Medieval Midwives Beyond Myths

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Who were medieval midwives and what did they do? As imagined in novels and films, the medical expertise of such women might be secret, mystical, persecuted, or some combination of all three. In the archives, traces of their activities can be tantalizingly hard to find. This podcast looks not only at the history of midwives in medieval Europe, but at the history of how scholars have tried to recover and reconstruct that history.

Host: Lucy

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Further Reading

Elisheva Baumgarten, “Ask the Midwives: A Hebrew Manual on Midwifery from Medieval Germany,” Social History of Medicine 32:4 (2019), 712–733.

Carmen Caballero-Navas, “Virtuous and Wise: Apprehending Female Medical Practice from Hebrew Texts on Women’s Healthcare,” Social History of Medicine 32:4 (2019), 691-711.

Montserrat Cabré, “Women or Healers? Household Practices and the Categories of Health Care in Late Medieval Iberia,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82:1 (2008), 18-51.

Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Feminist Press, (1973).

Giulia Gollo, “Midwives in Byzantium: An Overview,” Estudios Bizantinos 10 (2022), 97-121.

Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Premodern Gynecology, Oxford University Press, (2008).

Fiona Harris-Stoertz, “Midwives in the Middle Ages? Birth Attendants, 600–1300,” in: Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, eds. Wendy J. Turner and Sara Butler. Brill, (2014), 58–87.

Deborah E. Harkness, “A View from the Streets: Women and Medical Work in Elizabethan London,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82:1 (2008), 52-85
 
Richard A. Horsley, “Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in the European Witch Trials,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9:4 (1979), 689–715. https://doi.org/10.2307/203380.
 
Rebecca Wynne Johnson, “Divisions of labor: gender, power, and later medieval childbirth, c. 1200-1500,” History Compass 14:9 (2016), 383-396
 
Imogen Knox, “The Midwife and the Witch (1966)." 
 
Margaret Alice Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology, Clarendon Press, (1921).

Katharine Park, The Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection, Zone Books, (2006).

Sara Ritchey, Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health, Cornell University Press, (2021).

Sara Ritchey and Sharon T. Strocchia, eds., Gender, Health, and Healing 1250-1550, Amsterdam University Press, (2020).

Sharon T. Strocchia, Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy, Harvard University Press, (2019).

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This episode is a part of our Women's History Collection.

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)