[1] Midwives in early modern Europe found themselves in an
unenviable position. Though they still officiated at nearly
every childbirth--(male) doctors being summoned only in cases of
dire complication--their role had been cast in a dimmer light with
the rise of the universities and the expanding claims of
university-trained physicians over all forms of medical
practice. The nature of their work could also bring them
under suspicion, for when a birth went badly for mother or child,
it was all too easy to accuse the midwife of wrongdoing. The
Malleus Maleficarum cast a suspicious eye on midwives, and
in the witch hunts of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries, midwives were often accused and found guilty of
witchcraft.[1] It was natural for
the university-trained theologians and lawyers to share the
perspective of their medical colleagues. Philipp Melanchthon,
in a 1531 oration Contra medicos empiricos, though not
singling out midwives in particular, sharply attacked those who
presumed to call themselves medici and offer treatment without
having read a single page of Galen.[2]
[2] It is, therefore, somewhat surprising to find early Lutheran
pastors, including Melanchthon's own students, taking an active
role in defending midwives and their practice on distinctively
Lutheran theological grounds. Their sermons, and the church
orders and municipal ordinances which the sermons helped shape,
provide a fascinating test case illustrating how the claims of
early Reformation theology about lay vocation and the universal
priesthood of the baptized came to shape the institutional and
legal forms of life in Lutheran Germany.
[3] The first efforts by German towns to regulate midwives'
practice came already in the fifteenth century. But the
Reformation brought about a discernible transformation of the
existing order. Particularly influential, because of their
publication as models, were the Regensburg Hebammenordnung of
1554[3] and the town physician
Adam Lonicer's 1573 proposal to the council of Frankfurt am
Main.[4] Reformation
influence on these ordinances was directly visible, for example, in
the appendage of a sermon by Caspar Huberinus to the printed
Frankfurt ordinance.[5] The most important
and positive contribution of Lutheran theology to the status of
midwives, however, was in the application of the Lutheran doctrine
of vocation to their work. In bold defiance of modern scholars who
have opined that the one vocation allowed women by Lutheran pastors
was that of bearing children,[6] Lutheran
preachers and the ordinances used the full Lutheran vocabulary of
vocation--Beruf, Stand, Amt--to describe the status of
midwives, assigned them religious tasks otherwise reserved to the
clergy, and even defended their work against the encroachment of
university-trained physicians.
[4] Among the most vigorous and laudatory defenses of midwives
came from the pen and pulpit of the learned Lutheran pastor Johann
Mathesius of Joachimsthal (1504-1565), who in 1556 preached a
sermon "On Women in Childbed and Midwives" in his series of sermons
on the book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach).[7] Mathesius
promises to speak of the "estate and office" [Stand und
Ampt] of midwives and nurses, and praises midwives as having
"a Christian and holy calling [Beruf]," language which is
echoed in Lonicerus' Frankfurt order: "Midwives should know
that they are in a blessed office and calling, and that they serve
the Lord God in their office in the preservation of his creation,
for which end he employs them as means. . . and should consider
that their office is a blessed and Christian one, well pleasing to
God, which he will not leave unrewarded."[8] Indeed, in defiance
of his teacher Melanchthon, Mathesius repeatedly argues that
midwives deserve the name "physician" (Arzt) just as much
as those men who hold university degrees.[9] They have their own
experience and skills, have studied their own
literature, [10] and "are due just as
much honor and thanks as other pious, Christian, and faithful
physicians"[11]
[5] The midwives' ordinances reflected this high clerical
estimate of the capabilities of the midwife. They were
recognized as officials of the town, sworn to offer their help to
women regardless of their social or economic standing, and in
return were assured of a pension from the town council when they
were no longer able to practice. In his church orders,
Bugenhagen observed that midwives might well be called "ministers
of the church" because of their weighty
responsibilities.[12]
[6] The duties of a Christian midwife described by Mathesius and
in the town ordinances included not only practical knowledge and
skill and attentive and faithful care, but also participation in
the religious comfort and instruction of the women and children in
their charge. Some of this responsibility was negative:
midwives were prohibited from employing "magical" or superstitious
means for aiding the birth,[13] and
were expected to report illegitimate births and, if possible, to
discover the identity of the father by interrogation in the midst
of labor![14]
[7] But far more extensive were the positive religious duties
assigned to Lutheran midwives. Above all, Lutherans defended
the propriety of emergency baptism by the midwife. Though
this point eventually received special emphasis in polemic against
the Calvinists, who rejected emergency baptism in general, but
especially its administration by women,[15] Lutherans had staked
out their position before this became a confessional issue, and it
was incorporated into all the Lutheran church orders and midwives'
ordinances.[16]
[8] Even apart from emergency, the Lutheran midwife played an
essential religious role in the delivery. The midwife was to
pray for the woman giving birth and to see that the other women and
the whole household prayed for her as well, even as prayer was
offered in the town's church and school.[17] She should also
comfort the woman in labor with God's word, assuring her of God's
help and mercy and her own salvation, and consoling her with the
promise of healing in the resurrection if the child were born
deformed. [18] The Regensburg
church order of 1543 specified that midwives should be able to
encourage women with God's Word and address them on spiritual
matters. They took their place along the laywomen who were
appointed to visit the sick (Seelfrauen) and to point the dying to
the merits of Christ with the use of Lutheran hymns.[19] The midwives were
entrusted with essential spiritual care, since too often in early
modern Europe the childbed could become a deathbed. Midwives
thus took on, in connection with the childbed, many of the
functions otherwise associated exclusively with the
clergy.
[9] In a case where the mother's life seemed to be in danger,
the midwives' ordinances affirmed that the midwife should hear
confession and pronounce absolution in words which were otherwise
the prerogative of the pastor in the chancel or confessional:
[10] In order that the
mother in labor may be assured of such divine grace and of the
forgiveness of her sins, the midwife or another knowledgeable
person may, in such danger and necessity, where no minister is
available, absolve and remit her sins herself:
" Dear sister, since our dear Lord Jesus Christ has given us
Christians this power here on earth, that each should and may, in
necessity, absolve and remit the sins of another who confesses her
sins, believes in Christ, and desires the grace of God, and that
the same is then absolved in heaven. For he says, "Receive
the Holy Spirit. Whosesoever sins you remit, they are
remitted unto them," and again, "if two of you agree on earth about
anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in
heaven," Matt. 18. And since you have made such a
confession before me, and in true faith desire the grace of God and
the forgiveness of your sins, I therefore, in the stead and by the
command of Christ, hereby release and pronounce you free of all
your sins, in the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen."[20]
[11] As Bugenhagen insisted, the right of a midwife to baptize
and pronounce absolution "in the stead and by the command of
Christ" was a clear manifestation of the priesthood of all
Christians, lay or clergy, male or female.[21] The midwives'
ordinances attest that this doctrine was not simply a piece of
early Reformation propaganda quickly abandoned as the "new papists"
among the Protestant clergy sought to consolidate and protect
their status, but continued to inform not only preaching but
law.
[12] Finally, however, the Lutheran appraisal of midwives
extended beyond the transformation legal order to defend their
activity even beyond and against the law. One of the key
Biblical texts for Lutheran praise of midwives was Exodus 1, which
recounted the story of the Hebrew midwives Shiprah and Puah, who
"feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them,
but let the male children live," lied to the Pharaoh, and received
God's blessing. Here Mathesius pointed out to his
congregation the application of "St. Peter's good rule: 'one
must obey God more than men.'" and defended the midwives' lie to
the government as "an honorable, neighborly, salutary, and friendly
lie of necessity [nothlügen]," in defense of the
neighbor. Without intentional irony, the text from Exodus 1,
"The midwives who feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt
commanded them" is placed, without irony, at the head of Lonicer's
Frankfurt order as well.[22]
[13] Such reminders, even in the context of town ordinances,
that a midwife's calling might obligate her beyond or against the
commands of the authorities, found practical application
generations later in Mathesius' town of Joachimsthal. During
the Thirty Years War, when Lutheran clergy had been expelled and
Roman Catholicism officially reestablished by imperial authorities,
the new Roman Catholic cantor assigned to the town petitioned the
town council for the right to perform emergency baptisms during the
(often long) periods when the parish was vacant of a priest.
But the Lutheran midwives of Joachimsthal successfully secured the
privilege of baptizing for themselves, persuading the council that
the cantor was despised by the people and moreover "could not
perform the baptism correctly"--that is, in the Lutheran
manner.[23] Religious
fidelity was more important than the claims of gender or higher
political authority.
[14] The case of midwives in early Lutheran Germany thus
illustrates the spread of Lutheran theology from the pulpit into
the laws and institutions of early modern society, preserving early
Protestant claims about lay prerogatives even in the midst of the
institutional forms of the later sixteenth century. To the
debated question of the effect of the Reformation on women for good
or ill, the study of Lutheran preaching and law about midwives
encourages a positive answer. In the face of countervailing
trends in early modern educated society and gender relations, the
doctrine of vocation was used by Lutheran pastors and councilmen to
defend and define midwives' work as a praiseworthy Christian
calling of service to the neighbor.
[1] On the situation of early modern
midwives, see Sibylla Flügge, Hebammen und heilkundige Frauen:
Recht und Rechtswirklichkeit im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt
a.M.: Stroemfeld, 1998); Merry E. Wiesner, Working Women in
Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1986),
pp. 35-74; and Heidi Wunder, He Is the Sun, She Is the Moon
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993), p. 100ff.
[2] Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum
11: 205.
[3] Ordnung eines Erbarn Raths der
statt Regenspurg/ Die Hebammen betreffende. Welche in gemein allen
anderer orten Hebammen/ schwangern Frauen/ und Kindelbetterin auch
nit wenig nutz und dienstlich sein mage (Regenspurg: Hansen Khol,
1554), cited as Regensburg.
[4] Adam Lonicerus, Reformation/ oder
Ordnung für die HebAmmen/ allen guten Policeyen dienstlich.
Gestelt an einen Erbarn Rath des Heyligen reichs Statt Franckfurt/
am Meyn (Frankfurt a.M.: C. Egenolffs Erben/A. Lonicerus, J.
Cnipius, P. Steinmeyer, 1573), cited as Frankfurt.
[5] The original sermon by Huberinus
appeared in his Mancherley Form zu predigen/ von den
fürnembsten Stücken/ so inn der Christlichen Kirchen
teglich gelert und getrieben solen werden (Nürnberg: U. Neuber
& J. vom Bergs Erben, 1565), f. 216v ff.
[6] E.g. Susan Karant-Nunn, "Kinder,
Küche, Kirche: Social Ideology in the Sermons of Johannes
Mathesius," in Germania Illustrata: Essays on Early Modern German
Presented to Gerald Strauss, ed. Andrew C. Fix & Susan C.
Karant-Nunn, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 18 (Kirksville,
Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal, 1992), p. 132.
[7] Syrach Mathesii (Leipzig: J. Beyer,
1586), ff. 124v-127r. The sermon was reprinted separately by the
Osnabruck court preacher Nicolaus Schenk as Eine Christliche und
tröstliche Predigt. Von den Kindelbetterinnen und Hebammen
(Lemgo: C. Grothen Erben, 1605).
[8] Mathesius, Von Kindelbetterinnen,
f. A3v: "Das sie in einem Christlichen und heiligen beruff sein/
und das Gott ein auge auff sie hat/ wenn sie nur Gottfürchtig
sein." Cf. Frankfurt, ff. B4v-C1r: "Es sollen die Ammen wissen/ das
sie in einem Gottseligen ampt und beruff sein/ und das sie Gott dem
Herren inn solchem jrem ampt/ zur erhaltung seines
geschöpffes/ dienen/ und wie mittel von jm darzu gebraucht
werden. (Ex. 1). . . . Und sollen dencken/ das jr ampt ein
Gottselig Christlich ampt sey/ welches Gott wolgefalle/ und nicht
unbelohnet wölle lassen."
[9] Mathesius, Von Kindelbetterinnen,
f. A2v: "To the doctrine about physicians pertain also the matrons
and women who help and serve women and children in the birth, with
delivery, washing, swaddling, stilling, or nursing, feeding and
caring, as the nurses, etc. do."
[10] On such books for midwives, see
Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard, 1983), pp.
100-131.
[11] Mathesius, Ehespiegel (Leipzig:
Beyer, 1591), f. B2v-B3r: "Denn der Hebammen ist man auch ehre und
danckbargkeit schüldig/ wie den andern Christlichen frommen
und getrewen Artzen. Ehre/ liebe/ und sey danckbar und freundlich
gegen den Hebammen/ welche im Rosengarten und Alberto studieret
haben/ die da guten bescheidt wissen und geben können."
[12]
Bugenhagen&=javascript:goNote(39s 1529 Hamburg church order,
cited in Flügge p. 322: "Diße mögen ock wol hethen
Kerke-Denerinnen, wente an ehren Ampts veel gelegen."
[13] E.g., Regensburg, f. D4v; cf.
Mathesius, Von Kinderbetterinnen, f. B1v.
[14] See Wiesner, p. 61f.
[15] Cf. Calvin, Institutes
4.15.21-22, and, e.g., the Lutheran polemic of Adam Crato,
Christliche notwendige Verantwortung/ auff die unzeitige
unbefügte nichtige protestation/ etlicher Anhaltischen
Kirchendiener/ etc. Zum erkendnis und Urtheil der Kirchen
Gottes/
in vorgefallenem Kirchenstreit von der H. Tauff und Exorcismo und
viel anderer Heuptstück unser Christlichen Religion.
Insonderheit von der Tauffe/ so in Heusern geschicht/ und vom Ampt
Christlicher Hebammen (n.p. ["Gerapolis"], 1591).
[16] See Regensburg, f. C1v;
Frankfurt, f. F4r ff.
[17] Mathesius, Von Kindelbetterinnen,
f. A4r.
[18] Mathesius, Von Kindelbetterinnen,
ff. B1v-B2r: "Die andere Tugen der Hebammen und der Matronen soll
sein/ das sie die arme/ müde/ und die geengstete/
abgearbeytete Kreysterin/ mit Gottes wort trösten sollen."
[19] Emil Sehling, Die evangelischen
Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts 13, p. 410: "mit dem wort
Gottes vermanen und inen geistlich zusprechen sollen." The hymns
mentioned for the Seelfrauen are those of Luther: Aus tiefer Not,
Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr&=javascript:goNote(39 dahin, Nun
freut euch lieben Christen gmein, and his hymns on Baptism and the
Lord's Supper.
[20] Johann Bugenhagen, Von den
ungeborn kindern/ und von den kindern/ die wir nicht teuffen
können/ und wolten doch gern/ nach Christus befehl/ und sonst
von der Tauff (Wittenberg: J. Klug, 1551), f. E1r.
[21] Johann Bugenhagen, Von den
ungeborn kindern/ und von den kindern/ die wir nicht teuffen
können/ und wolten doch gern/ nach Christus befehl/ und sonst
von der Tauff (Wittenberg: J. Klug, 1551), f. E1r.
[22] The Exodus text is also expounded
in Huberinus' sermon attached to the Frankfurt order, f. L2v.
[23] Archiv Me¡sto
Jáchymov, Kronika me¡sta 2, f. 602v (3 October 1630):
The council sought the opinion of the midwife Glaser, who strongly
recommended that the cantor be forbidden to baptize "weil die Leute
einen Abscheu vor ihm haben, und er könne auch nicht recht
taufen."