their bodies are weighed down. The observation that stout women conceive children less often can be read in various gynaecological texts. One reason given for this in the late Middle Ages was the extended act of procreation; if they were too full-figured, the seed of the man and woman could not unite immediately. Or corpulent people were told that they did not produce enough seed because their blood was needed to produce fat. Since thin women were also considered unsuitable for reproduction, in this case, too, the average was considered ideal.33 Placed fourth in Von Empfängnis und Geburt are emotional reasons. Again, this idea is based on humoral pathology. Anger and sadness were believed to upset the inner balance of bodily fluids, impairing natural fertility. The direct connection between psychological and physical factors was also addressed in the Gynäkologische Rezepte von griechischen Medizinern (Gynaecological Recipes of Greek Physicians), which immediately followed the unique treatise in the manuscript. It said that the absence of menstruation and swelling of the uterus did not only affect physical wellbeing. Weakened women often became agitated and distressed because they feared that they would no longer be useful to their husbands.34 The fear of infertility thus set in motion a negative feedback mechanism that could trigger a mental block and permanently limit one’s ability to conceive. This description of the condition presupposes that women’s self-image is based on reproduction. The theological teaching that woman was created to help man by giving birth is reflected in the gender-specific concern that infertility rendered a woman worthless. The fifth reason for infertility was related to the third. Not only eating and drinking too much, but also poor-quality food was said to affect fertility; it made people depressed and ‘weighed down’ their blood. The sixth barrier to reproduction also arose from unhealthy behaviour: sterility could be the result of too much sexual intercourse. In these cases, the face went pale, dizziness developed in the head, memory became less sharp, the stomach hardly digested, and the blood became infertile. Conversely, a

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lack of sex had a similarly negative effect. If men did not have sexual intercourse for a long time, their semen became so unusable and sluggish that it was better for them not to have offspring.35 The medical opinion was that the right amount of food and sex determined ability to reproduce; too much and too little intercourse were both considered harmful. Both ancient and medieval dietetics not only provided explanations for infertility, but also provided recommendations for fertility. A healthy lifestyle was a prerequisite for having a child. The seventh and final cause mentioned in Von Empfängnis und Geburt relates to the puerperium. In the Middle Ages, a woman who gave birth risked life and limb. Although by doing so, she proved her fertility, complications could lead to infertility. The author of the treatise placed less emphasis on the dangers associated with childbirth itself, as the need to take care of a woman afterwards. Warnings that ‘disorder’ during lying-in would cause the uterus to grow cold and women to become infertile were primarily directed at men. Gynaecological literature was thus addressed to both women and men. Much of the medical literature warned that sexual intercourse was harmful to young mothers, damaging to their health, and affected their reproductive capacity. Nature and Morality The treatise Von Empfängnis und Geburt not only shows how infertility was medically explained in the Middle Ages, but also shows how parenthood was declared to be a superior way of life. The author wants to deal with the origin of human life, but starts with the opposite phenomenon, that is, the circumstances in which children are not conceived. The list of seven obstacles to reproduction is reminiscent of the seven deadly sins and can evoke a sense of guilt infused with moral theology. Seven main sins against fertility are presented. The author established reproduction as a norm by distinguishing infertility from fertility, understanding it as a bodily malfunction and attributing it to human error. Within each cause, this hierarchy was naturalized by repetition of ‘nature’: people were only capable of childbearing at the age nature intended, they should not endanger their natural fertility with too much or bad nutrition or with negative emotions, and they were to preserve the natural order during sexual intercourse. The extent to which ‘natural’ reproduction is shaped by cultural ideas becomes obvious in the rules to be observed during coitus. In medicine,

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the theological discussions about sex contra naturam were given an anatomical interpretation: the ‘work of nature’ was to proceed in a decorous and orderly manner.36 The authors of gynaecological texts warned sternly that sinful sexual behaviour could lead to infertility or deformities. If the semen was poured into the uterus ‘untidily’ and ‘not properly’ received by it, the resulting children were born with a physical defect. Therefore, women were urged to have intercourse with their husbands as the ‘natural’ order demanded. They should lie on their backs, spread their legs, and move as little as possible so that the seed did not get trapped and reached its destination. Only when people followed the moral medical advice would their sexual acts bear fruit and offspring come into being. Infertility was portrayed in medieval medical literature as a deviation from the ‘natural’ order, for which childless couples themselves were sometimes even to blame. They could permanently damage their fertility through a lifestyle that endangered their health, such as through ‘unnatural’ sexual intercourse. The theological and medical discourses overlapped in that they constructed a connection between doing and becoming. While from a religious perspective infertility was often interpreted as a punishment from God, in gynaecological texts it was seen as a consequence of self-destructive sexual behaviour. Medical recommendations stoked moral pressure and created a fertility imperative, which may be formulated as ‘always act in such a way that you remain fertile and can have a (healthy) child.’ Premodern medicine did differentiate between congenital and acquired infertility, and only the latter was seen as the responsibility of the affected person and was considered curable under certain circumstances.37 However, it was difficult to draw a distinction in concrete individual cases and this caused significant levels of suffering, especially for childless women. This moral medical tradition of interpretation can probably explain why involuntarily childless people still often have doubts about themselves and feel guilty today. Many consider whether they could have prevented their infertility through a healthier lifestyle, trying for a baby at a younger age, or regular visits to the doctor. Public health warnings about behaviour that is harmful to fertility increase their self-doubt: for instance, information on posters and cigarette packets that smoking reduces fertility and causes impotence. These feelings of guilt only increase the suffering of childless people. Some would-be parents keep trying new treatment methods, investing more and more to make up for their perceived misconduct.

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Methods of Promoting Fertility: Hormone Therapy and Fertility Girdles Fertility clinics have websites listing the medical treatments offered by a team of doctors. In the Middle Ages, childless people could hardly obtain a comparable overview of fertility treatments; they had to rely on the recommendations and experiences of the people around them or on personal contacts. Historians of science today, however, are able to systematically evaluate medical manuscripts and gynaecological recipe collections. The copious Latin and vernacular tradition prove that (in)fertility was a relevant topic for medieval medicine and that there was great interest in treatment methods. Ancient knowledge, supplemented by empirical observations, was passed on to midwives and physicians who sought to cure their patients with tinctures, liniments, baths, incenses, and ointments. General health practices such as bloodletting or cupping were also used to make people fertile. The veins were opened and the tissue pierced to relieve the body of excess blood and harmful juices, draining them out. Which specific measures were taken or combined depended on the individual case.38 In addition to the childless person’s constitution, the knowledge and skills of the healers played a decisive role. In the Middle Ages, too, not everyone who longed to be a parent had the same opportunities to seek medical help. While a queen who had difficulty conceiving was attended to by several doctors at once, treatment for members of the lower classes could fail due to their lack of financial means. From today’s medical perspective, many medieval fertility pharmaceuticals were only partially or not at all effective; some worsened women’s health and caused severe burning or even sores on the vaginal mucosa. Women and men had to undergo sometimes painful procedures if they wanted to become parents. Sophisticated Remedies Premodern reproductive medicine was holistic in that it was based on humoral pathology and focused on inner balance. Authors of gynaecological treatises educated childless people about healthy lifestyle and its physical correlations.39 The stomach should be neither too full nor too empty and coitus was best performed at midnight or early in the morning, as food is digested at these times and sperm production is in full

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swing. Galen and his successors recommended certain foods to regulate body temperature and increase the ability to reproduce. They attributed a positive effect on potency to all foods with a warming character—chickpeas, eggs, asparagus, leeks, peppers, aniseed, cumin, and much more. In the early modern period, aphrodisiacs were frequently recommended to enhance fertility and reproductive success and to treat infertility, as Jennifer Evans (2014) has shown.40 The next step was to treat infertility with medication. Physicians combined different pharmacological substances to increase the effect. A Latin recipe by Arnald of Villanova shows how complex the production of such a fertility potion could be. The finest ingredients were needed for a remedy for internal cold41 : six raw egg yolks, fresh butter, goat’s whey, a bull’s penis, orchid, zedoary (white turmeric), pickled ginger, mint, and the penis and testicles of a cock (the left was to be used for women and the right for men). To these, one added the flesh of a coconut, pine nuts, pistachios, sweet almonds, dates, the oil of cooked hazelnuts, mallow seeds, dog’s mercury, mustard seed, cloves, ginger, long, white, and black pepper, a bird’s tongue, and cinnamon. All the ingredients had to be cleaned, mixed, boiled in cow’s or sheep’s milk, and crushed before adding half an ounce of the tail of a lizard (skink). The whole thing was to be combined with rose honey and sugar loaf, stirred for a long time, cooked, and finished with musk. Arnald valued the efficacy of his remedy so highly that he called it a divine revelation. To treat infertility in women, Arnald doubled the oral dose and developed special digestive syrups to make the medicine work better. Arnald’s elaborate prescriptions testify less to an effort to help childless couples than to the pharmacological erudition of their author. His medicine was so complicated to make that one could not do it oneself and there was a high knowledge gap between the medical expert and the person trying to conceive. The indication ‘infertility’ offered physicians an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise. The search for causes and treatments led to a form of premodern reproductive medicine in which the knowledgeable decided on the welfare of the ignorant. The suffering of people who longed to be parents was a lucrative business for physicians, as John of Gaddesden (1280–1348/1349) openly stated in his Rosa Anglica, Practica Medicinae (English Rose, Medical Practices), written between 1304 and 1317. The remedy mentioned was rare and very costly to produce, which is why he made a lot of money from it.42

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Vernacular remedies, in contrast, were usually much easier to make. The author of Von der Natur der Frauen, for example, advised infertile women to consume pig kidneys with warm wine and then drink fresh warm milk. Alternatively, they could mix dung and lard from a hare with honey, let the whole thing stand for three days and then drink it with shavings of ivory. In the late medieval German gynaecological texts, numerous remedies for infertility have been handed down, some of which also promise to resolve male impotence. In order for a man to become fertile, he should, for example, drink goat’s milk with honey for thirty days, eat hare’s testicles, or put on mercury patches.43 Baths, Incenses, and Ointments In premodern gynaecology, baths, incenses, and ointments were also recommended.44 Herbs and roots of a ‘hot’ nature, such as nettles, betony, mugwort, wormwood, centaury, and elderberry, were supposed to have a positive effect on reproductive capacity. Some physicians tried to increase the effectiveness of this method by combining it with certain foods. If a woman took a bath of elderflowers, hot nettles, and betony and then drank powdered meat in elderberry wine, she would become fertile. Alternatively, she could bathe in hot cones and barks and then eat a boiled hare’s stomach. Another author recommended first bathing a woman in a decoction of celandine, verbena, and oats, letting her sweat, and then steaming her from below. When she came out of the bath, her therapist should put white incense and white Roman cumin on embers and open her loins using the smoke. If she then lay down in a warm bed with a man, she would conceive. Incense is a form of treatment for infertility that can be traced back to ancient Egypt and probably originated in cultic purification.45 Even in the Middle Ages, physicians hoped to be able to influence the position of the uterus using incense. The fragrant vapours were supposed to attract and malodorous vapours to repel, in order to correct upward movement or prolapse of the uterus. This procedure could be applied both vaginally and nasally, with the direction of the scent adjusted accordingly. The use of incense was encouraged by the old idea that the uterus was a living being in its own right and could cause harm. If it was not supplied with seed for a longer period of time, it was believed that it set off independently to wander around the body and occupied the respiratory tract. In a new variation, men’s idea that women must be slept with and made mothers

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for their own good emerged once again. The urge to reproduce exerted by the uterus could even be a matter of life and death. In cases of infertility, physicians also prescribed ointments for external use. The tinctures were to be spread on the parts of the body which, according to premodern theories of procreation, were central to reproduction. A woman was to apply the ointment from the navel to the vagina and onto the loins; a man was to rub it in thoroughly around the kidneys and the entire genital area.46 Knowing this treatment method sheds light on a literary scene from the Hessisches Weihnachtsspiel (Hessian Nativity Play, second half of the fifteenth century). As the Holy Family seeks shelter in Bethlehem, the innkeeper threatens that he will rub Joseph’s loins if he does not leave immediately.47 The allusion has a clearly sexual connotation and provides a comic moment in the story of the birth of Jesus. Joseph’s ability to reproduce is to be restored by anointing his loins, after he claims that his obviously heavily pregnant companion is still a virgin. Mary and Joseph were unable to find a place to stay, as the Bible says, but their search is presented in an entertaining way for the theatre performance. The landlord’s rude reaction gives an impression of how childless men were perceived and ostracized in the late Middle Ages. People who were considered incapable of procreation were undoubtedly ridiculed. Unlike in epic or dramatic literature, these social consequences of childlessness are usually left out of medical treatises. The doctors’ view of (in)fertility is body-centred and solution-oriented: childless people are to be cured of a disease, whereas their experiences of discrimination and passionate feelings are of little interest. Confidence in the art of medicine and pharmacy was so great in the Middle Ages that a medical failure cast doubt less on the method than on the constitution of the person who was considered as ill. How a medical scholar secured his own superiority is shown by the cautionary note in a collection of recipes. He said that a drink made from boiled badger testicles would help prevent impotence if taken in the morning on an empty stomach. If someone still did not feel any desire after taking this for several days and was not able to perform coitus, their case was hopeless. If not even this true, tried, and tested remedy succeeded, the incapacity was congenital, and could not be cured. Such a man could clearly never father a child, according to the medical guide.48 My basic thesis that childlessness should be understood as a construct in which physical and cultural aspects are inextricably intertwined can be well illustrated by this statement. When the badger testicle treatment fails,

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the medical diagnosis is infertility. Whether it is a congenital or acquired inability to procreate, a curable or incurable disease is not decided by a biological context but by its interpretation. The lack of clarity in the understanding of infertility, which oscillates between nature and culture, biological and social aspects, health and illness, is also reflected in the current practice of statutory health insurance funds in Germany. These do not consider infertility to be a disease, but they will cover the costs of three IVF treatment cycles under precisely defined conditions. Animal Testicles and Human Milk Among the foods to be ingested, animal genitals are ubiquitous. The consumption of hare, boar, or deer testicles is said to have a positive effect on human fertility. From a pharmaceutical point of view, this practice does not seem unjustified, at least for men; the pharmaceutical historian Annette Josephs draws a parallel with today’s hormone replacement therapy in the ‘struggle against infertility’ (Der Kampf gegen die Unfruchtbarkeit, 1998) and considers androgen hormone therapy to be the most successful treatment method of premodern times. In women, on the other hand, she cannot see any fertility-promoting effect.49 The fact that Arnald of Villanova distinguished between the sexes and wanted to use the left testicle of a cock for women and the right for men in his fertility drink may, therefore, have had mainly symbolic significance. The symbolic function of food in the Middle Ages should not be underestimated. Genitals represented and embodied animal potency. By consuming animal testicles, childless people literally imbibed the procreative power of hares, boars, and deer. They hoped to participate in the fertility of wild animals by taking it in orally. Their much-vaunted reproductive capacity was supposed to be transferred to the human body through incorporation. A similar idea underlies the ingestion of milk, which is both a product and a symbol of female fertility. Many authors assumed that the milk of animals that conceived easily would have the same effect on people. It was equally essential to Arnald of Villanova’s complicated recipe and the folk remedy of goat’s milk and honey. The desire to transfer reproductive capacity becomes even more obvious in the use of human milk. This was considered a particularly effective cure for infertility and could be used when all other measures had failed. Women who had not had sexual intercourse for a long time and suffered from swelling of the uterus

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were recommended a pessary.50 They were to soak a tampon with human milk and insert it exactly into the part of the body where a child should develop and grow. The milk was said to have a cooling and decongestant effect, which was supposed to eliminate the backlog of harmful juices and purify the loins. The conviction that the sexes had a different value again played a role in these methods. Medieval fertility experts explicitly advised treating their patients with the milk of a woman who had given birth to a son. Another reason why this was seen as so beneficial was because, according to humoral pathology, greater warmth was necessary to conceive a boy. Treatment with human milk is reminiscent of the magical and religious approach to touching relics. In medieval popular piety, people believed that they could attain some share in salvation through contact with sacred bodies. Similarly, infertile women hoped to gain a share of the donor’s fertility by inserting human milk into their own bodies. Comparable parallels with medical and religious ideas can be drawn with regard to the ingestion of animal genitals: the belief that one can absorb the fertile potency of others through oral consumption has certain similarities with the ritual of the Eucharist. By receiving the Body of Christ, which was rarely possible for lay people in the Middle Ages, they were to share in communion with God and the spiritual goods God granted. In the same way, both medication and communion helped medieval believers fulfil their longing to have a child. Medicine and Magic Some of the means by which people in the Middle Ages sought to improve their fertility seem strange today. To counter sterility, besides taking or applying medicines, people wore amulets, made votive offerings, and touched relics and stones in the shape of phalluses.51 A curious fertility custom, half sexual, half ritual, is said to have been common in Upper Brittany. Involuntarily childless women sought refuge with St Mirli by simulating coitus. They rubbed their stomachs against the statue of the saint at night and believed that they would become fertile in this way. People also hoped that consecrated hosts would have a positive influence on their reproductive capacity. Peter Auriol (d. 1322) criticized this in his commentary on the Sentences: there would have been no need to do so if this fertility method had not been used. He admonished readers that hosts must not be stolen and misused as a remedy for infertility.

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The modern inclination is to distinguish between scientific and superstitious practices, but this does not do justice to premodern ideas of health and illness. The boundaries between medicine, magic, and religion were fluid in the Middle Ages, as has also been noted in infertility history research for the early modern period.52 This is exemplified by the voluminous collection of letters of the rich Italian merchant Francesco di Marco Datini (1335–1410), whose marriage to Margherita di Dominico Bandini (1360–1423) was without issue.53 Childlessness put a heavy strain on the couple’s relationship, and relatives also took a lively interest in their troubles. On 7 September 1393, Margherita received a letter from her sister Francesca in Florence. She believed that she had found an effective cure: several women had become pregnant by wearing a bandage wrapped around their stomachs. In her further enquiries, Francesca came across a woman healer, who promised to help, but warned of unpleasant side effects. The treatment could only be done in winter and was accompanied by such a foul smell that not all husbands wanted to undergo such a procedure. Margherita should, therefore, first find out, the sister said, whether her husband wanted her to put herself through this at all. Did Francesco Datini reject this proposal—possibly because of the stench—or was the method less successful than his sister-in-law had assumed? Two years later, the infertility problem was still unresolved, although the couple had been consulting physicians for a long time. Their doctor friend Naddino Bovattieri suspected in 1395 that their sterility could be related to Margherita’s severe menstrual pains. Telling him that he had recently successfully treated a patient with similar symptoms and helped her to give birth to two children, Naddino gave his friend hope. He promised to send everything that was needed for the treatment. If Margherita’s doctors thought it appropriate, her condition could be cured in the same way. The idea that Francesco might also undergo medical fertility treatment was never the subject of the correspondence. After all, he had already proven his potency by fathering several illegitimate children. Margherita’s sister gave some new advice in the same year. According to a letter written by her husband Niccolò dell’Ammannato Tecchini, Francesca recommended that the Datini couple use a girdle inscribed with characters. In medieval medicine, this miracle cure was primarily known in obstetrics. Even into modern times, to alleviate pain and preserve the life of mother and child, a girdle or strip of cloth, parchment, or paper with writing on it was placed around women when they were giving birth. In

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many cases, such birthing girdles were inscribed with invocations of prayer addressed to specific saints such as Mary, Elizabeth, or Margaret. Binding and loosening the girdle imitated the painful process of giving birth and was supposed to bring it to a positive conclusion.54 This magical ritual of protection was transferred from an expectant to a would-be mother in the family history of the Datinis. Francesca instructed her sister in exactly what she had to observe during this procedure. An untouched boy should gird her after saying three Our Fathers and Hail Marys to the glory of God, the Trinity, and St Catherine. In order for the fertility girdle to have the desired effect, the characters would have to directly touch her bare skin. The male author of the letter, Niccolò, thought little of the procedure described and made no secret of his scepticism. He felt a more promising approach would be for Margherita to feed three beggars on three Fridays than to listen to women’s gossip. But although Niccolò rejected magical practices, advocated a religious solution, and belittled his wife’s advice, he still passed it on. After more than fifteen childless years of marriage, nothing could be left untried that promised even the slightest prospect of pregnancy. In the private letters of Francesco and Margherita Datini at the end of the fourteenth century, four methods that modern science likes to keep apart appear close together: the bandage from a woman healer, the medical expertise of learned doctors, the magical fertility ritual with the girdle, and the religious hope of divine reward for charitable deeds. In medieval and early modern Europe, however, all these healing strategies belonged equally to the realm of physical health.

The Medicalized Sex: ‘Being a Woman’ Equals ‘Being Ill’ Prescriptions for impotence should not hide the fact that, even if the importance of men must not be negated,55 throughout the ages, medical fertility treatments were primarily a women’s issue. If couples remain involuntarily childless today, the woman usually undergoes an extensive gynaecological examination first. The uterus is often examined for adhesions and the fallopian tubes for permeability before a man even visits a urologist. Yet, it would be easier and cheaper to test his fertility. There are no biological reasons for this approach: fertility disorders occur statistically equally often in women and men. The causes of infertility lie with the woman in about one-third of cases, with the man in one-third, and

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with both in one-third. Nevertheless, women tend to seek reasons for it primarily in themselves, as the German social researcher Carsten Wippermann (2014) found in his study of childless women and men.56 Since men take the same approach, women are under greater pressure to seek medical help. Pathologizing Women In medieval and early modern medical discourses, the unequal treatment of women and men related to childlessness is even more striking. Premodern theories of procreation emphasized the man’s role in reproduction, whereas the woman’s role seemed less important. However, when a physical defect was identified and treatment to be initiated, the focus is clearly on the female. A German-language collection of remedies stated that because humanity reproduces through women, treatment for infertility must also start with them: after all, the female body was subject to many and various internal and external malfunctions and weaknesses.57 In view of such assumptions, it may seem only logical that there was no andrology counterpart to the multitude of writings on gynaecology until the seventeenth century. Premodern physicians did reflect on the fact that a man’s reproductive capacity can also be limited. But as a rule, no distinction was drawn between the ability to procreate (potentia generandi) and for coitus (potentia coeundi). Male infertility was therefore usually only perceived when it was accompanied by erectile dysfunction. Then, however, not only doctors but also judges in church marriage cases became interested in men’s potency problems, which will be discussed in the next chapter. The body of vernacular texts on remedies for impotence embedded in the field of gynaecology is relatively small. Infertility was fundamentally perceived as a female problem, while fertility appeared as a male privilege. From a gender perspective, the impression created by reading the gynaecological writings of the German Middle Ages is ambivalent. On the one hand, the authors emphasize the indispensable contribution of women to reproduction. They want to inform readers about the functions of the female body and its diseases so that women receive gender-appropriate treatment. On the other hand, the authors interpret the otherness of the female body as a weakness and bring the manifold sufferings of women to the fore. Women are offered medical help with fertility, but are

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more frequently examined for the causes and offered treatments, which pathologizes them. How women are perceived and positioned as the suffering sex is also shown by the image of the ‘diseased woman’ in the Fasciculus Medicinae (Fig. 3.1). The woodcut is from a medical collection compiled in the mid-fifteenth century, long attributed to the doctor Johannes de Ketham, which was printed in 1491.58 The work was so popular that it was translated into several languages and reprinted again and again. The information on typical women’s illnesses is preceded by a full-page anatomical illustration that varies between schematic figure and figurative representation. With her head slightly tilted, deep circles under her eyes and her index finger pointing upwards, the unclothed female figure looks up as if expecting help from on high. The position of her head and her pain-filled gaze are reminiscent of martyrs who face their suffering with composure. Unlike the martyr saints, her head is not framed by a halo, but by the names of illnesses. Transferring the iconography from the theological to the medical context creates the figure of the martyr-like patient, passively devoted to her doctors.59 Anne of Bohemia and Her Longing for Children Gynaecological recipe collections do not usually provide information about their recipients. Therefore, a collection of apothecary bills containing medicines for Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394) is a real find for (in)fertility researchers. Several substances and concoctions said to mitigate infertility were prescribed for the ‘Lady Queen’ in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Richard II of England. Using these apothecary’s bills and other historiographical sources, medical historian at the University of Toledo Kristen L. Geaman has reconstructed Anne’s ‘struggle to conceive’ (2014).60 Her case shows how childlessness was dealt with in the highest aristocratic circles in the late Middle Ages. On her marriage in Westminster Abbey in January 1382, the conditions seemed favourable for gaining power through reproduction. At the age of fifteen, Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of Emperor Charles IV, was married to Richard, who was the same age. But when she died twelve years later, several chroniclers noted, sometimes with explicit regret, that the queen had not borne her husband a child. Just eighteen months after their wedding, we find the first hint that Anne and Richard feared that they would remain childless. Together the

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couple made a pilgrimage to Walsingham in Norfolk in May and June 1383. The objects of veneration at the most important English pilgrimage site included a statue of Mary with baby Jesus and a phial containing a relic of Mary’s milk. If, in the medieval mind, the milk of an ordinary woman could promote fertility, how much more powerful was the milk of the Mother of God? Walsingham was, therefore, a popular place of pilgrimage for people hoping to become parents with divine help. In the late Middle Ages, numerous noble women such as Margaret of Anjou (1430–1482) and Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) are known to have visited, as well as couples such as Edward IV (1442–1483) and Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1437–1492). Anne and Richard’s joint pilgrimage did not lead to the birth of the hoped-for heir to the throne. Yet they neither relied solely on a religious solution nor accepted their childlessness idly, as is proven by the apothecary’s bills made out to the queen. Anne of Bohemia sought medical help several times over a long period, at the latest after her marriage had remained childless for more than ten years. On six sheets bound together, different pharmaceuticals and medicines are listed along with prices, signed off by various physicians. Anne must have consulted at least five different medical advisers during the treatment period from June 1393 until her sudden death—presumably from the plague—in June 1394. The listed remedies cannot all be clearly identified as for infertility. But there are several indications that the queen used them and deeply desired to have children: for example, the small amount of many substances, enough for only one person, or the prescription of ‘trifera magna.’ This remedy was inserted into the vagina and expressly attested to promote fertility in the gynaecological literature. The price for trifera magna is comparatively high, and Anne’s consumption is conspicuously large. Even if it cannot be ruled out that Richard also consumed potency-enhancing agents, there is much to suggest that the physicians focused their fertility treatments on Anne. While the king was involved in religious efforts, the main burden of medical treatment was on the queen. Anne and Richard’s double strategy to conceive a child confirms once more that the medical and theological discourses of infertility in the Middle Ages closely overlapped. Although the medical texts focused on the body and contained concrete knowledge of methods, religious practices were always included. In this worldview, the human art of healing and the divine power of redemption are not in contradiction, but complement each other. This same connection can be assumed in Anne and

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Richard’s donation to St Giles’ Hospital in Norwich. The hospital was dedicated to St Anne, on whose intercession the childless royal couple possibly relied.61 Even in the Middle Ages, people did a great deal to fulfil their desire to have children. But women were, indeed are, also expected to do everything they could to become mothers. Bikini Medicine in the Middle Ages The cultural and historical link between infertility and femininity has farreaching consequences. Even in medicine today, women are primarily perceived in categories of (in)fertility and the female body is anxiously monitored for its reproductive capacity.62 The fertility-related differentiation between women and men begins immediately with sexual maturity. For example, in Germany, girls are usually sent to the gynaecologist after they start menstruating, whereas boys do not need to see a urologist after they start ejaculating. The fixation on childbearing would not be so problematic if it were not accompanied by neglect of women’s other bodily functions. Men are the medical norm, whereas gender-specific differences in clinical presentation are hardly taken into account. Even today, women’s health care has focused on the parts of the body that are necessary for childbearing and breastfeeding. This disproportion is associated with high health risks for women, as the American cardiologist and initiator of sex- and gender-sensitive medicine, Nanette K. Wenger, highlighted in 2004. While most women are aware of the danger of breast cancer and are kept aware of it by being invited for screening, fatal heart diseases in women are dramatically underestimated.63 By coining the term ‘bikini medicine,’ Wenger drew attention to the problem that women tend to receive medical care on the parts of their bodies covered by two-piece swimwear. As a sex and as a gender, women are both overand under-treated, because their health care is dominated by the issue of (in)fertility. The extensive tradition of this perspective on the female body is shown in numerous medieval treatises on gynaecology. More illustrative, however, is another look at the image of the ‘diseased woman’ (Fig. 3.1), marked with the medically relevant body parts. The pose of the naked female figure is not easy to define. Her half-squatting, half-sitting, and straddled posture suggests a birthing position. Through the oval, upward-tapering opening in the centre of her body, one can look inside. Her sexual and reproductive organs are highlighted. The

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numerous lines leading to annotations connect text and image. At first glance, it is obvious that the medical explanations of women’s ailments largely refer to their sexual and reproductive organs. Some notes provide information about possible obstacles to conception, others about signs of pregnancy, the regulation of menstruation, or breast pain. ‘Bikini medicine,’ therefore, has a history that is far older than its name suggests.

Prospects Since the birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first child conceived in vitro in July 1978, the medical interpretation of (in)fertility has become increasingly established, specialized, and optimized. Fertility medicine has become the guiding paradigm that largely determines the way we think and talk about involuntary childlessness. Whereas in medieval and early modern Europe couples wishing to have children could seek the opinion of individual fertility experts, today they face an entire service industry. Fertility clinics are usually high tech and part of strong international networks. They advertise treatment successes—with the necessary financial and physical investment. These procedures are largely decoupled from coitus; in many countries, people who want to have children no longer even need a partner, whether of the same or opposite sex, to become a parent. Of course, this also increases the pressure on women to seek medical help if they do not conceive. Women still bear the brunt of fertility treatment; even in cases where the organic causes clearly lie with the man, women have to undergo hormone treatment and, if necessary, follicle puncture and embryo transfer. There is much to suggest that our current perceptions are worlds apart from the premodern discourses of (in)fertility. Above all, the connection between medicine, religion, and magic seems to belong to a past that we have long since left behind. Prayers or pilgrimages are hardly recommended by doctors today to increase fertility; instead, they offer medically proven, technologically supported treatment measures. But are theology and medicine really as completely detached from each other in the struggle to conceive as our enlightened contemporaries claim? The overconfidence that both stakeholders and the public commonly place in reproductive technology makes me doubt this. If one knows the cultural history of childlessness since its biblical beginnings, one rather notices structural similarities between premodern theological interpretations and the expectations of reproductive medicine today. Is the biblical God’s

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promise of salvation to Abraham fundamentally different from that of the fertility clinics? Aren’t gynaecologists also fostering confidence that nothing is impossible to medicine? Throughout the ages, people who wish to have children are given hope of a baby if they entrust themselves to a higher authority and follow its instructions. It is remarkable how positively people who struggle to have children respond to the advances made by reproductive medicine—regardless of actual treatment success. In his study for the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Wippermann emphasized that childless women and men felt they received excellent medical care even when an intervention failed to produce results.64 Although the interviewees had not had a child despite high expenses and emotional stress, they did not doubt either the doctors who had treated them or the method they had tried. Instead, over eighty per cent felt confident in both their decision and reproductive medicine. This undimmed appreciation can probably only be explained by a deep faith in the gospel of the fertility clinics. The good news that many babies have been born comforts and encourages those whose try to conceive but fail, however vague the prospect of biological parenthood may be. The historical context provided by comparative studies reveals what would never come to light with a teleological view of history that focuses purely on medical progress: the most important discourses on infertility in the Middle Ages and the present differ in the scope of their technologies, but their function is structurally analogous. Then and now, hope of help and redemption, as well as the fear of guilt and failure, remains a guiding principle for those who struggle to have children. The medical fertility treatment industry has not abolished theology, but adapted its inner mechanisms and promises of salvation. In this way, reproductive medicine has itself become a postmodern religion.

Notes 1. See ‘D.I.R. Jahrbuch 2017’, Journal für Reproduktionsmedizin und Endokrinologie – Journal of Reproductive Medicine and Endocrinology, 15, Sonderheft 1 (2018), pp. 1–56, here pp. 8, 22, 43, https://www.deu tsches-ivf-register.de/perch/resources/dir-jahrbuch-2017-deutsch-final-4. pdf (accessed 31 March 2022).

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2. See Jennifer Evans, Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2014) (Studies in History); Daphna OrenMagidor, Infertility in Early Modern England (London, 2017). See also Oren-Magidor and Catherine Rider, ‘Introduction: Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2016), pp. 211–223. 3. See Britta-Juliane Kruse, Verborgene Heilkünste: Geschichte der Frauenmedizin im Spätmittelalter (Berlin and New York, 1996) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte N.F., 5). 4. See Annette Josephs, Der Kampf gegen die Unfruchtbarkeit: Zeugungstheorien und therapeutische Maßnahmen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1998) (Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie, 74), pp. 108–109. On the recipients see Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 112. On male and female actors see ibid., pp. 113–142. 5. See Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-modern Gynaecology (Oxford, 2008). 6. See Andrea Kammeier-Nebel, ‘Wenn eine Frau Kräutertränke zu sich genommen hat, um nicht zu empfangen… Geburtenbeschränkung im frühen Mittelalter’, in Bernd Herrmann (ed.), Mensch und Umwelt im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 65–73; Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 168–182; Larissa Leibrock-Plehn, Hexenkräuter oder Arznei: Die Abtreibungsmittel im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1992) (Heidelberger Schriften zur Pharmazie- und Naturwissenschaftsgeschichte, 6); Karl-Heinz Leven (ed.), Antike Medizin: Ein Lexikon (München, 2005), cols. 5–8 (Ewald Kislinger, ‘Abtreibung’), cols. 329–331 (Daniel Schäfer, ‘Geburtenregelung’); Angus McLaren, A History of Contraception: From Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxford, 1991); Claudia Opitz, Evatöchter und Bräute Christi: Weiblicher Lebenszusammenhang und Frauenkultur im Mittelalter (Weinheim, 1990), pp. 64–69; John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1992); Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge, MA, and London 1997). 7. See Catherine Rider, ‘Men and Infertility in Late Medieval English Medicine’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2016), pp. 245–266; Rider, ‘Men’s Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England’, in Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (London, 2017), pp. 273–290. 8. See Andreas Bernard, Kinder machen: Neue Reproduktionstechnologien und die Ordnung der Familie: Samenspender, Leihmütter, Künstliche Befruchtung (Frankfurt a.M., 2014), pp. 25–74, 186–187, esp. p. 25. 9. See Sabine Föllinger, Differenz und Gleichheit: Das Geschlechterverhältnis in der Sicht griechischer Philosophen des 4. bis 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.

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(Stuttgart, 1996); Föllinger, ‘Zeugung’, in Leven (ed.), Antike Medizin, cols. 935–937; Wolfgang Gerlach, ‘Das Problem des ‚weiblichen Samens ‘in der antiken und mittelalterlichen Medizin’, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 30 (1938), pp. 177– 193; Josephs, Kampf , pp. 51–53, 60–65, 77, 196, 324; Erna Lesky, Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken (Wiesbaden, 1950) (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, 19); Sabine zur Nieden, Weibliche Ejakulation: Variationen zu einem uralten Streit der Geschlechter, 2nd edn (Gießen, 2009 [1994]), pp. 38–43. See Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Causae et curae’, chaps. 4, 6, 9–10, in Hildegard, Heilkunde: Das Buch von dem Grund und Wesen und der Heilung der Krankheiten, nach den Quellen übers. u. erläutert v. Heinrich Schipperges (Salzburg, 1957), pp. 94–182, esp. pp. 101, 125, 171, 179–180; Cause et cure, ed. Laurence Moulinier, recogn. Rainer Berndt (Berlin, 2003) (Rarissima mediaevalia Opera latina, 1). See also Josephs, Kampf , pp. 74–76. On the importance of greenness, which encompasses health in all its facets, see Hildegard, Heilkunde, pp. 301–310. See Hildegard of Bingen, On Natural Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from Cause et Cure, transl. by Margret Berger (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 43– 56, 62, 79–85, esp. pp. 78, 82. See Josephs, Kampf , pp. 78–83, 86. In the Middle Ages, the testicles were considered the seat of procreative power, whereas the penis did not determine the discourse on male sexuality until the late nineteenth century. This shows a paradigm shift from the ‘economy of patrilineal reproduction […] to an economy of pleasure’, argues Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and London, 2002), p. 108. See Albertus Magnus, De animalibus libri XXVI , nach der Cölner Urschrift hg. v. Hermann Stadler, vol. 2 (Münster, 1916–1920) (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 15–16), X, 2,1,44 (p. 748): Fit autem aliquando causa sterilitatis in membris generationis, sicut si debilia sunt vasa spermatis aut etiam abscisa, sicut cui absciduntur venae post auriculas (hic enim amplius non spermatizat) […]. See also Josephs, Kampf , p. 80. See Thomas of Cantimpré, ‘De naturis rerum: Liber I: De anatomia corporis humani 59 and 71’, in Christian Ferckel, Die Gynäkologie des Thomas von Brabant: Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der mittelalterlichen Gynäkologie und ihrer Quellen (München, 1912) (Alte Meister der Medizin und Naturkunde, 5), pp. 19–32, quoted here pp. 20, 24: Omnia autem membra in maribus et feminis sunt similia praeter matricem feminae et virgam viri […]. Proinde dicunt quidam solum virile semen

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15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

sufficere ad conceptum nec necessarium semen femineum. Mentiuntur plane qui hoc dicunt. See excerpts from the ‘Problemata’ of Pseudo-Aristotle in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 348–369, here p. 354; ‘Von der Natur der Frauen und ihren Krankheiten’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 272–297, here p. 274. See ‘Sieben Erklärungen zur weiblichen Sexualität und Reproduktion’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 268–271, here pp. 269–270. On the serious consequences of lack of sexual activity for women see ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 267–268. On semen retention treatment through sex see also Günter Elsässer, Ausfall des Coitus als Krankheitsursache in der Medizin des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1934) (Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 3), pp. 11–14. ‘Sieben Erklärungen’, p. 270: sÿ sich vor [der] ee mit ein andern rissen mit schimpffen mit k¯ ussen vnd halsen das sÿ entpfint das sich jra schlos gegen jm entz¯ undet so mag sÿ den kind entpfachen vnd die nat¯ urlich gebern bin jrem man f¯ urbas gesunt beliben […]. See also ‘Von der vnd mag Natur der Frauen’, p. 284; ‘De conceptus impedimento’, in Hermann Grensemann, Natura sit nobis semper magistra: Über den Umgang mit Patienten, die Diät bei akuten Erkrankungen, Sterilität von Mann und Frau, Augenleiden: Vier mittelalterliche Schriften (Münster, Hamburg, and London, 2001) (Hamburger Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, 2), pp. 117–133, chap. 5, pp. 130–131. See excerpts from the ‘Problemata’, pp. 349: die vnkeusch ist ein jn mischung Deß manß vnd deß weibß durch die jnstrüment die die natur dar zu geordnet hat […]. See Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 94; Vern L. Bullough, ‘Medieval Medical and Scientific Views of Women’, Viator, 4 (1973), pp. 485–501, here pp. 495–496; Elsässer, Ausfall, pp. 3, 25–30. Only since the eighteenth century has the ‘war against onanism’ become one of the great power complexes shaping attitudes to sex, argues Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, transl. from the French by Robert Hurley (London etc., 1981, Reprint 1998), p. 104. See also Karl Braun, Die Krankheit Onania: Körperangst und die Anfänge moderner Sexualität im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1995) (Historische Studien, 16); Ludger Lütkehaus, ‘O Wollust, o Hölle’: Die Onanie – Stationen einer Inquisition (Frankfurt a.M., 1992). See Martin Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben (1522)’, in WA 10, 2, p. 301; Martin Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage, 1522’, transl. by Walther I. Brandt, ed. by Brandt, in Luther’s Works Volume 45: The Christian in Society II (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 17–49, here p. 45–46. See Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 154; Peter Ukena, ‘Solutus cum soluta: Alexander Seitz’ Thesen über die Notwendigkeit des Geschlechtsverkehrs

3

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

32.

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zwischen Unverheirateten’, in Gundolf Keil (ed.), Fachprosa-Studien: Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte (Berlin, 1982), pp. 278–290. ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, pp. 276, 280. On the significance of dyscrasia and distemper see Josephs, Kampf , p. 325. See Ludwig Schmugge, Marriage on Trial: Late Medieval German Couples at the Papal Court, transl. by Atria A. Larson (Washington, D.C., 2012) (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, 10), p. 222. Originally published in German as Ehen vor Gericht: Paare der Renaissance vor dem Papst (Berlin, 2008), pp. 164–165. See ‘Beitexte zum Situsbild’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 339–348, here p. 346; ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 294; ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 316. See also Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 151; Bullough, ‘Views’, p. 493. On the surgical measures of ancient gynaecologists see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 188–191. On diagnosis and treatment in Antiquity see also Daniel Schäfer, ‘Kinderlosigkeit’, in Leven (ed.), Antike Medizin, cols. 495–497. See Josephs, Kampf , pp. 70, 115–116; Aristotle, Generation of Animals, With an English Translation by Arthur Leslie Peck (Cambridge, MA and London, 1953) (De generatione animalium II, 7, 747a, 2–7); Isidorus Hispalensis Episcopus, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1962), XI, 1, 142. On church criticism see Joseph, Kampf , p. 116. See Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, cap. 10, p. 179; ‘Gynäkologische Rezepte von griechischen Medizinern in deutscher Übersetzung’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 330–334, here p. 331. On the idea that the sight of a menstruating woman could poison people, see excerpts from the ‘Problemata’, pp. 356–357. der vsflusz ist je ges¯ under die ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 275: je ist. See ‘Beitexte zum Situsbild’, p. 339; ‘Von Empfängnis und Geburt’, in Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 323–330, here p. 327. See also The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and transl. by Monica H. Green (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 76–77. After Hildegard of Bingen (Causae et Curae, pp. 267–273, esp. 267) every person’s urine indicates the nature of their own illness and health. On samples with wheat, barley and beans or mallow or lettuce see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 116–117. Albertus Magnus, De animalibus, X, 2,1,47 (p. 749): Haec autem omnia nobis absurda esse videntur. On criticism see Josephs, Kampf , p. 83; Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 161–162. See ‘Von Empfängnis und Geburt’, p. 323: Das erste jst zu vill kranchait der man vnd der weÿb […]. Das ander ist j¯ ugenntt oder kinthaitt dar in

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33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41.

plúett vnd natur ˚ noch nit zeÿttig jst vnd auch nit perhaft […]. Das dritt oder jst zw vill essenn vnd trinkenn dar von wirt die natúr peswertt […]. Das virtte jst zornn vnd traürikaitt dar von zerstrewtt sich die frúchparikhaitt der natür auch des plúettes vnd wo die zerstrewúng jst da mag ÿe kain kintt nit werdenn empfangenn aún allen zweÿffell […]. Das fünft jst pösse speÿss vnd trannck dar von wirtt die natur ˚ getruckt ˚ vnd das plúett peswertt alle zeÿtt […]. Das sext jst zw vill vnkawschaitt dar von wirtt die natúr ee vnd das plúett vnperhaft des menschenn antlücz plaich das hirnn swindlen vnd die gedechtnüs krannch der magen vnuerdewig […]. Das sibenntte ist verbarlossúng oder vnordnung in kindellpettenn vnd in andernn kranckhaitt der weiber dar von die matrix erkaltenntt vnd verdirbtt […]. On the (more than thirty) known diseases from which women could suffer after giving birth, see Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 96. See ‘Beitexte zum Situsbild’, p. 346. On corpulence as an obstacle to reproduction, see Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge, 1993) (Cambridge History of Medicine), p. 243. See ‘Gynäkologische Rezepte’, p. 331: so werdenn die weiber so swach vnd so wee das sÿ ein gedank gewinent vnd mainent das sÿ mannen nit mer mügen nücz sein vnd habennt dauo vil vnrúew vnd wee […]. See ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 273. See also Dietrich von Engelhardt, ‘Diätetik’, in Werner E. Gerabek et al. (eds), Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte (Berlin and New York, 2005), pp. 299–303. See ‘Beitexte zum Situsbild’, pp. 344, 346; ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 274. Since ancient times, doctors have demanded that women remain absolutely still after coitus, Josephs explains (Kampf , p. 130). The Hippocratic physicians and Aristotle distinguished between congenital and acquired infertility, see Josephs, Kampf , p. 185; Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II, 7, 746b, 33–747a,1. On general practices see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 191–194. On the medical care of queens see Kristen L. Geaman, ‘Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2014), pp. 224– 244; Susan Broomhall, ‘“Women’s Little Secrets”: Defining the Boundaries of Reproductive Knowledge in Sixteenth-Century France’, Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002), pp. 1–15. On moderation in eating and drinking see ‘Beitexte zum Situsbild’, p. 346. On favourable times of day see ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 273. On potency-promoting foods see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 136–145. See Evans, Aphrodisiacs. See Julius Pagel, ‘Raymundus de Moleriis und seine Schrift “De impedimentis conceptionis”’, Janus, 8 (1903), pp. 530–537, here p. 533; Josephs, Kampf , pp. 162–163, 214–215.

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42. See John of Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica Practica Medicinae (Venice, 1502), lib. 2, cap. 17, fol. 79r, quoted from Oren-Magidor and Rider, ‘Introduction’, p. 217: Ista cura est valde difficilis et rara, tamen cum quibusdam hic positis lucratus fui magnam pecuniam in multis locis. In Provence, in 1326, the case of Antoni Imbert was brought to court; he was said to have sold overpriced and ineffective medicines to childless women. See Cadden, Meanings, p. 231. 43. See Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 166–167. 44. See ‘Von Empfängnis und Natur’, p. 327; ‘Gynäkologische Rezepte’, p. 334; ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 318; ‘Weitere frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 336. For these and other applications such as pessaries, inhalations and plasters, see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 259–281. For vaginal douching and tamponades see ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 383. 45. See Josephs, Kampf , p. 200. On the attraction of the uterus see also ibid., pp. 234–235; Karl-Heinz Leven, ‘Gebärmutter’, in Leven (ed.), Antike Medizin, cols. 324–327. On the concept of them as living beings see Josephs, Kampf , pp. 37, 44; Plato, ‘Timaeus 91B–C’, in Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato, transl., with a running commentary, by Francis MacDonald Conford (Indianapolis, IN, 1997 [1993]), pp. 356–357. 46. See Josephs, Kampf , pp. 168–169; ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 384; ‘Von der Natur der Frauen’, p. 282. 47. See ‘Das hessische Weihnachtsspiel’, in Drama des Mittelalters, ed. by Richard Froning, 3 vols (Stuttgart, [1891–1892]) (Deutsche NationalLitteratur, 14), vol. 3, pp. 902–939, v. 102. See also Regina Toepfer, ‘Vom marginalisierten Heiligen zum hegemonialen Hausvater: Josephs Männlichkeit im Hessischen und in Heinrich Knausts Weihnachtsspiel ’, European Medieval Drama, 17 (2013), pp. 43–68, here p. 47. 48. See Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 167. 49. See Josephs, Kampf , pp. 182, 321–322. 50. See ‘Frauenheilkundliche Rezepte’, p. 267: so nim eins wibs spune Die einen knaben s˘ogt vnd er werm die zweÿ bÿ ein andern vnd nim entklein wollen vnd truks dar jnne vnd sch¯ ub dz jr an die heimlichen stat […]. See also ‘Gynäkologische Rezepte’, p. 331. On the effect of animal milk see Josephs, Kampf , p. 319. 51. On the custom in Upper Brittany see Françoise Loux, Le jeune enfant et son corps dans la médecine traditionnelle, préface de Alexandre Minkowski (Paris, 1978), pp. 40–41. On Eucharistic fertility practices see Peter Browe, ‘Die Eucharistie als Zaubermittel im Mittelalter’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 20 (1930), pp. 134–154, here p. 137; Adolph Franz, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter, vol. 2 (Freiburg, 1909, Reprint Graz, 1960), p. 185. See also Josephs, Kampf , pp. 119–124; Kruse,

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52. 53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

Heilkünste, pp. 156–157; Katja Triplett, ‘For Mothers and Sisters: Care of the Reproductive Female Body in the Medico-Ritual World of Early and Medieval Japan’, Dynamics: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam, 34 (2014), pp. 337–356, esp. p. 343. See Evans, Aphrodisiacs; Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2006). See Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini (London etc., 1988 [1957]), pp. 161–163; Katharine Park, ‘Medicine and Magic: The Healing Arts’, in Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (eds), Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy (London and New York, 1998), pp. 129– 149, here pp. 129–130; Joseph P. Byrne and Eleanor A. Congdon, ‘Mothering in the Casa Datini’, Journal of Medieval History, 25 (1999), pp. 35–56. See Kruse, Heilkünste, pp. 57–58; Britta-Juliane Kruse, ‘Die Arznei ist Goldes wert’: Mittelalterliche Frauenrezepte (Berlin and New York, 1999), pp. 48–50. On blessing letters and written incantations placed on the wombs of women giving birth, see also Don C. Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, 2006), pp. 235–239; Franz, Benediktionen, vol. 2, pp. 198–205. On the custom of girdling women in childbirth, see ibid., pp. 196, 206–207. See also Claudia Schopphoff, Der Gürtel: Funktion und Symbolik eines Kleidungsstücks in Antike und Mittelalter (Köln, Weimar, and Wien, 2009) (Pictura et Poesis, 27), pp. 127–130, 210–217. See Rider, ‘Men’s Responses to Infertility’; Rider, ‘Men and Infertility’. See also Jennifer Evans, ‘“It Is Caused of the Womans Part or of the Mans Part”: The Role of Gender in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction in Early Modern England’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), pp. 439–457; Evans, ‘“They Are Called Imperfect Men”: Male Infertility and Sexual Health in Early Modern England’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2016), pp. 311–332. See Carsten Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer: Ungewollte oder gewollte Kinderlosigkeit im Lebenslauf und Nutzung von Unterstützungsangeboten, ed. by Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (Paderborn, 2014), p. 89. See ‘Gynäkologische Rezepte’, p. 330: Darvmb jst von erst zw wisenn […] das die merung aller welt kümpt von frawenn Nún jst gar vil vnd manigerlaÿ jierung vnd swachaitt der weiber in wendig vnd aus wendig dem leib […]. See also Cadden, Meanings, pp. 249–253; Josephs, Kampf , pp. 131–133; Kruse, Heilkünste, p. 166. See also Christian Ferckel, ‘Zur Gynäkologie und Generationslehre im Fasciculus medicinae des Johannes de Ketham’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 6 (1913), pp. 205–222; Robert Herrlinger, Geschichte der

3

59.

60.

61. 62.

63.

64.

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medizinischen Abbildung: Teil 1: Von der Antike bis um 1600 (München, 1967), p. 38. See also Daphna Oren-Magidor, ‘Literate Laywomen, Male Medical Practitioners and the Treatment of Fertility Problems in Early Modern England’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2016), pp. 290–310; Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford, 2008). See Geaman, Anne of Bohemia. The best-known gynaecological treatise of the Middle Ages recommends ‘trifera magna’ as a means of promoting conception, see Trotula, pp. 133–134. See Geaman, Anne of Bohemia, pp. 237–238. See Mareike Nieberding, ‘Was Frauen krank macht’, SZ Magazin, 21 (24 May 2019), pp. 8–17; Nanette K. Wenger, ‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. Cardiovascular Health and Disease in Women: Problems and Prospects’, Circulation, 109 (2004), pp. 558–560, https://doi.org/10. 1161/01.CIR.0000117292.19349.D0; Martin Spiewak, Wie weit gehen wir für ein Kind? Im Labyrinth der Fortpflanzungsmedizin (Frankfurt a.M., 2002), pp. 83–84. See Wenger, ‘Cardiovascular Health’, p. 560. Although only one in 29 women die of breast cancer, but one in 2.4 women die of heart disease, the former is considered the biggest health problem. See also Luitgard Marschall and Christine Wolfrum, Das übertherapierte Geschlecht: Ein kritischer Leitfaden für die Frauenmedizin (München, 2017). See Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer, p. 125.

CHAPTER 4

Jurisprudence: Laws on (In)Fertility

Family law is heavily influenced by tradition and still primarily regulated nationally in Europe, even today.1 In the German constitution, marriage and parenthood are particularly protected; raising children is considered the ‘natural right of parents.’2 Children may only be taken from a family against the will of the legal guardians in serious cases and for their own good. In addition, mothers have the right to care and protection by the community. Article 6 in the Basic Law (constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany demonstrates a high regard for marriage, family and motherhood, protecting parent–child relationships but at the same time holding women to an ideal. Implicitly, the unmarked norm in the German constitution is—female—fertility, whereas no separate rights are attributed to childless people. The key question of my study is: how do differences arise between people who have or do not have children? Legal texts reveal many answers. Laws provide the framework for a community to live together. They respond to social conflicts, establish norms, reflect common values, and influence actions. When studying mediaeval sources, the plurality and heterogeneity of legal ideas must be taken into account. These differ according to phases, regions, and systems; Roman, Germanic, and canon (church) law have special features that can hardly be reduced to

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a common denominator. In addition, documentation on many mediaeval laws has survived only in fragmentary form and their interpretations are not undisputed in legal-historical research. Nevertheless, similar privileging and marginalizing tendencies emerge in different legal texts. Much of the legal history of childlessness can be told as a history of discrimination, in which normativity is generated through processes of exclusion and attribution. A completely different picture would emerge here if I were to focus exclusively on refused rather than desired parenthood and evaluate the statements of canon law on celibacy. Since the church’s appreciation of life without children or marriage is covered in the chapters on theology and ethics, in this chapter I omit the case of celibate clergy and religious, to explore the involuntary childlessness of laypeople. Numerous sources on marriage law, inheritance law, and criminal law are based on an internal hierarchy in which infertility is linked to other values. The meaning of parenthood in mediaeval and early modern Europe depended more on social, cultural, and legal conditions than on the biological act of procreation.

Ecclesiastical Marriage Law: Impotent Men and Women Who Want Children Do people have the right to a child? This question is being discussed today by lawyers, ethicists, and moral theologians with regard to the legal framework of reproductive medicine. The same issue arose in the Middle Ages, but it was negotiated in terms of marriage law, which diverse legal systems defined differently. In Germanic law, men were authorized to dissolve a childless marriage.3 Marriage agreements seemed to be null and void if reproduction did not result. If a woman did not fulfil the expectations that had led a man to marry her, this was tantamount to a breach of contract. Infertile women could therefore be cast out. This view was clearly in tension with canon law, according to which a marriage was considered indissoluble due to its sacramental character, as still applies in the Roman Catholic Church today. Following the words of Jesus, the canonists emphasized that humans must not separate what God has joined (Mt 19:6). The growing influence of the church on marriage practices meant that childless women were better protected in the High Middle Ages. Canon lawyers did not grant husbands the right to reproduce: they explicitly stated that infertility is not grounds for divorce. Procreation was an important purpose of marriage, but by no means a

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necessary condition.4 So did church teaching end discrimination against childless spouses? Not at all. The blame shifted from infertile women to impotent men. Instead of the absence of pregnancy, the inability to have intercourse (impotentia coeundi) came into focus; men had to undergo humiliating examinations.5 Cultural historians have already paid some attention to these impotence trials, including Angus McLaren at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and Catherine Rider at the University of Exeter, who shed light on the connection between sexuality and masculinity before Modernity.6 Impotence as an Impediment to Marriage Early on, theologians discussed how to evaluate a marriage that remains childless and may not even be physically consummated. In different regions, church authorities initially assessed this case differently. As early as the sixth century, the Irish Church stated that a man must not leave his wife in the case of sterility. Rather, the spouses were advised to adhere to the way of life that Paul preferred: to remain celibate. For the Italian lands, the Roman Church reached a similar conclusion. If one partner was not capable of consummation, the spouses were not allowed to separate, but were to live together like brother and sister. Since the ninth century, however, the Gallican Church held that a marriage may be dissolved in cases of impotence. This view prevailed from the end of the twelfth century and is still one of the few reasons why a marriage can be annulled under Roman Catholic canon law today.7 Just like the prohibition of marriage between close genealogical or spiritual kin (social relationships established through baptism or confirmation), impotence is considered a fundamental obstacle, blocking the sacramental act of marriage, as it were. In such cases, the canonists spoke of an apparent marriage (quasi coniugium). The bride and groom believed they were entering into a marriage that was valid, but it was not, because freedom from impediments is a prerequisite for the sacrament.8 In such cases, spouses can separate but are treated unequally. Only the potent partner receives permission to remarry. The one who is considered ‘guilty’, however, faces discrimination under church law. This person is barred from ever entering into a valid marriage. The potential to annul a marriage raises numerous questions that mediaeval canon lawyers grappled with. What are the causes of infertility? Is sexual dysfunction curable or not? Until when can childless couples

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claim impotence as a reason for separation? How can their testimony be tested while restricting the practice of marital separation? The canonists drew up extensive catalogues of measures, indications, and explanations to guide the ecclesiastical marriage courts. There was some variation in their proposed solutions. While some required that the impediment be reported within two months of solemnizing the marriage, others accepted a period of up to three years. In their explanations of the causes, the canon lawyers were guided by the sexological and medical literature of their day. They explained that sexual incapacity can be caused by a cold constitution, a vagina that is too narrow, or different-sized genitals. Separation was usually only allowed if the disorder did not solely manifest with one particular partner and could not be remedied despite all efforts.9 The canonists did not consider temporary impotence an impediment to marriage. Sorcery and curses, or an unattractive partner, could perhaps be remedied. Depending on the cause, the jurists recommended curing impotence through exorcism and penance, medical or aesthetic treatment. Yet again, their advice shows how closely the different domains of knowledge about infertility are linked. Canonists and theologians also prescribed sexual therapy and marriage education. Thus Albert the Great advised that a woman should win over her husband with jewellery, cleanliness, and neatness.10 If the canon lawyers assumed that sexual dysfunction could be remedied, they imposed a probationary period on married couples. In cases affected by magic, they had to live together for three more years and ‘keep trying.’11 The long examination period served to protect the sacrament of marriage, but was hardly in the interest of the partner who had filed the suit and wanted a separation. How these doctrines played out in legal practice can be seen in trial records, court books, and supplications.12 In 1350, for example, of the 228 marriage proceedings conducted in Augsburg, one-third (76 cases) were initiated by women. While in the secular context only men had the right to separate from an infertile wife, canon law strengthened the position of women, who could claim the right to reproduce and seek annulment. In the majority of the ten cases of impotence, the Augsburg court ruled in favour of the women; it declared eight marriages null and void. In 1490, the verdicts in Regensburg were quite different. Again, almost one in three cases were brought by a woman (119 out of 378), although impotence accounted for only a fraction of all marriage proceedings. None of the eight wives who had filed for separation on the grounds of male impotence had their complaint upheld.13 The court refrained

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from examining the cases further and obliged the couples to continue their married life for three years. What happened after this time and how the infertility stories ended remains unclear. Women Longing for Children A typical motive for all divorce suits is longed-for motherhood. Magdalena from Schiers, Anna Murerin from Stieningen (Stühlingen?), Anna Humel from Freising, Elsa Gruderin from Basel, and many other women wanted to marry another man so that they could have children.14 This justification recurs repeatedly, attracting the attention of any historian of infertility. Is women’s desire to have children an anthropological constant or even a feminine trait? Is there a ‘natural’ need for motherhood that drove mediaeval women to the marriage courts? The French philosopher and cultural scientist Elisabeth Badinter (1980) has exposed such notions of ‘motherly love’ as a myth. Looking at Frenchwomen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, she shows that the supposedly innate maternal instinct is culturally shaped and changes over time.15 Women’s desire for children as represented in mediaeval and early modern court records must also be considered in the context of the churches’ teaching on marriage and the documentation of contemporary courts. These sources do not contain individual, spontaneous expressions of women’s feelings, but statements given in court, which the clerks wrote down. In church marriage law, a woman’s longing for a child was a significant factor. While the canonists would have preferred all couples to live together as brother and sister in the event of impotence, if a woman wanted to have children at all costs, they allowed her to separate and remarry. For theologians like Peter Lombard, a woman who wanted to have her marriage to an impotent man annulled could only declare one legitimate motive: ‘I want to be a mother.’16 This condition may explain why longed-for parenthood is a gender-specific topos in divorce proceedings, whereas economic or erotic motives are left out. There is no evidence in the court records that women hoped for an heir, and only a few statements about unsatisfied sexual desire. Of course, this does not mean that women willing to separate did not harbour such desires. Rather, the female plaintiffs knew that these arguments were not considered relevant in court, or male court clerks may have corrected their statements. This does not mean that that the plaintiffs did not want

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to have children, only that this desire was formulated within a given discourse. These documents show how women had to argue to get their marriage annulled. In the legal sphere, it is thus particularly easy to understand how childlessness becomes a dispositive and is influenced by specific power relations. The narrowing of the church’s (in)fertility discourse to male impotence only superficially appears to valorize women. Admittedly, they were granted a right to fulfil their longing for children. But this concession followed a circular pattern of argumentation that permanently locked women into the role of child-bearer and mother. Childless women argued in court as they were expected to. They expressed a wish for motherhood so that their marriages would be declared invalid and they would be allowed to marry a potent partner. In doing so, they confirmed the common assumption that every woman wants to become a mother, thus reinforcing gender norms. At the same time, the legal expectations probably impacted on women’s own self-perception and longing for motherhood. Law and desire are in complex relationship, as Judith Butler points out in Gender Trouble (1990), following Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality.17 Only superficially is desire suppressed by the law. A closer look reveals that desire only arises because the law creates the fiction of a suppressed desire. Foucault’s hypothesis—that continuously talking about repressed sexuality only seemingly leads to liberation, but in fact reinforces power relations—can be applied to reproduction. Because women feared remaining childless, they wanted to free themselves from their impotent partners. But the talk about how to annul a marriage also fuelled and increased their desire for a child. Church marriage law is therefore not a disruptive factor, but rather a generator and catalyst of the longing for children. Evidence of Impotence Before the marriage courts, a couple’s sex life came into the spotlight. Both partners were interrogated at an impotence trial and the wife had to swear that she had never experienced an erection with her husband. Seven relatives or neighbours had to vouch for the spouses under oath in order for their claim to be believed. The situation was particularly delicate when statements differed, the court doubted the reason for annulment and experts were called in to examine the case.18 In 1241, for example, the Archbishop of Pisa demanded that a certain Ricca undergo a virginity

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test to see if she had indeed not slept with her husband during seven years of marriage. Based on the testimony of wise women, the marriage was annulled. Virginity tests had limited value for proving marital potency. After all, a woman could have slept with another man or a careless examination could falsify the result. Some experts therefore found it more reliable to have the male genitals inspected. This method is attested in the divorce case of Alice of Greyford and Walter de Fonte, which came before the Commissary Court of Canterbury in 1292.19 Alice invoked her unfulfilled desire to have children and demanded separation. She claimed Walter was impotent and argued that she had only married to have children. The court appointed twelve respectable women to examine the allegation. The good reputation, apostolic number, and composition of the group—from the parishes of both spouses—was meant to ensure that the judgement would not be challenged. According to the court records, the experts came to a unanimous conclusion, which they swore to uphold. By looking at it and touching it, they found that Walter’s ‘virile member is useless and insufficient.’20 He could neither satisfy a woman nor father children. A similar court scene is depicted in a manuscript of the Decretum Gratiani (Canon Law Collection of Gratian; 1280–1290), now owned by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Fig. 4.1). The miniature is inside an initial that introduces the two-column text, framed by comments. Viewers have to look closely to see the detail that mattered in this trial. The judge is the only one of the five to sit on a chair, on the far left, leaning on a book with his right hand to indicate that he is erudite and law-abiding. The other court official beside him wears the same head covering. Defensively, this man raises his hand and looks at the judge as if he can hardly wait for the verdict. The three figures in the right half of the picture are somewhat smaller, visually subordinate to the learned men, and form a unit. The accused is framed by two women. Their bonnets suggest that they are married and experienced in sexual matters. The man between them is the centre of attention: the two women open his robe like a curtain to reveal his body from chest to feet, exposing the corpus delicti. The two women’s hands form a line pointing to his genitals. The accused is visibly uncomfortable with the situation; defenceless, he raises his hands and looks down in shame. The woman facing the judge, gesticulating excitedly, reports her discovery. The other lady looks rather pityingly and silently at the genitals. The judge’s verdict is indicated by the gestures: he points his finger at the accused, whose bare left

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Fig. 4.1 Accused of impotence—initial from the Decretum Gratiani (c. 1280– 1290)

foot protrudes from the manuscript initial. He obviously deviates from the prevailing norms and order. How male procreative capacity could be investigated is documented in detail in the records of a 1433 trial in York. The American legal historian Richard H. Helmholz drew attention to this case of a certain John in Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (1974); since then, it has gained unfortunate notoriety in sexual and legal history research.21 The erection test to which John, the defendant, was subjected is bound to a heteronormative worldview. Two genders and heterosexuality are assumed to be natural when seduction is imitated and perverted. A woman commissioned by the court exposed her naked breasts to the

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accused, rubbed his penis and testicles with warmed hands, kissed and embraced him. The scene was far from erotic and closer to legally legitimized violence—the woman put John under both physical and verbal pressure.22 During her assault, she held the threat of disgrace over him and demanded that he prove his virility. The result of this humiliating procedure was to be expected: as the woman testified in court, the penis remained unchanged at about three inches long the entire time. The narrative perspective of the historical source changes again from the court interrogation to the conviction scene. Only at this point do we learn that several women are present. From the outset, this sexual examination had been scrutinized by numerous pairs of eyes. The verdict of the female collective is scathing. The women unanimously curse John and accuse him of having betrayed his young wife. How dare he marry if he is unable to serve a woman better? The witnesses thus adopt the plaintiff’s point of view, and the court concurs: the marriage is annulled due to impotence. The procedure, which was supposed to help women gain their conjugal rights, massively devalued their husbands. It is hardly surprising that some did not want to expose themselves to such shame. They refused a judicial potency test, preferred another ground for annulment, or blamed their wife for all their shared misery.23 Some scholars preferred other testing methods. When a woman and a man gave different statements regarding procreative capacity, Thomas of Chobham (c. 1160–c. 1236) in the Summa Confessorum (penitential; c. 1215) recommended a potency test in the marriage bed. For several nights, wise women should observe the couple’s sexual behaviour. Only if the man’s member remained motionless throughout was the couple allowed to separate.24 According to the physician Guy de Chauliac (1298–1368), wise women should even actively assume the dual function of erotic and medical assistant. They had to prepare the couple for the sexual act, introduce them to the art of lovemaking, and report the result of their efforts to a doctor. When the parties left the bedchamber, jurisdiction thus passed to the male medical examiner, who interpreted what had happened and testified in court. This move from female assistant to male witness is characteristic of the later marriage trials. In the early modern period, the women experts on sex and fertility lost their authoritative function in the legal system to learned men. At the late fifteenth-century officialate court of Freising, as elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire, accused men had to be examined by a doctor under oath.25 This procedure may have been less humiliating for those affected, as they no longer

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had to publicly demonstrate their potency. Canon lawyers and physicians worked hand in hand to protect the theological ideal of an indissoluble marriage. If the doctor certified that the disorder was not congenital and that there was hope for recovery, the plaintiff and defendant were obliged to stay married. They were to constantly try to sleep together and please God by good works. Potency Problems of a Different Kind From today’s perspective, legally obliging couples to continue living together and to undergo constant potency tests seems highly inappropriate.26 Yet mediaeval and early modern judges in ecclesiastical courts wanted to avoid miscarriages of justice at all costs, because they could lead to new problems that were difficult to solve. Suppose an allegedly impotent man fathered a child with a new partner after his marriage was annulled. How was the relationship with his former wife to be assessed? Obviously, the man was—at least at that point—capable of coitus, so there was no impediment to marriage, as evidence had emerged that the sacrament had always been valid. In this case, the earlier court ruling was disproved: instead of an apparent marriage, it was a case of apparent dissolution. The canonists considered what this meant in legal practice. Was the previous misjudgement to be revised? Did a woman have to return to her ex-husband because her marriage was valid after all? Johannes Teutonicus answered this question in the affirmative around 1245, whereas other authors were more cautious.27 A 1250s penitential advised against dissolving the second marriage: it was by no means certain that another attempt would be successful and that the marriage to the first wife would not have to be dissolved again. In contrast, Tancred (1185–1234/1236) conceded that the husband had the right to reclaim his wife, but only if he could quickly prove that he was capable of coitus. If the man did not succeed after three attempts, he would have to give up all claims. Today, such legal considerations seem a curiosity, but in the Middle Ages they had serious consequences. Ecclesiastical trials could turn people’s lives upside down, as in the case of John Poynant and Jean Sikon, heard at the Consistory Court of Ely in 1378/1379.28 They had married, but were unable to consummate this. The court declared the marriage invalid because of John’s impotence and allowed Jean to remarry. After she married Robert Boby, John entered

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into a relationship with Isabell Pybell. This made it obvious that he was by no means suffering from permanent sexual dysfunction. Isabell became pregnant, which caused John to have potency problems of a different kind. Both couples had to appear before the court: John and Jean gave an account of their marriage, inability to sleep together, and annulment. Jean and her second husband Robert testified to their marriage; John, to his relationship; and Isabell, that John was able to procreate, and the father of her expected child. In Ely, the difficulty was that an existing marriage was declared invalid because of the sudden potency of an ex-husband. This outcome was indicated in the course of the proceedings. The court demanded that John explain why his marriage to Jean should not be restored and interrogated numerous witnesses. The extensive evidence-gathering included a physical examination of the man and an interview with his confessor, whom John had to release from the seal of confidentiality. Based on all this, the court passed its judgement to reverse the status quo. The annulment of Jean and John’s marriage was revoked, Jean and Robert’s marriage was declared null and void, and the former partners were ordered to resume their marriage. Isabell was to give birth to an illegitimate child who would face considerable discrimination.29 The judges argued that there had been no impediment to marriage, Jean was therefore validly married to John and could not have taken Robert as her husband in the first place. The Ely court case makes it clear that (in)fertility can be an ambivalent category. By proving he could procreate, John was freed from the social stigma of impotence and no longer discriminated against under marriage law. This did not mean he was allowed to choose his partner freely, as he was forced to return to his ex-wife. In ecclesiastical marriage litigation, plaintiffs and defendants are dependent on judges who want to defend a theological ideal. The Consistory Court of Ely was not concerned with the wishes of the parties involved or the welfare of a young family. What happened to the pregnant Isabell and her child was of no interest, nor was Jean’s relationship with John and Robert relevant. The judgements in impotence trials primarily served to protect the church’s view of marriage as an indissoluble sacrament. But one should be cautious about seeing all those involved in (in)fertility cases as victims of a merciless canon law. After all, why was the case ever brought before the Consistory Court of Ely? If there was no official inquisition procedure in Catholic marriage trials, one of the four parties involved must have had a specific interest in initiating the

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proceedings. At the very moment when a child was expected, someone was keen to restore the original marriage relationship. Could it be that Jean wanted to fulfil her desire to have children by another route, since she had not become pregnant with her second husband either? Was she relying on another woman’s reproductive capacity and happy to recognize John’s illegitimate child as her own? This would mean that those who wanted children in the Middle Ages knew how to use canon law on marriage specifically to their own advantage. Given the scarcity of sources, this notion of a tactical move towards desired motherhood is no more than a speculation—albeit an attractive one.

Inheritance Law: Childless Testators and Chosen Children The question why a woman wants to become a mother is not asked in mediaeval marriage court cases. Even today, women hardly have to justify having children, but they do have to justify not wanting to have them. If you look for possible reasons why people might have wanted offspring in the Middle Ages, and disregard theological and emotional aspects, you soon arrive at inheritance law. This clearly reflects the privileged status of marriage and family. Children are considered the ‘natural’ heirs of their parents. People who do not procreate, therefore, worry about who will inherit their property. Remarkably, this plays a much more important role in narrative literature than in marriage court records. The typical formulation in mediaeval novels, legends, and epics is that childless married couples long for an heir. For instance, Konrad von Würzburg, one of the most important authors of the German late Middle Ages, tells readers in the legend of Alexius (1275) that the saint’s parents suffered greatly for a long time, complained many times about the infertility of their marriage, and frequently gave alms so that God would grant them a child to be their heir.30 This longed-for parenthood is linked to far-reaching questions about the future, such as securing one’s rule, old-age provision, and care in the hereafter. Childlessness entails long-term consequences that extend beyond the life of the individual. In the Middle Ages, people tried to compensate for and control the economic impact of infertility through inheritance strategies. They formulated conditions for wills, invested in their salvation, or named people as their children.

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Privileged Heirs In Roman and Germanic inheritance law, children were treated as the norm, which did not require separate regulation. They came first in the line of succession and received the family property after the death of their parents.31 But not all children had the same inheritance rights in mediaeval and early modern times. In Germanic law, daughters are either generally second to sons or at least do not inherit landed property. Thus, in the oldest Germanic legal code, the Lex Salica (Salic law; early sixth century), and in a later version, the Lex Ripuaria (Ripuarian law; first half of the seventh century), women had no right to the house, grounds, or inheritable land.32 The Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), which Eike von Repgow wrote down around 1230 and influenced jurisprudence throughout northern Germany, also privileges male heirs. According to Saxon Landrecht (customary law), sons may inherit the parents’ estate alone, and brothers are given preference over sisters. Only if there is no son is a daughter entitled to the inheritance.33 In the Lehnrecht (feudal law) of the Sachsenspiegel, the gender hierarchy of heirs has an even more detrimental effect. If a man dies without sons, his fief becomes vacant. The lord is not even obliged to pay for winding up the estate. What may well be advantageous for the lord can be disastrous for his vassals. The future of his family is only secured through male descendants. (In)fertility in the Middle Ages is therefore a relational category dependent on the child’s gender. Strictly speaking, in a cultural history of childlessness, one would have to define the desire for children more precisely: in the Middle Ages and well into modern times, married couples mostly wished for a son. The rule that children receive the family inheritance could become a burden. Parents were obliged to maintain and increase the family property. The fact that someone could not bequeath their property to their own descendants was viewed very critically. Especially in the early Middle Ages, the opportunities for passing on property outside the family were limited. Extensive and somewhat controversial legal-historical studies have been published on the order of succession, the possibility of appointing heirs, and the practice of wills34 ; for reasons of space, they are not detailed here. Instead, I focus on examining inheritance under the town law of Freiburg (1520). As a matter of course, the author of this law, the humanist scholar Ulrich Zasius (1461–1535), assumes that parents do not make gifts by which they reduce the inheritance of their children.

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Even if a man has bequeathed something before having a legitimate child, the latter should not suffer any disadvantage: with the birth of one’s own child, the gift is no longer legally valid. This legal privileging of (unborn) children is justified by both emotional and biological aspects, which are inextricably linked in the town law of Freiburg. Their ‘natural’ love moves people to leave their property to well-bred children rather than to anyone else. Therefore, Zasius argues, parents are unlikely to perceive such requirements as a restriction. But he would hardly have had to defend the Freiburg inheritance laws if nobody had raised critical objections. His justification suggests that privileging children certainly required legitimization.35 In the early modern period, the spouses’ joint income gained significance in inheritance law. An inheritance claim was no longer granted to the children alone, but also to the widow or widower. This new legal principle strengthened the position of married couples and was no longer oriented solely towards the interests of the next generation. This right of inheritance also disadvantaged women, although the regional conditions varied greatly. The range in the German-speaking lands extends from towns such as Augsburg and Frankfurt, whose women were allowed to stay on the jointly acquired estates without duties until their death; to Munich and Nuremberg, where the widow was entitled to half of the property; and to the southern imperial cities such as Basel, Strasbourg, and Zurich, where women received only one-third, while men received two-thirds of the inheritance.36 Any remaining thirds went to the children, whose traditional inheritance law had considered to be the sole heirs. For childless couples who could not always count on the support of extended family in old age, the new order of succession brought many advantages. In some town laws, the inheritance share of the spouses was even higher if there were no joint children. The Freiburg town law of 1520 awards a childless widower three quarters of the shared property brought by the wife; a childless widow receives two-thirds of the joint property.37 Although the wife is still worse off than her husband in this case, she receives twice the share of a widow with children. This shows that a new attitude towards the older generation was emerging. Inheritance was no longer reserved for the descendants, but also to secure the livelihood of older relatives. While mothers could hope that their children would support them in old age, childless widows had to be able to

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support themselves, which was what their dowries were supposed to be used for. In Basel in the fifteenth century, several childless women took the opportunity to secure their future through inheritance contracts.38 They bequeathed money to a servant and demanded in return that she stay with them and care for them until death. The social deficit of not having children of one’s own was compensated for by contracts. The future of the next generation counted more before the law than provision for the old, as indicated by the order of succession in the Freiburg town law. If a man had children from a previous marriage, the childless widow had to be content with one-third of the inheritance. Without the support of her own family, such a woman was particularly at risk of poverty in her old age. However, the Freiburg legislators took care to ensure that no spouse became completely destitute; the widowed partner was always granted a right to use the main marital property.39 Childless spouses could override the legal division of inheritance by designating each other as universal heirs. They had to declare their will before five councillors and could revoke this decision with good reason. An indispensable condition, as the Freiburg town law repeatedly emphasizes, was that there were no living direct heirs by marriage. The Swiss historian Gabriela Signori, who studied wills in late mediaeval Basel, found that the historical sources always address the family situation. Most legacies of childless testators contain the phrase ‘because she/he has neither father nor mother nor a legitimate child.’40 Men and women become legal subjects by justifying their last will and testament with their childlessness. Such bequests automatically lapsed if a legitimate child was born. Legitimate descendants always had the prior claim to the inheritance. The privileged status of children was subject to one significant restriction. Only those who were conceived and born in wedlock were entitled to inherit.41 The value of fertility rested on the legitimacy of the sexual relationship. Having children, or not, thus depended on specific life circumstances and phases. In early modern inheritance law, if there was no legitimate child, a couple was considered childless. As a rule, children conceived before or outside marriage were not entitled to inherit, any more than deceased children. (In)fertility in inheritance law is less a constant of identity than a variable that is subject to unknowns.

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Child or Church? Representatives of the church expressed deep reservations about how children and family members born in wedlock were prioritized under inheritance law. Of course, they did not want to end discrimination against illegitimate children, but pursued their own interests. Since Antiquity, influential clerics have tried to persuade Christians to make a will in favour of the church.42 From an ecclesiastical perspective, childlessness did not appear as a lack, but as a gift. While parents think primarily of their children, people without issue were free—at least in church theory—to use their inheritance for religious purposes. Salvian, presbyter of Marseilles (c. 400–c. 475 CE), vehemently advocated remembering the church in one’s will. In Ad ecclesiam (To the Church; c. 440 CE), he sharply criticizes the usual wealth strategies and outlines an alternative model in which the church replaces the children.43 Salvian reveals that the link between gaining property and safeguarding the inheritance is based on circular reasoning. Children are needed to inherit property, yet their existence legitimizes the accumulation of wealth. Salvian warns that a rich inheritance is of little use at the Last Judgement and advises leaving only part of the estate to one’s own descendants. Instead of considering wayward sons, Christians would do better to free themselves completely from family ties. While Salvian still has some understanding for the behaviour of loving parents, he considers it completely reprehensible when childless people bequeath their wealth to distant relatives: filling a gap in the family genealogy through contracts is disloyalty to God and to oneself. Instead of perceiving childlessness as a religious gift, some Christians forged their own bonds, plunging into self-imposed ruin. A relative appears out of nowhere and is made the universal heir, causing serious harm to the soul. Salvian vividly depicts the devil’s terrible torments in hell and contrasts them with the sated heir who squanders their inheritance on overeating and indulgence, and exhorts readers to invest in the afterlife: a Christian’s key concern must be to encourage God’s mercy through gifts and good behaviour. He urges all parents to put eternal life before the next generation. Salvian’s Ad ecclesiam is a striking example of how the Church could profit from inheritances, and the arguments used for this. Although the law of succession privileged legitimate children, pious donations could be made from the early Middle Ages. The countermeasures taken by the secular authorities testify to the church’s success in accumulating

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wealth.44 Louis the Pious (778–840 CE) issued a decree in 816 CE to protect family property from the grasp of the church. A clergyman was not allowed to accept endowments if the children of the testator were left empty-handed. Roman common law also defined compulsory portions for children. In the late Middle Ages, many towns imposed conditions on bequests to the church. For example, the law of Basel (1457) did not allow testators with children to invest more than a quarter of their assets in their salvation. Views differed widely on how generous to the church testators were.45 In 1501, the Strasbourg preacher Johannes Geiler von Kayserberg (1445– 1510) was incensed by the fact that a maximum for ecclesiastical legacies was stipulated in the town law and that the heirs had to consent to any higher amounts. The Leipzig Dominican Marcus von Weida (1450– 1516), in his Spigell des ehlichen ordens (Mirror of the Order of Marriage, 1487), also considered the allowances to be insufficient. Wills in favour of the church had dwindled and everyone was only thinking of their own children, he complained. While churchmen lamented a decline in donations, the German princes at the Diet of Worms in 1521 were convinced that the reverse was the case. More than one hundred complaints of the German nation included one about clergy manipulating testators to change their wills. They were accused of trying to persuade the sick on their deathbeds to bequeath their property to the church, instead of to their relatives. In The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (1983), the historical anthropologist Jack Goody sees a connection between inheritance practice and canon law on marriage that explains the striking differences between family models in Europe and those in ancient Rome, Greece, Israel, the Middle East, and Africa.46 In Goody’s view, the church specifically tried to gain power over marriage patterns in order to control the distribution of property from one generation to another. Important compensatory strategies for childlessness were removed in the Latin Middle Ages at the behest of the church. Remarriage, polygamy, concubinage, and adoption were prohibited—unlike in the Middle East and Eurasia. Through its strict marriage laws, Goody argues, the church was able to capitalize on the childlessness of the faithful and, within a few centuries, significantly increase its own wealth. The narrative which guides Goody’s study is not discrimination due to (in)fertility, as in this chapter, but the economic success of the church.

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Objections can be raised against Goody’s interpretation. The economic perspective of the institution overshadows the motivation and agency of historical individuals. Gabriela Signori’s study on childless testators in Basel points in a different direction. Childless people were free to decide on who they transferred their assets to. But in Basel they bequeathed only about ten per cent to the church, well below the maximum limit permitted by law for testators with children. The main winners in the ‘inheritance poker of the childless’ were testators’ siblings and their children.47 Goody’s view is shaped by anticlerical prejudice without being confirmed in concrete individual cases. Yet his overall finding is indisputable: the concepts of marriage, family, and childlessness change in the course of history. Admittedly, this cannot be explained by one cause alone, but by multiple factors of ecclesiastical, economic, genealogical, political, and patriarchal power. Adoption, Affatomy, and Anwünschung In the legal literature of the Middle Ages, adoption comes under the law of succession. In ancient Rome, if the paterfamilias had no male offspring, he could adopt a son. The latter took the place of a biological son with all the legal consequences, secured his father’s authority, and maintained the family ancestor cult. Legal historians emphasize that this ancient practice of adoption did not continue into the Middle Ages, but that adoptionlike formats were developed in Germanic law.48 These served above all to fill the vacancy in the family succession. Those who did not have a son of their own could adopt one to inherit. Emotional and family aspects of the parent–child relationship were largely ignored in mediaeval adoption legislation and the legal status of the adopted child remained precarious. Social parents thus had good reasons to conceal the foreign origin of their non-biological child, which is always reported in the narrative literature of the Middle Ages when abandoned infants are found and raised by ‘strangers.’49 The history of mediaeval adoption legislation begins with the Germanic laws of the sixth and seventh centuries. Ripuarian law allows a childless man to adopt one of his relatives or a stranger as his heir, in the presence of the king.50 This legal procedure, affatomy, was an act of gifting property that only took effect after the death of the testator, but this did not establish a new family relationship. Similarly, Marculf’s collection of formulas (650 or 721–735 CE) proves that heirs could be

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assigned in the early Middle Ages. Among the sample texts for various legal transactions is a formula for an ‘adoption.’51 A man who has no sons bequeaths his property to someone who is not a relative. This commitment is linked to the condition of care in old age. If the testator becomes ill and infirm, the designated heir must care for him as a son would, and in return may use the property during the testator’s lifetime. Both sides benefit from delegating the rights and duties of a son. The designated son is an alternative to a biological heir, but is only considered a stopgap. The reference to a lack of ‘natural’ children in the adoption laws is formulaic. If a testator does later have a biological son, the designated son loses his significance. In the history of early mediaeval royalty, there are even examples of their sudden disappearance.52 In the High Middle Ages, neither Roman adoption nor Germanic affatomy were practised any longer; these inheritance strategies were explicitly discarded.53 The Sachsenspiegel describes it as wrong for someone to claim an inheritance on the basis of a promise, unless this has been secured in court. In his commentary, the jurist Johannes von Buch (c. 1325) explains that this statement referred to Roman adoption practice and its consequences. In the old days, anyone could have freely chosen a son or a daughter. This was originally an exception made for non-parents, but more and more testators took this option, as the author maintains. It is worth pausing to look closely at the structure of this argument: Johannes von Buch tells a reversed story of discrimination related to adoption. The beginning of his narrative could support a challenge to the claim that biological children ‘naturally’ come first. The idea that everyone would prefer chosen over begotten children exposes the notion of innate parental love as a fiction even in the Middle Ages. The second part of his story, however, seeks to confirm and uphold established power structures: adopted children and non-biological parents are marginalized by law in order to protect the privileged children. The advantages of adoption were not recognized again until Renaissance humanism, when ancient legal sources were increasingly read and revived. Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) in his De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul; 1358–1366) has his personification of Reason declare that adoption is safer than procreation. One cannot determine what one’s biological children will be like: nature will take its course. In contrast, a man can think carefully about whom he wants to adopt and make his decision freely. Thus, one type of paternity is left to chance, the other is based on a well-founded choice.54 Implicitly,

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Petrarch assumes that children do not always bring joy to their parents and can also dash their hopes. This assumption could explain the problems Johannes von Buch raised regarding inheritance. If we take this idea further, inheritance and adoption laws are key factors in the different treatment of parents and non-parents. If everyone was free to choose their offspring, there would be no need to draw a distinction between parenthood by birth and by law. Adoptions were legally regulated for the first time in the town law of Freiburg in 1520; to describe them, Ulrich Zasius selects the term Anwünschung (‘chosenness’).55 In the history of the German language, it is easy to draw a semantic line from this legal solution to provide the longed-for heir in the early modern period to parents having longedfor children (Wunschkinder) today. Yet early modern adoption law was different in that birth and adopted children were never completely equal. Freiburg’s town law recognizes three different ways of adopting a child. The first two cases correspond to the most common form of adoption today: one partner brings a biological child into the marriage. Zasius differentiates between a marriage agreement and a gift on the wedding day. Spouses can either jointly agree on parenthood, or one partner hands over their child to the other after marriage and thus obliges their spouse to care for that child.56 Only in the third case is there no direct genealogical relationship between the parents and chosen child: a childless couple adopts because they have no children of their own. Because this is a new and unusual legal practice, not only in Freiburg but across the German-speaking lands, Zasius lays down two conditions for a chosen child to be legally adopted. The legal parents must have sufficient life experience, be at least 25 years old and must not already have a child of their own. Should anyone disregard these requirements, the adoption is invalid. Freiburg town law stipulates that every request must be approved by the council, but does not place any further restrictions on either the marital status or the gender of the legal parents. Both men and women are entitled to adopt, provided that the woman’s legal representative consents. The child’s biological parents, if they are still alive, must also give their consent. The first adoption law in the German language cites charitable and emotional motives, rather than memorial, political, or hereditary economic motives: a good disposition, mercy, and love of children moved people to adopt children.57 Unlike in affatomy, these parents do not desire an heir only in death, but a child for life.

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Nevertheless, even after an adoption contract is made, the child’s biological family is preferred by law.58 Early modern adoption law differentiates between belonging and non-belonging, one’s own people and strangers, which reinforces a hierarchy. The legitimate bodily descendants of the spouse always have priority, whatever is agreed in the contract. Every request is therefore subject to a genealogical reservation. If childless spouses later have their ‘own’ child, the adoption of the ‘outsider’ child is invalid. The regulation does not state that in Freiburg chosen children were cast out into the streets. Nevertheless, the parents’ commitment to a chosen child ended with the birth of their biological one. The 1520 adoption law does not take into account the best interests of the child or the will of the parents, who have no means whatsoever to put their social child on an equal footing with the child born to them. The child’s status in his or her social family remains precarious insofar as the father can revoke his choice to adopt the child. Freiburg town law does require that the child be adequately provided for in such a case, their possessions reimbursed, and an endowment paid. But it still grants a father the right to separate from the child again.59 Designating someone as your child is therefore not an irreversible act, but a declaration of will for an unspecified period. Zasius was aware of the problems involved, for he pointed out the fragility of the bond and urged caution: those who wanted to adopt a child should think twice before doing so. Early modern legislators thus did much to draw a distinction between biological and social children—and parents.

Criminal Law: Castrated Men and Complaining Women What is marriage, parenthood, and fertility worth to a community? One way of answering this question today is to look at the financial resources that a state allocates in its budget for family policy and pronatalist measures. For the Middle Ages, legal texts can be similarly revealing. I focus here on early mediaeval sources that state how crimes related to (in)fertility are to be punished, and victims, compensated. The data on the fines paid prove to the penny the value that a community ascribes to the reproductive capacity of individuals. Therefore, these provisions in Germanic law can be read as a price list of (in)fertility. The amount of compensation paid varies considerably; it is related to the degree of harm and to the social position of the injured party.

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The Value of Fertility Women who could bear children counted more than others in early mediaeval Germanic law. In contrast to talion law, which punishes a crime with the same act (‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’), offences in Germanic law could be compensated for financially. The amounts set for fines provide information about the different value of both persons and body parts. This shows that women’s reproductive capacity was valued in the truest sense of the word.60 Salic law differentiates between women of childbearing age and those who have passed menopause. Anyone who kills a woman after she is no longer able to bear children only has to pay a third of the amount due for a fertile woman. Ripuarian law is also implicitly oriented to women’s reproductive capacity. Full compensation is only payable if a woman is younger than forty. When a man is killed, however, no distinction is made between victims who are or are not able to procreate, so the value of their lives is not defined by the category of (in)fertility. In this criminal law, male reproductive capacity is only an issue if the genitals are injured. In a nutshell: castration is murder. This is a core message of many early Germanic legal codes. Salic law ascribes much greater severity to severing sexual organs than to other mutilations. An offender who castrates a freeborn male must pay double the fine for cutting off a hand, foot, or nose, or knocking out an eye. Thus ending reproductive capacity is ranked as high as ending a person’s physical existence.61 In some Germanic law codes, however, a man’s life clearly counts for more than his reproductive capacity. These codes provide for only a fraction of the fine for killing someone (Wergeld) in cases of castration. The wording of several laws goes into detail about how severely the genitals have been injured. Thus, in the Lex Saxonum (Law of Saxony; 802 CE), the fine doubles if both testicles are cut off; only in this case does the penalty correspond to the full amount of Wergeld.62 A fertility crime not only limits the victim’s sexual and reproductive agency, but also makes it impossible for future children to be born. This connection between castration and childlessness is made explicit in individual Germanic law codes. Reproductive expectations are formulated and ascribed functions in the Ostgötenrecht (Ostragoth or East Gothland Law). A castrated man is entitled to fourfold compensation: first for his wound, second for his mutilation, third for a son, and fourth for a daughter.63 All consequences of the injury are weighted equally: the

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fines for the pain suffered, the permanent physical limitations, and for each child no longer conceived are 40 marks each; there is no genderspecific price difference between male and female offspring. In the case of payments for children not yet conceived, past, present, and future damages are added together without distinguishing between actual and hypothetical loss. The legislators assume that every man concerned would (still) have had two children. The reproductive norm is formulated for the very person who can no longer fulfil it. Physical injury becomes social deprivation by linking castration with imaginary children. Reproductive capacity has its price in the early Middle Ages, but this is by no means the same for everyone. The fines imposed in the Germanic law codes fall into three categories, based on the status of the injured party: it is many times more expensive to castrate a free man than a servant. Furthermore, a nobleman is entitled to significantly higher compensation than a freeman.64 The varying levels of fines leads us to a similar observation as the inheritance law. Fertility is not always the same; its value depends on other criteria. Whereas in inheritance law the gender of the child and the legality of the parents’ relationship are decisive, in the case of fines, status (‘class’) is key. Castration as Punishment Punishing people by destroying their ability to procreate contradicts the cultural logic that favours fertility. When castrations are carried out in the name of the law, we need to examine the cases closely. Important sources date back to the early Middle Ages; in them, status proves decisive. Infertility punishments are rarely imposed in Germanic law and usually remain limited to the lowest orders. In Salic law, a servant is to atone for a theft either with his genitals or with six gold coins (solidi); the corporal punishment can thus be compensated by (high) fines. Many laws mete out castration as a punishment, especially for sexual and moral offences. Thus, according to Ripuarian law, a servant who slept with a maid without permission had to either pay three solidi or be castrated.65 Free and noble people enjoyed sexual and reproductive privileges; they were not prevented from procreating by punitive legal measures. The fact that only servants are punitively castrated proves once again the relative value of fertility. According to those who made the laws, servants should use their ability to work, not to procreate. It is implicitly assumed that servants are not allowed to marry or simply reproduce.

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Rulers wanted to be able to decide for themselves what kind of children grew up within their sphere of influence. The different social functions probably also explain why, in mediaeval law, punishments for infertility were not imposed on women. Of course, it can be argued that it is technically easier to sever a man’s genitals than to sterilize a woman. But unequal treatment under criminal law had a deeper cause than biology: it was based on traditional roles. As the chapters on theology and medicine show, the most important task for women, be they lowly or highly placed, was to bear children. Therefore, female fertility in the Middle Ages was always spared the clutches of legally legitimized violence. In contrast, men’s ability to procreate was not protected if they had same-sex partners. These and other forbidden sexual practices were subsumed under the term ‘sodomy’ in the premodern era; it embraces all kinds of sexual acts that do not lead to reproduction. Among the Visigoths, men who had sex with each other were punished with castration, regardless of their status. According to the Leges Visigothorum (Laws of the Visigoths), they were to be castrated immediately and then handed over to the bishop in charge. They remained in captivity unless they repented and did penance. Under King Egica (687–702 CE), this law was tightened and expanded. If convicted of sodomy, young and old, clergy and laity alike were first to be castrated and then sent into exile.66 Compared to other offenders, these men were doubly disadvantaged: by violating the heteronormative order, they lost the privilege of their status and the option to pay fines instead of this punishment. Castration punishments are often based on analogies. The wrongdoing is to be reflected in the body of the convicted person and prevent them from committing further sexual offences. The convicted man cannot repeat the crime, and other men are deterred by the threat of punishment. Yet, there is no evidence that an early mediaeval legal community wanted to prevent the reproduction of those who deviated from the norm. This is in line with Michel Foucault’s thesis that people who preferred to have sexual relations with someone of the same gender were only seen as a distinctive category in the nineteenth century. As he argues: ‘The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.’67 The mediaeval legal system did not recognize castration for reasons of eugenics: the moral crimes of sodomites were to be punished, not the homosexual ‘species’ eradicated.68 With the transition from Germanic to territorial law, corporal punishments increase overall, whereas fines decrease. Castration is integrated

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into a complex system of honour, corporal punishment, and death penalties, detaching it from its interweaving with the categories of status and sexuality. In the oldest surviving town law, for Strasbourg (1129), castration is combined with other mutilation punishments, as in other penal laws. The ‘blood bailiff’ has the task of gouging out the criminal’s eyes, severing their testicles, and cutting off their heads.69 Convicts are not punished on their sexual organs because these were the instruments of their crime. Rather, reproductive incapacitation seems to be part of an increasing dramaturgy of execution, in which all bodily functions are systematically deactivated. Or is this a misinterpretation that echoes and encourages our prejudices about mediaeval affinity to violence? It is possible that these bloody sanctions are only listed together because they all fall under the jurisdiction of the blood bailiff. Legal-historical sources are to be interpreted with some caution—not only with regard to (in)fertility. In the High Middle Ages, talion law rose to prominence once again. According to the Schwabenspiegel (Mirror of Swabia, around 1275), anyone who cuts off someone else’s limb is to be punished in the same way. In a thirteenth-century manuscript, this idea is explicitly related to the genital area: whoever cuts off someone’s mouth, nose, ears, or tongue, gouges out their eyes or cuts them between the legs, ‘the same shall be done to them.’70 Unlike in early mediaeval Germanic law codes, the fertility penalty here is based on the idea of equal treatment. The crime against fertility is inscribed on the body of the perpetrator. He remains scarred for life by his crime and has to endure the same painful consequences as his victim. Indirectly, this procedure serves to protect fertility. If you want to preserve your ability to procreate, you must not rob anyone else of it. In the early modern period, fertility is under the protection of the authorities, regardless of the person and the nature of the offence. Male defendants no longer have to fear being castrated. Neither in the Amtsund Standsbücher (collection of laws and registry) of Nuremberg nor in the Strafbuch (book of punishments) of Frankfurt are there any references to severing genitals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.71 At the same time, the penalties for crimes against fertility are increased and extended from castration to all kinds of acts that prevent birth. According to the Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V. und des Heiligen Römischen Reiches of 1532 (the first body of German criminal law, known as the Carolina), all offences related to reproduction warrant the death penalty.

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The focus is shifting towards female fertility: whoever aborts a woman’s child or intentionally and maliciously renders anyone else infertile should be treated as though they had committed manslaughter. A male perpetrator is condemned to death by the sword, a female perpetrator is given a less honourable and more painful penalty: death by drowning.72 The Carolina explicitly includes in its punitive articles those women who do not want to become mothers (any more) and prevent the birth of their own children. They are not granted the right to choose; rather, they are punished in the same way as if they had made another woman infertile against her will. The criminalization of abortion, still the subject of heated debate today, can be traced far back into the past. Women’s Complaints about Castration Castration punishments and impotence trials prove that infertility in the Middle Ages was by no means only a women’s issue. But whenever a man loses his procreative capacity, the wife is also affected. What does it mean for her when her husband is castrated? The mediaeval legal texts address how crimes should be punished, but not how victims and their relatives react to castration. I would like to fill this gap with two narrative texts. One tenth-century historical account describes a castration that is just barely prevented; the other document is the autobiographical epistolary dialogue of Peter Abelard and Heloise (c. 1133), probably the most famous historical lovers of the High Middle Ages. In both stories, it is the women who declare reproductive incapacitation to be an injustice. In fact, castration does not comply with the law in either case; prisoners of war are violated on one occasion while on the other, vigilante justice is meted out on a lover.73 The first lamentation is found in the historical work Antapodosis (Retribution) by Liudprand of Cremona (920–972 CE), when he reports on the battle for Benevento in 935 CE. The Italian Margrave Tedbald manages to defeat the invading Greeks.74 Tedbald sends the prisoners back to their master, castrated, claiming that he wishes to make a precious gift to the Byzantine emperor; he had learned that the emperor particularly valued eunuchs and will send him more of them in the future. Tedbald asserts his superiority in word and deed: he destroys the reproductive capacity of the enemy soldiers, thus preventing the procreation of future fighters, mocking Byzantine customs, and humiliating the emperor. Infertility stories connected to war are primarily a demonstration of

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power.75 The sexual organs are war trophies that herald victory and defeat. The serious personal consequences are addressed in Antapodosis from the perspective of one wife. When Tedbald has once again overpowered some Greeks, a woman rushes over, worried and distraught. With rhetorical skill, she tries to prevent her husband’s castration. She accuses Tedbald of waging an unjust and outrageous war, directed not against armed men, but defenceless women. She explains to the surprised margrave that he can inflict no greater misfortune on women than to cut off their husbands’ testicles, because the wives suffer in two respects: they are robbed of both sexual pleasure and the hope of children. The speaker concludes with an urgent plea to be saved from such a great, grim, and ghastly loss. The scene shifts towards comedy and dissolves in general laughter. The Greek woman would rather do without all the other parts of her husband’s body—his eyes, nose, hands, and feet—than his sexual organs. With her openness, the nameless woman manages to win the sympathy of the victor, so she is allowed to take her unharmed husband home with her, reclaiming him along with her stolen property. The story of prevented castration confirms the different valence of body limbs, as seen in early mediaeval Germanic law codes, and also declares a man’s genitals to be the property of his wife. The fact that the Greek woman is not only allowed to formulate her right to reproduce, but also to use female desire as an argument, is unusual for the chronicle as a genre. Liudprand puts words into the mouth of this woman from the East that characterize her as courageous and learned, but at the same time as permissive, foreign, and exotic. (In)fertility in the Antapodosis is a theme used both to negotiate military power relations and to mark cultural differences.76 From the male chronicler’s perspective, of course, it is clear what the worst consequences of castration must be for women. Becoming a mother, he has his protagonist proclaim, is a woman’s most important purpose in life. Heloise’s letters to Abelard (1079–1142) create a completely different impression.77 For her, the issue of parenthood is irrelevant, whereas she deeply mourns the loss of her sexual partner. Heloise (c. 1100–1164) considers herself the most unhappy of all women because she has experienced the pleasures of sexual passion through Abelard and is now unable to satisfy her desire. Her love lament has caused such a stir among later readers because the timing is surprising. Abelard had been violently attacked over ten years ago; Heloise’s uncle and his relatives cruelly took revenge on the famous philosopher after he had seduced, impregnated,

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and married his gifted pupil, keeping their marriage secret. At the time of writing, Heloise had been living in the convent that she had entered at the insistence of her beloved husband, for almost as long. Moved by reading Abelard’s autobiographical letter, Heloise begins to discuss the portrayal of their love story. Their perspectives on castration are diametrically opposed. While Abelard, in retrospect, knows how to make sense of the event, even when she is established as an abbess, Heloise still struggles with her fate. She does not direct her anger against the perpetrators, who have been brought to justice, but against God, who allowed this to happen. It is no coincidence that, in both stories, the castration complaints are taken up by women. A man who complained about the impending or suffered loss of his sexual organs could easily be ridiculed. If he wanted respect in a male-dominated world, he had no other option than to bear his indignity with composure. For good reason, Abelard was afraid to be seen in public after the attack, because everyone might point the finger at him and tongues would wag. By interpreting his castration as divine grace that has freed him from all sensuality, he regains his male clerical superiority. Presented by a woman, the same facts can seem tragic, especially if she aspires to fulfil traditional roles. A woman’s life task of being fertile ultimately depends on a man’s sexual organs. Therefore, women can convincingly complain about the magnitude and senselessness of the suffering that castration brings them, to present themselves as co-sufferers, even the main sufferers. The pain of a would-be mother was much more significant to contemporary readers than the agony of an unsatisfied wife. Even for a theologian and philosopher who speaks unemotionally about his own incapacity, a woman’s infertility seems difficult to bear. Although Heloise never argues that she desires another child or ever regrets the separation from their son Astrolabe, Abelard consoles her with her spiritual motherhood. Instead of giving birth in pain to a few children, as a nun she can give birth in joy to a great multitude for the kingdom of heaven.78 Although Heloise’s complaint makes it abundantly clear that her suffering is not due to infertility, she nevertheless bows to Abelard’s will and takes care of her spiritual daughters. The complaint of the one who suffers most from the consequences of castration falls silent.

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Prospects My central question about how differences arise between people who do or do not have children can broadly be answered by legal frameworks for (in)fertility. Parents received certain privileges under mediaeval and early modern law; fertility was valued more highly than infertility, and people who could not have offspring were discriminated against. Yet, a closer look at the legislation shows that the matter is far from straightforward: childless women could be cast out according to Germanic law, but not according to canon law. Infertile marriages could be declared invalid by a church court, but only if it was physically impossible to consummate the marriage and the impotence had not been known before the wedding. A woman’s desire to have children carried significant weight before the ecclesiastical courts, but the sacramental nature of marriage was even more decisive. Biological descendants were privileged in inheritance matters, but only (primarily male) children conceived in wedlock were entitled to all the benefits. Germanic law codes imposed fines on people who harmed others’ reproductive capacity, but the payments depended on the status (‘class’), gender, and origin of those affected. Even this brief summary makes it clear that divergent ideas of (in)fertility compete and different categories are interwoven in a complex way. The American legal scholar and initiator of the theory of intersectionality, Kimberlé Crenshaw, has drawn attention to the structural problems associated with discrimination against women of colour.79 If people belong to several marginalized groups, they are much more affected by discrimination, and in very specific ways. (In)fertility is such an intersectional category, where different factors in inequality overlap and mutually reinforce each other. Many processes of marginalization that characterized premodern legal systems have—fortunately—been surmounted today. The Basic Law (constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany requires that children born out of wedlock be given the same conditions for their physical and mental development and social position as children born within marriage; they are also treated equally in inheritance law. Whether parents conceived their child during sex, had fertility treatment, or adopted is irrelevant before the law, just as a child’s gender does not play a role. Men do not have to fear castration as punishment or humiliating impotence trials; women may assume that the sentence for perpetrators of violence is not based on their fecundity. Article 3 of the German constitution defines the

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equality of all people before the law; no one may be discriminated against or favoured on the basis of gender, parentage, race, homeland, origin, disability, faith, and religious or political opinions. Despite all this, fertility is still not a value that enjoys protection independent of person or status. As soon as (in)fertility is linked to other categories, a mode of differentiation sets in that leads to specific forms of discrimination. Thus, legislators continue to largely perceive women as actual, potential, future, or would-be mothers, whereas parenthood plays a much smaller role for men. For this very reason, fathers are often in a weaker position when they seek custody of their children. The differences in values are particularly striking in attitudes towards children. Some political decision-makers and others who shape public opinion ascribe greater value to children who best fit the cultural ideals of origin, education, and health. Refugees do not have the same rights as citizen parents, and the pronatalist policies of many European governments aim to increase the birth rate among members of the nation state. Our brave new world of equality before the law remains a claim that is yet to be fully realized.

Notes 1. At European level, private and family life is protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This is a right of defence against the state, which may not arbitrarily interfere in the relationships of persons. See the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8, here the official website: https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-conven tion/private-life (accessed 31 March 2022), and the official text: https:// rm.coe.int/1680a2353d (accessed 31 March 2022). 2. Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (GG), art. 6, § 1–4. http://www.gesetzeim-internet.de/gg/GG.pdf (accessed 31 March 2022). 3. Paul Mikat, ‘Ehe’, HRG, 1 (1971), cols. 809–833, here col. 825. On the church’s understanding and its enforcement see Stephan Buchholz, ‘Ehe’, 2 HRG, 1 (2008), cols. 1192–1213. 4. Hans Zeimentz, Ehe nach der Lehre der Frühscholastik: Eine moralgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Anthropologie und Theologie der Ehe in der Schule Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux, bei Hugo von St. Viktor, Walter von Mortagne und Petrus Lombardus (Düsseldorf, 1973) (Moraltheologische Studien, 1), p. 178. See also Rudolf Weigand, ‘Das Scheidungsproblem in der mittelalterlichen Kanonistik (1971)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe im Mittelalter (Goldbach, 1993) (Bibliotheca eruditorum, 7), pp. 179*–187*.

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5. Although impotence is defined across genders in canon law, in legal practice it is restricted to male potency. Josef Löffler, Die Störungen des geschlechtlichen Vermögens in der Literatur der autoritativen Theologie des Mittelalters: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Impotenz und des medizinischen Sachverständigenbeweises im kanonistischen Impotenzprozeß (Wiesbaden, 1958) (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, 6), especially pp. 7–44. On the rare case of a man petitioning for separation because of an insurmountable impediment in the female body (this husband petitioned the pope that he might be allowed to enter into a new marriage, because his wife was physiologically incapable of consummating their marriage due to vaginismus), see Ludwig Schmugge, Marriage on Trial: Late Medieval German Couples at the Papal Court, transl. by Atria A. Larson (Washington, DC, 2012) (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, 10), p. 221. 6. Angus McLaren, Impotence: A Cultural History (Chicago and London, 2007); Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2006). 7. Rudolf Weigand, ‘Kanonistische Ehetraktate aus dem 12. Jahrhundert (1971)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe, pp. 37*–57*, here p. 38*; Weigand, ‘Kirchenrechtliche Bestimmungen mit möglicher Bedeutung für die Bevölkerungsentwicklung (1988)’, in ibid., pp. 377*–387*, here pp. S. 379–381*; Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, pp. 212–213. ´ sniewicz, Die Lehre von 8. Vgl. Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 183, 194; Leon M. Smi´ den Ehehindernissen bei Petrus Lombardus und bei seinen Kommentatoren: Albert d. Gr., Thomas v. Aquin, J. Bonaventura und J. D. Scotus, den Hauptvertretern der Hochscholastik, dargestellt nach Maßgabe der vierfachen Kausalität der Ehe (Posen, 1917), pp. 102–115. See also McLaren, Impotence, pp. 25–49. Church lawyers assessed the voluntary renunciation of sexuality differently: Those who lead a chaste marriage or marry knowing that they cannot have children, for instance because of their age, are bound by their promise. James A. Brundage, ‘The Problem of Impotence’, in Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (eds), Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church (Buffalo, NY, 1982), pp. 135–140, here p. 137. 9. Brundage, ‘Problem’, S. 136–137; Löffler, Störungen, S. 76–77. See also Rüdiger Schnell, Frauendiskurs, Männerdiskurs, Ehediskurs: Textsorten und Geschlechterkonzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1998) (Geschichte und Geschlechter, 23), pp. 129–133. 10. Albertus Magnus, Commentarii in IV sententiarum dist. 34 B, art. 6, ed. by Auguste Borgnet (Paris, 1893) (Opera omnia, 30). See also Schnell, Frauendiskurs, p. 47, note 15.

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11. On the origin of the three-year term, see Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, p. 218. On impotence through demonic magic see Rider, Magic and Impotence. See also Chapter 5. 12. Susanna Burghartz, Zeiten der Reinheit – Orte der Unzucht: Ehe und Sexualität in Basel während der frühen Neuzeit (Paderborn etc., 1999), pp. 218–224; Charles Donahue Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments About Marriage in Five Courts (Cambridge, 2007); Donahue, ‘Female Plaintiffs in Marriage Cases in the Court of York in the Later Middle Ages: What Can We Learn from the Numbers?’, in Sue Sheridan Walker (ed.), Wife and Widow in Medieval England (Ann Arbor, 1993), pp. 183–213; Richard H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge etc., 1974) (Cambridge Studies in English Legal History); Michael M. Sheehan, ‘The Formation and Stability of Marriage in Fourteenth-Century England: Evidence of an Ely Register’, Medieval Studies, 33 (1971), pp. 228–263, especially p. 261; Schmugge, Marriage on Trial; Rudolf Weigand, ‘Zur mittelalterlichen kirchlichen Ehegerichtsbarkeit: Rechtsvergleichende Untersuchung (1981)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe, pp. 307*– 341*; Weigand, ‘Ehe- und Familienrecht in der mittelalterlichen Stadt (1984)’, in ibid., pp. 343*–376*, especially pp. 362*–364*. 13. Rudolf Weigand, ‘Die Rechtsprechung des Regensburger Gerichts in Ehesachen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der bedingten Eheschließung nach Gerichtsbüchern aus dem Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts (1968)’, in Weigand, Liebe und Ehe, pp. 245*–S. 305*, here pp. 248*–249*, 255*. See also Weigand, ‘Ehegerichtsbarkeit’, pp. 311*, 328*–329*. In the ten Augsburg impotence trials, once no verdict is recorded, and in one other case the court revised a verdict. 14. Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, pp. 215–223. 15. Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love: Myth & Reality: Motherhood in Modern History, foreword by Francine du Plessix Gray, Translation of: L’amour en plus (New York, 1981). ´ sniewicz, Lehre, p. 113: Causatur mulier: volo esse mater! 16. Smi´ 17. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY, 1990), p. 65. See also Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, transl. from the French by Robert Hurley (London etc., 1981, Reprint 1998), pp. 46–49 etc. On the deployment of sexuality see ibid., pp. 75–131. 18. Gero Dolezalek, Das Imbreviaturbuch des erzbischöflichen Gerichtsnotars Hubaldus aus Pisa Mai bis August 1230 (Köln and Wien, 1969) (Forschungen zur neueren Privatrechtsgeschichte, 13), p. 154; Jacqueline Murray, ‘On the Origins and Role of “Wise Women” in Causes for Annulment on the Grounds of Male Impotence’, Journal of Medieval

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20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

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History, 16 (1990), pp. 235–249, here p. 239. On the origin of the sevenhanded oath, see Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, p. 218. On the experts see Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, p. 88; Löffler, Störungen, p. 79. Murray, ‘Wise Women’, p. 240. On the advice to examine men, see ibid., p. 242; Thomas de Chobham, Summa Confessorum, ed. by Frederick Broomfield (Louvain and Paris, 1968) (Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia, 25), p. 186. Murray, ‘Wise Women’, p. 240. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, p. 89: Ipsa iurata ostendebat mammillas suas denudatas ac manibus suis ad dictam ignem calefactis virgam et testiculos dicti Johannis palpavit et tenuit ac eundem Johannem amplexabatur et sepius osculabatur ac eundem Johannem ad ostendendum virilitatem et potentiam suam in quantum potuit excitavit, precipiendo sibi quod pro pudore tunc ibidem probaret et redderet se virum. Weigand (‘Ehegerichtsbarkeit’, p. 331*) glosses over this procedure: ‘Die Gerichte haben sich […] innovationsfreudiger gezeigt als die Wissenschaft’ [The courts appeared keener to innovate than the scholars]. Murray counters that (‘Wise Women’, p. 247): ‘The procedures themselves were crude, and to modern eye perhaps even cruel’. Giovanni Sforza wanted to contest the annulment of his marriage to Lucrezia Borgia in 1497, but did not want to submit himself to a public inspection (McLaren, Impotence, p. 36). John Maddyngle argued before the church court in Ely in 1377 that his marriage should be annulled not because of impotence but because he was too closely related to his bride. Georg, who was sued for impotence in the Regensburg marriage court eight weeks after the wedding in 1490, countered by accusing his wife of sorcery. Murray, ‘Wise Women’, p. 241; Brundage, ‘Problem’, p. 139; Weigand, ‘Rechtsprechung des Regensburger Gerichts’, p. 278*. Thomas von Chobham, Summa Confessorum, p. 186; Murray, ‘Wise Women’, pp. 243–244. In contrast, the Jesuit Thomas Sanchez declared surveillance of the marriage bed immoral in 1602. Weigand, ‘Ehegerichtsbarkeit’, p. 331*, note 129. The doctor of medicine in Munich, Baldasar Mansfelt, was commissioned to provide an expert opinion for the divorce proceedings of Barbara and Leonhard Witte from Teyting. After the physical examination, he informed the marriage judge Johannes Heller of the officialate court of Freising in writing on 13 November 1471 that Leonhard is ‘not suited for marital embraces’. Ludwig Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, pp. 223–224. For good reasons, the Roman Catholic Church today does not draw temporal distinctions, see CIC (1983), Book IV, Part I, Title VII, Chapter III: ‘Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have intercourse, whether on the part of the man or the woman, whether absolute or relative, nullifies marriage by its very nature’.

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27. Brundage, ‘Problem’, pp. 137–138; Weigand, ‘Ehegerichtsbarkeit’, pp. 329*. If the separation had come about because the genitals are of unequal size, the man had no right to make a claim. 28. Brundage, ‘Problem’, pp. 138–139. 29. This judgement was not an isolated case, as is proven by proceedings at the Augsburg marriage court (1350). Weigand, ‘Ehegerichtsbarkeit’, pp. 328*. On discrimination against illegitimate children, including legal countermeasures see Susanne Lepsius, ‘Die Legitimierung nichtehelicher Kinder als Testfall für die Kompetenzen des römisch-deutschen Königs im späten 13. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung, 104 (2018), pp. 72–150. 30. Konrad von Würzburg, ‘Alexius’, in Konrad von Würzburg, Die Legenden II , ed. by Paul Gereke (Halle, 1926) (ATB, 20), pp. 1–63, here vv. 57– 121, especially v. 112. 31. Nüwe Stattrechten und Statuten der loblichen Statt Fryburg im Pryßgow gelegen, ed. by Ulrich Zasius (Basel: Adam Petri, 1520), fol. LXXIIIIv: […]/ vor allermengklich/ Eeliche kind/ […] erben ir vatter vnd ist das kind ir eltern erben/ dann die erst vnd fürnemest sach in […]. 32. Pactus Legis Salicae, ed. by Karl August Eckhardt, Vol. II 1: 65 TitelText (Göttingen, Berlin, and Frankfurt a.M., 1955) (Germanenrechte N.F.), p. 341, tit. 59 § 6; ‘Lex Ribuaria’, ed. by Rudolph Sohm, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum Sectio, vol. 5 (Hannover, 1875– 1889), pp. 185–268, here pp. 240–241, tit. 56. See also Martin Lipp, ‘Erbfolgeordung’, 2 HRG, 1 (2008), cols. 1361–1365, here col. 1364. 33. In the wider family circle, male privilege no longer applies; relatives receive the same share regardless of gender. Der Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel: Codex picturatus Oldenburgensis CIM I 410 der Landesbibliothek Oldenburg, commentary by Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand and Wolfgang Milde, text and translation by Werner Peters and Wolfgang Wallbraun (Graz, 2006), Ldr. I, art. 20–21 (vol. 2, p. 39); Lnr., art. 27 (vol. 2, p. 233). 34. Cf. a.o. Lipp, ‘Erbfolgeordung’; Adrian Schmidt-Recla, Kalte oder warme Hand? Verfügungen von Todes wegen in mittelalterlichen Referenzrechtsquellen (Köln, Weimar, and Wien, 2011) (Forschungen zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 29). 35. Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. XLr, LVIIv. 36. Gabriela Signori, Vorsorgen – Vererben – Erinnern: Kinder- und familienlose Erblasser in der städtischen Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters (Göttingen, 2001) (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 160), pp. 63–64. On role attributions and cultural practices of widows see Bernhard Jussen, Der Name der Witwe: Erkundungen zur Semantik der mittelalterlichen Bußkultur (Göttingen, 2000) (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 158); Britta-Juliane Kruse, Witwen:

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37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

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Kulturgeschichte eines Standes in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Berlin and New York, 2007). Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. LVIv–LVIIr, LXv–LXIr. The remainder goes to the next of kin of the deceased. Signori, Vorsorgen, p. 234. The will as a unilateral last testament is a comparatively recent phenomenon and only became established north of the Alps from the mid-thirteenth century. Werner Ogris, ‘Testament’, HRG, 5 (1998), cols. 152–165. Signori, Vorsorgen, p. 29, emphasises that legacies, bequests, and gifts are far more productive for historical research as legal-historical sources. Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. LXIr. Signori, Vorsorgen, p. 44: dwile sy/er weder vatter, noch muter ˚ noch dhein eliche kinder hette. The Freiburg town law differentiates between premarital, marital, and extramarital children. If the testator has legitimate children, children born out of wedlock are left empty-handed. In the paternal succession they are only taken into account if there are no close relatives. In cases of maternal inheritance, they are at least placed on an equal footing with the parents and grandparents of the deceased. Children conceived in adultery, incest, or violation of celibacy (vnflatskinder) may not be considered. Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. LXXXr–LXXXIv. Thus Jerome advised the widow Furia to defy her father’s will and delight Christ through her inheritance. Basil and Chrysostom also called on believers to donate their possessions to the church. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983) (Studies in Literacy, Family, Culture and the State), pp. 93–94, 99–100. Salvian von Marseille, Des Timotheus vier Bücher an die Kirche: Der Brief an den Bischof Salonius, transl. by Anton Mayer, ed. by Norbert Brox (München, 1983) (Schriften der Kirchenväter, 3), III 2, pp. 70–71. See also III 13–14, pp. 91–93. Ogris, ‘Testament’, col. 154; Goody, Development, pp. 124–125; Signori, Vorsorgen, p. 357. For the legal discussion, see Julius Kirshner, ‘Baldus de Ubaldis on Disinheritance: Contexts, Controversies, Consilia’, Jus Commune, 27 (2000), pp. 119–214. Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, ‘21 Artikel’, in Geiler von Kaysersberg, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, ed. by Gerhard Bauer. 1st part, 1st dep. (Berlin and New York, 1989) (Ausgaben deutscher Literatur des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts), pp. 153–200, here pp. 168–171; Marcus von Weida, Spigell des ehlichen ordens, ed. by Anthony van der Lee (Assen, 1972) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Erbauungsliteratur des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 1), p. 81; Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Jüngere Reihe, vol. 3, ed. by Wrede, no. 71. See also Goody, Development, pp. 164–165. Goody, Development.

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47. Signori, Vorsorgen, p. 170. See also ibid., p. 357. On the church as beneficiary, see also Karl Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König: Ein Testfall für die Ausdifferenzierung des Politischen im 11. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 292 (2011), pp. 323–363, here pp. 328–331. For a critique of Goody’s argument cf. Bernhard Jussen, ‘Verwandtschaftliche Ordnungen’, Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, ed. by Gert Melville and Martial Staub, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 2008), vol. 1, pp. 163–171. 48. Clausdieter Schott, Kindesannahme – Adoption – Wahlkindschaft: Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtsgeschichten (Frankfurt a.M., 2009), pp. 108–121, especially p. 114; Elisabeth Koch, ‘Adoption’, 2 HRG, 1 (2008), cols. 78– 81, here col. 78; Bernhard Jussen, Patenschaft und Adoption im frühen Mittelalter: Künstliche Verwandtschaft als soziale Praxis (Göttingen, 1991) (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 98), p. 55. Zu den gelehrten Diskussionen über das römische Adoptionsrecht im Mittelalter see Franck Roumy, L’adoption dans le droit savant du XII e au XVI e siècle (Paris, 1998) (Bibliothèque de droit privé, 279). 49. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago, 1988, Reprint 1998); Regina Toepfer, Kinderlosigkeit: Ersehnte, verweigerte und bereute Elternschaft im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 2020), pp. 244–274, especially p. 264. 50. ‘Lex Ribuaria’, pp. 236–237, tit. 48: Si quis procreatione filiorum vel filiarum non habuerit, omnem facultatem suam in praesentia regis […] de proximis vel straneis, adoptare in hereditate vel adfatimi […] licentiam habeat. For a comprehensive discussion of affatomy in Salic and Ripuarian law, see Schmidt-Recla, Kalte oder warme Hand, pp. 131–169. 51. ‘Marculfi Formulae II 13’, in Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, ed. by Karl Zeumer (Hannover, 1882) (MGH Legum Sectio V, Formulae, 1), pp. 32–112, here pp. 83–84. The concept is very close to Roman adoption law, see Jussen, Patenschaft, p. 58. 52. Jussen, Patenschaft, pp. 95–96. 53. Schott, Kindesannahme, pp. 134–141; Glossen zum SachsenspiegelLandrecht: Buch’sche Glosse, ed. by Frank-Michael Kaufmann, part 2 (Hannover, 2002) (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui. Nova Series, VII), pp. 717–718. See also Bernd Kannowski, Die Umgestaltung des Sachsenspiegelrechts durch die Buch’sche Glosse (Hannover, 2007) (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften, 56), p. 556. 54. See Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De Remediis Utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary by Conrad H. Rawski (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991), vol. 1, chap. 79, pp. 219–220; Francesco Petrarca, Von der Artzney bayder Glück/ des guten ˚ vnd widerwertigen, ed. by Sebastian Brant (Augsburg: Heinrich

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55.

56.

57.

58.

59. 60.

61.

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Steiner, 1532), Book 1, chap. 79, fol. XCVIv–XCVIIr. See also Schott, Kindesannahme, pp. 126–129. Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. LXIIIr–LXIIIIr. See also the article on ‘Anwünschung’ in the online version of the Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, http://fwb-online.de/go/anw%C3%BCnschung.s.1f_1543524815 (accessed 31 March 2022). According to the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch (DRW I, col. 790), the term is used for the first time in the Freiburg town law. In cases of children ‘coming into’ the family (Einkindschaft ), step-siblings are treated like biological siblings. See also Schott, Kindesannahme, pp. 152–165. Nüwe Stattrechten, chap. III.7, fol. LXXVIIIv–LXXIXv, here fol. LXXVIIIv: Zuzyten mag sich begebn das erlebte lüt die kein kind haben/ / vß barmhertzigkeit oder vß liebe den kinden bewegt vß werden/ das sy vßwendig iung personen an kindßstat annemen/ das heißt nit vil gebrucht ist/ das in vnser Statt in latin adoptio/ wie wol dauon etwas lüttrung wir nutz den künfftigen dannocht . In the order of succession, the chosen child is treated as a biological child, but the reverse does not apply. If the chosen child dies, his or her closest blood relatives are entitled to inherit, just as the child remains on an equal footing with his or her biological legitimate siblings in matters of inheritance. Nüwe Stattrechten, fol. LXXIXr–v. The possibility of a mother wanting to separate from her adopted child is not considered. Pactus Legis Salicae, tit. 24 § 8–9, p. 193; ‘Lex Ribuaria’, tit. 12, pp. 216– 217. Under Salic law, for a free-born woman with childbearing capacity, 24,000 pfennigs or 600 solidi; for one no longer capable of childbearing, 8,000 pfennigs or 200 solidi must be paid. Under Ripuarian law, the fine for a woman of childbearing age is three times that for a girl (600 vs 200 solidi). For mutilation of a hand, foot, eye, or nose, 4,000 pfennigs or 100 solidi, for a castration and for the killing of a free Frank, 8,000 pfennigs or 200 solidi. Pactus Legis Salicae, tit. 29 § 1 and 17–18, tit. 41 § 1–2, pp. 215, 221, 263. A key study on this, where I found my sources, is Susanne Tuchel, Kastration im Mittelalter (Düsseldorf, 1998) (Studia humaniora, 30), pp. 61–89. See also Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and London, 2002). ‘Lex Saxonum, art. 11’, in Leges Saxonum und Lex Thuringorum, ed. by Claudius Freiherr von Schwerin (Hannover and Leipzig, 1918) (Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scolarum ex MGH separatim editi), pp. 17–34, here p. 20. In Frisian folk law (Volksrecht ), too, if the penis or

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64.

65.

66. 67. 68.

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both testicles are severed, the full Wergeld must be paid, and if one testicle is severed, only half the Wergeld must be paid. Tuchel, Kastration, p. 68. Das Ostgötenrecht (Ostgotalagen), transl. from the Old Swedish with commentary by Dieter Strauch (Köln and Wien, 1971), p. 91. In another Old Norse legal text, a castrated man is supposed to receive compensation for two sons and a daughter. Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer, vol. 1 (Darmstadt, 1965 [Leipzig, 4 1899]), p. 558. See also Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 64–65. Ripuarian law sets the fine for castrating a freeman at 200 solidi, while only 36 solidi are to be paid for a servant. According to the Leges Thuringorum (Law of the Thuringians, beginning of the ninth century), a nobleman is entitled to three times the amount of the fine for a freeman. ‘Lex Ribuaria’, tit. 6 and 27, pp. 200–201, 220; ‘Lex Thuringorum’, art. 16–17, in Leges Saxonum, pp. 57–66, here p. 59. ‘Lex Ribuaria’, tit. 58, 17, p. 246. A freeman is obliged to pay 15 solidi in the same case, without fear of corporal punishment. The Anglo-Saxon law of Alfred the Great also punishes a servant—for the rape of a maid—with castration. For a comprehensive overview of castration as punishment, see Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 73–89; Rolf Lieberwirth, ‘Entmannung’, 2 HRG, 1 (2008), col. 1352. See also Pactus Legis Salicae, tit. 12 § 2, p. 157. Leges Visigothorum, ed. by Karl Zeumer (Hannover and Leipzig, 1902) (MGH Leges, 1, 1), pp. 163, 165; Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 79–80. Foucault, Will to Knowledge, pp. 42–43, citation p. 43. See also Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, ‘Sodomiter: Erscheinungsformen und Kausalfaktoren des spätmittelalterlichen Kampfes gegen Homosexuelle’, in Hergemöller (ed.), Randgruppen der spätmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft, new revised edition (Warendorf, 2001), pp. 388–431; Sven Limbeck and Lev Mordechai Thoma (eds), ‘Die sünde, der sich der tiuvel schamet in der helle’: Homosexualität in der Kultur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Ostfildern, 2009), especially the chapters by Andreas Kraß, ‘Sprechen von der stummen Sünde: Das Dispositiv der Sodomie in der deutschen Literatur des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berthold von Regensburg/Der Stricker)’, pp. 123–136 and Christine Reinle, ‘Das mittelalterliche Sodomiedelikt im Spannungsfeld von rechtlicher Norm, theologischer Deutung und gesellschaftlicher Praxis’, pp. 13–42. Deutsche Stadtrechte des Mittelalters, mit rechtsgeschichtlichen Erläuterungen, ed. by Ernst Theodor Gaupp, vol. 1 (Breslau, 1851), p. 53, XXIII: Item Advocati Vicarius eruet oculos, truncabit testiculos, decollabit et ceteras penas omnes exequetur pro varietate criminium. – Der an dez Vogetes stat da ist, der stichet die ougen uz, die hoden snidet er uz, die houbet sleht er ab, und ist ein wizennere einre iglichen missetat dar nach daz si ist. See also Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 87–88.

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70. Der Schwabenspiegel in der ältesten Gestalt: Landrecht, ed. by Wilhelm Wackernagel (1840), Lehnrecht ed. by Heinrich Christian von Senckenberg (1766), edited with preface, appendices, and list of sources by Karl August Eckhardt (Aalen, 1972) (Bibliotheca Rerum Historicarum Neudrucke, 3), p. 147: dem sol man daz selbe tuon. Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 70–71. 71. Cf. the criminal statistics analyses by Richard van Dülmen, Theater des Schreckens: Gerichtspraxis und Strafrituale in der frühen Neuzeit, 3rd edn (München, 1988 [1985]), pp. 187–193. 72. Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V. und des Heiligen Römischen Reichs von 1532 (Carolina), ed. and commented by Friedrich-Christian Schroeder (Stuttgart, 2000), art. 133, p. 83: Item so jemandt eynem weibßbild […] eyn lebendig kindt abtreibt, wer auch mann oder weib vnfruchtbar macht, so solch übel fürsetzlicher vnd boßhafftiger weiß beschicht, soll der mann mit dem schwert, als eyn todtschläger, vnnd die fraw so sie es auch an jr selbs thette, ertrenckt oder sunst zum todt gestrafft werden. On the murder, abandonment, and abortion of children cf. ibid., art. 131–132. See also Wolfgang P. Müller, Die Abtreibung: Anfänge der Kriminalisierung: 1140–1650 (Köln, Weimar, and Wien, 2000) (Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht, 24); Müller, The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law (Ithaca, 2012). 73. On castrating as revenge, particularly against clerics, see Schmugge, Marriage on Trial, pp. 182–184 (‘How Husbands Took Revenge’). 74. Liudprand von Cremona, Werke, ed. by Joseph Becker, 3rd edn (Hannover and Leipzig, 1915) (Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum ex monumentis Germaniae historicis separatim editi), pp. 108– 109 (Antapodosis IV, 9–10). See also Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 92–94. 75. Other chroniclers also report castrations as a means of warfare or exerting a ruler’s authority. Mostly this is evaluated critically, but some also speak of opponents being ‘mercifully’ only emasculated. Tuchel, Kastration, pp. 91, note 1, 96–98, 100–102; Klaus van Eickels, ‘Hingerichtet, geblendet, entmannt: die anglo-normannischen Könige und ihre Gegner’, in Manuel Braun and Cornelia Herberichs (eds), Gewalt im Mittelalter: Realitäten – Imaginationen (München, 2005), pp. 81–103, here p. 95. 76. Tuchel (Castration, p. 308) points out that historians prefer to attribute castrations to Eastern and pagan cultures and thus defame their opponents. 77. The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. with a revised translation by David Luscombe after the translation by Betty Radice (Oxford, 2013), ep. I.30, pp. 46–47; ep. IV.6–7, pp. 162–165; ep. V.20– 22, pp. 198–203. See also Regina Toepfer, ‘Die tröstende Funktion der Autobiographie: Abaelards und Heloisas Briefdialog’, in Renate Stauf and

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Christian Wiebe (eds), Erschriebenes Leben: Autobiographische Zeugnisse von Marc Aurel bis Knausgård (Heidelberg, 2020) (GRM Beih., 97), pp. 275–293. 78. Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ep. V.25, pp. 204–205; ep. VI.1, pp. 218–219. 79. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine’, The University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), pp. 139–167; Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43:6 (1991), pp. 1241– 1299. See also Gabriele Winker and Nina Degele, Intersektionalität: Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten (Bielefeld, 2009). To put this perspective in historical context, see Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A. Fenton, Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2010); Andreas Kraß, ‘Historische Intersektionalitätsforschung als kulturwissenschaftliches Projekt’, in Nataša Bedekovi´c, Andreas Kraß, and Astrid Lembke (eds), Durchkreuzte Helden: Das ‘Nibelungenlied’ und Fritz Langs Film ‘Die Nibelungen’ im Licht der Intersektionalitätsforschung (Bielefeld, 2014), pp. 7–47.

CHAPTER 5

Demonology: Metaphysics of (In)Fertility

‘The devil wants infertility.’ This statement does not originate in the early modern discourse on witches, which is the subject of this chapter, and certainly not in the Middle Ages. It was made by the current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Francis made a rather casual comment on childlessness in December 2017 at a morning mass, but this reaffirmed earlier statements, with the much harsher comment that those who actively prevent themselves from being fruitful commit a diabolical act.1 This drastic position finds little approval even in Catholic circles today, but plenty of predecessors in early modern demonological literature. Authors shared dire warnings against infertility caused by the devil and thus about the danger of witchcraft. The only difference—but a decisive one—is that Francis condemns childlessness as a personal choice, whereas the problem for the early modern demonologists was infertility caused by others. The fear of impotence was stoked most and sex with demons painted in greatest detail in the infamous Hammer of Witches by Heinrich Kramer (Latinized name: Henricus Institor, 1430–1505), first printed in Speyer in 1486.2 His work draws from various sources, so the key statements are anything but original, but intensified in his retelling. Due to its strong reception, the book had devastating consequences. Although this is a legal text for inquisitors, Kramer’s overall attitude is that of an agitator. Infertility and impotence are crucial issues to arouse hatred and defame women as ‘witches.’ Again and again, the argumentation revolves around different © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_5

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variants of prevented and refused parenthood: impotence spells, penis stealing, premature birth, and infanticide. With his accusations, Kramer touched a nerve.3 Since the late 1470s, crop failures and diseases had accumulated, leading to reduced fertility in both humans and animals. The witch paradigm offered a way of acting to counter this and punishing the supposedly guilty. Early modern demonology built on mediaeval infertility laws, especially church marriage law, but narrowed the focus down to impotence, searching for its demonic causes. Therefore, demonologists offered a completely different method of fertility treatment than medical practitioners. They did not seek to fulfil the desire for children using pharmacological substances, but with exorcisms. For demonologists, infertility was primarily a subject of metaphysics. Whether a person could procreate and give birth depended on the will of God, the power of the demons, the piety of the people, and the supposed witches’ desire for revenge. The balance of power—between God and devils, ‘witches’ and bewitched, and men and women—was negotiated. Demonology is not only relevant to a cultural history of childlessness because it deals with the situation of people who are prevented from procreating. Rather, the literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries anticipates central considerations that shape today’s debates about the relationship between reproductive medicine, law, and ethics. What methods of having a child are allowed? How can someone without functional sperm become a father? What consequences do the involvement of a third party have for parenthood? In the early modern period, such considerations arose around unions with the devil. The assumption that ‘witches’ had sex with the devil led some authors to bold speculations about potential demonic progeny.

Demonic Magic: Impotence from Love’s Revenge Why am I, of all people, not having a child? What is the cause of my infertility? These questions are asked again and again by people who struggle to have children. The answer that the early modern demonologists gave was as simple as it was dangerous: they accused others of making people infertile through sorcery. Ancient and mediaeval theologians had already considered the possibility that demonic magic could cause impotence, but the early modern demonologists developed this into a closed metaphysical system. Fifteenth-century ideas about impotence magic were affected

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by new fears of demonic witchcraft, as Catherine Rider shows in the last chapter of Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (2006). She points out that theologians were no longer alone in discussing the demonic forces behind magic; other scholarly discourses joined the conversation. Although early modern authors drew on ancient and mediaeval sources, they emphasized the role of demons in magic much more than their predecessors.4 Inquisitors were vehemently committed to combating and destroying those they believed were connected with evil and practised magic. Women who deviated from the norm became scapegoats. The Power of Evil In the early modern period, whether infertility could have a supernatural cause was by no means undisputed. In the Hammer of Witches, Heinrich Kramer explicitly distanced himself from the view that demonic magic is only human imagination and has no direct efficacy.5 For him, the genitals were a gateway of evil, a view he justified with original sin and the depravity of sex. Kramer retained the mediaeval scholastics’ notion of sinful desire (concupiscence), but linked it directly to the actions of the devil, whom God had granted more influence over the sexual realm than over other human actions because the first sin was passed on through the act of procreation. This meant that the neuralgic point where the sacrament of marriage was most vulnerable was sexuality. The power of the devil, according to the author of the Hammer of Witches, lies in human loins. Contemporaries conflicted over Kramer’s theses.6 One of the earliest respondents was the jurist Ulrich Molitor (1442–1507/08), who had experienced witch trials in his home diocese of Konstanz and was to write a legal opinion for Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol (1427–1496). Molitor crafted his treatise Von den unholden oder hexen (On demons or witches, first printed in Latin and German in 1489) as a fictional dialogue, which allowed him to consider and contrast different positions. The sceptic Sigismund, the proponent of the witch trials Cunradus, and the jurist Ulricus discuss whether women make men impotent through sorcery.7 From the first, demonic magic was interpreted as gendered. Only men could be considered as victims, whereas the role of perpetrator was always played by women. Cunradus was convinced that women posed a danger to men with their spells; he knew many righteous husbands who attributed the loss of their ‘natural’ ability to procreate to women’s

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demonic magic. Yet Sigismund found it incredible that the devil could change the course of nature. Both his dialogue partners regarded sexual intercourse as a ‘natural’ act and reproduction as a ‘natural’ human capacity. In demonology, the conflict is never just a ‘battle of the sexes,’ but always relates to a metaphysical question about the power of evil—the key contrast to ‘natural’ is not with ‘unnatural,’ but with ‘supernatural.’ Ulricus examined the matter from different perspectives before passing judgement. In doing so, he took up the idea of naturalization, referred to canon law, and considered the medical knowledge of his day. In his opinion, impotence could be evoked by sorcery, so that men were no longer capable of sexual intercourse, even if they did not have a cold constitution, but the crucial factor was the will of God, not the evil magic of a woman. Whether or not a person had children was not about demons or harm caused by a third party, be it the devil or a ‘witch’; Ulricus placed the onus on those affected. He considered infertility as a trial or punishment from God and clearly rejected the search for a scapegoat. Narrative evidence The author of the Hammer of Witches instead endeavoured to present his readers with countless literary and narrative proofs of how dangerous ‘witches’ were. To substantiate their negative influence on male potency, Kramer invoked the Bible, the Decretum Gratiani (Gratian’s collection of canon law; 1280–1290), and various ecclesiastical authorities such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure. Besides these religious texts, he cited numerous cases that he claimed to have experienced himself or to have heard about from credible sources.8 One of these impotence stories concerned a Count of Westreich, near the Diocese of Strasbourg. He married a woman of equally noble birth, but suffered from impotence, and could not consummate the marriage for three years.9 The count was so filled with fear that he did not know what to do. In his distress, he did not turn to a doctor, but chose what the demonologist saw as the only right way—he prayed. A little later, on a journey to conduct business in Metz, he met a woman he knew all too well. Only at this point do readers discover that the protagonist had a relationship before marriage. The count soon noticed his former lover’s excessive interest in his family life. When he feigned a happy marriage and the birth of several sons, the woman was surprised. She openly admitted

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that she had had him bewitched. The count learned not only the supernatural cause of his impotence, but also the method: a pot containing various objects in the well on his land. His former lover expressed delight that he had been blessed with such a family, cursed the sorceress, and vanished from the tale as suddenly as she had appeared. On returning home, the count had the pot pulled up out of the well and burned along with its contents, thus transforming himself from a hurt lover into a potent husband. The initial problem and happy solution frame the story to make a demonological case. Kramer wanted to show that, how, and why men’s ability to procreate could be inhibited. But he preferred not to reveal the count’s identity—to preserve his honour. Implicitly, Kramer confirmed the assessment made in other branches of mediaeval and early modern knowledge: being impotent is a shame, making someone impotent is a crime. The demonic magic in the story of the Count of Westreich is conclusively motivated; a jilted lover had good reason. Kramer even claimed to observe a general rule that impotence often follows a split. Women who had hoped to marry took revenge by casting spells or trying to win back their lovers. Kramer had no sympathy for the abandoned, instead referring to church law; whoever made a man or a woman barren out of revenge or hatred acted like a murderer.10 Kramer’s demand that sorcery and fertility crimes be punished by death applies too in the few cases where the gender roles are reversed. Another story he cites from the literature to prove the existence of demonic magic involves the sorcerer Stadelin from the Diocese of Lausanne.11 Kramer refers to Stadelin’s own statement that he killed seven babies in the womb. Because of his magic, a woman suffered miscarriages for many years, and all her domestic animals also remained barren; the cattle became pregnant but did not give birth to a live young. As was the case with the Count of Westreich, the spell could only be lifted when the means were known, by the perpetrator’s confession. Stadelin admitted to having placed a snake under the threshold of the house door and said that if this was removed, the residents’ ability to give birth would return. The effectiveness of the remedy confirmed the truth of the tale. Although the snake had turned to dust, the damaging effect was eliminated by removing the earth. In the same year, both woman and cattle regained their fertility. This restoration was constitutive for Kramer’s interpretation; it was supposed to prove that the infertility had had a supernatural cause.

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The plausibility of this argumentation was questioned by the Dutch physician Johann Weyer (1515–1588).12 With his De lamiis (Of Witches; 1563), he was one of the main critics of the Hammer. Weyer deconstructed Kramer’s impotence stories, pointing out logical weaknesses and incoherencies. It was ridiculous to believe that ‘witches’ could limit fertility through sorcery: how would a snake lying under the doorstep cause miscarriages and stillbirths? If snakes had an abortive effect, all the women in some countries would be infertile. It was far from clear how a man was supposed to regain his procreative power because a pot with enchanted objects was removed from his well. Why did not everyone who drank from this well lose their capacity to reproduce? Weyer assumed that a causal relationship could not be limited to one person, an agent that limited fertility must have the same effect on everyone. To Weyer, the fact that the devil needed a pot, of all things, to make a man impotent, and that the count could drive away the evil spirit by burning a household object, seemed absurd. Instead, he explained the demonic magic away with negative autosuggestion; people granted the devil influence over themselves. Penis Stealing Kramer’s stories of penis stealing are even more curious. Women who knew magic not only made men impotent, but could even make their sexual organs disappear, argued the author of the Hammer of Witches: if demons could kill humans, they should also be able to remove the male member. Once again, Kramer sought to make his case through stories. First, someone claims castration by demonic magic, then this is confirmed, as in the following anecdote.13 When a young man from Ravensburg left his girlfriend, she took revenge by cutting off his genitals. The young man could see and grasp nothing between his legs, where his body seemed smooth. Frightened, he went to a wine cellar, presumably to drown his sorrows, and told a woman there about his loss. To prove this was not a figment of his imagination, he showed her his genital area. The woman immediately recognized the demonic at work and enquired as to the suspects. They needed to identify who cast the spell so the youth could regain his manhood. The wise woman advised him to use violence if kindness failed, which the young man took to heart. At dusk, he lay in wait for his ex-girlfriend, who Kramer always referred to as ‘the witch.’ Politely he asked her to give

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him back his health. While the young man couched his request in medical terms, the woman immediately transferred it to a moral and legal context. She claimed to be innocent and to know nothing. The protagonist then turned violent. He lunged at his ex-girlfriend and pulled at the ends of her scarf, threatening to strangle her to death. The dispute over the stolen penis was staged as a bodily battle of the sexes. Each combatant had power over the other. The woman had the man’s sexual potency; he could destroy her physical existence. In direct confrontation, the woman was defeated: her face turning blue, she was ready to concede anything, begged for mercy, and promised healing. She returned his member by touch and word. Grabbing the man between the thighs, she said, ‘You now have what you want.’ When his demand was met, the youth transformed from a victim to a witness of demonic magic. By feeling, seeing, and touching, he realized that his penis was back and told others about his disturbing experience. Reflecting on this story in the Hammer of Witches, Johann Weyer also strives for clarification. Through a series of questions, he makes it clear how unlikely penis stealing is. How could this be done without bloodshed? How could the procreative organs suddenly be returned? Castration is life-threatening and excruciating, yet alleged penis stealing posed no danger to life. Weyer was convinced that the devil was neither able to create new things nor to heal the sick. Therefore, he considered the accusation false. Men who thought they had lost their sexual organ were deceived by the devil. The restoration of potency fits his explanatory model: as soon as the scales fell from their eyes, the men realized that their genitals were intact.14 Even Kramer reckoned with sensory deception. Under no circumstances should one believe that a ‘witch’ could actually separate male reproductive organs from the body and reattach them.15 Rather, men often simply thought that their penis had disappeared. Such an illusion was created when a flat, flesh-coloured patch covered his genitals; the victim could no longer see or feel anything that reminded him of his manhood. Kramer also considered the existence of penis nests, of which he gives a detailed account, to be a diabolical deception. According to a common rumour, ‘witches’ sometimes kept a considerable number of penises—twenty or even thirty—in a bird’s nest or a cupboard. Detached, the male members seemed to have a life of their own; they moved and ate oats.16

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The Hammer of Witches is a treasure trove for psychiatrists and sex therapists, as the author has a real obsession with sex. With the phantasm of stolen penises, he fuels the fear of female potency and male impotence. Kramer is deeply misogynistic17 : while he acknowledges that demonic magic can cause women’s sterility and miscarriages, most of his examples involve harm done to men. Women’s religious and moral instability and men’s greater attractiveness to demons were the reasons Kramer gave. Despite all his horror stories, he was careful not to allow women too much influence over the male body, stating that men were not harmed by witches’ magic, but by the hidden power of the devil. Besides the detailed psychological explanation, Kramer provided a physiological reason why more men than women are bewitched: it is easier to make a man impotent. As soon as the sperm ducts are blocked, ejaculation and even erection are impossible.18 Barbara’s Confession The demonologists’ debate on penis stealing could be dismissed as learned speculation had it not led to the relentless persecution and extermination of ‘witches.’ Women (and men) were burned at the stake because they were accused of rendering people unable to procreate through sorcery. One of the victims of the demonologists’ infertility craze was forty-year-old Barbara Kurzhalsin from Reichertshofen. She was accused of killing her seven children, most of them herself, and of ‘taking the manhood’ from two men.19 The fact that her two marriages remained childless, although Barbara was obviously capable of reproduction, may have aroused the inquisitors’ scepticism. According to the record of her trial in 1629, she made a comprehensive confession. At that time, the alleged offences had occurred more than ten years ago. Barbara’s first husband Michael Reuter, who had died long ago, was said to be her first victim, and her second, a certain Wolf Widmann from Gottenzhauen. Genital evidence and witness testimony were absent, and replaced by the extorted confession. The offence of penis stealing is presented in the trial record as a perversion of an act of love. One night, Barbara meddled with Michael’s member. Her desire was not for coitus; on the contrary, she planned to prevent it permanently. She took the penis in her hand, which she

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had previously smeared with a devilish ointment. Instead of lubrication, this conjured castration. The spell worked by combining a symbolic act of touching with a magical substance and performative words. Barbara proclaimed, ‘now I’m going to take away your tip,’ invoked the metaphysical instance of evil, ‘in the devil’s name,’ and anticipated the intended purpose: ‘so you don’t know what to do with me anymore.’ Contrary to what is described in the Hammer of Witches, according to the court records, this was a real robbery, not demonic deception. That night, Michael’s sexual organ passed into Barbara’s possession. After four days, at the devil’s behest, she threw the penis into the river Ilm, so it was no longer possible to reverse the demonic magic. Therefore, according to the prosecution, she could no longer help her husband to have a child. The second magical castration precedes the first in time, but follows it in the narrative, largely repeating the same content, merely bolstering the argument to make the other case seem all the more credible. Barbara’s sexual assaults are portrayed in the records as an attack on the gender order. Under torture, the supposedly overpowering woman had no choice but to declare that the devil incited her to steal two penises. For the Inquisition, Barbara’s confession was indispensable. Accused persons could only be sentenced as ‘witches’ if they admitted their offence.20 If they protested their innocence, this was interpreted to their disadvantage. A ‘witch’ who stayed stubbornly silent or denied the charges against her was considered a particularly serious case, who had to be brutally forced to talk. Torture set in motion a dangerous mechanism that fuelled and sustained the cultural fear of impotence. Lyndal Roper shows how ‘Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany’ were inextricably intertwined in her illuminating study, Witch Craze (2004).21 The accused were forced to confess to demonic fertility crimes they could never have committed. Their accusers and persecutors saw the extorted confessions as confirmation that such crimes were committed and had to be vigorously stamped out. With their assertion that fertility was endangered and needed protection, the inquisitors helped to create normativity. Having children was considered the natural and normal thing to do in marriage. Not having children, then, seemed unnatural, abnormal, and even diabolical. This demonological logic can hardly be summed up more succinctly than with the phrase ‘the devil wants infertility.’

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Demonic Means: Legal and Illegal Ways to Have a Child ‘How far will we go for a child?’ This is the title question posed by the German science journalist Martin Spiewak in his book addressed to the involuntarily childless.22 Not everything that is medically possible is legally permitted in all European countries. Some reproductive techniques such as egg donation or surrogacy are considered immoral in Germany, and are therefore prohibited. Medical ethics debates about the extent to which national laws on reproductive medicine should be adapted to international practices are intense. Early modern demonologists also explored the boundaries of permissible action and distinguished between legal and illegal paths to parenthood. This shifts my focus from the people blamed for infertility to those who experienced it. But the two groups were not as easy to separate as the inquisitors would have liked. Just as people today circumvent legal restrictions by undergoing fertility treatment abroad, premodern people transgressed prohibitions to fulfil their longing for children. Spiritual authorities therefore warned them not to seek the help through magic. The Demonologists’ Diagnosis Mediaeval and early modern authors were under no illusion that everyone could have children. Certain types of infertility were considered natural and incurable. However, in many cases of sexual dysfunction caused by demonic magic, they considered recovery possible. Demonologists drew careful distinctions between temporary and permanent impotence. Kramer outlined a concrete contemporary conundrum. ‘Peter has had his member removed, but he does not know whether it has been removed through sorcery or else […]. Are there ways of judging and deciding […]? it is possible to answer that there are.’23 The passage adheres to the pattern of advice literature; a person seeking competent help describes their problem. In Kramer’s view, supernatural impotence was always an indicator of the afflicted person’s misconduct. If a spell was cast on a married couple, it was a clear sign that at least one of the partners had sinned. Therefore, the author of the Hammer of Witches recommended impotent men examine their conscience.24 This led them into a self-torturous search for possible causes, as can be observed in other contexts to this day. People

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who cannot have children often blame themselves and are plagued by feelings of guilt. What have I done wrong? Could I have prevented my infertility with a different lifestyle? Kramer had no shortage of answers. In his opinion, both the crime and the punishment were related to sexuality, the area in which humans sinned most and God allowed bewitchment the most. As in some of the theological and medical discourses, Kramer blamed those who suffered from sexual dysfunction, asserting that adulterers and fornicators were most likely to be punished by God with barrenness. However, he did not conclude the contrary to this, that demonic magic was legitimized by religion. In the Hammer of Witches, women who knew magic were always seen as confederates of the devil, never as instruments of God. Examination of one’s own conscience could be supplemented by an external diagnosis of symptoms. Kramer referred to a commentary on sentences by Henricus of Segusio (shortly before 1200–1271), which declared the penis to be the measure of male potency.25 If the member showed no movement at all and a man could never sleep with a woman, he was generally unable to procreate. But if the penis could be stimulated to erection, this was probably a case of demonic magic. Henricus regarded impotence with one particular partner as an indication of a supernatural cause: experience showed that men who could not sleep with their wives, but were not impotent otherwise, were bewitched. Kramer explicitly warned against citing these ideas publicly in a sermon, believing that the learned debate on impotence was unsuitable for the common folk. Henricus of Segusio’s comments are far less provocative than Kramer’s page-long expositions on disturbed and demonic sexuality. The Hammer of Witches contains a differentiated case analysis so that every man can assess his potency problem for himself. Is he potent with other women or not, does he desire his wife or not, can he get an erection or not, does he have an ejaculation or not? This catalogue of questions was to be used to determine both whether demonic magic had been used and to what end. Of course, such detailed research into the sexual preferences of impotent men was not relevant to their treatment: the inquisitor’s interest was far more pronounced than can be justified for religious remedies. How the sexual dysfunction developed confirmed the demonologists’ diagnosis. The experts believed that if the ability to procreate returned after some time, it was most likely a case of demonic magic. In all the impotence stories of the Hammer of Witches, the return from infertility to fertility is regarded as evidence of a supernatural cause. However, Kramer

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made it clear that demonic magic could cause permanent impotence; if no human antidote existed, was known, or was allowed, the man could never sleep with a woman again. This emphasizes an aspect that is of little relevance to the theological, medical, and legal reflections on infertility before Modernity, but which determines the discussions about fertility treatment techniques today. While procreation per se is evaluated positively—at least within marriage—in most fields, demonologists focused on the method. Prohibited means Kramer was emphatic that the end of procreation did not justify the means. He drew a precise distinction between legal and illegal ways to overcome infertility. Under no circumstances should involuntarily childless people turn to those who knew magic, accept harm to others, or seek the help of demons.26 Yet, Kramer berated the many people who did not shy away from such solutions and sought help from ‘witches.’ The author of the Hammer of Witches was especially irate that women healers competed with the church’s offers of help, to the disadvantage of priests and exorcists. He observed that bewitched people preferred to turn to ‘witches’ because they often relieved them of their suffering. He was incensed that not even places of pilgrimage could have such a large influx of poor and sick people. Therefore, he sought to defame women healers by accusing them of an insidious seduction strategy: ‘witches’ deliberately caused harm to make people dependent on them. The problem he highlighted is that, in fulfilling the desire for children, those seeking help and their helpers did not always want the same thing. He cautioned the reader that placing oneself in the hands of fertility experts with selfish interests could have unforeseen consequences. While ‘witches’ demonstrably could undo demonic magic, their aid should not be sought under any circumstances. Kramer made no exception for those ‘witches’ who used magic exclusively not to harm, but to heal. He was not interested in whether wise women helped others to have or not to have children, but demanded a detailed investigation into whether the means were legal or not. If the methods were permitted, Kramer had no reservations whatsoever and absolved the helper of the accusation of witchcraft. In cases of prohibition, he differentiated between principle and context. All means in which demons are invoked were forbidden, so if a woman was accused of witchcraft, the judge was to carefully examine the methods used. In

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the Hammer of Witches, everything extraordinary that only the devil could have prompted is considered suspicious. Judges were to be alert when restrictions were placed on healing, because ‘witches’ only provided support to some, but not to others. Kramer considered women who assisted at births and had power over the lives of mother and child to be particularly dangerous. In every village, there was a midwife practising witchcraft who is in league with the devil, he wrote, characterizing their power as fundamentally uncanny. ‘Witches’ who only wanted to help should be condemned, too, as at any time they could decide to harm.27 Medicinal and magical remedies such as the fertility bandage and belt Francesca recommended to her sister Margherita Datini (see Chapter 2) would probably have aroused Kramer’s suspicions. Rooting Out the Causes After Kramer declared the popular solution illegal, he only saw one more radical option. Instead of eliminating demonic magic, the ‘heresy of witches’ was to be eradicated. For sorcery, the inquisitor showed no mercy: ‘witches’ deserved the death penalty even if they returned to the Christian faith and repented their deeds. Again and again, Kramer emphasized the harm they caused to humans and animals, no least in terms of fertility. The third part of the Hammer of Witches was dedicated to their conviction and destruction.28 To this end, Kramer developed an elaborate method of interrogation in which religious appeals and manipulative kindness alternate with psychological and physical violence. Torture was used to force ‘witches’ to confess their offences in full detail. Right down to the wording, Kramer prescribed how to conduct the process and formulate the records. The question–answer catalogue was to be worked through step by step, so that the accused could do no more than respond to specific questions within a predefined framework of argumentation. According to the Hammer of Witches, the main strategy to promote fertility was to kill the person accused of inflicting impotence. But demonologists were equally concerned about the bewitched, whose religious and moral misconduct was said to have made this sorcery possible. Kramer advised them to take up the church’s offer of salvation, since the sacrament of penance was considered the strongest remedy against demonic magic.29 The bewitched should confess their sins with a contrite heart and sincerely atone through tears, almsgiving, prayers, and fasting. In Kramer’s view, all clergy-led rites of the church—communion, pilgrimage,

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prayer, confession, and exorcism—were recommendable. Priests and exorcists were exhorted to take on the role of spiritual doctor and proffer the ‘church’s medicine,’ placing the bewitched in the role of patients. In a religious context, however, healing was not automatic. As Kramer emphasized, recovery was in the hands of God, who knew best what is right for every person seeking aid. The Hammer of Witches provides detailed information on how to perform an exorcism. First, the bewitched person must make their confession. This spiritual preparation is followed by cleaning the house to banish any danger of local infection. Every nook and cranny, beds, upholstery, and doorsteps must be carefully searched to see if any means of demonic magic might be hidden there. Found objects should be burnt immediately, preferably all beds and clothes—and even the place of residence—should be changed. Only then does the actual exorcism begin, to be performed in the morning with a consecrated candle and holy water in the church and repeated three times. Finally, the exorcized person is to receive the Eucharist. Demonological fertility therapy was costly, complex, and without any guarantee of success.30 It is little wonder that those who longed for children preferred to turn to wise women for healing rather than to ordained men for exorcism. Not even in Kramer’s case stories did impotent people undergo the complete treatment programme of the church. Although the Count of Westreich had the well drained and the pot with the enchanted objects burned, he refrained from leaving his house and farm. Nor did the young man from Ravensburg allow himself to be exorcized by a priest, but was content with violently assaulting his ex-girlfriend. According to Kramer’s critics, the treatment success did not depend on exorcism, but on the subject’s own imagination. Johann Weyer told the story of an impotent nobleman who thought he was under a spell and was cured by a trick.31 He was told about an ointment that had cured another man of impotence. When the nobleman tried the miracle remedy himself, his procreative power returned. Weyer clarified that this was simply a placebo. The ointment had no potency-enhancing effect whatsoever; it worked only because the man believed in it. Weyer saw this story as yet another confirmation that belief in witches is nothing but vain delusion and foolish projection. Impotence through demonic magic, in his opinion, could only be remedied by demonological elucidation; supposedly bewitched men should use their brains and think better of it.

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Demonic Infertility: The Devil’s Reproductive Techniques Reproductive technology today makes parenthood possible for people who could never have a child through sex, including women with blocked fallopian tubes or without a uterus, men without functional sperm, and same-sex couples. Fertility clinics often imply that conceiving is just a question of finding the right technique. Even for the early modern demonologists, overcoming infertility was primarily a question of method. The broad consensus was that the devil could not procreate. But many authors were convinced that he had techniques to compensate for this deficit. While the demonologists ascribed him supernatural power, they described how he interacted with people to determine their (in)fertility. Union With the Devil Whether demons could reproduce, a question which had been discussed since antiquity, gained significance in relation to the early modern belief in unions with the devil. What happens when ‘witches’ sleep with the devil? Can this lead to children? The accusation of having entered into a sexual relationship with the devil weighed heavily in the witch trials, due to church teaching on marriage and sexuality. If, through intercourse, man and woman become one flesh (Gen 2:24), sex with the devil must have similar consequences; the ‘witch’ merges with evil and enters into a union of body and soul.32 Kramer paints these encounters vividly. As disgusted as he is fascinated, he describes how half-naked women perform rhythmic movements in utmost arousal in the open fields where anyone can see, while their sexual partner remains invisible. Although union with the devil is interpreted as sexual excess and punished as a severe offence, the sexual practices are remarkably conventional. As a rule, demons in the Hammer of Witches conform to the implicit norm that sex is only acceptable between heterosexual partners and reinforce the gender binary. Female demons are called succubae because they lie down during coitus. Male demons are called incubi, because they penetrate. This demonology thus reflects contemporary concepts of gender: it is both binary and heteronormative. Union with the devil is depicted in the full-page woodcut in Ulrich Molitor’s Von den unholden (Fig. 5.1).33 It shows an opposite-sex couple dressed like burghers of the time, embracing. Man and woman look at each other, eye to eye. The impression of figural unity is reinforced by

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Fig. 5.1 Union with the devil—woodcut from Von den unholden und hexen by Ulrich Molitor (1508)

the fact that the woman’s floor-length dress and the man’s thigh seem to grow together to form an abdomen. Yet, the intimate scene is also disturbing. The man’s left leg slims down into an oversized rooster’s leg. His left hand, with which he tenderly embraces his beloved, resembles a claw; on his long back, you can just see his tail. In the open countryside, they are surrounded by trees, hills, and fields; a schematized church is depicted far away on the horizon. The space itself suggests that the relationship is outside the legitimate order. The woman’s headgear represents another transgression: since the High Middle Ages, the coif

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has been a hallmark of being married.34 So the woman who is making eyes at the devilish gallant is committing adultery. The woodcut anticipates a position that was then contested in the dialogue. The sceptical Sigismund was not at all convinced that the devil could sleep with women. He considered the confessions of ‘witches’ to be of little value and preferred to refer to learned authorities. He quoted the desert father John Cassian (360–435 CE), who found sexual relations between demons and women implausible for two reasons.35 His first argument started with reproduction, which he saw as a necessary consequence of sexual activity. If demons could sleep with women, children must have resulted from these relationships, which was not the case. His second argument addressed the connection between sex and desire. Demons would feel more lust if they remained among their own kind. A human partner could hardly satisfy demonic desire. Likewise, Johann Weyer in his De lamiis rejected the notion of union with the devil. Anyone who thought that people can have sexual intercourse with evil spirits was very much mistaken, he argued, according to the basic principles of natural philosophy. Where there is no cause, no incentive, and no desire, nothing is triggered. The devil lacked all the prerequisites for human sexuality: he had no procreative organ, no blood, and needed no food, so he did not have the necessary sexual energy and could not produce semen. Weyer assumed an inseparable link between desire, sex, and reproduction, in which a possible consequence becomes an indispensable condition: without reproduction there is no desire. Since demons did not have to reproduce, they did not have sexual intercourse. A desire to have children only arises if one wants to preserve one’s own kind.36 Weyer was relentlessly critical of some contemporaries’ notions. To reveal their absurdity, he placed himself in the role of the devil’s sexual partners. Even if demons were capable of sexual intercourse, their partners would be anything but attractive, since for Weyer, ‘witches’ were no more than foolish women, devalued not for their relationship with the devil, but for their age: it simply was not credible that the devil would want to have sex with ‘old hags.’ With age, strength and sap were lost, so the women could hardly be expected to still feel desire themselves. Weyer could not understand why women should prefer to have sex with the devil, rather than their husbands. Since the devil’s member was supposed to be completely cold, coitus could not be pleasurable—other authors compared sex with the devil unflatteringly to being touched by a cold

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wet sack. After his thought experiment, Weyer returned to his starting position that union with the devil was nothing but ‘pure fantasy and a demonic fool’s errand.’37 Melanchthon’s student Hermann Witekind (1522–1603) considered union with the devil to be largely an invention.38 A woman and a demon could not sleep together because their nature and essence were unequal. Although Witekind did not completely rule out sex, the demon would then need a material form. He would have to appropriate the body of a deceased person so that he could penetrate a ‘witch.’ What kind of passion was that supposed to be? In Witekind’s reading, sex with a demon proves an act of latent necrophilia from which every sensible person should recoil. Recalling alleged witches’ own words, Witekind emphasized that the devil’s seed was cold and sex with him could not be compared to conjugal love. Because the devil used a corpse—which had long lost the ability to procreate—as a cover, intercourse could not lead to pregnancy. So ‘witches’ should not be believed when they claimed to have had the devil’s child. Demonic Semen Transfer Early modern authors agreed that demons could not reproduce, using arguments from both natural philosophy and theology.39 Even Heinrich Kramer regarded fertility as a privilege granted by God to humans, based on the biblical mandate to multiply (Gen 1:28). For Abraham Saur (1545–1593), who edited an extensive collection of demonological texts entitled Theatrum de Veneficis (Theatre of Sorcerers; 1586), fertility was a divine blessing. He quoted the first book of the Bible, where Jacob rejects his wife Rachel’s demand for a child (Gen 30:2). According to this, God alone was responsible for fulfilling the longing for children. Another important argument came from Christology—the singular position of Jesus Christ would be at stake if others could also be born without the intervention of a man. Ulrich Molitor compared the demon child to the Christ child to draw a key distinction: Jesus alone was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born without male seed, whereas the evil spirit could not beget. Kramer was convinced that the devil could compensate for his infertility. All he needed was a human producer whose seed he could collect and transfer.40 Usually, a demon was said to gain the seed by sleeping with a man as a succubus. He could then take the form of an incubus

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and pass the seed on to a ‘witch.’ In Kramer’s view, the devil was so powerful that he could slip invisibly between a couple, mix different semen, or transfer the sperm in several stages. This ability was needed for certain combinations of couples. In the Hammer, witches and sorcerers were always assigned a specific demon, who, if needed, cooperated with others in reproduction. Thus, a demon could pass on the seed he had received from his male partner to another demon, who took the form of an incubus and transferred the sperm into the body of a woman, who then conceived. Kramer explained the elaborate procedure with demon morality; they found this mode of reproduction so abhorrent that they would not wish to do it alone. The author of The Hammer of Witches was fascinated by every detail of this kind of sex. Does a demon who lies with a ‘witch’ always ejaculate, and how can he obtain sperm from someone without their knowledge? Men did not always voluntarily invest their seed in a relationship with the devil; of this Kramer was convinced. Rather, demons could steal sperm that was discharged unnoticed during sleep. Since only superfluous bodily fluids are excreted in this way, this semen was of inferior quality, so coitus was preferable. But if the nightly sperm was useable, the demon would do so gladly. In Kramer’s view, demons paid attention to their partner’s readiness to conceive. If a ‘witch’ was old and infertile, the demon avoided ejaculation so as not to waste its potential, but would not hesitate to do so if she was capable of reproduction. Kramer portrayed the devil as a shrewd fertility expert and calculating sexual partner. During coitus, he sought to produce as many progeny as possible despite his infertility. Other demonologists considered pregnancy through demonic insemination impossible. Ulrich Molitor started his critique with the quality of the seed, moving on to logistical problems and physical constitution. Even if the demon could absorb and retain sperm, he would not immediately pass it on to a woman, and this delay would render the seed useless. Drawing on ancient humoral pathology, Molitor argued that sexual organs alone were not enough to have children. While the testicles were ‘the prince of procreative power,’41 they could only perform their specific function if the seed was properly tempered. Molitor considered the male body in its entirety and established a connection between the genitals and the heart as the seat of the inner life force. Only if the procreative power was stoked from the heart was the ejaculate usable for reproduction. Since a demon lacked the necessary inner energy and warmth, it could not have children.

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Paul Frisius in Von deß Teuffels Nebelkappen (On the Devil’s Hoodwink, printed in 1586) endeavoured to harmonize the opposing positions. He developed the demonologists’ model of reproduction to completely decouple procreation from coitus: the devil was such a skilful manipulator that he could arouse people even without erotic cause. Through imagination, he evoked an erection with ejaculation and uses the sperm for his own purposes.42 Frisius tried to consider the objections raised by Molitor and others against the theory that the devil could transfer semen, shifting the perspective from the technique to the product. Because the stolen seed was cold and weak, did not draw strength from the heart, and was damaged in transit, he argued, nothing good and strong could come from it. Frisius did not exclude the possibility that the devil could reproduce, but massively devalued the begotten being. A child created by diabolical reproductive technology was deficient in every respect. In their speculations on how it was possible for an infertile demon to have a child, the demonologists anticipated a well-known modern reproductive technique: sperm donation by a third party.43 But the devil’s metaphysical superiority made his methods strikingly different from heterologous insemination in a fertility clinic today. According to the demonologists, the man did not make a free choice to donate his sperm, but the devil secretly stole the by-product of his sexual activity. In both cases, the sperm producer was an unknown third party whom the woman seeking to conceive did not know personally. But the women who bore the ‘devil’s children’ did not even know that a donor was involved; they must have assumed that the sperm came from their sexual partner. In this early modern model, the demon takes up the position of fertility doctor, but also enters into a physical relationship. Although sperm can be obtained through sexual stimulation, importing it into a woman’s body remains linked to coitus. Thus, the demon functions as a sexual partner, semen storer, and reproduction manager. Defining fatherhood The model of demonic insemination raises further questions. Who is the father of a child born from sex with the demon? The man who produced the semen, or the demon who injects it during sex? In the history of assisted conception, the problem of paternity has been hotly debated. According to the Civil Code, the father of a child in the Federal Republic of Germany today is the person who is married to the mother

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at the time of birth, who has acknowledged paternity, or with whom paternity has been judicially established.44 While modern reproductive medicine has a vested interest in marginalizing the role of the sperm donor, early modern demonologists considered the material origin to be crucial. Kramer emphasized that the demon was only responsible for the transfer, but that procreation came from the sperm donor45 ; the child conceived was therefore by no means a son of the devil. Rather, the man who unknowingly and unwillingly passed on the seed was considered the father. The reason for the different perceptions of fatherhood is a different view of the world and the family. In premodern times, the sperm producer had to be regarded as the father so that the difference between God and the devil was preserved and the demon did not have divine procreative power. In modern times, the sperm donor is excluded from the role of father so that the family structure of parents and intended child is not disrupted by a third party.46 Through his superior knowledge, the devil was able to use the seed effectively. Kramer designed a demonic fertility model that can be characterized as an eugenics of evil. In his view, demons knew all too well about reproductive technology. Firstly, they knew about the constitution of the man from whom they took the semen; secondly, they could choose the woman best suited to receive that semen; thirdly, demons knew what external conditions were most favourable for pregnancy; and fourthly, they knew what was best suited to a child conceived under these circumstances. Therefore, according to Kramer, babies who were created through diabolical insemination were stronger than other children. The devil could not only compensate for his infertility, but use this multi-stage reproduction process to optimize it. He ensured that his progeny received the best opportunities for practising demonic magic. Kramer raised the alarm against the proliferation of such a ‘brood.’

Demonic Fertility: The Devil’s and Witches’ Children Demonologists who saw union with the devil as a fiction had to find a way to explain stories and forced confessions about demonic fertility. Where do the ‘devil’s children’ come from? How can women claim to have become pregnant from sex with a demon? What do you do with crying infants or other babies who deviate from the norm? According to Molitor, critics had just three options to explain the origin of these

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children: either the children were stolen, or it was pure imagination, or an apparition conjured by the devil.47 The metaphysics of infertility demanded that young parents be on the alert, lest the devil deceive them. Phantom Pregnancy Men can easily be mistaken when they think they are the father of a child, but women know exactly whether they have given birth or not. This basic reproductive rule was challenged in early modern demonology. Young parents needed to beware demonic deceptions, phantom pregnancies, and children foisted on them. In making this case, the learned authors assumed a blatant knowledge gap between the manipulating devil and the deceived women, which they revealed with a nod to enlightened rationalism. Even Kramer cautioned that some women were not really haunted by an incubus, but only believed so. Some seemed to be pregnant by demons and their bellies grew enormous. But when the time came for them to give birth, they only emitted a great deal of wind.48 Phantom pregnancy was used to explain the devil’s fertility by those demonologists who rejected the idea of semen transfer. Even they had to explain how babies seemed to have been born out of relationships between ‘witches’ and demons. Ulrich Molitor had the three participants in his dialogue discuss several potential cases of devil children, which were refuted one by one. Sceptical Sigismund does not accept the first example because it is a fictional narrative: the prose romance about Melusine, who, as a fairy, marries a count and gives him many sons.49 The second story—from a more historical source, the Speculum historiale (Historical Mirror) of Vincent of Beauvais (d. c. 1264)—poses the dialogue partners a greater challenge. The proponent of the witch-hunt, Cunradus, recalls the birth story of the wizard Merlin, who King Arthur found when he was looking for a counsellor born without a human father. Merlin’s supernatural descent was authenticated by word and deed: he had outstanding knowledge, helped the king, and prophesied the future. Moreover, his mother confirmed that she conceived her son with a demon. Her oral confession was put in writing before the king and then passed down.50 To sum up, the narrator attempts to authenticate this precarious origin story with five proofs: Merlin’s miraculous abilities, the maternal confession, the royal authority, the written record, and the assured tradition. The legal scholar Ulricus counters and rationalizes the event by stating that Merlin was a normal human being, conceived by a man and born to

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a woman: the mother’s claim to have conceived her son from an incubus was due to woman’s error and demonic deceit.51 In Merlin’s birth story, the female body becomes the showcase for a demonic fertility simulation. The devil could manipulate the mind and body of a woman devoted to him. By all exterior indications, she was expecting a child, but it was a phantom pregnancy. Her body had swelled because air was blown into it. The evil spirit elaborately staged his fatherhood by causing all the typical symptoms of childbirth; the woman was not even spared the pains of labour. While she had to believe she had become the mother of a devil child, the demon deceived her one last time. A stolen child, conceived naturally, was foisted on her. Merlin was therefore not a son of the devil, but his changeling.52 Here, the demon has much more power over reproduction than the human: the male member is infertile, but has much greater reproductive agency, while the woman is aware of neither her child’s genealogy, nor whether she gave birth to it herself. In Molitor’s dialogue, Ulricus uses similar arguments to disprove the last two cases.53 He interprets the sudden disappearance of the swan knight and the silent mermaid with her son as an apparition conjured by the devil. If the child had been human, it would have drowned in the sea. The devil had not foisted a strange child on the supposed father, but had taken the form of the boy. With this interpretation, Ulricus draws attention to another essential quality of being human that demons lacked: the devil could not reproduce, but nor did he have to die. Reproduction and conservation, infertility and immortality, are linked. Other demonologists cited contemporary cases of women deceived into believing they were mothers. Paul Frisius described an incident in Konstanz, when a young woman named Magdalena was allegedly tormented by the devil with a phantom pregnancy.54 Like that of her biblical namesake, it is a conversion story. After the Konstanz Magdalena had renounced evil and returned to Christ, the devil gave his apostate no peace. Day and night he tormented her and pretended that she had to bear his child. A midwife was repeatedly called, but unable to help. When Magdalena finally gave birth, it was not to a living baby, but to countless material objects: nails, glass, wood, hair, bone, stone, and iron. The birth event became a moment of revelation that the devil is not able to beget. He operates with dead matter, through which he can cause all kinds of harm, but never create new life.

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Changelings Children brought into a relationship by the devil were a separate issue for demonologists. Their perspective shifted from ‘witches’ accused of entering into unions with the devil to ‘innocent’ women. The Hammer of Witches warned readers that demons could horribly rob mothers of their own children and foist on them a stranger’s child.55 This made changelings a risk for all parents. Families suffered particularly badly when the devil himself took the place of their little one. Kramer detailed the discernible characteristics of changelings: they are very heavy, but lean; they can never get enough milk, but do not grow. Most tragically of all, the parents do not even notice the substitution, as they are fooled by a demon’s mirage. Yet these children are such a challenge that people can despair. Accordingly, after desired and refused parenthood, aspects of regretted motherhood and fatherhood were also negotiated in demonology. Stories of changelings belong to the collective narrative heritage of the early modern period. Even Martin Luther commented on this phenomenon in his Table Talk (1539/40). He saw early infant death as the work of the devil, attributed it to the emergence of changelings and reported on his own experiences.56 Eight years ago, he had seen a changeling aged twelve in Dessau. The child did not look noticeably different, but had the appetite of four grown men and an extremely active digestive system. The child’s reactions were challenging to everyone around it. If you touched it, it screamed. If someone suffered harm, it laughed. If happy, it cried. Luther advised drowning the child, but neither the Prince of Anhalt nor the Elector of Saxony wanted to do this, so Luther recommended a less martial method. They should have an Our Father prayed in church every day so that God would take away the devil’s child. After one year, this had the desired effect and the child died. Luther explained to his table companions that this death had been unavoidable. Changelings were ‘simply a mass of flesh without a soul.’57 Frequently, children turned out to be the devil’s spawn. Often the babies of women in childbed would be exchanged and the devil would take their place. Eating, excreting, and screaming like ten normal children, they gave their parents no peace. Luther did not regard changelings as creatures that deserved to live, but the devil’s plague. If such children died early, this could only be a salvation for the parents. According to Luther, the mother being ‘sucked dry’ is the surest sign the baby is a changeling.

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What did such stories trigger in young parents, their families, and their neighbours? How were children who required more care than usual perceived in the age of witch-hunts? The demonologists set standards for the behaviour of young children and branded deviations as diabolical. The preferred means of dealing with disagreeable children in many stories is violence. In the Dessau anecdote, the call to kill comes from Luther, is directed at the secular authorities, and is implemented by the Christian community. In other stories, parents even take action themselves to get rid of a changeling. Two stories in the Theatrum de Veneficis, one by Luther, the other by Frisius, are about how parents first want to cure their ‘abnormal’ child through a ritual.58 Here, too, the children are unpleasantly conspicuous because of their excessive appetite. One is insatiable, although it is nursed by its mother and five wet nurses. The other screams and eats incessantly without gaining weight. In Luther’s story, a Halberstadt father decides to take the child on a pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary. In Frisius, the mother from Hessloch sets out to make her child drink from St Cyriax’s holy well. Neither family reached their destination; each was suddenly disturbed while crossing a bridge. In space between the sky and the water, the child’s life is threatened and evil is particularly powerful. In the Halberstadt anecdote, the devil called, ‘Changeling, changeling,’ to which the boy immediately replied. When the father heard this, he became so enraged that he threw the little one and his basket into the water. While he cast away his sinister baby in the heat of the moment, the mother from Hessloch was urged to do so. Panting and sweating, she crossed a bridge with the all-too-heavy infant, where she was met by a travelling student. He confronted the mother with the demonic nature of her child and asked her to throw it into the stream. Horrified, the mother countered him and kissed her child lovingly. Only on the promise that she would find her biological baby at home in its cradle did she respond to the appeal. Weeping, the mother threw the infant into the stream, whereupon a great howling resounded under the bridge. The end of the story justified the act of violence: the mother found her real child safe and healthy at home. Horror stories of changelings were so widespread that some women themselves doubted their motherhood, as Frisius narrated in a second story.59 Near Breslau, a young mother had to work in the fields shortly after giving birth and laid her newborn down to sleep on a heap of grass. When she returned to breastfeed, the infant appeared strangely changed.

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Neither the greedy suckling nor the inhuman howling sounded familiar to her. In the following days, the baby brought the young mother to the brink of despair. Finally, she turned to her lord, who advised violence. She should put the changeling exactly where she had found it and strike it violently with a rod. The brute method worked according to demonological logic: the devil appeared and gave the woman back her biological child. On the surface, the changeling stories aim to demonstrate the dangerous power of the devil. The blessing of fertility turns out to be a curse when the devil is involved. Underneath, the stories address the fact that parenthood can be very stressful and that children’s behaviour does not always meet expectations. At first glance, the repentance of the mother in Frisius resembles the modern phenomenon of regretting motherhood, on which the Israeli sociologist Orna Donath conducted the ground-breaking research. She found that some mothers regret their decision to have a child and wish for their old life back.60 The young woman in the Breslau anecdote also lamented her lot. But while the women interviewed today regret ever having become mothers, the Breslau mother merely wished she had had another baby. According to the author of the story, the cause of the excessive demands on her is clearly metaphysical. Insatiable children are demonized as manifestations of the devil and handed over to death. Demonologists did allot some responsibility to the parents and take them to task.61 In Kramer’s view, there were two reasons why God allowed child stealing: either parents loved their progeny too much and were therefore given problem children for their own good, or the mothers were being punished for getting involved with a demon. In Kramer’s interpretation, God slips into the role of a jealous husband who takes revenge on his unfaithful wife by withdrawing the child. Molitor made the substitution less dependent on the actions of the parents than on the religious status of the children, as unbaptized babies were most at risk of becoming victims of demonic exchange. But for Frisius, the ones mainly affected were people who enjoyed sex but shied away from the consequences. As soon as a pregnancy occurred, they cursed the unborn child; once the baby was born and cried occasionally, they wished it—cradle, swaddling, and all—would go to hell. In sum, problem children are the product and mirror of their parents’ behaviour. Overall, the notion of changelings had ambivalent effects on the early modern concept of the family. The fact that the devil could substitute,

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swap, and replace children meant that biological bonds became relativized. The child’s behaviour seemed more important for belonging to the family than ‘natural’ processes of parenthood, which the devil could disturb, manipulate, and simulate. At the same time, there was a growing need for genealogical certainty to raise biological offspring: another person’s child could be a gift from the devil and bring countless problems. Family Stigma Early modern witch discourse was primarily a medial phenomenon; its persuasive power fed on imaginings and narratives. Because the inquisitors transferred (in)fertility stories from the literature to their lifeworld, metaphysical speculations led to mass murder. In many cases, family origin was taken as the first clue of the defendants’ guilt. Kramer considered ‘the Heresy of Sorceresses’ to be a family stigma passed on from mother to child. The daughters of ‘witches’ were disreputable even among their peers because they were infected at an early age and imitated their mothers’ crimes.62 Therefore, Kramer required judges to carefully examine the family relations of a ‘witch’ and to inquire about the cause of her parents’ deaths. Genealogical suspicions actually played a role in early modern witch trials, as is proven both by the Reichertshofen case in 1629 described above, and a Metz court case in 1519. For the Dominican inquisitor Nicholas Savini, the fact that the mother of one of the accused had already been condemned as a ‘witch’ was more than enough evidence. In line with the Hammer, he argued that ‘witches’ consecrated their progeny to the devil directly after birth and that the children usually came from coitus with an incubus. The learned syndic of the imperial city of Metz, Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486–1535), did not accept this argument. Instead, he called the inquisitor a ‘murderous, cruel, bloodthirsty, […] wicked father,’ who ‘with these forged devises drew poore guiltless women to the racke’ and blamed others, although he himself was a worse heretic.63 Agrippa considered the notion that witchcraft was a familial hereditary disease absurd. Barbara Kurzhalsin, who was forced to confess to stealing the penises of two men, did not have such a capable advocate. She too was targeted by the Inquisition not only because of her seven deceased children, but also because her mother had been condemned as

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a ‘witch.’ Even as a child, she was said to have incited her daughter to sorcery, according to the court records. As in law, all the more so in demonology: before Modernity, fertility was not an absolute value, but dependent on status and context, even highly ambivalent. People’s fertility and infertility were considered demonic as soon as a ‘witch’ was suspected of being involved. Those who might want to protect the reproductive assets of some, simultaneously advocated the destruction of others. Because all the devil’s children were to be destroyed, many daughters of alleged ‘witches’ were burned at the stake.

Prospects The great cultural fear of impotence and loss of virility, a driving force behind early modern witch-hunts, has diminished today. In the West, the metaphysical explanation for infertility has largely lost its significance. Instead of being negotiated between God and the devil, ‘witches’ and ‘bewitched,’ involuntary childlessness is usually negotiated between doctors and patients. Reality caught up with the demonologists’ bold speculations on how children could be created by someone infertile. Heterologous insemination is standard in reproductive medicine; in the majority of treatments, fertilization does not occur in the mother’s body, but in a Petri dish. What remains, however, is the concern about whether children are ‘normal.’ As assisted conception moves increasingly further away from procreation through coitus, experts anxiously watch over whether the children are healthy and develop ‘normally.’ Can one even compare such cultural ideas and practices, which belong to completely different epochs and contexts, and have differing causes and effects? Is it legitimate to associate fertility treatments in the present day with early modern demonology? Comparative (in)fertility research has to face such critical questions. In my view, historical comparisons are always worthwhile when they help us to recognize analogies without ignoring cultural specifics. A cultural history of childlessness can reveal facets of our thinking that are hardly noticed, but subliminal. Without us even being aware of it, some patterns of interpretation may have become imprinted in cultural memory. Could the visions of semen transfer and procreation regardless of reproductive capacity that the demonologists first developed have had long-term consequences? Might the fear of demonic sexual practices still have an effect on the opponents of modern reproductive

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medicine? Or do they simply indicate a backlash against the promises made by fertility clinics? Does the Catholic Church today reject modern reproductive medicine because doctors have been placed in the role of the Christian Saviour? In its bioethics document, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does distinguish between legal and illegal ways to have a child and judges most reproductive techniques ‘morally unacceptable.’64 Members of other religious communities, too, exclude reproductive medicine that the biblical mandate to multiply could legitimize and that legislators have classified as morally unobjectionable. The metaphysics of (in)fertility seems to have been absorbed into the fields of moral theology and medical ethics by now, but it becomes tangible again in all kinds of demonization of childlessness, such as Pope Francis’ reference to the devil that ‘does not want us to give life […] to others.’65

Notes 1. Linda Bordoni, Pope Francis: ‘Fruitfulness is a blessing’, https://www.vat icannews.va/en/pope-francis/mass-casa-santa-marta/2017-12/pope-fra ncis-santa-marta-homily.html (accessed 31 March 2022). 2. See The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, transl. by Christopher S. Mackay (Cambridge, 2009). On the printing date, re-dating, and the problem of the author see Günter Jerouschek and Wolfgang Behringer, ‘“Das unheilvollste Buch der Weltliteratur?” Zur Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte des Malleus Maleficarum und zu den Anfängen der Hexenverfolgung’, in Heinrich Kramer (Institoris), Der Hexenhammer: Malleus Maleficarum, new transl. Wolfgang Behringer, Günter Jerouschek and Werner Tschacher, eds. Günter Jerouschek and Wolfgang Behringer, 11th edn (München, 2015 [2000]), pp. 9–98, here pp. 22–27, 31–40. 3. Jerouschek and Behringer, ‘Das unheilvollste Buch’, pp. 18–20. On the ‘Little Ice Age’ as a possible explanation for the growing attention to witchcraft see Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts. A Global History (Cambridge and Malden, 2004), pp. 87–88. 4. Cf. Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2006), pp. 186–207. 5. Cf. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 128, 171–173, 187–188, 254, 320– 321. On the fear, widespread in the Middle Ages, that demons could interfere with marital sexuality, see Adolph Franz, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter, 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1909, Reprint Graz, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 178–179.

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6. See e.g. Gerd Schwerhoff, ‘Rationalität im Wahn. Zum gelehrten Diskurs über die Hexen in der frühen Neuzeit’, Saeculum, 37 (1986), pp. 45–82; Wolfgang Ziegeler, Möglichkeiten der Kritik am Hexen- und Zauberwesen im ausgehenden Mittelalter: Zeitgenössische Stimmen und ihre soziale Zugehörigkeit (Köln and Wien, 1973) (Kollektive Einstellungen und sozialer Wandel im Mittelalter, 2). 7. Ulrich Molitor, Von den unholden oder hexen (Augsburg: Johan Otmar, weiber ainen man mügen verzobren damit 1508), fol. [avjv]: ob di er vngeberhafft werd vnd mit seiner frawen das eelich werck nit müg verbringen. See also ibid., fol. [avijr], eiijr. Sigismund refers to the Archduke of Tyrol, while Molitor names the other two characters after Konrad Schatz, the mayor of Konstanz, and himself. Julia Gold, ‘Von den vnholden oder hexen’: Studien zu Text und Kontext eines Traktats des Ulrich Molitoris (Hildesheim, 2016) (Spolia Berolinensia 35), pp. 165–171. For an annotated modern German translation see: Ulrich Molitor, Von Unholden und Hexen, ed. by Nicolaus Equiamicus (Diedorf, 2008). 8. On the statements of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century canonists, see Rider, Magic and Impotence, pp. 113–134. Around 30% of the 250 or so examples in the Hammer of Witches are attributed not to literary sources but to contemporary experience. Jerouschek and Behringer, ‘Das unheilvollste Buch’‚ p. 72; André Schnyder, Malleus Maleficarum von Heinrich Institoris (alias Kramer), unter Mithilfe Jakob Sprengers aufgrund der dämonologischen Tradition zusammengestellt, Kommentar zur Wiedergabe des Erstdrucks von 1487 (Hain 9238) (Göppingen, 1993), pp. 353–408; Schnyder, ‘Protokollieren und Erzählen. Episoden des Innsbrucker Hexenprozesses von 1485 in den dämonologischen Fallbeispielen des “Malleus Maleficarum” (1487) von Institoris und Sprenger und in den Prozeßakten’, Der Schlern: Monatszeitschrift für Südtiroler Landeskunde, 68 (1994), pp. 695–713, here p. 697. 9. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 279–281. 10. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 424–425, 281 (impotence as a result of separation), 190 (on canon law, citing the ‘Decretales Gregorii’, IX 5.12.5). 11. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 321–322. The story comes from Johannes Nider’s Formicarius (c. 1437). 12. It was translated into many languages, including German, see Johann Weyer, De lamiis: Das ist: Von Teuffelsgespenst Zauberern vnd Gifftbereytern […] (Frankfurt a.M.: Nikolaus Basse, 1586), hereafter pp. 32– 33. On Weyer and reception of his work see Hans-Peter Kneubühler, Die Überwindung von Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess (Diessenhofen, 1977), pp. 62–91; Hartmut Lehmann and Otto Ulbricht (eds), Vom Unfug des Hexen-Processes: Gegner der Hexenverfolgung von Johann Weyer bis Friedrich Spee (Wiesbaden, 1992) (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 55).

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13. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 200, 323–324. Kramer cites a second story, which he says a Dominican priest from Speyer authenticated. In confession, a young man revealed a salacious secret, showing the priest his genital area. The priest immediately concluded that sorcery had harmed him, enquired who was responsible and advised that the perpetrator be moved by flattering words. He is also said to have confirmed the return of the member by visual inspection. Cf. Walter Stephens, ‘Witches Who Steal Penises: Impotence and Illusion in Malleus maleficarum’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 28 (1998), pp. 495–529. 14. Weyer, De lamiis, p. 34: Es wirdt auch den Vnholden nachgesagt […] daß sie […] die Männliche Gliedmaß/ hinweg nemmen können/ von denselbigen aber/ welchen solcher Boß solt widerfahren seyn/ judicier vnd halt ichs gäntzlichen also/ daß sie durch den Teuffel an dem Verstandt vnd Sinn bethöret/[…] welche doch nachmals/ wann sie wider zu sich selber kommen/ den Betrug erstlich vermercken/ vnd jhre vorige Kräffte wider bekommen thun. Cf. Angus McLaren, Impotence: A Cultural History (Chicago and London, 2007), pp. 47–48. 15. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 324, 196. Yet, a demon is more than capable of this (ibid., p. 329). 16. Kramer in the Hammer of Witches, p. 328 evaluates a humanist joke as an eyewitness account. Other authors, too, considered penis nests to be a real danger, see e.g. Jacob von Lichtenberg, ‘Ware Entdeckung vnnd aller Artickel der Zauberey […]’, in Theatrum de veneficis: Das / ist: von Teuffelsgespenst Zauberern vnd Gifftbereitern/ Hexen vnd Vnholden […], ed. by Abraham Saur (Frankfurt a.M.: Nikolaus Basse, 1586), pp. 306–324, here pp. 311–312. 17. This is evidenced by his statements about the wickedness and manipulability of women, see Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 165–172. Frank Fürbeth argues that this gender specificity is relative, see his ‘“Weil ihre Bosheit maßlos ist”: Zur Einengung der thomistischen Superstitionenlehre auf das weibliche Geschlecht im Malleus Maleficarum’, in Silvia Bovenschen et al. (eds), Der fremdgewordene Text: Festschrift für Helmut Brackert zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin and New York, 1997), pp. 218– 232. On Kramer’s obsession with sex see Günter Jerouschek, ‘Heinrich Kramer (Institoris) – Zur Psychologie des Hexenjägers: Überlegungen zur Herkunft des Messers, mit dem der Mord begangen wurde’, in Günther Mensching (ed.), Gewalt und ihre Legitimation im Mittelalter (Würzburg, 2003), pp. 113–137; Jerouschek and Behringer, ‘Das unheilvollste Buch’, pp. 78–81. 18. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 188–189, 421. For other methods ‘witches’ were said to use to prevent coitus, see ibid, pp. 171–172, 189–190, 316, 421–426.

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19. Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland, ed. by Wolfgang Behringer, 3rd edn (München, 1995), no. 180, pp. 284–298, here p. 298: Zween hab sie ihre Manheit genommen. Erstlich ihrem verstorbenen Ehewürth Michael Reutter […] vor vngefähr 11 Jahren, habe sie bey der Nacht, als er geschlaffen, mit einer Handt, welche mit einer teuflischen Salben geschmirt gewesen, an sein mänlichs Glidt griffen mit Vermelden: Yezt nimb ich dir dein Zipfel ins Teufels Nahmen, das du nichts mehr mit mir zue schaffen haben kanst. Welchen sie, nachdem sie solchen bekommen, 4 Tag vffbehallten, hernach in das Waßer, die Illm genant, geworfen. 20. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 541. 21. Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze. Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven and London, 2004). 22. Martin Spiewak, Wie weit gehen wir für ein Kind? Im Labyrinth der Fortpflanzungsmedizin (Frankfurt a.M., 2002). 23. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 199–200. As explained in Chapter 3, the distinction between temporary and permanent impotence was relevant for the annulment of a marriage under canon law. 24. Cf. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 423–424, 269–270. Kramer gives a chilling account of a judge in Reichshofen who did not prosecute ‘witches’ whose wife gave birth to their child in pieces (ibid., p. 322). 25. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 190, 200. 26. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 402–403, 407–408, 275–276, 398. 27. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 640–644, 647. On midwives practising witchcraft cf. ibid, pp. 211, 643–644. See also Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini (London etc., 1988 [1957]), pp. 161– 163. 28. In this practical law section, crimes against fertility are hardly mentioned, presumably because Kramer based his text on Nicolaus Eymerich’s Directorium inquisitorum. Peter Segl, ‘Spanisches “Know-how” für Ketzerbekämpfer im Heiligen Römischen Reich’, in Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert (eds), ‘Das kommt mir spanisch vor’: Eigenes und Fremdes in den deutsch-spanischen Beziehungen des späten Mittelalters (Münster, 2004) (Geschichte und Kultur der Iberischen Welt, 1), pp. 475–491, esp. pp. 489–490. On the death penalty for ‘witchcraft’ see Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 235. 29. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 200, 403, 447. 30. On performing exorcism, see Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 452–454. On the failure of the procedure due to the sins of the bewitched or the choice of illegal means, see ibid, pp. 454–455. 31. Weyer, De lamiis, p. 70. 32. On outdoor sex see Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 313. 33. For the woodcuts that Johann Zainer of Ulm presumably made for the first German printing around 1490, see Gold, ‘Von den vnholden’,

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34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41.

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pp. 245–279. The image here is a recut from the Augsburg print shop of Johan Otmer. Elisabeth Vavra, ‘Kopfbedeckung’, LexMA, 5 (1991), cols. 1436–1437; Gold, ‘Von den vnholden’, p. 267. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. [bvjr]. Weyer, De lamiis, p. 30: Wo kein Nachtruck oder Nachkommens ist/zu Erhaltung des Stammes/da ist auch die natürliche Begierde zur Geburt nötig/verloschen. Weyer, De lamiis, p. 69: ein lauter Phantasey vnd Teuffelisches Affenspiel. On the sack comparison see Paul Frisius, ‘Von deß Teuffels Nebelkappen’, in Theatrum de veneficis, pp. 214–228, here p. 227. Weyer in De lamiis, pp. 29–31 also sees the non-existence of human–animal hybrids as evidence of diabolical infertility. If the devil could use the seed of other beings, these beings did not have to be human. Hermann Witekind published under the pseudonym Augustin Lercheimer von Steinfelden, Christlich bedencken vnd Erinnerung von Zauberey […] (Heidelberg: Jakob Müller and Heinrich Hafer, 1585). Issue used: (Straßburg, 1586), here pp. 142–143, 147–148. Witekind authenticated the diabolical revenant with three cases, claiming to have heard one story from his academic teacher Melanchthon. Cf. Kneubühler, Überwindung, pp. 94–99; Otto Ulbricht, ‘Der sozialkritische unter den Gegnern: Hermann Witekind und sein Christlich bedencken vnd erjnnerung von Zauberey von 1585’, in Lehmann and Ulbricht (eds), Vom Unfug des Hexen-Processes, pp. 99–128. An annotated edition is in: Frank Baron (ed.), Hermann Witekinds Christlich bedencken und die Entstehung des Faustbuchs von 1587 , in Verbindung mit einer kritischen Edition des Textes von 1585 v. Benedikt Sommer (Berlin, 2009) (Studium Litterarum, 17). Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 122; Abraham Saur, ‘Ein kurtze/trewe Warnung/[…]’, in Theatrum de veneficis, pp. 202–214, here p. 209; Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. [dvjv]. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 128–130, 132, 309–311. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. eijv: der geburtlichen krafft fürst. Weyer in De lamiis, p. 30 also rejects the thesis of semen transfer by the devil. He explicitly dissociates himself from Thomas Aquinas’ view that the devil could maintain the required temperature through rapid movement and heat supply. On the change in the concept of male sexuality in Modernity, in which the testicles are replaced by the penis, see Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and London, 2002), pp. 85–109: ‘The Rise of the Penis, the Fall of the Scrotum’. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 227. See Charles Zika, Exorcising our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden

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44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

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and Boston, 2003) (Studies in medieval and Reformation thought, 91), pp. 481–521. Andreas Bernard, Kinder machen: Neue Reproduktionstechnologien und die Ordnung der Familie: Samenspender, Leihmütter, Künstliche Befruchtung (Frankfurt a.M., 2014), pp. 195–217. Cf. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) § 1592.1, http://www.gesetze-im-int ernet.de/bgb/__1592.html (accessed 31 March 2022). Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 129, 132, 470–471. Likewise, Frisius insists on the paternity of the seed producer; ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 227. For the modern view see Bernard, Kinder machen, pp. 87, 97, 153. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. eiijv: […] das der tewffel weder als ain incubus noch als ain succubus. kain kind gebern mag. Ob aber solliche obgemelten kind erfunden wurden das die selben aintweders gestolen oder fantastigi kind seien. Witekind makes a similar argument in Christlich bedencken, p. 147. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 420. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. bijr. Melusine’s family history is repeatedly discussed in the demonological literature, including by Martin Luther, ‘Colloquia oder Tischgesprech’, cap. 24 (‘Von Zauberey/ Teuffelsgespenst/ vnd Hexerei/ Campsionibus vnd Wechselkindern’), in Theatrum de Veneficis, pp. 11–14, here p. 12. Cf. Beate Kellner, ‘Melusinegeschichten im Mittelalter: Formen und Möglichkeiten ihrer diskursiven Vernetzung’, in Ursula Peters (ed.), Text und Kultur: Mittelalterliche Literatur 1150–1450 (Stuttgart and Weimar, 2001) (Germanistische Symposien Berichtsbände, 23), pp. 268–295. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. bijr. Cf. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 224. Vgl. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. e[j]r–v: Also main ich. nach dem vnd die muter ˚ sich laider dem teüfel ergeben het. das dann der teüffel in ir gemütt vnnd fantasey ain solliche starcke einbildung […] eingeworffen hab […]. also das sy gemainet hat. er sey bey ir gelegen vnd […] hab er iren leib gepleugt. mit lufft oder andern dingen. damit sy hab gewent sy sey schwanger gesein. vnd so dann das zeitt der betroglichen geburt kommen ist. das denn […] der teüffel der muter ˚ schmertzen vnd wee in dem leibe gemacht. vnnd den plaust so dann sy gehabt. außgetriben. vnd als bald dann ain ander kind so er vor gestolen hett. ir verborgenlich vnder gelegt habe […]. Frisius (‘Nebelkappen’, p. 224) draws a parallel between Merlin’s birth story and a Dresden witch trial reported by Erasmus Sarcerius. The Dresden defendant also claimed to have been impregnated by the devil. Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. [bvijr–v], eijr. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 224.

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55. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, p. 470–471. Similar stories circulated in the Middle Ages, see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago, 1988, Reprint 1998), pp. 378–380. 56. Saur combines two extracts from Luther’s Table Talk, presenting Luther as the author of his own writing on witches. Luther, ‘Colloquia’, p. 13–14. The Halberstadt anecdote is dated 20 April 1539 (Luther, WA Tischreden, vol. 4, p. 358, no. 4513), at Dessau, September 1540 (WA Tischreden, vol. 5, pp. 8–9, no. 5207). 57. Martin Luther: ‘Disposition of a Boy Possessed by the Devil: Between September 2 and 17, 1540’, in: Luther’s Works, Vol. 54: Table Talk, ed. and transl. by Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 396–397, no. 5207 (citation p. 397). 58. Luther, ‘Colloquia’, p. 13–14. Cf. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 225. 59. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, pp. 225–226. 60. Orna Donath, Regretting Motherhood: A Study (Berkeley, 2017). 61. Frisius, ‘Nebelkappen’, p. 228; Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 470–471; Molitor, Von den unholden, fol. cjv. 62. Kramer, Hammer of Witches, pp. 374, 518, 637. 63. Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Of the Vanitie and vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences: Englished by Ia. San. Gent (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1575). https://www.proquest.com/books/henrie-cornel ius-agrippa-vanitie-vncertaintie/docview/2240905811/se-2?accountid= 15156, p. 168r. See Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts, p. xiii, 168. 64. The bioethics document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith mentions in vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and cryopreservation. Only those techniques ‘aimed at removing obstacles to natural fertilization’ are permitted. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions (Rome, 2008), no. 13–20, here no. 13, https:// www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html (accessed 31 March 2022). See also John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (Rome, 1995), art. 14, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/docume nts/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html (accessed 31 March 2022); Michael Schwantge, Der (geplatzte) Traum vom Kind: Die ‘künstliche Befruchtung’ aus der Sicht christlicher Ethik (Hammerbrücke, 2010). 65. Bordoni, Pope Francis: ‘Fruitfulness is a blessing’.

CHAPTER 6

Ethics: Ideals of Life with (In)Fertility

Should I have a child? Canadian author Sheila Heti asks herself this question in her autobiographical novel Motherhood (2018). Over three hundred pages, she examines the arguments for and against. Heti considers whether she wants to become a mother at all to be her biggest secret, which she hides even from herself. On the one hand, she thinks of the joy that children give their parents, and on the other, of the freedom of not having children. Although many women give her the impression that it is wonderful to be a mother, Heti doubts whether she really wants to take on this task or would rather immerse herself in her work as a writer.1 Medieval and early modern people also discussed whether and why to have children. The crucial question of (in)fertility was always addressed in the context of marriage. The legal coupling of marriage and paternity meant that men had to decide whether they wanted to marry or not. The previous chapters showed that (in)fertility was controversial in many fields. The reproductive norm and the ideal of chastity collided; the children of married, high-status, and pious women were welcome, but the offspring of single, low-status wives suspected of witchcraft were not. How did people of childbearing age deal with these conflicting values and in what ways did they arrive at their own position? Authors of advice on marriage aimed to support people in making their decisions.2 They transformed theological teachings and legal regulations into concrete action © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_6

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without taking parenthood for granted. Reflection on the right action to take made (in)fertility a matter of ethics. Church fathers, philosophers, humanists, and preachers tried to convince others of their own ideal ways of life, weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of marriage and parenthood. While some warned of negative consequences, others highlighted the positive aspects of marriage. In the cultural history of childlessness, a shift is observable in the early modern period, as documented by the demonological and theological debates, and in places in the legal discourses. Although critiques of reproduction can be found in all epochs, the proponents of reproduction have determined the leading discourse since the Reformations. Martin Luther’s view that everyone should marry led to an idealization of the roles of mother and father. His praise of marriage was accompanied by praise of parenthood. It became almost inconceivable that people could voluntarily do without children. Protestant authors formulated a fertility imperative linked to processes of privilege and marginalization. Childlessness was considered a serious misfortune, as the following saying makes clear: ‘Barren to be and heirless quite, is like a sun that gives no light.’3 For women who could not live up to the fertile ideal, a specific form of catechesis was developed that inextricably entwined pastoral care and stigmatization. In an effort to provide comfort, some were assigned the role of the unhappy wife without children.

Marriage Laments: The Fortune of the Childfree ‘Childfree instead of childless.’ This is the title the publicist and antinatalist Verena Brunschweiger chose to draw attention to the advantages of a life without children in her 2019 contribution to the current (in)fertility debate in German.4 While for her the suffix ‘-less’ implies a deficit, the ‘-free’ is meant to emphasize the multitude of options open to people who do not have children. Brunschweiger has been sharply criticized on social media and in the national press for her book, which she wants to be understood as a feminist manifesto. Some found her statements particularly explosive because she is a secondary school teacher. To many, the fact that a teacher publicly called for no more children to be born and made women aware of the physical, social, and ecological disadvantages of motherhood did not seem compatible with her profession. Brunschweiger had to answer to various authorities and was even summoned before the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture. The head of her

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school and the president of her teacher’s union felt compelled to publicly distance themselves from their colleague. The concept of being childfree as enrichment and liberation is by no means as new and revolutionary as conservative circles would have us believe. Belief in the happiness of people who do not have children dates back to Antiquity, but in the past, it was mainly proclaimed by male authors. It is possible that the fact Brunschweiger is a woman was enough for some recipients to find her arguments barely tolerable. In the history of arguments for a life without children, two strategies can be distinguished: some critics of reproduction warn readers of the efforts, worries, and burdens entailed by having a family. Others highlight the benefits of being able to organize one’s own everyday life and to devote oneself to prayer, science, philosophy, literature, or another task in life. Early Christian authors were among the most influential critics of reproduction; while we could have discussed these in the chapter on theology, I address them here because they held similar positions to the ancient philosophers, so together, their arguments shaped the ethical discussions about (in)fertility in medieval and early modern Europe. The church fathers did not reject marriage in principle, but, following Paul’s letters, considered abstinence the better option. Childlessness was not a social deficit in their view, but a religious ideal. Reproductive Concerns Circulate The eloquent Greek preacher John Chrysostom (349/350–40 CE) was particularly committed to stating the disadvantages of marriage.5 In De virginitate (On Virginity; 382 CE), he sketched out a chronology of the woes of marriage that began with the choice of a partner. Young women were scared of courting, because they did not know whether anyone was interested in them, nor what kind of husband they would get. Premarital uncertainty was also a problem for men, who knew too little of their brides. If a woman was not pretty, the sight of her could be off-putting even on the wedding day. Some aspects of marriage that initially seemed positive turned out to be problematic on closer inspection. Chrysostom explicitly warned against marriage between partners of unequal wealth: marriage to a rich woman was much more burdensome for a man than marriage to a poor one. The church father saw the gender hierarchy threatened when a woman could set herself up as the head of the man because of her economic power. Even with the roles reversed, such a

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marriage seemed unbearable to him. The wife of a rich man had to fear that she was considered as a handmaid, not a spouse. Chrysostom even rejected the last option, marrying a person of similar status, because again the equality was ruined by the rule of subordination of women and the domination of men. Aesthetic and financial concerns were compounded by reproductive ones, which the theologian again formulated first from a male perspective. Once the dowry issues were settled, a husband had to worry about offspring. What mattered here was moderation: not only the fear of infertility, but also the fear of excessive fertility and the worry of too many children can be distressing. Chrysostom did not specify the appropriate number of children; he was concerned with (in)fertility, not a reproductive norm. Once the man’s initial anxiety about having married an infertile woman proved unfounded, the expectant father’s joy was overshadowed by new worries. Would pregnancy and delivery proceed without complications? With the premodern mortality rate of mothers and babies so high, it was easy to fear the worst. Chrysostom shifted focus from the man to the woman when he turned to birth, and saw childbearing as a deterrent against marriage: labour pains alone would make getting married unattractive to women. The series of worries continued: how unhappy a woman would surely feel when, after the torture of childbirth, she did not hold in her arms the child she wanted. The mother’s joy would be severely muted if the child had a physical defect or… it was a girl. Here, Chrysostom was sensitive, aware that he was touching a nerve: reproduction was not an end in itself but a woman’s fecundity was also measured by the physical integrity and sex of the child. The fear of not meeting men’s standards could torment women just as much as the physical pain of childbirth. Once this hurdle had been happily overcome and a healthy boy was born, the parents faced new worries: children need to be cared for and educated so that they bring joy. Chrysostom developed a model for how cares are reproduced from the image of a family tree. The further the roots extend and the more branches emerge from the trunk, the greater the growth in fears and needs. A wife fears not only her own death and that of her husband, children, and grandchildren, but all possible dangers that could befall her loved ones: loss of assets, poverty, illness, and other adversities. As a wife and mother, she suffers with her relatives. Even if a family was spared blows of fate, Chrysostom did not see the situation of a wife as much more pleasant, since fear of loss differed little

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from mourning a loved one; to him, it seemed even greater, because while mourning for a deceased person diminished with time, concern for the living remained. Therefore, marriage always brought suffering to a woman, whether her misfortune was experienced or a feared; if people were hardly able to bear their own fate, how could they still have strength to endure the suffering of others? Abstinence, the church father was convinced, was the surest way to break the cycle of concern about reproduction. With these warnings, Chrysostom made the case against the idea that people’s happiness could lie in marriage and parenthood. The American literary critic Lee Edelman positioned himself at least as clearly against the ideal of reproduction today.6 In his book No Future (2004), he criticized the fact that the fulfilment of desire is continuously postponed in heteronormative societies. Children are seen as a cipher of a promise of salvation that always refers to an indefinite future and is never fulfilled. Edelman challenges all those who call themselves ‘queer’ to embrace the very position that has been negatively projected onto them. They should resist ‘reproductive futurism’ and ideological overemphasis on children. Members of the majority society and LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexuals, trans*, intersex, and queer) people who want to have children may disagree. But Edelman’s appeal must be read in the context of reproductive medicine today, the options it opens up, and their consequences. Even people who are not in heterosexual relationships, especially women, are under subtle pressure to have offspring. Edelman sharply rejects adapting to the values of fertility in this way. The similarities between the queer researcher and the early church father are obvious, as are the differences: both refute the reproductive norm, but one promises earthly pleasure in the present; the other, eternal salvation in the future. Freedom Through Childlessness If you do not have children, you have more time for the most important things in your life. This is how the second central argument of critics of reproduction can be summarized; pagan and Christian authors asserted it even in Antiquity.7 Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BCE) warned that study and family are hardly compatible. Due to his misogynistic attitude, Theophrastus regarded married life as less than desirable: a woman’s exaggerated demands, banal gossip, and foolish jealousies made life difficult for any man, without him ever being able to rely on her. For

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all the typical tasks of a wife, Theophrastus named more suitable helpers: a reliable slave was better suited as a caretaker, and friends provided more loyal support in cases of illness. The pre-Socratic Democritus (459/460– c. 370 BCE) argued that family caused great inconvenience and distracted one from more necessary things. The Stoic Epictetus (c. 50–138 CE) despised the idea of a philosopher caring for his pregnant wife and heating bathwater for the baby instead of pursuing his vocation. Since ancient times, people have thus been expected to draw ethical consequences from their inner convictions and choose between having a child and a career. However, in the secular sphere, only men were granted the right to choose a life of philosophy over parenthood. The Christian religion did also give women a choice about how they wanted to live: as a wife or as a virgin. The church father Jerome (347– 420 CE) contrasted both possibilities to promote his ideal of life.8 While a virgin strives to live a pious life, a wife seeks to please her husband: one fasts and prays without ceasing, the other puts on makeup in front of a mirror, rushes towards her husband smiling, and flatters him with tender words. Jerome described the wife’s life as busy, noisy, and turbulent, surrounded by babbling toddlers, noisy servants, whispering weavers, and meat-cleaving cooks. Numerous tasks had to be done; children looked after, household expenses accounted for, and receptions prepared. The church father rhetorically questioned where there was room for God in all this: godliness could hardly dwell in places filled with parties, music, and fashion. Therefore, a pious wife was bound to become unhappy: either she would take to it and ruin herself religiously, or she would quarrel with her husband and provoke a separation. Even on those rare days free from entertaining and other duties, family life was not conducive to spirituality. What woman was not distracted from the thought of God by managing the household, bringing up the children, fulfilling the wishes of her husband, or supervising the servants? The patristic pleas for a life free from children and marriage are based on a serious eschatology that is key to understanding the discussions about where one should invest one’s inheritance—in children or the church (see Chapter 4, pp. 106–108)? After John Chrysostom had imagined the horrors of marriage, he undertook a thought experiment. He described an ideal marriage with every advantage: a large progeny, virtuous children, and wealth; a modest, pretty, and wise wife; family harmony and old age. Even this hypothetical ideal did not hold in the long run—Chrysostom warned against setting the wrong priorities. A

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perfect family might bring earthly joy to married couples, but was not counted as a merit by God. Because he focuses on the hereafter, to him, married life appears transient and void. Instead of devoting oneself to worldly affairs, it is better to remain chaste and thus anticipate the kingdom of heaven on earth.9 The central concern of all Christians should be to prepare as well as possible for their own death and the Last Judgement. My approach to comparative studies in historical context can be used to look for continuities from this specifically Christian motivation for childlessness to the present, revealing clear parallels and differences. Surprisingly, the fear of an imminent end seems to be resurfacing in today’s debates on (in)fertility. Convinced non-parents warn against bringing children into a world of overpopulation and resource scarcity. All people concerned about fragile ecosystems should refrain from reproducing, argues Verena Brunschweiger, using the antinatalist slogan for emphasis: ‘Save the earth, don’t give birth.’10 Both cases against having children, whether ecologically motivated in the present or religiously motivated in the past, arose in a sense of impending doom; renouncing reproduction is supposed to bring salvation. But while today’s childfree movement aims to encourage a general change in behaviour and save this planet, early Christian theologians were driven by the belief that every human being was answerable for their deeds in the next life. Abelard at the Crossroads Warnings about marriage and family life recur in the discourse history of (in)fertility. One significant medieval textual example is the Historia calamitatum (The Story of my Misfortunes; 1133) by Peter Abelard (1079–1142). In a letter of consolation to an unnamed friend, the famous philosopher made a life confession in which he recounted his passionate relationship with his seventeen-year-old pupil Heloise (c. 1100–1164) and their shared struggle to find an appropriate way of life.11 Unlike the ancient philosophers and church fathers, in his autobiographical writing Abelard was not aiming to influence others, but to arrive at his own ethically justified attitude. Abelard decided to marry when the love affair threatened to come to light as Heloise became pregnant. The highly educated young woman stubbornly resisted marriage for two reasons, as Abelard described in his famous letter ten years later: she feared the loss

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of her lover’s reputation on the one hand and the revenge of her family on the other. In the Historia calamitatum, Heloise imagines herself being held responsible for Abelard’s desire to marry and has to defend herself. Her concern is based on an antagonism between a public life lived for scholarship and a private life lived for family. Heloise expects to be blamed many times over if she takes such an important man away from the world. The young philosopher associates marriage with a claim to exclusivity that would restrict social contacts; she therefore urges Abelard not to devote himself to just one woman, when he was made for many. All her arguments are aimed at the welfare of the beloved. To protect him, Heloise presents marital status in the most deterrent way possible, invoking the learned tradition. First, she recalls Paul’s ideal of chastity and then draws on other Christian and pagan authorities such as Jerome and Theophrastus. The ancient authors were unanimous in their opinion that a wise man should not marry and should rather devote himself to philosophy or the praise of God, while the cautionary tale of Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife, shows what a married philosopher has to endure, Heloise argues. The philosopher vividly depicts how incompatible the lives of a scholar and father are: pupils and chambermaids, desk and pram, books and spinning wheel, stylus and spindle do not go together. These people and paraphernalia are clearly divided according to gender: Abelard is assigned all the attributes of erudition; Heloise, those of the household and motherhood. A family, especially with children, considerably disturbs one’s concentration on philosophy, Heloise emphasizes. When the little ones are screaming, the nurse is singing, and servants are clattering about, it is difficult to focus and think. Abelard, in her view, is at a crossroads. If he chooses marriage, there will be hardly any time left for philosophy. With various biblical examples, Heloise exhorts her beloved to remain faithful to his vocation. The Nazirites, the sons of the prophets, the disciples of Elijah and Elisha, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes all led a life without marriage and family. Heloise draws a direct line from the Christian monks and church fathers to the ancient philosophers who devoted themselves entirely to wisdom. With these role models, she puts pressure on Abelard: if pagan philosophers lived celibate lives, how much more was he obliged to do so as a Christian philosopher and canon? One might wonder about the young woman’s reasoning. Although Heloise was expecting a child by Abelard and could legally secure both

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his and her own position, she did everything to dissuade her lover from his desire to marry. Heloise’s attitude to marriage was similar in many respects to the patristic one, but with a key difference: her invective was directed against the institution of marriage, but not against sexuality. In the end, Heloise declared that she would rather be Abelard’s mistress or even whore than his wife. She described marriage as bondage and a constraint; what was crucial was mutual love. Without marriage, Abelard would not be obliged to take care of his wife and child. Heloise valued his freedom more than her safety. Heloise was right to be worried, as Abelard’s later life and love story proved; while his life was spared, it was not one of marriage, due to the cruel revenge of Heloise’s uncle (Chapter 4, pp. 116–118). After they had both entered the cloister, Abelard and Heloise again debated the best form of life in their letters, but with reversed rhetorical positions: he became as a critic of life together and she, its proponent. While Heloise once voluntarily renounced her husband and family, after the forced separation she struggled with her situation and pined for her lover. The latter tried to convince Heloise of the sanctity of her new status and emphasized the great damage they would have caused by starting a family. In the convent, Heloise could make far better use of her gifts, erudition, and wisdom.12 Chastity, in Abelard’s view, offered a way to invert the gender hierarchy. Instead of being like all the other women, Heloise was now high above most men. As a nun, she only used her hands to turn the pages of the holy books, which would otherwise have been desecrated by lowly mundane activities. Abelard urged Heloise to stop mourning her sexual relationship and to recognize Christ as her true bridegroom. Medievalist researchers have debated the extent to which Abelard’s and Heloise’s correspondence in any way reflects the ‘real’ attitudes of the historical persons.13 Was Heloise really convinced in her youth that it would be better not to marry and not to have (more) children? Or did Abelard put these arguments into her mouth in his comforting letter, either to devalue himself or to present his pupil as an erudite philosopher? What editorial interventions were made by the nuns in Heloise’s convent, where the letters were compiled, copied, and handed down? These questions about the authenticity of historical statements cannot be answered, but are irrelevant to my interest in received and produced knowledge. A discourse analysis of (in)fertility is about deconstructing overarching patterns of interpretation rather than verifying individual confessions. Abelard’s and Heloise’s statements on celibacy are not original insights

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that they developed themselves, but are part of a long rhetorical tradition with roots in the marriage critiques of Antiquity. Lines can be drawn from the ancient philosophers and church fathers through the medieval and early modern periods to the present day. Convinced non-parents still describe children as a great burden, stressing the negative impact of a family on employment or other social, scientific, and religious activities. Life with and without children are often understood as binary options and opposites. Not only the proponents of reproduction, but also its critics deepen the divide between parents and non-parents.14 The Ambivalence of Parenthood The humanists and authors of didactic texts on marriage in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries strove to reach a balanced judgement. They stressed that everything in life has two sides and weighed up the pros and cons of marriage. For example, the Eichstätt canon and jurist Albrecht von Eyb (1420–1475) discussed in a three-part Ehebüchlein (Little Book of Marriage) ‘whether a man should take a wife or not.’15 The work, printed in 1472, opens with an anecdote: when a young man asks Socrates whether he should marry, his answer is double-edged. Instead of taking a clear position, Socrates takes his interlocutor to task. He gives him free choice, but confronts him with the fact that he will regret his decision in any case. If he marries, he will live in constant conflict with his wife without ever being sure of her fidelity. If he renounces marriage, he will regret being deprived of the love of a wife and the comfort of children, and having produced no heirs. Opportunity costs cannot be avoided in the ethical decision for or against having children. Albrecht von Eyb therefore understood mixed feelings on marriage and parenthood all too well. The first part of his Ehebüchlein dealt with the toil, trouble, and terror, but also the joy, pleasure, and benefits associated with marriage. Several times Albrecht pointed out that all disadvantages involve advantages and vice versa. Although he started from a reproductive ideal life, he did not lose sight of the negative consequences of parenthood. Thus, Albrecht warned readers that a man has to take on a lot of worry, effort, and work if his wife is fertile. A house with children in it was filled with wet nurses and maids, cries and weeping, eating and drinking, which put a heavy burden on the whole household. Therefore, Albrecht knew how to find positive aspects in involuntary childlessness. An infertile woman did not disturb the domestic peace

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because she always quietly and obediently submitted to her husband. In making this assessment, the early German humanist referred to Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), who systematically explored the two sides of the coin, fortune and misfortune in his book De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul; 1358–1366). In Petrarch’s work, Reason personified discusses all kinds of events in human life, and their effects. Men’s ambivalent attitudes to fatherhood are also addressed, with Reason encouraging them to reconsider common social criteria for assessing (in)fertility.16 Reason relativizes the father’s joy, the childless person’s grief, and the lament of those who have many children, to show that this is far from being the boon one might expect.17 Nor does Reason agree with Pain when he complains bitterly about his wife’s infertility. Instead, she lists the many hardships a husband without children does not have to endure.18 He does not have to worry that his wife’s demands will be too great or that she will foist someone else’s child on him. For his own good, Reason advises Pain to come to terms with his childless marriage. Otherwise, it might turn out that the physical cause did not lie with the woman. She adds that fertility can sometimes lead to disaster and that infertility can prevent worse things from happening: a man does not know what kind of son his wife would have given birth to; indeed, it would have been better for some Roman rulers if their fathers had never married or their mothers had been barren. Petrarch devotes a separate chapter to what a great and heavy burden children can be. Again and again, Pain laments being driven into poverty, frightened, and depressed by his children. In the German translation, the Glücksbuch (Book of Happiness) published in 1532 by Heinrich Steiner in Augsburg, this burden of parenthood is visually illustrated. The woodcut by the Petrarch Master takes up about half of the folio page (Fig. 6.1).19 It is not clear whether it depicts an indoor or outdoor scene; framed by heavy brickwork, a woman stands with her seven children who literally push her up against the wall. Her body is barely distinguishable from the brood crowding around her. In each arm, she holds a child, the three older ones turn to her standing up, the youngest lies in its cradle directly in front of her, but only the sitting child in the foreground seems to notice the father, who is standing to one side. The bearded man is visibly upset by the whole situation. With open mouth and wide eyes, he gazes at the family group. The pockets of his coat are open and empty; with his right hand, he reaches for the purse at his belt and with his left, for the precious chain still around his neck. The

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Fig. 6.1 The burden of parenthood—woodcut by the Petrarch Master (1532)

pieces of bread and the empty plate in the children’s hands also indicate the high costs of maintaining the family. The fact that premodern parents are not only supposed to feed their offspring but also to educate and chastise them is symbolized by the objects in the right-hand edge of the picture: a rod, a jug, and a book. Having many children is a gift that distinguishes their parents, Reason tells Pain in the text—yet this claim is not remotely visible. The image visualizes the perspective of an unhappy man longing for relief and liberation who seems to regret his fatherhood. Yet, compared to his wife, he has much greater freedom of action and movement. His attitude to his family is mixed: devoted to his wife and children, he digs deep into his pockets for their upkeep. But, hat on head, his right foot appears poised to step out of from the scene. Worry and suffering are a problem for every father, regardless of the number of children. Albrecht von Eyb states in his Ehebüchlein that fear, toil, and hardship are inseparable parts of parenthood. If children go off the rails despite all their educational efforts, they cause their parents a great deal of grief. If children behave in an exemplary manner, their

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parents are constantly afraid that something might go wrong or someone might prove a bad influence.20 Unlike the critics of reproduction before and after them, humanists did not conclude that people should not have children. Rather, Albrecht von Eyb explicitly recommended that men marry. Yet, like Petrarch, he pointed out the ambivalence of parenthood so as not to raise false expectations and to comfort both overburdened parents and involuntary non-parents. Albrecht believed that people could experience no greater joy, but also no greater pain, than through their children. By looking at (in)fertility from different perspectives, humanists raise awareness of the concerns of others, bridging the gap between people with and without children, rather than widening it. If the ambivalence of parenthood is no longer mentioned, as in early modern wedding speeches that only praise the joys of having children, family seems to be the only desirable and ethically required way of living.

Wedding Speeches: The Fortune of Parents What do you wish the happy couple? Joys and blessings, patience and perseverance, fertility and healthy children? Wedding speeches are revealing. They usually tell us more about the well-wishers and their view of a happy life than about the bride and groom. Since time immemorial, couples have been presented with good wishes and edifying speeches on their wedding day. In the sixteenth century, the custom of distributing printed wedding sermons and speeches emerged.21 The bride and groom received a lasting memory of their special day, while the guests could read the good wishes, share in the festive event from afar, or be inspired for their own speeches. Such sermons attest to the high esteem in which marriage and parenthood were held in the early modern period. They outline the social expectations placed on the couple, especially the bride. The speakers enthusiastically invoke marital bliss and the blessing of children as if they themselves could provide for offspring with their good wishes. To justify why people should have children, early modern preachers used three different strategies that are still deployed today: they pointed to the future function of children as heirs and successors (economization), emphasized the affective bond between parents and children (emotionalization), and charged childbearing and education with religious significance (sacralization).

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Children as an Investment in the Future In the current political debate, childlessness is perceived as a social problem. As mentioned in the introduction, many European governments are concerned about the sustainability of their social security systems in the future, given the low birth rate.22 In contrast, the authors of didactic literature on marriage and the early modern wedding preachers were more interested in the individual, genealogical, and ‘class’ consequences. Infertility was not a problem for the entire community, but for a noble family, inheritance, or personal provision in old age, it was. These arguments have been traced in the legal context, but—in keeping with the genre—are reiterated in ethical texts as appeals, to urge and to warn.23 Everything those without children have laboriously saved will fall into the hands of strangers after their death, warned the Italian humanist Marcello Palingènio Stellato (c. 1500–before 1551) in the didactic poem Zodicacus vitae (Zodiac of Life; 1531). As in German wedding sermons, he stressed that those with children did not strive in vain: pious parents would know exactly for whom they accumulate and set aside their inheritance.Therefore, children made all this effort easier and more bearable, according to the Protestant theologian Johannes Dinckel (1545–1601). The Lutheran preacher Gregor Strigenitz from Meissen (1575–1635) also emphasized that the only justification for all this hard work is ‘the dear little children.’ Nothing makes a father work more joyfully, undauntedly, and selflessly than the thought of his own children. Otherwise, what would be the point of it all? A childless man would scowl and ask himself: ‘Who should I save for?’ Both humanist ethicists and Protestant preachers held a completely different view of the connection between parenthood and the burden of everyday life. Unlike the advocates of life without a family, they were sure that children increased life satisfaction. For people who did not marry or have children, the proponents of reproduction drew up a terrible scenario.24 Palingènio Stellato predicted that single men would be lonely at the end of their lives. If they became old and weak, nobody would come to their aid. No brother, cousin, or friend would stand by them; all would be hoping for their imminent death and a rich inheritance. Nobody loved them for their own sake; their relatives were only after their money. Palingènio Stellato idealized the nuclear family and only allowed for selfless love within it: a woman who left her family of origin remained faithful to her husband at all times and stood

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by him kindly for through good and ill, in sickness and in suffering. Likewise, children did not leave their fathers, though Palingènio Stellato only applied this to offspring conceived in wedlock. Even in the Hebrew Bible, children were praised as the support of their elderly parents, recalled the court preacher Johann Georg Marggraf (1633–1706) in a speech for the wedding of Duke Ferdinand Albrecht of Brunswick-Lüneburg with Christina of Hesse in 1667. For good reasons, Hannah in the Book of Tobit referred to her son Tobias as her support and greatest comfort (Tob 5:18); parents hoped to be cared for by their children in their hour of need. If you follow didactic texts on marriage and wedding preachers, children are the best investment in your future. They help you in old age, take over the succession, manage the inheritance, and keep your memory alive.25 In this Protestant view, the deceased benefit in two ways: first, children keep the memory of their parents alive through commemoration of the dead or prayer to God; second, their high reputation extends somewhat to the people they conceived and bore. Both aspects are included in Marggraf’s fertility blessing. He wished the princely bride and groom children who would rule kingdoms, so their parents’ reputation would grow and they would still be honoured in the tomb. The external resemblance also suggests that parents live on in their children. Palingènio Stellato emphasized that children were a physical part and image of their parents: when a man died and eternal darkness surrounded him, he remained present as a father on earth. Progeny thus enabled people to secure long-term influence and indirectly shape the future. Marggraf invoked a proverb that closely links literary and genealogical (re)production: ‘In books and children you will live even after you have died.’26 Parents, especially fathers, were stylized as authors and creators of new life. Reproduction was thus a way of overcoming one’s own transience beyond religious models of salvation. People have always been expected to participate in preserving creation, society, and their family line through procreation. Those who do not want to or cannot fulfil the norm of reproduction are marginalized. This is made abundantly clear by the saying Strigenitz and Marggraf cite, which massively devalues childless people: ‘Unworthy the begotten who begets no other, and unworthy the living who gives life to no other.’27 Both authors first render the saying in Latin before adding their own touch to their German translations. Marggraf declared it a human duty to beget heirs, to extend one’s family line, and thus to take possession of the world.

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Reproduction is interpreted here as an act of subjugation through incorporation. Those who fail in this area forfeit their right to exist. Strigenitz formulated his fertility diktat even more sharply, which can be succinctly stated as follows: whoever does not multiply is not worthy of life. Admittedly, this rule is embedded in a religious context; the aim of procreation is to increase the praise of God. Nevertheless, reproduction serves as a criterion to determine whether a life is worth living. Strigenitz once again hammered home the assertion that infertile people are worthless. The second time, he expanded his expectation: people should not only beget offspring, but leave them behind when they die. Child survival thus becomes an indicator of fertility success. If a person does not succeed in creating the next generation, the hopes placed in them have failed. In the economy of reproduction, this person’s birth proves to be a bad investment. Family Happiness and the Joys of Fatherhood Charging it with emotional significance is an effective strategy for promoting reproduction, which can be used to mask tangible economic interests. Preachers and moralists promoted life with children using images of happy families.28 In his Ehebüchlein, Albrecht von Eyb developed the idyllic view that children are the centre of conjugal love and tenderness. What could be more pleasurable and sweet than being called father, mother, or child? Albrecht asked, describing how the little ones embrace their parents and receive many sweet kisses from them. Luther’s pupil Johannes Mathesius (1504–1565) extended this perspective by a generation and includes the grandparents in his family ideal. Joy and happiness reigned where laughing and loving children were at home. In Mathesius, children sit happily and healthily around a table, lovingly call an elderly gentleman ‘dear grandpapa,’ want to scratch his beard, and give him kisses. For a grandmother, the mere mention of her grandchildren is enough to warm her heart with love. Notably, this and other descriptions of the tender family were written in the mode of the imaginary. These are not real situations, but ideal fictions. For many centuries, parental love has been seen as a natural and automatic result of the birth of one’s child. Motherly and fatherly love are innate, Albrecht von Eyb stated, referring to the philosopher of late Antiquity, Macrobius (around 385/390–after 430 CE). Nature had arranged this so that people would take on the worries and effort of

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bringing up children; no love could be greater than that of a father for his son, who is a part of himself. The relationship between nature and culture thus became a live issue again in ethics debates. While we have explained women longing for children in the marriage court in the Foucauldian sense with the dispositive of childlessness and the complex interplay of law and desire (Chapter 3), I interpret the same phenomenon in wedding speeches by drawing on communication theory: parental love and fatherly joy do not simply develop by human nature, but according to patterns cut by culture. For the German systems theorist Niklas Luhmann, love is not a feeling but a symbolic code.29 These rules of intimacy tell us how to communicate successfully, to express and imitate feelings. In contrast, affects that are not influenced by predefined behavioural models and forms of communication are barely detectable. Luhmann’s observations on Love as Passion (1982) can be applied to the parent-child relationship. Sermons and didactic texts on marriage deploy coded arguments and design images of family to encourage spouses’ feelings of parental love. Wedding speeches inducted the bride and groom in the knowledge they needed on their marriage, awakening in them the desire for children and pain when they are unable to have any. This staging of the happy family in word and image played a decisive role in the development of parental love and the desire to have children. A Tübingen professor of Lutheran theology, Matthias Hafenreffer (1561– 1619), proclaimed what joyful experiences lie ahead for the bride and groom: the sight of their children was not only a delight to parents’ ‘eyes, but to gladden their heart, marrow, and bones.’30 Therefore, their future offspring would alleviate much affliction and pain, as Johannes Dinckel promised the happy couple. Gently, he increased the intensity of physical affection so that the listeners can ever better empathize with his vision of family: when parents looked at their children, touched them, carried them around, hugged and kissed them, they cast aside all their cares. Marital happiness and parental happiness are consistently combined in the early modern wedding sermons and advice literature. The challenges of upbringing are largely ignored as children are presented as a strategy for solving problems in one’s marriage and life: they dispel their parents’ worries and sorrows, bring joy and laughter into the house, comfort, encourage, and delight. Interestingly, several authors focus their enthusiastic descriptions of marital bliss on men. They are shown the joys of fatherhood, whereas

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the suffering of childlessness is mainly focused on women. Strigenitz called children ‘the greatest good cheer’ because they helped distract their fathers from their worries. He illustrated their healing influence on men with many cares. When a father heard his children praying psalms and reciting edifying sayings at the table, he immediately felt revived, like a new person. Such situations touched the heart of every man, however worn down, and gave him new courage to live. Strigenitz uses the Wittenberg reformer as a model happy father: Luther apparently came out of his study to seek comfort in his children when he was troubled by grief. As soon as they prayed an Our Father and quoted from the Psalms, he felt better. With this narrative, the early modern preacher conveyed a completely different impression of family life from that of the medieval philosopher Heloise. For him, children are not a hindrance to scholarship, but bring wholesome thoughts to a busy man, so that he can concentrate again. While Luther was portrayed as a pious man of the house whose relationship with his children remained religiously embedded, Strigenitz emphasized the fun and entertainment factor in another anecdote: the Spartan king Agesilaus was so fond of his children that after his government business he liked to amuse himself with them and ride around the parlour. When his chancellor was outraged by this, the king silenced him: he should not judge the king’s behaviour until he had children of his own. Agesilaus not only argued for the joys of fatherhood, but also constructed a binary opposition between parents and non-parents, declaring the childless chancellor incompetent. The anecdote teaches readers two things: any man, no matter how highly placed, can enjoy the company of his children, but no childless man is ever able to comprehend and empathize with this. Children as Treasure and Bond of Love Children are their parents’ greatest treasure, as reproduction advocates were fond of proclaiming. This designation was part of the code of familial intimacy as early as in medieval literature, as illustrated in an aesthetically complex work by a key early poet, Konrad von Würzburg’s thirteenthcentury epic on the Trojan War. The Colchian king Oetas promised the Greek hero Jason to show him the most valuable thing he has in his house: his beautiful and highly educated daughter Medea.31 Four centuries later, similar anecdotes led the wedding preachers Strigenitz and Marggraf to prove the value of fertility. Both used the example of the

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Roman noblewoman Cornelia, who was extremely wealthy. When asked to show off her possessions, she renounced all outward display. Instead of putting on necklaces, rings, pearls, and bracelets, Cornelia gathered her children around her and declared them to be her best jewels, her most beautiful adornment. Men also valued fertility more than material possessions, as shown by a second anecdote set in fifteenth-century Italy. Duke Eberhard of Württemberg was invited to Florence to view his host’s most valuable treasure—his family. The duke expressly approved of his host’s judgement that fertility is worth more than economic capital. The preacher Marggraf justified this ranking with the fact that silver and gold are material goods, but children are not. Precious metals are mined from the earth, but babies are born from a woman. Emphatically, Marggraf asserted the unity of body and soul: children came from the substance and essence of their parents; they were of the same stuff and spirit. While mineral resources moved from one person to another, children undeniably remained the personal property of their parents. Nor did Marggraf accept the counterargument of infant death. Rather, he assured readers that children who died young were not lost and attained immortality. All this made children the most beautiful and only lasting possession. The fact that Marggraf deliberately omits the downsides of parenthood becomes clearer in contrast to the De remediis utriusque fortunae, where Petrarch’s retelling of Cornelia’s story brings Pain no comfort. The father overburdened by a large family does not see his children as treasures; on the contrary, he does not know how he is going to provide for them all. The woodcut by the Petrarch Master does not depict children as precious, either, but as a cost factor (Fig. 6.1). In it, sexual and economic power is visually brought together by the purse hanging below the man’s belt. His reaching for it can be interpreted as an ethical warning: people should think carefully about whether they want to have children, and if so, how many. Too many children make a wealthy man poor, drive the couple apart, and surround their mother like a wall. Protestant wedding preachers, on the other hand, only talk about the positive influence that children can have on their parents’ relationship. They postulate an interrelation of love, marriage, and reproduction. Children are seen as a trigger and catalyst of marital love, with the act of reproducing often long preceding the emotional bond.32 Johannes Dinckel explained that the hearts of married couples were only truly united through children; parenthood led to reconciliation between spouses and transformed a troubled marriage into a good one,

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often making married couples argue less and get along more. Gregor Strigenitz too was convinced that parenthood helped married couples grow together. Children were the right bond of love to strengthen the spouses’ mutual affection. He substantiated this view with everyday observations; spouses loved each other most when they had beautiful, healthy, and friendly children. The positive effects of parenthood were not only denied couples without issue, but reversed. According to Johann Georg Marggraf, the sadness, quarrels, and displeasure that arise from childlessness could be observed everywhere. Infertility prevented spouses from developing intimate feelings towards the mother or father of their children. In addition, infertile couples often fell out because they blamed each other for their misfortune. The preachers unanimously declared children to be the best way to stabilize a marriage; not having any was the likeliest way to destabilize it. The early modern code of intimacy thus contributes decisively to the fact that life without children was perceived as deficient and painful, because it excluded people from the joys of having their own family. The risk that a marriage could remain childless resonated through the early modern wedding speeches. Infertility served as a dark foil against which the benefits of fertility shined all the brighter. Children, therefore, were not primarily intended to cheer up their father after a hard day’s work, but to free husbands and wives from the fear of or suffering from infertility. Children were the ‘right medicine’ for the sadness of childless people, Marggraf explained. The authors’ arguments were code-oriented, closed-system, and tautological; fertility was presented as a remedy for infertility. Having Children as a Salvific Experience The third strategy to promote fertility is the sacralization of family life. Like the medieval theologians, Albrecht von Eyb and other early modern authors regarded marriage as a godly and biblically legitimized vocation.33 It was instituted in paradise so that humans could procreate and lawfully satisfy their sexual desire. For their wedding sermons, preachers drew on various biblical passages to illustrate the principles of a good marriage. With Genesis and the Psalms, they justified the different value attributed to fertility and infertility. A ruler’s offspring was interpreted as a sign of divine grace; childlessness, as a sign of rejection. In one case, God wanted

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to preserve a noble family; in the other, to eradicate the memory of the godless. The biblical fertility blessing for Boaz was very popular as a wedding blessing (Ruth 4:11).34 In it, the people and elders of Israel wish that God would give them descendants and that his wife Ruth would be as fruitful as Rachel and Leah. Jacob’s wives were considered the epitome of female fertility, although one of them first suffered severely from her infertility (Gen 30:1). The preachers transferred the blessing into their contexts, to the bride and groom before them. Marggraf wished that God would bless the newlyweds abundantly with fruits of the womb in their married life and that the bride—like Ruth, Rachel, and Leah—might bear many pious children. These would continue the bridegroom’s noble line, strengthen the Christian community, and serve God in churches, schools, and governments. The Lutheran theologian and reformer Caspar Güthel (1471–1542), in a sermon on the wedding at Cana (Jn 2:1–12), declared it the noblest duty to beget children so that more souls might come to God. From this perspective, procreation appears a genuinely religious task. Fruitful spouses help to increase the number of those who praise and honour God. The connection between sexuality and religiosity was emphasized by many wedding preachers.35 Gregor Strigenitz, for example, explicitly justified reproduction with the divine will to grant children to husbands and wives so that they might praise God, build the church on earth, and swell the company of heaven. Married couples were helping God to create human beings, explained Matthias Hafenreffer. He compared God to a chief builder who puts carpenters and masons to work to erect a magnificent edifice. The spouses cooperate, but without God, they can do nothing. Children, as the preachers unanimously emphasize, are a gift from God. Not even the greatest artists in Antiquity were able to produce a child, explained Hafenreffer. Emphatically, he praised children as ‘living saints, living little angels,’ created in God’s image. Marggraf also closely linked children and heavenly creatures: unlike all worldly riches, children were under angelic protection that turned back the forces of evil. Indeed, whoever had a child in the house could be sure that they were hosting an angel. Reproduction thus bore traits of self-sanctification, insofar as the child’s divine aura radiated onto its parents. The contrast to the ancient and Catholic ideal of chastity could not be greater. In monastic ascetic discourse, abstinence was seen as the only way to break the cycle of birth and death, to restore the lost state of paradise

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and anticipate the heavenly life of the angels. But early modern wedding sermons replaced the ideal of chastity with the mandate to multiply. They shared the same desire to attain communion with angels while still on earth, yet found salvation not in abstinence, but in sexual activity. The family is a place to experience salvation and encounter God in this Protestant interpretation, exemplified by the above anecdote in which Luther feels strengthened by the prayers of his children. His family forms a church in miniature, where God is worshipped and the pious father is comforted.36 Johannes Dinckel highlighted this aspect of religious and family intimacy by comparing the parent–child relationship to God’s relationship with the Son. No one knew how much God loved them until they had sons and daughters of their own: pain and sorrow for one’s own offspring helped one to understand God’s selfless action. In this way, parents had experiences of faith that are denied to childless people; living with children enabled them to experience the Christian story of salvation in their own bodies. The many arguments used in wedding sermons to celebrate fertility make a life without children seem sinful, shameful, and futile. The devaluation of childless couples is stark in the popular comparison I quoted at the beginning of this chapter: a marriage without children is like a life without the sun. Marggraf knew this saying in different variations and drummed it into his readers’ minds by repeating it several times. In the process, the misfortune of infertility is engraved even more strongly and charged with cosmic significance. While the sunshine only brightens up the day, childless people suffer incessantly from their loneliness: ‘Unhappy the day and fearful the night, On which does never shine a light, So is the house without an heir, Fearful and tormented ones lie alone there.’37 Life with and without children seem like two different worlds, one brightly lit, the other shrouded in eternal darkness. The words fearful, tormented, and alone indicate how infertile spouses were supposed to feel: being married and having children was as essential and self-evident as sunlight during the day and the glimmer of stars at night. The enthusiastic praise of family life is at the expense of those excluded from it, to emphasize their feelings of pain and loss. The early modern preachers created high expectations of married life in their wedding sermons. Marggraf noted that while young married couples, especially brides, were initially ashamed and did not want to know anything about sex, this changed when they were not blessed with children. Women were under the greatest pressure to succeed, as

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Marggraf’s fourfold wish for them shows: to be beautiful, to be married, to be fertile, and to be able to give birth easily. Again and again, he emphasized that he could not wish a bride and groom anything better, more beautiful, and more important than fertility. What could be more delicious, pleasant, and enjoyable for high noble spouses than children? In this and other wedding sermons, the recurring wishes were formulated into a prayer for the recipients.38 Everyone who joined in the blessing affirmed the reproductive norm and internalized the Protestant hierarchy of (in)fertility. The wedding guests became a community of faith that praised the privilege of fertility.

Infertility Catechesis: The Misfortune of Childless Women The Protestant Reformation confined women to the dual role of wife and mother. While the followers of the Roman Church considered fertility irrelevant to the sacramental nature of marriage,39 reproduction was at the heart of Protestant marriage and gender doctrine. In his early sermon ‘The Estate of Marriage’ (1522), Luther urged women to recognize their religious purpose in working for the good of their families. When a woman nursed, cradled, bathed, and cared for her child or helped and obeyed her husband, he counselled her to remember that ‘these are truly golden and noble works.’40 Women should also accept the pains of labour and birth joyfully because this was what God wanted and expected of them. Luther and his successors referred to the statement in the First Letter of Timothy that women would be ‘saved through childbearing’ (1 Tim 2:15).41 They declared reproduction to be a godly duty and a specifically feminine way of the cross. In a wide variety of texts— marriage books, wedding sermons, and prayer collections—motherhood was interpreted as women’s path to salvation. What did the Protestant sacralization of fertility mean for women who could not have children? Were they excluded from salvation? Christian ethicists and preachers deliberately sought to relieve infertile wives of this fear and to offer them comfort. These efforts reached their peak in the eighteenth century: Johann Friedrich Starck (1680–1756) included specific instructions in his prayerbook on how to deal with the stigma of infertility.42 Starck’s arguments were typical of the Protestant evaluation of childlessness in early modern Europe, as evidenced in the article ‘From Anne to Hannah’ (2015), in which Daphna Oren-Magidor

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explores religious views of infertility in Post-Reformation England.43 Prayers for infertile people could be understood as a response to the wedding speeches and doctrines of marriage that prove the success of religious fertility propaganda. Once a life without children was declared ‘abnormal’ and inferior, those who lived it required their own form of pastoral care. Childless women had to learn to deal with the stigma they faced, but without relief from the underlying discrimination. Pastoral Care for Infertile Women The Lutheran theologian Starck wrote numerous devotional writings and hymns and was one of the most widely read German authors of his day. His prayerbook was specifically aimed at women, whom he divided into four groups: pregnant, in labour, with children, and infertile. The significance of childbearing for gender identity is immediately obvious: fertility serves as a criterion to typologize women. The ‘devotions’ relate to different stages in the birth process and include prayers for pregnancy, during confinement, and postpartum. Women who do not have children come last. The final chapter is entitled ‘Remembrance and comfort for the infertile.’44 Starck began by noting where catechesis was urgently needed drawing on his own experience. He had often heard pious but childless wives complain that they received no spiritual consolation; thus, they had a clear need for pastoral care. Claiming that works are written at the request of others is a popular topos and serves as self-justification for authors. As a responsible preacher, Starck was all too glad to accept this challenge. Admittedly, his remarks referred in large part to both spouses, who were to bear the burden of childlessness together. But infertility appeared as a specifically female problem because his prayerbook was addressed to women. As in the medical collections and gynaecological treatises of the Middle Ages, infertility was ascribed to the female sex; men were at best secondary recipients of this ‘women’s literature.’ Starck divided his reflections into twelve sections, aiming to help infertile people adopt an appropriate attitude. The biblical number and clear structure aid the memory. In the first section, Starck explained that there are natural causes for infertility that may occur in either spouse. God has not given all people the gift of fertility by nature. The theologian developed this line of thought by comparing human fertility with that of different plant species. Tulips had fewer flowers than a rose bush, and

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many trees adorned a garden without bearing any fruit. From the gardener’s joy in their plants, Starck deduced God’s relationship to his creatures. His first and most important concern was that childless people should not doubt God’s love. But the way he formulated his consolation was adversarial: infertile spouses were God’s dear children despite their lack. The prevailing view was that they were not equal to fertile couples.45 In the second section, Starck urged infertile spouses to practise serenity and patience. Because babies were a gift from God, no human being had the right to them. If God refused the blessing of children, one should not oppose the divine will. Starck stressed this and God’s omnipotence in equal measure, taking up biblical ideas. God gave everyone as much as God willed, and held the keys to the womb: nobody could close or open it without divine consent. Starck emphasized the power imbalance between God and human beings to explain why infertile spouses have to accept their lot. Infertility was not to be understood as a sign of divine wrath or punishment, as he made clear in the third section. Starck thus contradicted the widespread view that there is a causal connection between fertility and piety. As evidence, he pointed to other gifts that God granted childless couples: health, blessing, nourishment, and well-being. The (in)fertility hierarchy was overridden in other areas of life, for nonparents sometimes received more benefits than parents, Starck observed. The pastor also addressed the fact that fertility is not only beneficial. Like the marriage court cases, Petrarch, and Albrecht von Eyb, he recognized the ambivalence of parenthood. A large brood of children could bring worry, sickness, and misery; pregnancy itself could be life-threatening. Starck therefore described caring for children as a ‘cross’ (Kinderkreuz), an expression popular in the German Reformation discourse,46 from which the childless was spared. Infertility could even be a special grace, Starck explained in the fourth section. God knows people better than they know themselves. Many women love children, but they may be too weak to give birth and raise them; a child might cause them too much worry, keep them away from prayer and worship, or their death would be too difficult to cope with. Starck’s thesis that childlessness was better for some than others was double-edged. While he took pains to put a positive spin on infertility by defining it as a state of freedom from suffering, he implicitly devalued spouses who did not have children. They were presumably too weak to do them justice and fulfil the important task of parenthood. That is why, in the fifth section, Starck urged readers against forcing God to grant them

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a child by grumbling and impatient pleading. The idea that anyone could be pregnant against the divine will does not quite fit the overall argument. But Starck assumed the possibility that God could give children in anger, with devastating consequences: either the mother whose demand was met would fall ill and perhaps even die, or the offspring would cause nothing but grief and horror. The sixth section was specifically addressed to women who feared for their salvation because they could not give birth. Starck sought to allay this fear by recalling a fundamental principle of the Protestant Reformation: Christians are not justified by their works, but by faith alone. So the blood of Christ, not childbearing, brings salvation. In the seventh section, Starck again proposed patience and trust in God. He gave his readers hope and assured them that God could still hear all their petitions. The eighth section dealt with how to get through the time of anxiety and waiting; under no circumstances should spouses blame each other. Starck identified God as the actual cause of (in)fertility and thus exonerated the spouses. In general, he advised restraint and composure, even if friends and relatives were to become interested in the inheritance too soon. Instead allowing themselves to be affected by the negatives, childless couples were to remain faithful in their love for each other and for God. They had more time for pious activities, as Starck pointed out in the ninth and tenth sections. He suggested practising works of mercy and supporting poor people, such as pious children.47 In this way, people who had no children of their own could take on a social parental role for which they would be praised on the Last Day. In the eleventh section, Starck again considered childlessness as a sign of divine grace. It was possible that God did not give married couples offspring in order to spare them from an imminent catastrophe. Starck changed tack in the final section, encouraging each reader to examine their own conscience. Spouses should consider whether they had the right attitude: did they see children only as natural progeny or as a gift from God? In asking this, Starck implied that infertility might be self-induced after all, and revisited the traditional link between action and effect encountered in theology, medicine, and demonology. Perhaps God wanted to make infertile couples aware that something was wrong? The pastor took the precaution of refuting the potential objection that much greater sinners have had children: whores and whoremongers were not able to hide their shame. Consequently, the causes of infertility could not be explained in a general way, but only by case-specific research.

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Starck concluded by referring to biblical models, including the possibility of late parenthood.48 Childless couples were thus not released from their worries, but remained in a suspended state of anxious hope. Instead of abolishing the dichotomy of fertility and infertility, entrusting everything to God, Starck advised his readers to pray without ceasing. As an ideal, fertility remained unchanged; longed-for parenthood continued to have a strong emotional impact. This is particularly clear in Starck’s final piece of advice that his readers bear their pain patiently—it would end, but only in the next life. If their houses remained empty of children on earth, they could enjoy the fellowship of thousands of angels in heaven. Thus, childlessness was a catechetical problem that individuals could never overcome, despite all attempts at consolation. The medium also helped to ensure that the (in)fertility hierarchy was never forgotten. Women without children seeking comfort in prayer needed only pick up the book to be reminded of the reproductive norm. The bulk of Starck’s prayerbook, one hundred of about one hundred and twenty printed pages, is dedicated to childbearing women. Advice to Accept Stigma Like gender, status, and origin, (in)fertility is a category that significantly shapes personal and social identity. Women’s self-image and others’ images of us depend on whether we have children or not. Johann Friedrich Starck’s prayerbook exemplifies how women are guided to form their identity as childless.49 The theoretical instruction is followed by two further texts that readers are supposed to use to internalize Starck’s position: a prayer and a song. Both are formulated in the first-person singular and focus on the suffering of childless women. Although the first-person statements appear very personal and highly subjective, they are predetermined by the male author and composed in theological rhetoric. His prayer texts offered infertile women a way to put their painful affects into words while guiding them in the desired direction. Starck’s prayer begins with a double address to God, a question about one’s own destiny and a lament about one’s childlessness: ‘Lord, Lord, what wilt thou give me? I’m journeying through life without children!’50 Like the sinner confessing ‘my fault’ in the Confiteor, Starck’s praying I self-defines through stigma. He transforms the ‘mea culpa’ into a ‘mea infertilitas,’ making the supplicant identify with the role of unfortunate infertile woman. The book Stigma (1963) by the Canadian–American

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sociologist Erving Goffman offers interesting insights into the process by which childless women form their identity: he describes techniques to manage a ‘spoiled identity,’51 a problem that only occurs as a result of expectations from all sides. The prerequisite is that a particular standard is not only advocated but also applied. Through socialization, a person learns the identity standards of a society and applies them to themselves, even if personally unable to conform to them. Their deviance leads to an inner self-contradiction, which is reflected in Starck’s prayer for infertile women in the discrepancy between faith and experience. The petitioner understands herself as God’s creature, like all other human beings. Yet she sees how God gives children to others, but not to herself. According to Goffman, stigmatized people are supported by others who know their trouble very well. The pastor Johann Friedrich Starck is a typical ‘wise person’ in Goffman’s sense. By formulating the prayer, he offered professional help in dealing with infertility. The previous catechesis is transferred into prayer practice through which childless people are to find an appropriate attitude. Therefore, the supplicant does not lament for long, but asks for patience and serenity, acknowledges the omnipotence and love of God, and promises to submit to the divine will. The prayer is formulated to make recipients pray about their own situations in a certain way and take the advice of the ‘wise person’: instead of complaining, to praise God’s goodness and give thanks for being spared the ‘cross’ of a child in their weakness. Should her longed-for child not be granted, the pious supplicant asks for strength to serve God all the more joyfully. The aim of the prayer is to foster acceptance of childlessness and protect supplicants from feeling envy, resentment, or hatred. Faith, hope, and love, devotion to God and steadfastness are to be strengthened so that the supplicant can perform works of mercy. Modelling this, the infertile petitioner does not give up hope and believes in the possibility of a redemptive turn. She implores the Almighty for a child and refers to the biblical role models of Sarah and Elizabeth—who against all odds became pregnant at an advanced age—yet promises to accept the divine will. The urgent desire for a child and the declared willingness to suffer provide an inherent tension that creates a split identity. ‘Lord, I have poured out my heart before you, alas!’ sighs the supplicant, before being led to a composed and comforted attitude. At the end, the petitioner shifts from addressing God, to encouraging herself: ‘I rejoice in my hope.’ Four times, Starck has the praying woman say the

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formula ‘I rejoice,’ which transforms grief into serenity and autosuggests a change in attitude.52 Instruction to pray like this served the purpose of ‘good adjustment,’ which Erving Goffman describes as follows53 : stigmatized individuals are supposed to accept themselves cheerfully and unselfconsciously, as if they were equal to ‘normal’ people; at the same time, they are required to tolerate implicit limits and not to push their luck. ‘If it be not your will, I do not desire to force a child from you,’ vows the pious one praying Starck’s words. The guidelines for ‘good adjustment’ are set by representatives of the majority view. They require a discredited individual to accept their stigma with composure. Stigmatized people are considered exemplary when they declare that, to them, their burden does not seem too heavy, but nevertheless maintain their distance from the ‘normals’ to confirm the society’s standards. The management of ‘spoiled identity’ is central to Starck’s prayerbook, in which the hierarchy of (in)fertility is not questioned at all, but childless women are expected to bear their heavy burden patiently and humbly. The prayer is followed by a song that also aligns to the rules of ‘good adjustment.’ The twelve verses are to be sung to the tune of the Bach cantata ‘Alle Menschen müssen sterben’ (Everybody must die). The musical adaptation is relevant to the devotional practice. What the female recipients have understood intellectually and aligned themselves to in prayer, they are to internalize through the song. For catechesis, this procedure is highly effective. Metre, rhythm, and verse all help make it easy to learn theological content quickly and to recall it again and again. Like the prayer, the song starts from the singer’s childlessness and contrasts this with the abundance of children others have, awakening their own emotional distress. Seeing the joy of motherhood in others, she always feels lonely and sad: ‘What then wilt thou grant me, Lord, For children have I none? All my life and all my days, sorrow-filled they linger on; Others with great joy are filled, daughters and sons all around, But I face life all alone, and I still must bear this pain.’54 The longing for a child is expressed much more keenly in the next verse than in the previous texts, because the singer imagines the relationship to a desired child.55 She imagines lovingly caring for an infant, playing with the baby and carrying it around. Just the thought of being a mother brings the greatest joy. As in the wedding sermons, parental happiness is emphasized, yet marked as illusionary and unattainable. The elation suddenly turns into the pain of deprivation and lament at being denied the

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greatest happiness. In the following verses, the infertile narrator increasingly manages to accept her situation: she acknowledges that God has bestowed many other gifts upon her, promising to submit to the divine will and not to force God to grant her a child. Compared to the Reformation wedding speeches, what is most remarkable is the joy that this supplicant feels in God’s love. While the preachers compare childlessness to a life without sunshine, Starck points to the superior value of Christian life. Love for Christ is more important than ten sons, which is why the singer displays contentment and trust in God: ‘You I have, my one delight! My God, my joy, and my light! Content I am with You, my Sun, So in me Your will be done.’56 Not their own offspring, but God, were to light up the lives of such pious women. Even in the song, however, the desire for a child remains powerful. The singer is divided—willingness to accept infertility alternates with the hope of a late pregnancy. ‘Who knows’ what God will bring? The singer asks herself this four times; her identity is decisively determined by her childlessness and she cannot free herself from the key differentiating factor—(in)fertility. Until the end, she hopes for ‘the hour of grace’ (verse 11), in which, after a long wait, she will finally be granted a child. At the same time, she asks to bear her passion like Christ. The cross of a pious woman can be both her motherhood and her childlessness. The last verse ends with the singer’s ambivalence about her fate; her speech vacillates between urgent appeal and quiet resignation. She pleads with God to hear her petitions, yet promises to accept the divine will.57 The melody gives the intended consolation a melancholic undertone. The affects of the original words in the German cantata, used at funerals, are transferred to the new text when it is sung and create a negative mood that can only be overcome by trusting in God. The contrafactum contributes to the fact that suffering, pain, and death always remain inscribed in consolation. On the musical level, dealing with infertility is tantamount to working through a grieving process. At the same time, the infertility song conveys on a textual level what behaviour is expected from people who long for children. In Starck’s prayerbook, pastoral care and stigmatization are inseparable. The theologian guides women to develop an identity as a childless individual. The aim of catechesis is for infertile women to internalize and accept their deviation from ‘normality.’

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Prospects The pain women feel today due to their infertility is demonstrated by testimonials, interviews with experts, and reports by those affected. ‘Nothing in my life has hurt me as much as my childlessness’; ‘Everything revolved around the desire for a child’; ‘My life seemed to come to a complete standstill’ said 44-year-old Ines, who tried in vain for eleven years to have a child and endured numerous fertility treatments.58 Guides for women who remain childless but not by choice are still in great demand today. In very few cases do these books help readers to put their longing for a child behind them and go through a grieving process; mostly the phase of trepidation and hope is prolonged. In this, the promises made by reproductive medicine have played a decisive role. Fertility clinics are not concerned that childless people make peace with their life situation, but that they receive medical treatment. Slogans like ‘Don’t hang your head’; ‘Basically every woman gets pregnant’; or ‘Just today we had three more positive pregnancy tests’ raise expectations and encourage infertility patients to continue pursuing their desire for a child. The perspective of women whose lifelong dream of having a family remains unfulfilled is diametrically opposed to that of women who do not have children of their own free will. When longing for a child determines everything, it is difficult to see the ambivalence of parenthood. People who desperately struggle to conceive are not childfree, but childless, clarifies Verena Brunschweiger. Herself, she can only see positive sides to a life without children. Sheila Heti, too, consciously decides at the end of her autofictional work not to become a mother. Instead of caring for a child, she wants to use her time to write and, with her partner, derive satisfaction from making art rather than being a parent.59 In the past and present, individuals have varied vastly in their views as to whether life with or without children is the ideal. Yet, (in)fertility is shaped by more than subjective feelings and personal desires; ethical imprints, cultural patterns of interpretation, and social values all play a role. Since the Reformation, maternal happiness as the meaning of a woman’s life has been continuously propagated; the competing discourse strand advocating the liberty of the childfree has become less and less significant. The great pain that people feel today when they cannot have children should be interpreted in this cultural historical context: for centuries, women were sensitized to the risk of infertility and trained to perceive their lives as less worthwhile without children. Thus, they were made

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to suffer in a situation which, according to ancient church fathers and premodern philosophers, was enviable. Women who publicly share their conviction not to choose motherhood are questioning the ideas of happiness established in the early modern period. Their arguments for a good life can be found as early as in ancient and medieval literature. The question whether to have children is not a new one that emerged with the contraceptive pill, but in the past, it was mainly discussed by men; in the present, it is almost exclusively women who are required to speak out on the subject of parenthood.

Notes 1. Sheila Heti, Motherhood (London, 2018). 2. On marriage literature in general, see, e.g., Albrecht Classen, Der Liebesund Ehediskurs vom hohen Mittelalter bis ins 17. Jahrhundert (Münster etc., 2005) (Volkslied Studien, 5); Erika Kartschoke, ‘Einübung in bürgerliche Alltagspraxis’, in Werner Röcke and Marina Münkler (eds), Die Literatur im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (München, 2004) (Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1), pp. 446–462. There are no register entries on fertility, infertility, or childlessness in the Repertorium deutschsprachiger Ehelehren der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Erika Kartschoke, Vol. I/1 (Berlin, 1996), pp. 234–236. 3. Johannes Mathesius, Hochzeitpredigten Vom Ehestand vnnd Haußwesen/ […], transl. by Nikolaus Hermann (Nürnberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1575), fol. 173r: Vnfruchtbar vnd on Erben sein/ Ist gleich als leucht kein Sonnenschein. See also Nikolaus Selnecker, Der gantze Psalter Dauids ausgelegt […] (Leipzig: Jakob Bärwald (Erben), 1571), fol. 176r. 4. Verena Brunschweiger, Kinderfrei statt kinderlos: Ein Manifest (Marburg, 2019), p. 11. Brunschweiger herself deals with the public reactions in detail; her analysis is shaped by ecofeminism, see Brunschweiger, Die Childfree-Rebellion: Warum ‘zu radikal’ gerade radikal genug ist (Marburg, 2020), especially p. 27. She presents her experiences and ideas to an international readership in her most recent publication, Brunschweiger, Do Childfree People Have Better Sex? A Feminist’s Journey in the Childfree Movement (New York City, 2022), pp. 22–23. 5. St. John Chrysostom, ‘On Virginity’, in St. John Chrysostom, On Virginity, Against Remarriage, transl. by Sally Rieger Shore, with an introduction by Elisabeth A. Clark (Lewiston, NY, 1983) (Studies in Women and Religion 9), pp. 1–128, here pp. 87–96, chap. LIII–LVIII. 6. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London, 2004). See also Claudia Krieg, ‘Die Heilige Familie: Repro-Technik: Die Geschlechterforscherin Ulrike Klöppel über queere

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

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Wünsche, Handlungsspielräume und Kritik an Reproduktionstechnologien’, analyse & kritik, 626 (18 April 2017), https://archiv.akweb.de/ ak_s/ak626/26.htm (accessed 30 January 2022). Günther Christian Hansen, ‘Molestiae nuptiarum’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock: Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, 12 (1963), pp. 215–219, here p. 218. St. Jerome, ‘The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary. Against Helvidius’, in St. Jerome, Letters and Select Works, transl. by W. H. Fremantle (Oxford and New York, 1893) (A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. VI), pp. 334–346, here pp. 344–345, chap. 22. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988); Karl Suso Frank, AΓ Γ EΛIKOΣ BIOΣ: Begriffsanalytische und begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum‚ ‘engelgleichen Leben’ im frühen Mönchtum (Münster, 1964); Regina Götz, Der geschlechtliche Mensch – ein Ebenbild Gottes: Die Auslegung von Gen 1,27 durch die wichtigsten griechischen Kirchenväter (Frankfurt a.M., 2003) (Fuldaer Hochschulschriften, 42), pp. 88–92. Brunschweiger, Kinderfrei, p. 36; Brunschweiger, Die Childfree-Rebellion, p. 11. See also David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford, 2006). The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. with a revised translation by David Luscombe after the translation by Betty Radice (Oxford, 2013), ep. I.13–31, pp. 20–51. See Letters 1–5, in Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, pp. 122– 217, especially ep. V.25 and V.29, pp. 204–205, 208–211. See, e.g., Peter von Moos, ‘Post festum: Was kommt nach der Authentizitätsdebatte über die Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?’, in Rudolf Thomas (ed.), Petrus Abaelardus (1079–1142): Person, Werk und Wirkung (Trier, 1980) (Trierer theologische Studien, 38), pp. 75–100; Elisabeth Schmid, ‘Die Regulierung der weiblichen Rede: Zum Problem der Autorschaft im Briefwechsel Abaelard–Heloisa’, in Ingrid Bennewitz (ed.), Der frauwen buoch: Versuche zu einer feministischen Mediävistik (Göppingen, 1989) (GAG, 517), pp. 83–111. Susanne Garsoffky and Britta Sembach, Der tiefe Riss: Wie Politik und Wirtschaft Eltern und Kinderlose gegeneinander ausspielen (München, 2017). Albrecht von Eyb, Ob einem manne sey zunemen ein eelichs weyb oder nicht, introduction by Helmut Weinacht (Darmstadt, 2006), pp. 5, 22 (= Ehebüchlein [Little Book of Marriage]). Francesco Petrarca, Von der Artzney bayder Glück/ des guten ˚ vnd widerwertigen, ed. by Sebastian Brant (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532), lib. I, chap. 70, fol. LXXXIXr, lib. II, chap. 12, 22, fol. XVIr–XVIIv,

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20.

21.

22.

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XXXr–v. See Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De Remediis Utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary by Conrad H. Rawski (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991), Vol. 1, chap. 70, pp. 205–206; Vol. 2, chap. 12, pp. 44–47 (‘The Burden of Many Children’), chap. 22, pp. 71–72 (‘A Barren Wife’). ‘I could cite many illustrious men who found the greatest obstacle to their happiness was that they had children.’ Ibid., p. 206. ‘Just why do you want to hear her yells in childbed; the shouting of wet nurses, and bawling babies?’ Ibid., p. 72. See also Karl A. E. Enenkel, ‘Der Petrarca des “Petrarca-Meisters”: Zum Text-Bild-Verhältnis in illustrierten De remediis-Ausgaben’, in Enenkel and Jan Papy (eds), Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance (Leiden, 2006), pp. 91–169; Joachim Knape, Die ältesten deutschen Übersetzungen von Petrarcas ‘Glücksbuch’: Texte und Untersuchungen (Bamberg, 1986) (Gratian, 152), pp. 70–74; Paul Michel, ‘Transformation und Augmentation bei Petrarca und seinem Meister’, in Martin Schierbaum (ed.), Enzyklopädistik 1550–1650: Typen und Transformationen von Wissensspeichern und Medialisierungen des Wissens (Berlin, 2009), pp. 349–377. Cf. Albrecht von Eyb, Ehebüchlein, p. 24. Even Boethius considered those who were spared the hassles and worries of parents to be fortunate: Boethius, Trost der Philosophie: Consolatio Philosophiae, Latin and German, ed. and transl. by Ernst Gegenschatz and Olof Gigon, 5th edn (Darmstadt, 1998) (Sammlung Tusculum), 3.7.5. Reformed preachers, too, remained convinced of this. Gregor Strigenitz, Votum Bethlehemiticum. […] Christiano II. Hertzogen zu Sachssen […] Vnd […] Hedwigen […] (Leipzig: Franz Schnellboltz Erben für Bartholomäus Voigt d.Ä., 1602), vngeratene fol. B[iiij]v: So ists auch besser keine Kinder haben/ denn Kinder. Erik Margraf, Die Hochzeitspredigt der Frühen Neuzeit: Mit einer Bibliographie der selbstständig erschienenen Hochzeitspredigtdrucke der HerzogAugust-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, der Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg und der Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg (München, 2007) (Geschichtswissenschaft, 16). For example, Garsoffky and Sembach, Der tiefe Riss, pp. 155–193; Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung (ed.), Die Zukunft des Generationenvertrags: Wie lassen sich die Lasten des demografischen Wandels gerechter verteilen, Discussion Paper, 14 (2014), https://www. berlin-institut.org/fileadmin/Redaktion/Publikationen/aeltere_Studien/ Die_Zukunft_des_Generationenvertrags/140523_BI_Paper_Generatio nengerechtigkeit_Online.pdf (accessed March 31, 2022). deß lebens Marcello Palingènio Stellato, […] Zodiacus vitae, das ist/ […], transl. by Johannes Spreng (Frankfurt a.M.: Georg Rab, Sigmund Feyerabend, and Weigand Han Erben, 1564), fol. 88v: Vber das wirstu

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25.

26. 27.

28.

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sterben bloß/| On freund vnd kinder gantz erbloß/ . Johannes Dinckel, Predigt: Auß dem vierden Capittel deß Buchs Ruth/ […] (Coburg: vnd Christoph Truckel, 1588), fol. Bijv: Kinder […] machen alle arbeit/ […] leichter vnd treglicher/ dieweil fromme Eltern wissen vnd sehen/ wem sie zu gute arbeiten/ etwas erwerben/ sparen/ vnd beylegen/ […]. Strigenitz, Votum, fol. Biijv: Die lieben Kinderlein sind auch das rechte vnd arbeit/ was machet einen lenimentum laboris, die linderung aller Vater frewdiger vnd vnuerdrossener/ daß er gerne arbeitet […]? Das tuhn sawer/ keine sorge beschwalles die Kinderlein/ da wird jhme keine erlich/ weil jhm Gott Erben bescheret/ daß er weis wem ers lassen vnd sol. Palingènio Stellato, Zodiacus vitae, fol. 88v–89v; Johann Georg Marggraf, […] (Celle: Andreas Holwein, 1669), Hertz-Christlicher pp. 14–15. Palingènio Stellato, Zodiacus vitae, fol. 89r–v: Sie seind dein fleisch vnd bildnuß eben. […] So wirst in deinen Kinden doch/ Gleich lebendig gesehen noch. Early on, Aeschylus referred to the role of children in preserving one’s memory: ‘For to a man after death his children bring renown’. Cited in Clement of Alexandria, ‘The Stromata, or Miscellanies’, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (entire), American ed. (Peabody, MA, 1995 [1885]), pp. 299–568, here Book II, chap. XXIII, p. 378. Clement erroneously attributes the verse to Sophocles. , pp. 17–18: In und Kindern wirstu Cf. Marggraf, leben/ wenn du gleich gestorben bist. Vgl. Nascitur indigne, cui non quoque nascitur alter/ Viuit et indigne, cui , p. 17: Der lebet kaum non quoque vivit et alter. Marggraf, mit recht/ der sonder Erben bleibt/| Und sein Geschlecht und Stand/ der Welt nicht einverleibt. Strigenitz, Votum, fol. B[iiij]r: Der ist nit werth daß er geboren worden ist/ der nicht auch einen andern zeuget. Der ist nit werth daß er auff Erden lebet/ der nicht auch einen andern nach sich am leben vnd preisen. hinterlesset/ der ‘Albrecht von Eyb, Ehebüchlein, pp. 81 and 22; Mathesius, Hochzeitpredigten, fol. 172v–173r. Early on, the literature of Antiquity stylized a tender relationship between parent and child. In a bride’s song, Catullus imagines how the young mother will soon hold a young son in her lap: ‘I would like to see a miniature Torquatus / from the bosom of his mother / reaching out his fresh young hands / smiling sweetly at his father / with his little lips half open.’ Catullus, Poems 61–68, ed. with introduction, translation and commentary by John Godwin (Warminster, 1995), 61, vv. 209–213.

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29. Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, transl. by Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Oxford, 2012). First published as: Niklas Luhmann, Liebe als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimität (Frankfurt a.M., 1982). 30. Matthias Hafenreffer, Predigt Bey dem Hochzeitlichen Ehrntage/ […] Michaëlis Beringeri […] vnd […] Anna […] Aichlin […] 1601 […] gehalten […] (Tübingen: Philipp Gruppenbach, 1608), pp. 22–23: Welche zierde den Eltern nicht allein die Augen zubelustigen/ sondern jhr Hertz/ Marck vnd Bein […] zu erfrewen pfleget. Cited in: Dinckel, Predigt, fol. vnd schmerztens/ wenn sie dieselbige Bijv: Ja sie lindern jhnen viel […]. Strigenitz, Votum, ansehen/ auff fassen/ tragen/ hertzen/ fol. Biijv: Kinderlein sind die besten Spielvogel/ vertreiben einen viel vnlusts/ Vater/ dem bringen viel lust vnd frewd ins Hauß/ daß mancher ist/ […] wenn er die Kinderlein sein Hertz voller jammer vnd Tisch die Psalmen beten/ hersagen/ gleich wieder lebendig/ vnd ein newer Mensch wird/ vnd solche reden gehen einem zu Hertzen/ vnd machen einem ein new Hertz. On Luther and Agesilaus see ibid., fol. Biijv–B[iiij]r. On children bringing joy to a marriage see also Rüdiger Schnell, Sexualität und Emotionalität in der vormodernen Ehe (Köln, Weimar, and Wien, 2002), pp. 206–210. 31. Konrad von Würzburg, Trojanerkrieg, ed. by Heinz Thoelen and Bianca Häberlein (Wiesbaden, 2015) (Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter, 51), vv. 7573–7574: diz ist der beste prîsant,| den ich in mînem hûse fant […]. vnd bestesten Strigenitz, Votum, fol. Bijv: daß sind meine Edle , zierde. See also Marggraf, Kleinot/ vnnd meine pp. 12–13; Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, Vol. 2, chap. 12, pp. 44–45. 32. Dinckel, Predigt, fol. Bijv; Strigenitz, Votum, fol. Biijr; Marggraf, , p. 15. 33. Albrecht von Eyb, Ehebüchlein, p. 57; Dinckel, Predigt, fol. Biijr; , p. 15. Marggraf, , p. 6; Dinckel, Predigt, fol. Bv; Strigenitz, Votum, 34. Marggraf, fol. Bv. See also Caspar Güthel, Vber das Euangelion Johannis/ da Christus seyne Mutter ˚ auch seine Junger/ waren auff die Hochtzeyt geladen […] (Zwickau: Johann d.J. Schönsperger, 1524), fol. Biijr–v. 35. Strigenitz, Votum, fol. B[iiij]r: Ja die Kinderlein werden auch von Gott gegeben/ daß sie jn sollen loben vnd preisen helffen/ seine Kirche hie erbawen […]. On children as a gift from God see also vnd den Himmel , p. 11; StriDinckel, Predigt, fol. Bijv–Biijr; Marggraf, genitz, Votum, fol. Bijr, Cr; Jodocus Graßhoff, Dorff Hochzeitpredigt/ […] (Magdeburg: Andreas Seydner, 1603), fol. B[iiij]r. Zur Engführung von Kindern und Engeln see Hafenreffer, Predigt, p. 22: Die Kinder aber/ seind lebendige heiligen/ lebendige Engelein/ nicht nach Appellis, Zeuxis

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37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

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oder Praxitelis Kunst/ sondern nach Gottes selbs eignem Ebenbild formirt , pp. 13–14. vnd gebildet. Marggraf, Dinckel, Predigt, fol. Bijv. On the Protestant understanding of family life as serving God see Albrecht Koschorke, The Holy Family and Its Legacy: Religious Imagination from the Gospels to Star Wars, transl. by Thomas Dunlap (New York, 2003), pp. 118–120. , pp. 15–16: heist der Tag/ und Marggraf, furchtsam selbe Nacht/| Die ohne Licht und Schein/ muß werden hingebracht.| Dem gleichet sich das Haus/ da Leibes-Erben fehlen/| Und wo ein . See also ibid.: Wie der Tag einsam Bett/ ist lauter Furcht und ohne Sonnen und die Nacht ohne Sternen ist: Also ist das Leben ohne den Ehestand/ und die Ehe ohne LeibesFrucht. Marggraf cites the saying also in Latin (Ut tristis sine Sole dies, sine lumine nox est: | Sic tristis sine prole domus sine compare lectus ) and refers to Augustine and Nikolaus Selnecker’s interpretation of Psalm 128. , pp. 14–15, 37–39. See also Strigenitz, Votum, Marggraf, fol. Dv–Dijr. See, e.g., Johannes Cochlaeus, Von der heyligen Ehe Sechs Fragstuck […] (Dresden: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1534), fol. b[j]r: Jn der Ehe giltt mehr die heylikeit diß Sacraments/ dann die fruchtbarkeit des leibes. Martin Luther, ‘Vom ehelichen Leben (1522)’, in WA 10, 2, pp. 267– 304, here p. 296: Es sind alles eyttell guldene, edele werck. [‘These are truly golden and noble works’, Martin Luther, ‘The Estate of Marriage, 1522’, transl. by Walther I. Brandt, in Luther’s Works Volume 45: The Christian in Society II , ed. by Brandt (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 17–49, here p. 40.] On the position of women in the Reformation see Lyndal Roper: The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989). See, e.g., Otho Körber, Ein kurtzer bericht/ wie sich die schwangere […] sollen (Leipzig: WolfWeiber/ vor vnnd in der Kindtsgeburdt gang Günther, 1553), fol. Avv; Conrad Wolfgang Platz, Ein Christliche Predig für alle vnnd jede Schwangere vnd geberende Frawen gehalten zu˚ Bibrach (Ulm: Oswald Gruppenbach, 1564), fol. [Biiijv]. On the role of bearing children in salvation see Ulrike Gleixner, ‘Todesangst und Gottergebenheit: Die Spiritualisierung von Schwangerschaft und Geburt im lutherischen Pietismus’, in Barbara Duden, Jürgen Schlumbohm, and Patrice Veit (eds), Geschichte des Ungeborenen: Zur Erfahrung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Schwangerschaft, 17–20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2002) (Veröffentlichungen des Max-PlanckInstituts für Geschichte, 170), pp. 75–98, here pp. 76–85. Johann Friedrich Starck, Gebetbuch für Schwangere, , Kindbetterinnen und Unfruchtbare […], 20th edn (Frankfurt a.M., 1833), pp. 105–110. The work first appeared in 1731 as an appendix to a very

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46. 47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

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popular Pietist book of consolations for the sick, see Gleixner, ‘Todesangst’, p. 81. The sermon by Strigenitz (Votum, fol. B[iiij]r) contains a consolatory passage that may have been added for printing. The marginalia draw attention to the problem of infertility: Obiectio von denen die keine Kinder haben. – Trost für dieselbigen. Daphna Oren-Magidor, ‘From Anne to Hannah: Religious Views of Infertility in Post-Reformation England’, Journal of Women’s History, 27 (2015), pp. 86–108. Starck, Gebetbuch, p. 105: Erinnerung und Trost Unfruchtbare. Starck, Gebetbuch, p. 106. Sigfrid, who decouples marriage and reproduction, argues similarly. Although God mandated the first human beings to multiply, this was not a command that everyone should beget. See Thomas Sigfrid, Antwort auff die Frage/ Obs eine rechte Ehe sey/ wenn ein junger Mann ein alt Weib nimet/ oder ein jung Weib einen alten Mann nimmet. […], n.p., 1590, fol. Biijr. Gleixner, ‘Todesangst’, pp. 80–81. On the ‘cross of marriage’ cf. Margraf, Hochzeitspredigt, pp. 446–465. Geiler of Kaysersberg also comforts infertile couples with their charitable role: childlessness is God’s will, because rich people without children do more for the community than if they had twenty to thirty wayward sons. Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, ‘Trostspiegel’, in Geiler von Kaysersberg, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 1, ed. by Gerhard Bauer, 1st part, 1st dep. (Berlin, New York, 1989) (Ausgaben deutscher Literatur des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts), pp. 201–236, here p. 229. Sigfrid (Antwort, fol. B[iiij]r) encouraged childless couples in a similar way, saying that even in old age, pregnancy was sometimes still possible, as contemporary examples showed. Testimonies by childless women themselves in the early modern period are rare. In the few spiritual diary entries, religiously educated women interpret their infertility—as their pastors tell them to—as a severe trial and turn to God for help. Oren-Magidor: ‘From Anne to Hannah’, pp. 92–96. Starck, Gebetbuch, pp. 112–114, here p. 112: Herr, Herr, was willst du mir geben? ich gehe dahin ohne Kinder! Ervin Goffmann, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963), pp. 6, 28, 32–40, 123–124. Starck, Gebetbuch, p. 114: Herr, ich habe mein Herz vor dir ausgeschüttet, ach! [...] Ich bin vergnügt in meinem Hoffen, [...] ich bin vergnügt. Ich bin vergnügt, [...] ich bin vergnügt. Amen. Goffman, Stigma, pp. 120–122. Starck, Gebetbuch, verse 1, p. 114: Ach Herr! was willst du mir geben, Weil ich ohne Kinder bin? Meine Zeit und auch mein Leben Geht in vielem Kummer hin; Andre muß ich fröhlich sehen, Und mit Kindern einher gehen, Aber ich geh ganz allein, Und muss stets bekümmert seyn.

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55. Starck, Gebetbuch, verse. 2, pp. 114–115: Nichts erfreut mich mehr im Herzen, Als ein zartes Kind zu sehn; Mit ihm allezeit zu scherzen, Mit ihm hin und her zu gehn, Dieses pflegt mich zu ergötzen, Und in tausend Freud’ zu setzen; Doch die Freude hab’ ich nicht, Weils an Kindern mir gebricht. 56. Starck, Gebetbuch, verse 7, p. 115: Hab ich dich, o meine Wonne! Mein , Wie’s dein Wille Gott! meine Freud’ und Sonne! So bin ich in dir . in mir dieß mein Flehen, Ach! 57. Starck, Gebetbuch, verse 12, p. 115: Herr! nimm meine Seufzer an, Lasse meine Bitt’ geschehen, Du bists, der mir Alles dir, mein Gott, heimstellen, helfen kann; Doch laß mich in allen Daß ich, wie es immer geh’, spreche: Herr! dein Will’ gescheh. 58. Susanne Zehetbauer, Ich bin eine Frau ohne Kinder: Begleitung beim Abschied vom Kinderwunsch (München, [2007?]), pp. 81–84. See also Martin Spiewak, Wie weit gehen wir für ein Kind? Im Labyrinth der Fortpflanzungsmedizin (Frankfurt a.M., 2002), pp. 101–102; Iris Enchelmaier, Abschied vom Kinderwunsch: Ein Ratgeber für Frauen, die ungewollt kinderlos geblieben sind (Stuttgart, 2004). 59. Brunschweiger, Kinderfrei, p. 10; Heti, Motherhood, p. 35–36. On the conscious decision to lead a life without children cf. Dorothee SchmitzKöster, Frauen ohne Kinder: Motive – Konflikte – Argumente (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1987).

CHAPTER 7

Epilogue

‘Beauty is ageless—fertility is not.’ With this slogan, the Italian Ministry of Health wanted to encourage women to have children. The image making this implicit appeal was part of a large-scale campaign (Fig. 7.1). The health minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, planned a ‘Fertility Day’ in 2016 to draw attention to the low birth rate in Italy and to promote reproduction.1 Pictured on the poster is a young woman with long brown hair, dark eyes, carefully plucked brows, and a strikingly fair complexion. Smiling, she looks at the viewers and stretches out her right hand to them. In her computer-enhanced hand, she holds an hourglass in which time is visibly running out. Her left hand rests on her stomach, which is not curved. Even without textual commentary, the message of this image would be easy to decipher: women have limited time to get pregnant. The large letters are predominantly white, with only the word ‘age’ set in a striking red, the same colour as the woman’s top, like a warning light. The image and text focus on a problem that is being addressed from various angles in current debates on childlessness2 : demographers note that on average, women today have far fewer children and give birth much later than they did fifty years ago. Gynaecologists point out that the success rate of fertility treatments decreases rapidly with increasing age. Social researchers raise the concern that sex education is one-sided: young people are informed about contraception and how to avoid teenage pregnancy, but infertility and its causes are completely ignored. Above all, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0_7

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Fig. 7.1 Fertility appeal—draft for a campaign by the Italian Ministry of Health (2016)

people who have been unable to have children feel they were uninformed about the growing risk of infertility, which seems to prove the Italian health minister right: it is better to advise women to become mothers early, because otherwise they might bitterly regret waiting until it is too late. The low fertility rate in Italy, as in many other European and some East Asian countries, cannot only be explained by changed social conditions such as long periods of education, men’s and women’s career paths, or a higher age at marriage. Neither are ecological factors alone, such as environmental toxins or oestrogens spread in drinking water, responsible for the low number of children per household. Involuntary childlessness is an ancient phenomenon found in the earliest Judeo-Christian written tradition. In contrast, (in)fertility history is a very new research field, as editors Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis point out in their introduction to The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History (2017).3 The approaches I find most significant for future research include critique of normativity

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and underlying power structures, and above all gender studies, narrative analysis, and comparative studies. The situation of childless women and men only becomes relevant to historians when we recognize that childlessness was an issue before the modern era. It is important to distinguish clearly between the stories people without progeny tell themselves and the tales others tell about them. Comparing narrations of (in)fertility from different points of view, genres, and periods reveals that life with and without children was experienced in different ways, depending on the context.

Uneven Visibility: Childless Men and Childless Women The Italian fertility campaign was intended to make childlessness visible as a social problem. The then health minister, Lorenzin, could be credited for recognizing the pain of longing for parenthood and attempting to raise awareness of this. Talking about the issue publicly, rather than behind closed doors, could have reduced and removed the taboos around involuntary childlessness. As highlighted in gender studies, disability studies, and intersectionality theory, visibility is a key step towards ending marginalization.4 However, discrimination does not only depend on whether members of a minority are perceived by society at all, but also on how that society addresses and defines their otherness. So we need to ask questions about how people who are not parents are presented, whether their own needs are taken into account, and what implicit assumptions are made about them. At first glance, the fertility poster seems to present only natural, objective correlations. Critique of normativity soon reveals that these are shaped by specific power constellations and expected roles. The image confirms my central thesis, that childlessness has a physical dimension, but is culturally constructed. The promotional poster shows how crucial the category of gender is. The role of the fertility messenger is female. Significantly, (in)fertility is embodied by a woman, in line with millennia-old tradition. Since Antiquity, childlessness has been associated primarily with women, without holding men to the same standard. The biblical (in)fertility stories of Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah and the ancient procreation teachings of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen provide sufficient evidence for this. Yet, the original biblical mandate to multiply was given to the man and woman together. Moreover, childlessness also affects men. Some medical

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procedures, such as sperm or urine tests, and parenthood via surrogates, such as Hagar, would be impossible without male involvement. Intended fathers were even engaged in most premodern theological remedies for childlessness—in pious foundations, prayers, and pilgrimages. In mediaeval literature, childlessness is surprisingly often presented as a men’s problem, as is shown by the work of Catherine Rider and throughout this book.5 Women and men who do not live up to the reproductive norm are indeed affected by social discrimination in different ways, but both suffer from marginalization. One need only think of the canonical proceedings in which husbands were accused of impotence and publicly exposed. Therefore, (in)fertility research should not focus exclusively on women, but also on the consequences of childlessness for men. In mediaeval and early modern Europe, people who did not want to marry and who did not have children faced enormous pressure through feudal politics. Rulers were simply required to produce an heir and secure the succession to the throne. In historiographical and narrative literature, childlessness primarily arises when it affects nobles and high nobles. Historical (in)fertility research faces a source problem here: It is almost impossible to determine how people of lower social status were affected by not having children. Overall, the category of status (‘class’) affected life in the Middle Ages even more than gender. Only with the spread of the Reformation did femininity and motherhood became so closely linked that women without children grew to doubt the meaning of their lives and their raison d’être. The gender concepts established in the early modern period have changed considerably over the past two centuries. The legal situation of women has continuously improved since the introduction of universal suffrage, and their equality with men has become enshrined in law. As soon as the categories ‘gender’ and ‘fertility’ intersect, however, the concepts of partnership and hierarchy, as well as feminist and misogynist attitudes, come into conflict. Fertility values are often rooted in a much older gender order, which is reflected in the unequal visibility of childlessness in men and women. This is clear in the Italian fertility campaign: besides the woman with an hourglass, other posters were aimed at men, but these did not include pictures of male bodies. The images of men’s infertility were limited to symbolic analogies of impotence: a discarded banana peel or a bent cigarette.6 Thus visual representations are biased against women, who are exposed for their inability to reproduce, while men enjoy the safety of anonymity. Furthermore, sterility and impotence

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are not the same thing, even if they have always been linked culturally and historically. Little seems to have changed since mediaeval times: infertility is still conceptualized differently according to gender, and for men, it is still associated with erectile dysfunction. The unmarked norm for masculinity is still fertility. In contrast, the woman in red is supposed to be a typical representative of her gender who urges all other women to be careful. At least before menopause, it seems that women have only two options: to use contraception or try for a baby. The visual proportions on the poster convey a clear message: it is up to each woman to decide whether she wants to have a child. Implicitly, it is suggested that women are responsible for their own childless fate if they let their fertile time go to waste. This completely ignores the fact that some women cannot have children at a young age and others do not want to become mothers at all. Advanced age may indicate being past fertility, but it is neither synonymous with or necessarily a cause of childlessness. Age was more of a political argument than a biological explanation for (in)fertility even before Modernity: in premodern literature, the category served to devalue those who deviated from the norm of reproduction. Husbands who had to enlist the help of a third party to procreate—like Philip of Macedon in the mediaeval Alexander romances—were marginalized as foolish old men.7 While age remains an important category, the way it is used has changed: in the Middle Ages, it applied to devalue childless men, and today it is intended to arouse anxiety in childless women. The age topos has thus been used for centuries to maintain the fertility hierarchy. The extent to which women have internalized this view is documented in the study by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer (Childless Women and Men, 2014). With increasing age, women are more and more likely to feel responsible both for their own lack of children and for finding a solution.8 (In)fertility discourses everywhere reflect and reinforce this disproportionate gender visibility. Childless women are also much more present on the book market and in the expanding range of literature. The vast majority of writers and autobiographers who reflect on desired, refused, and regretted parenthood are women. Self-reports by those affected, at least, seem to belong to the category of ‘women’s writing,’ though men indeed do write advice literature on the subject.9 The problems with these asymmetries in gender relations are revealed, above all, by women authors who have consciously decided against parenthood. Again and again, they

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have to justify their choice not to have children. In contrast, childlessness among men, whether intentional or involuntary, is hardly in the public eye at all. This disparity is reflected in population statistics: the fertility rate is based on a calculation of the number of births per woman.10 The reason for excluding men from the statistics may be practical, but it buttresses the perception that women are responsible for having children. Gender-sensitive (in)fertility research must uncover such inequalities and increase the visibility of childless men. This would move everyone beyond the traditional gender roles of men giving expert advice on fertility and women seeking solutions. Men (whether they are in heterosexual or same-sex relationships, or single) can also have an unfulfilled longing for children, as is proven by the few published reports of their painful experiences.11 There is a lot of catching up to do in research on masculinities and (in)fertility, which will reveal a great deal about the social meaning of fatherhood and male gender identity. When I mentioned my research project, I was struck by the high level of interest in it, but also by women’s and men’s shame and reticence about their experience of being childless. Most of the people who wanted to learn more about the different discourses and fields of knowledge in mediaeval and early modern Europe had their own (in)fertility story to tell.

Narrating Childlessness: Stories Told and Stories Untold Perceptions of childlessness depend on how people talk about it. Researchers who seek to critique normativity not only need to collect and archive stories of (in)fertility, therefore, but to analyse them in terms of narratology. What is narrated about desired, refused, and regretted parenthood? How is this done? What is the typical (in)fertility story arc? What is said explicitly, only hinted at, or deliberately left out? What relationship do the narrators have to the stories they tell? Do they classify themselves as part of the majority with children or the minority without, and do they distance themselves from the other group of people? Have they chosen to live this way, are they happy with it or not? Who do the speakers address in their stories, does their story change in different contexts, and what are they seeking to achieve by telling it? Some narratives that initially seem to question the hierarchy of fertility values may eventually confirm it, and vice versa.

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(In)fertility stories are ambivalent. Telling people about one’s own childlessness can be liberating, therapeutic, and empowering, but also normative, painful, and devaluing. In The Wounded Storyteller (1995), the American medical sociologist Arthur W. Frank points out the healing function of illness stories.12 By telling the story of their illness, people can give their bodies a voice and redefine their relationship to the world. Suffering is not only the theme, but also a condition for these narratives. If serious illness calls their self-image into question, people have to develop a whole new concept of and for themselves. An infertility diagnosis can trigger such a shock, especially if one has always planned to be a parent. People who have tried in vain to have children can find comfort in telling their painful stories, which can help them cope and find meaning in their lives. In addition, people who share their experiences of—sometimes countless—fertility treatments discover that they are not alone with their fate. When one person tells their story, perhaps for the first time, many others usually see themselves in it. By speaking, childless people become witnesses, as it were, who enable others to narrate and contribute to a better understanding of their emotions. Comparable cases are also reported by Orna Donath in her study Regretting Motherhood (2017).13 Only after their interviewees had heard about the doubts of other women were they able to explain their own negative affects and put their experiences into words. Marginalized people by no means have the sole, or even primary, power to interpret their own stories. Public debates are always about others’ perceptions, not about their own desires. Women who regret their motherhood are vilified or their stories are concealed. Women without children usually appear in the narratives of others either as unhappy, suffering, and bitter hysterics or as selfish and cold-hearted careerists. The image used to illustrate this here presupposes that women without children are desperate and remorse-ridden, and uses this idea in reproductive political propaganda. The problem of infertility is projected onto a young woman who points to her abdomen in conformity with expectations, but remains silent (Fig. 7.1). Viewers do not find out whether she wants to have a baby at all or whether she is afraid of pregnancy and would regret becoming a mother. Yet, the protagonist of this poster does not seem to feel entirely comfortable in the role assigned to her as an example of (in)fertility. Turned slightly sideways, she stands at the edge of the monochrome image, as if ready to step out of the frame at any moment. Perhaps she finds her situation far too constricting. She does not seem

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to want to hold onto the key prop either—her right hand almost reaches out of the picture, as if to give the hourglass away and withdraw from this staged scene. It is not easy to write a cultural history of childlessness before Modernity from the perspective of non-parents. Especially in earlier periods, although (in)fertility is often spoken about, it extremely rare to hear marginalized voices in this discourse.14 Did Edward the Confessor (c. 1004–1066) really see his childlessness as such a ‘terrible and dreadful fate’ as his biographer said? How did the Spanish Queen Elisabeth of Valois (1545–1568) experience the anxious waiting for her to finally become pregnant? Her difficulties in conceiving are well attested to by the correspondence of her mother, Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589), with the ladies of the court and the French envoy. Catherine continuously inquired about her daughter’s physical condition, how regularly she menstruated, and possible symptoms of pregnancy. The worried mother sent fertility recipes, drew up a dietary plan, and even advised her sonin-law, King Philip II (1527–1598), on how best to treat her daughter. What Elisabeth herself thought, felt, and hoped about motherhood was not part of the lively correspondence on (in)fertility issues between the French and Spanish royal courts. Studying premodern childlessness can create more questions than answers. In her microhistory (2008), Charlotte Newman Goldy carefully probes the circumstances of a Jewish woman from Oxford whose marriage was dissolved around 1240 because of her infertility. What could Muriel and her wealthy, influential husband David have tried before they separated? Were there fertility treatments available for Jewish wives in Oxford, did Muriel turn to a local midwife, or did she have to travel to London? Did she even seek out a Christian doctor, although contemporary rabbis explicitly warned against trying non-kosher remedies? Who could Muriel have spoken to about her worries when she failed to get pregnant again and again, and David finally demanded a divorce? How did her Jewish and Christian neighbours react to the separation and remarriage of her husband, who then soon became a father? All these unanswered questions hint at the different facets this (in)fertility story could encompass, had Muriel herself recorded her experiences. Yet, the rare historical narratives of people longing for parenthood should be approached with caution: the confessions put into their mouths in mediaeval and early modern texts follow established discursive and narrative patterns. The desperate prayers of childless characters in religious

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literature were based on biblical models, and the testimonies of women in ecclesiastical impotence trials corresponded to what was expected of them in court.15 Even later personal testimonies, reports of experiences, and diary entries are so strongly influenced by social norms that a distinction between authentic experiences and collective expectations is neither meaningful nor possible. We are all shaped by the values of the society we live in, which is why involuntarily childless people form a negative identity. Unconsciously, they pick up cultural narratives and identify with the social roles to which they are assigned. Nowhere is the influence of others on self-perception and self-narratives more evident than in early modern infertility catechesis. Praying and meditating, pious women without children learned to adopt the role of patient sufferer and to believe that their own life stories failed to meet the given ideals. The few surviving spiritual diaries written by Protestant women in post-Reformation England which Daphna Oren-Magidor was able to find prove that they responded to fertility problems exactly as the prescriptive literature proposed. They wanted to follow the advice to submit to God’s will, but found it very difficult to accept their childlessness, because they had internalized motherhood as central to a woman’s identity.16 Production and reception contexts, as well as genres, are essential aspects of any literary analysis of (in)fertility stories. Yet, people without children adapt their testimonies to the occasion and the audience, as is the case with some women in academia, whose experiences and reflections are reported in infertility research today.17 They evaluate their own life situation as deficient and develop narrative strategies to be more positively perceived; they say they have learned not to expect too much from society. Having experienced that others could neither understand nor bear her deep pain, one involuntarily childless researcher presented herself as more composed and her suffering as less severe than she felt. Rather than finding relief in telling her story, she tried to conceal her feelings and offer comfort to her listeners. In contrast, another academic who is childfree by choice presented herself as suffering from infertility and claimed to other women that she envied their family to avoid being criticized for her decision. Not only before the mediaeval marriage court, but in conversation today, women tell their interlocutors what they think they want to hear. How people without children tell their stories is typical for stigmatized people. Erving Goffman has shown that people who deviate from the norm are expected to make it easier for others to deal with their stigma, to reduce tensions and make their own efforts to be better accepted.18

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This ‘good adjustment’ ultimately has a negative effect for people who cannot or do not want to have children: they tell stories that help them assimilate, yet also confirm the majority society’s expectations. Critiques of normativity aim to question internalized norms, reveal hidden power structures, and highlight ambiguities. When narratives of childlessness are read against the grain, stories of (in)fertility can take a surprising turn. These stories can be read in different ways to deconstruct normative views, as illustrated by the case of John Pybell and Jean Sikon heard at the Consistory Court of Ely, who were obliged to resume their annulled marriage. In Fig. 7.1, too, the young woman’s smile can be interpreted as joyful and relieved, but also apologetic and renouncing, or mocking and mischievous. With her left hand on her abdomen, is she asking for understanding for her indisposition as a future mother—or is she grateful to be able to make her own decisions about her body and escape social pressure? Is she perhaps even making fun of those who do not recognize the ambiguity of her body language and are taken in by a dubious appeal to fertility? The hourglass on the poster is slightly tilted. At any moment, the enlarged hand could turn it upside down to let the sand run in the opposite direction. Whether time is really running out, and for whom, depends on the narrator’s point of view. Infertility is not a physical defect that can be recognized externally. Rather, words and signs are needed to turn people into would-be parents. The combination of gestures, symbols, and captions make the woman on the poster a potential mother. The recipients who see this staging are reminded of their previous knowledge of (in)fertility and can construct an imaginary story of living without children. This brings us to the most far-reaching consequence of my attempt to reveal the norms hidden in texts on desired parenthood: narrating is the origin of childlessness. While people generally become biological parents through having heterosexual vaginal sex, planned or unplanned, they only become childless through reflecting on and talking about why sex does not lead to pregnancy. Their fertility identity is formed through narrative acts.19 To put it bluntly, having children is a matter of biology and women’s bodies; not having children is a question of storytelling and people’s heads—mostly filled with different voices. This is what I have been seeking to determine throughout the book: what creates the difference between people with and without children is language, which influences our feelings, thoughts, and actions. In mediaeval and early modern Europe, women and men were repeatedly

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marginalized by the way others talked about them, placing them in the role of unhappy childless people. Hannah’s desire for a child, like that of countless others in literature and society, cannot be separated from her experiences of discrimination and the narratives of (in)fertility told by others about her. The stories of barrenness, childlessness, and infertility that have circulated since Antiquity are part of our cultural memory. People who painfully pine for progeny are in this tradition, regardless of whether they are even aware of it. But in other premodern discourses and literary worlds—such as the court of the legendary King Arthur—no one complains of childlessness, not because everyone becomes a mother or father, but because desired and refused parenthood never becomes an issue.

Comparative (In)Fertility Research: Analogies and Differences In public debate, the ‘mediaeval’ is often constructed in contrast to the present. The word is used to brand ideas and practices as abstruse, backward, and unenlightened. The Middle Ages thus appear monolithically shrouded in darkness. Yet perception of life without children in this era was by no means one-dimensional, as is evidenced by the many different commentaries, appeals, and prescriptions; warnings, regulations, and laws; prayers, songs, laments; and countless stories of (in)fertility. The plurality of socially accepted ways to live with and without children was not narrowed down until the early modern period, which in many respects appears more sinister than the much-maligned Middle Ages. Compared to the multifarious mediaeval perspectives, contemporary conceptualizations of childlessness in largely medical terms also appear limited. The Italian health minister probably did not notice the ambiguity of the fertility poster because she only acknowledged one interpretation of (in)fertility. Involuntary childlessness is now so strongly linked to reproductive technology in the public mind that women’s health and nursing professors Margarete Sandelowski and Sheryl de Lacey in their paper The Uses of a ‘Disease’ (2002) even claimed that infertility was ‘invented’ in 1978.20 Since the birth of the first baby conceived by IVF, involuntary childlessness has been viewed primarily in terms of reproductive medicine, and infertility has been understood almost exclusively as a disease of which women must be cured.

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In the Middle Ages, childless people also received medical treatment, but the theological context of interpretation was more relevant. Childlessness remained embedded in a metaphysical framework; God was considered the creator of new life. As Niklas Luhmann points out in Funktion der Religion (1977), moving from illness to health is not the same as turning from suffering to salvation.21 Mediaeval people did not believe that parenthood could depend on human will or medical knowledge—it was solely in God’s hands. Nevertheless, fertility cannot consistently be equated with divine blessing and infertility with rejection, as was shown by the competing biblical and theological maxims on (in)fertility. Distinctions between different status groups and ways of life were key in the Middle Ages; no ideal appeared to be equally recommendable for all.22 In Christian theology, chastity was prized and in mediaeval legend, life without children was a sign of special piety and holiness, provided it was based on a conscious decision. The contrast to the generally negative image of childless women today could hardly be greater. Comparative (in)fertility research not only puts current positions into perspective, but also reveals them in a new light. Some mediaeval aspects of knowledge, models of thought, and narrative schemes are still influential today; others reappear in altered, often secularized form. Thus, the grand narrative of the IVF era and the salvation stories of (in)fertility in premodern theology are based on the same assumption, even if the roles and means differ: only a higher authority, defined primarily in religious terms then and in medical terms now, can help people longing for a child. The great trust in reproductive technology today can hardly be understood without the long tradition of birth miracle narratives that recur through the Bible. The happy individual case stories in which couples finally have a child after a long struggle are more appealing than the sobering figures on the outcomes of fertility treatment. The seductive power of these stories to kindle the hope that one’s own (in)fertility story will end well drives some people to try any new medical intervention. Reproductive medicine could therefore become a postmodern religion, playing with promise and condemnation. Lines connecting the past and the present can be drawn right down to the details, thus exposing the hidden workings of power: the hourglass on that poster (Fig. 7.1) is used in Christian iconography to signify death. This religious image of the end times only serves to strengthen women’s fears that their fertile time is almost up. The designers deliberately used the hourglass to intensify the drastic rhetoric of their argument

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by linking biological concepts to eschatology. From a cultural historical perspective, the ticking biological clock proves a secular variant of a Christian apocalypse. Pronatalist actors skilfully make use of such primal fears to encourage women to reproduce. Social expectations, not physical function, drive these fears, argues Sarah Diehl.23 In her book Die Uhr, die nicht tickt (The Clock That Doesn’t Tick, 2014), the Berlin-based childfree activist soberly notes that neither her body nor her psyche, but only society, is telling her that her biological hour has come. Knowing the cultural historical background can help to unmask such power politics and upend the associated hierarchies. Viewed through traditional iconography, the woman on the poster, whose left hand perhaps cups a pregnancy, assumes the position of Death. Thus the intended message of the campaign could be reversed: from a pronatalist perspective, the woman with the hourglass warns viewers of the transience of fertility; from an antinatalist perspective, her fertility is identified as the cause of transience. Readers of this book may recall the church fathers who sought to break the cycle of birth and death through abstinence. In pre-Reformation Europe, countless men and women deliberately chose not to have children for religious reasons, so as not to burden themselves with passing, earthly things. Whether life after death was guaranteed by reproduction or by refusing to reproduce was determined very differently throughout the cultural history of childlessness. In the discourses of (in)fertility, parallels between mediaeval and modern positions may be closer than those between contemporaries. Sheila Heti’s autobiographical novel Motherhood (2018), for instance, diverges vastly from the twenty-first century stories of women struggling to have children.24 Heti decides to write about not having children rather than to have one, and her book bears striking similarities to the theological pleas for a chaste life and the philosophical critique of marriage in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Similarly, some family models that appear to be distinctly modern results of reproductive technology or changed social living conditions were formed long before Modernity. Historical (in)fertility research can help to objectify emotional debates and dispel fears about the demise of the family. Patchwork families and fragmented parenthood seem less threatening when one considers the range of premodern relationships. Children could not only be conceived within a marriage, but also adopted, cared for, and nurtured. Biological, social, and religious; single, partnership, and collective forms of motherhood and fatherhood have a long and chequered history.

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Such comparisons between past and present phenomena related to childlessness promote new knowledge in both directions. (In)fertility research expands the scope of mediaeval studies and provides it with new explanatory approaches. From a fertility-centred perspective, the actions of rulers may be assessed quite differently, as Cologne historian Karl Ubl showed in his essay Der kinderlose König (The Childless King, 2011).25 Older research tended to value political aspects much more highly than Henry II’s religious motivation. The traditional image of an ideal statesman who sought to centralize his realm at the expense of the nobility does not fit Henry’s family situation. The countless conflicts during his reign can be better explained by the unresolved question of the succession. Ubl argues that Henry should no longer be praised for his exemplary realpolitik, but perceived as a ruler who had to fight for recognition due to his inability to produce an heir. The childless Henry was not an isolated case; many other mediaeval contexts are ripe for reassessment. In Studies in Iconography (2018), Dutch art historian Jitske Jasperse showed that the precious Gospel Book of Henry the Lion and Matilda of England is missing an important pictorial motif26 : none of the elaborate miniatures depicts the couple with children. Jasperse uses the conspicuous absence of offspring to redate the valuable codex and explain the generous donation to the collegiate church of St Blaise in Brunswick. Presumably Henry and Matilda had no male heir at this time and hoped the clergy would pray for them to be granted progeny. So many political alliances, ecclesiastical foundations, pious donations, literary, and artistic patronages depended on the concrete family relationships, that we are faced with an enormous future research task: when (in)fertility is consistently included as factor in the interpretation, the history of the mediaeval empire and rulers, of piety, economy, and society, even of art and literature needs to be partly rewritten. Today’s debates about involuntary and intended childlessness should draw mediaevalists’ attention to the fact that (in)fertility is a central category for understanding human behaviour. Comparative (in)fertility research would be misguided if it focused solely on similarities. The cultural differences in past and present approaches to childlessness are significant and must not be glossed over. In mediaeval narrative literature, people do not want to become parents to find fulfilment in their lives or to form a deeper emotional bond with their partner, but to provide their family with an heir. This genealogical motive in no way excludes loving and intimate parent–child relationships,

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of course, but motherhood only became tantamount to a general promise of happiness in the early modern period. Such observable changes in the cultural history of childlessness can be instructive, not least as marked and unmarked norms related to (in)fertility are particularly conspicuous with historical distance. Mediaeval nobles had different duties than clergymen; even rulers had to cede to their vassals’ demands for an heir. Status, the key social identity category of the Middle Ages, has largely lost its significance today. Here too, my approach to comparative studies in historical context encourages us to seek structural analogies. Today, are different groups expected to reproduce more or less than others? Are some people seen as better potential parents? The Italian poster campaign creates a fertility ideal that few of Italy’s citizens could live up to: having children is for young, healthy, slim, beautiful, and white women. The poster seems to demonstrate concern for the suffering of childless people but, on closer inspection, appears both sexist and racist. The entire campaign was criticized so harshly on social media that it had to be withdrawn before it was even launched.27 Yet, similar values underlie many population and family policies across Europe—just think of the unequal treatment of native and refugee parents. The discourse analysis and critique of normativity which I have adopted for my study of childlessness in mediaeval and early modern Europe can be applied to other times, places, and religions. Ideas about (in)fertility will continue to diversify as their meaning is reconstructed in ancient Egypt, among the Aztecs, or in Victorian England. Still more perspectives emerge when today’s approaches to parenthood are examined in Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist societies, in China, India, or Nigeria. Studies that compare cultures not only draw attention to the marginalized group of people without children, but also show that fertility and infertility are not absolute values. Whether their children are too few, or too many, or deviate too much from gender and ability norms, people can feel stigmatized. In views of childlessness, medicine and biology overlap with religious, economic, and political interests. Individual desires and collective claims; ethical values and cultural practices; and social norms, historical discourses, and literary narratives all merge into an opaque conglomerate that shapes and is shaped by processes of privilege and marginalization. Uncovering such subtle power structures, differentiating between strands of discourse, deconstructing grand narratives of (in)fertility and retelling the heterogeneous stories of desired, refused,

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and regretted parenthood in the present as in the past remains the task of future research.

Notes 1. The image was circulated on social media, cf. Florian Prokop, ‘Sexistische Kampagne: Italien erinnert Frauen daran, Kinder zu kriegen und feiert “Tag der Fruchtbarkeit”’, ze.tt, 31 August 2016. https://www.zeit.de/ zett/2016-09/sexistische-kampagne-italien-erinnert-frauen-daran-kinderzu-kriegen-und-feiert-tag-der-fruchtbarkeit (accessed 31 March 2022). 2. Carsten Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer: Ungewollte oder gewollte Kinderlosigkeit im Lebenslauf und Nutzung von Unterstützungsangeboten, ed. by Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (Paderborn, 2014), pp. 6, 106–107, 133; ‘D.I.R. Jahrbuch 2017’, Journal für Reproduktionsmedizin und Endokrinologie— Journal of Reproductive Medicine and Endocrinology, 15, Sonderheft 1 (2018), pp. 1–56, here pp. 9, 11, 35–37; Millay Hyatt, Ungestillte Sehnsucht: Wenn der Kinderwunsch uns umtreibt, 3rd edn (Berlin, 2017), p. 34. 3. Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis, ‘Introduction: Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives’, in Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (London, 2017), pp. 1–25, here p. 19. 4. On the difference between the intersectional invisibility of the multiply discriminated and the multiply privileged, see Gudrun-Axeli Knapp, ‘“Intersectional Invisibility”: Anknüpfungen und Rückfragen an ein Konzept der Intersektionalitätsforschung’, in Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa Herrera Vivar, and Linda Supik (eds), Fokus Intersektionalität: Bewegung und Verortungen eines vielschichtigen Konzepts (Wiesbaden, 2010), pp. 223– 243; Cornelia Renggli, ‘Disability Studies und die Un-/Sichtbarkeit von Behinderung’, Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik, 29 (2005), pp. 79– 94. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-18838 (accessed 31 March 2022). 5. Catherine Rider, ‘Men and Infertility in Late Medieval English Medicine’, Social History of Medicine, 29 (2016), pp. 245–266; Catherine Rider, ‘Men’s Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England’, in Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (London, 2017), pp. 273–290.

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6. The complete photo series on ‘Fertility Day’ is still on the homepage of the Italian weekly magazine ‘L’espresso’: http://espresso.repubblica.it/ foto/2016/08/31/galleria/la-campagna-per-il-fertility-day-1.281576#1 (accessed 31 March 2022). 7. On the narrative of the dangerous third party and the marginalization of infertile men see Regina Toepfer, Kinderlosigkeit: Ersehnte, verweigerte und bereute Elternschaft im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 2020), pp. 232–238. 8. Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer, pp. 93. 9. On the problems with this gender imbalance see e.g. Sarah Diehl, Die Uhr, die nicht tickt: Kinderlos glücklich: Eine Streitschrift (Zürich and Hamburg, 2018 [2014]), pp. 51, 64–66; Christina Mundlos, Wenn Mutter sein nicht glücklich macht: Das Phänomen Regretting Motherhood, 2nd ed (München, 2016), pp. 166–171; Meike Dinklage, Der Zeugungsstreik: Warum die Kinderfrage Männersache ist (München, 2005), esp. pp. 14–29. 10. Paul Gans, ‘Totale Fruchtbarkeitsrate’, Lexikon der Geographie in vier Bänden (Heidelberg and Berlin, 2001–2002), Vol. 3, pp. 356–357. 11. See e.g. the story of Benjamin, aged 30, ‘Kinderlosigkeit: Schmerz und Chance’, in Maria Roßner and Anne-Kathrin Braun (eds), Keine Kinder?! Ungewollt kinderlos: Erfahrungen und Denkanstöße, 2nd ed (Lage, 2013), pp. 27–36. On gaps in masculinities research see Jeff Hearn, ‘Vernachlässigte Intersektionalitäten in der Männerforschung: Alter(n), Virtualität, Transnationalität’, in Lutz, Vivar, and Supik (eds), Fokus Intersektionalität, pp. 105–123. 12. Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago and London, 1995), pp. 1–3, 53, 56, 115. This approach to has been adapted to (in)fertility stories e.g. by Sally Bishop Shigley, ‘Great Expectations: Infertility, Disability, and Possibility’, in Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (London, 2017), pp. 37–55, here p. 40. On the importance of storytelling in accepting and grieving about involuntary childlessness, see e.g. Benjamin, 30 Jahre, ‘Kinderlosigkeit’, pp. 29–30. 13. Orna Donath, Regretting Motherhood: A Study (Berkeley, CA, 2017), pp. 86–87. 14. Karl Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König. Ein Testfall für die Ausdifferenzierung des Politischen im 11. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 292 (2011), pp. 323–363, here p. 337; Susan Broomhall, ‘“Women’s Little Secrets”: Defining the Boundaries of Reproductive Knowledge in SixteenthCentury France’, Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002), pp. 1–15; Charlotte Newman Goldy, ‘A Thirteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish Woman Crossing Boundaries: Visible and Invisible’, Journal of Medieval History, 34 (2008), pp. 130–145, esp. pp. 141–144; Newman Goldy, ‘Muriel,

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17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

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a Jew of Oxford: Using the Dramatic to Understand the Mundane in Anglo-Norman Towns’, in Newman Goldy and Amy Livingstone (eds), Writing Medieval Women’s Lives (New York, 2012), pp. 227–245. On the influential literary narrative of receiving a longed-for child with God’s help, see Regina Toepfer, Kinderlosigkeit, pp. 187–213. Daphna Oren-Magidor, ‘From Anne to Hannah: Religious Views of Infertility in Post-Reformation England’, Journal of Women’s History, 27 (2015), pp. 86–108, here pp. 92–96. See e.g. Bishop Shigley, ‘Great Expectations’, p. 40; Diehl, Die Uhr, die nicht tickt, pp. 146–147. On the distinction between official and actual motivation see also Wippermann, Kinderlose Frauen und Männer, p. 7. Ervin Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963), pp. 116, 118–119. On the role of narrative in identity formation see Inga Römer, ‘Narrative Identität’, in Matías Martínez (ed.), Erzählen: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch (Stuttgart, 2017), pp. 263–269; Dirk Johannsen and Anja Kirsch, ‘Religiöse Identitätsbildung’, in Martínez (ed.), Erzählen, pp. 274–280. Margarete Sandelowski and Sheryl de Lacey, ‘The Uses of a ‘Disease’: Infertility as Rhetorical Vehicle’, in Marcia C. Inhorn and Frank van Balen (eds), Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2002), pp. 34–51, here p. 34–36. See also Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis, ‘Introduction: Defining the ‘Problem’. Perspectives on Infertility’, in Loughran and Davis (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility, pp. 29–35, here p. 29. On the dominance of the medical narrative in modern histories of illness see also Frank, Wounded Storyteller, p. 5. Niklas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion, 2nd edn (Frankfurt a.M., 1990 [1977]), p. 193. On the key significance of religion for the modern understanding of childlessness see also Daphna Oren-Magidor, Infertility in Early Modern England (London, 2017). Similar differences in the evaluation of (in)fertility can be observed between married aristocratic women and Buddhist nuns in medieval Japan, see Katja Triplett, ‘For Mothers and Sisters: Care of the Reproductive Female Body in the Medico-Ritual World of Early and Medieval Japan’, Dynamis : Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam, 34:2 (2014), pp. 337–356, here p. 337. See also Triplett, Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500–1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship (Berlin and Boston, 2019) (Religion and Society, 81), pp. 111–133. Diehl, Die Uhr, die nicht tickt, p. 18. Cf. Daphne de Marneffe, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (New York, 2004).

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25. Ubl, ‘Der kinderlose König’. 26. Jitske Jasperse, ‘Visualizing Dynastic Desire: The Twelfth-Century Gospel Book of Henry and Mathilda’, Studies in Iconography, 39 (2018), pp. 135–166, esp. p. 140–144. 27. Cf. Prokop, ‘Sexistische Kampagne’. An initiative in Copenhagen aroused negative reactions in 2015: a poster with a picture of hen’s eggs and the question ‘Have you counted your eggs today yet?’ and a picture of sperm with the question: ‘Do they swim too slowly?’ See Isa Romby Nielsen, ‘“Count Your Eggs”: State interference in Danish women’s reproduction’, Fem. 2.0, 19 November 2015, http://www.fem2pt0.com/?p= 21892 (accessed 23 November 2019); Anna Louie Sussman, ‘The End of Babies’, The New York Times, 16 November 2019.

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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0

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Index

A Abelard, Peter, 116–118, 173–175 Abraham, 22, 81 Adam, 43 Agesilaus, 184, 202 Agrippa of Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius, 157, 165 Albrecht von Eyb, 176, 178, 179, 182, 186, 191, 199–202 Albert the Great, 52, 56, 57, 64, 94 Alice of Greyford, 97 Ambrose of Milan, 38 Anne of Bohemia, 13, 77, 78, 86, 89 Anne, Saint, 79 Anselm of Laon, 32, 35 Arthur, King, 152, 217 Aquinas, Thomas, 34, 47, 134, 163 Aristotle, 54, 57, 63, 85, 86, 171, 209 Arnald of Villanova, 52, 57, 69, 72 Astrolabe, 118 Augustine, 34, 35, 37, 38, 47, 48, 134, 203 Averroes, 57

B Bach, Johann Sebastian, 195 Baden, Joel S., 32, 46 Badinter, Elisabeth, 95, 122 Bandini, Dominico, 74 Beatrix of Burgundy, 3, 10 Bishop Shigley, Sally, 16, 223, 224 Blaise, Saint, 220 Boaz, 187 Boby, Robert, 100 Bonaventure, 134 Bovattieri, Naddino, 74 Brown, Louise Joy, 80 Brunschweiger, Verena, 168, 169, 173, 197, 198 Butler, Judith, 6, 16, 96, 122 C Catherine de Medici, 214 Catherine of Aragon, 4, 78 Charles IV, 77 Christina of Hesse, 181 Cornelia, 185 Crenshaw, Kimberle, 17, 119, 130

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Toepfer, Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08977-0

251

252

INDEX

Cunradus, 133, 152 Cyriax, Saint, 155

D Datini, Francesco, 74 Datini, Margherita, 75, 143 Dauphine de Puimichel, 40 David from Oxford, 214 David of Scotland, 4 Davis, Gayle, 6, 16, 82, 208, 222–224 de Chauliac, Guy, 99 de Ketham, Johannes, 77, 88 Democritus, 172 Diehl, Sarah, 219, 223 Dinckel, Johannes, 180, 183, 185, 188, 201–203 Donath, Orna, 156, 165, 213, 223

E Eberhard of Württemberg, 185 Ebernand von Erfurt, 40, 48 Edelman, Lee, 171, 198 Edward IV, 78 Edward the Confessor, 15, 214 Egica, 114 Eike von Repgow, 103 Eli, 25 Elijah, 174 Elisabeth of Valois, 214 Elisha, 174 Elizabeth, Saint, 75 Elizabeth, Zachariah’s wife, 28, 29 Elkanah, 23–25 Elzeario di Sabrano, 40 Epictetus, 172 Evans, Jennifer, 5, 16, 51, 69, 82, 86, 88 Ezekiel, 22

F Ferdinand Albrecht of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 181 Foucault, Michel, 6, 15–17, 84, 96, 114, 122, 128 Francis, Pope, 44, 131, 159 Frank, Arthur W., 213, 223 Frederick Barbarossa, 3, 10 Frisius, Paul, 150, 153, 155, 156, 163–165 G Gabriel, 28 Galen, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 69, 209 Gandulph of Bologna, 35 Geaman, Kristen L., 77, 86, 89 Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johannes, 107, 125, 204 Goffman, Erving, 194, 195, 204, 215, 224 Goody, Jack, 15, 107, 108, 125, 126 Green, Monica H., 52, 82, 85, 89 Gruderin, Elsa, 62, 95 Güthel, Caspar, 187, 202 H Hafenreffer, Matthias, 183, 187, 202 Hagar, 22, 210 Hammerschmitt, Johannes, 62 Hannah, Samuel’s mother, 22–25, 209, 217 Hannah, Tobias’s mother, 181 Helmholz, Richard H., 98, 122, 123 Heloise, 116–118, 173–175, 184 Henricus of Segusio, 141 Henry II, 40, 220 Henry VIII, 4 Henry the Lion, 220 Heti, Sheila, 167, 197, 198, 205, 219 Hildegard of Bingen, 3, 52, 56, 63, 64, 83, 85

INDEX

Hincmar of Reims, 38, 48 Hippocrates, 52, 54, 209 Hugh of Saint Victor, 32, 36, 39, 47, 48 Huguccio, 35 Humel, Anna, 95 Hyatt, Millay, 222

I Isaiah, 27 Isidore of Seville, 63

J Jacob, 22, 23, 45, 148 Jacobs, Hanna, 44, 50 Jason, 184 Jasperse, Jitske, 220, 225 Jerome, 37, 125, 172, 174 Jesus, 28–32, 46, 71, 78, 92, 148 Johannes von Buch, 109, 110 Johann von Wesel, 59, 60 John Cassian, 147 John Chrysostom, 169, 172, 198 John, defendant, 98 John of Gaddesden, 69, 87 John the Baptist, 29 Joseph, husband of Mary, 12, 29, 38–39, 71 Josephs, Annette, 45, 72, 82 Judah, 26, 27

K Konrad von Würzburg, 102, 124, 184, 202 Kramer, Heinrich, 13, 131–138, 140–145, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157, 159–165 Kruse, Britta-Juliane, 15, 52, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 124 Kunigunde, 40

253

Kurzhalsin, Barbara, 138, 157 L Lacey, Sheryl de, 217, 224 Leah, 23, 187 Liudprand of Cremona, 116 Lorenzin, Beatrice, 207, 209 Lothar II, 4, 15 Loughran, Tracey, 6, 16, 17, 82, 208, 222–224 Louis the Pious, 107 Luhmann, Niklas, 183, 202, 218, 224 Luke the Evangelist, 28, 30 Luther, Martin, 12, 40–43, 49, 60, 84, 154, 155, 164, 165, 168, 182, 184, 188, 189, 203 M Macrobius, 182 Magdalena from Konstanz, 153 Magdalena from Schiers, 95 Marcus von Weida, 107, 125 Mark the Evangelist, 29 Mansel, Jean, 7 Marculf, 108 Margaret of Anjou, 78 Margaret, Saint, 75 Marggraf, Johann Georg, 181, 184–189, 201–203 Mary, 8, 20, 29, 35, 38, 39, 71, 75, 78 Mathesius, Johannes, 182, 198, 201 Matilda of England, 220 Matthew the Evangelist, 29, 38 McLaren, Angus, 82, 93, 121 Medea, 184 Melusine, 152 Merlin, 152, 153 Mirli, 73 Molitor, Ulrich, 133, 145, 148–153, 156, 160, 163, 164

254

INDEX

Moss, Candida R., 32, 46 Murerin, Anna, 95 Muriel from Oxford, 214

N Newman Goldy, Charlotte, 214, 223 Noah, 21

O Oetas, 184 Onan, 26, 37 Opitz, Claudia, 5, 16, 82 Oren-Magidor, Daphna, 5, 16, 17, 51, 82, 89, 189, 204, 215, 224

P Palingènio Stellato, Marcello, 180, 181, 200, 201 Paul, 12, 28, 31–33, 36, 39, 40, 42, 93, 169, 174 Peninnah, 23–25 Peter Auriol, 73 Peter Lombard, 32, 37, 95 Petrarca, Francesco, 126, 199 Petrarch Master, 177, 185 Philip II, 214 Philip of Macedon, 211 Plato, 54, 87 Poynant, John, 100 Pybell, Isabell, 101

R Rachel, 22, 23, 45, 148, 187, 209 Reuter, Michael, 138 Ricca, 96 Richard II, 77 Rider, Catherine, 5, 16, 52, 82, 88, 93, 121, 133, 159, 210, 222 Roper, Lyndal, 139, 162

Ruth, 187

S Samuel, 23, 25 Sandelowski, Margarete, 217, 224 Sarah, 22, 194, 209 Saur, Abraham, 148, 161, 163 Savini, Nicholas, 157 Seitz, Alexander, 60 Sigismund, 133, 134, 147, 152, 160 Sigismund, Archduke of Tyrol, 133 Signori, Gabriela, 5, 15, 16, 105, 108, 124–126 Sikon, Jean, 100, 216 Socrates, 176 Spiewak, Martin, 89, 140, 162, 205 Stadelin, 135 Starck, Johann Friedrich, 189–196, 203–205 Steiner, Heinrich, 177, 199 Strigenitz, Gregor, 180–182, 184, 186, 187, 200, 202, 204

T Tancred, 100 Tecchini, Francesca, 74 Tecchini, Niccolo, 74 Tedbald, 116, 117 Teutonicus, Johannes, 100 Theophrastus, 171, 172, 174 Thietberga, 4 Thietmar of Merseburg, 3 Thomas of Cantimpré, 57, 83 Thomas of Chobham, 99 Timothy, 31, 189

U Ubl, Karl, 15, 17, 48, 126, 220, 223, 225 Ulricus, 133, 134, 152, 153

INDEX

V Vincent of Beauvais, 152 W Wahrig, Bettina, 6, 16 Walter de Fonte, 97 Walter of Mortagne, 32, 37, 39 Wenger, Nanette K., 79, 89 Weyer, Johann, 136, 137, 144, 147, 148, 160–163 Widmann, Wolf, 138 William of Champeaux, 32, 35, 47 Wippermann, Carsten, 15, 17, 76, 81, 88, 89, 222–224

255

Witekind, Hermann, 148, 163, 164 Woodville, Elizabeth, 78

X Xanthippe, 174

Z Zachariah, 28, 29, 32 Zasius, Ulrich, 103, 104, 110, 111, 124 Zeimentz, Hans, 32, 46–48, 120, 121 Zion, 27