Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Note on Translation
- Introduction Thinking about Abortion in the Early Middle Ages
- 1 From Hope of Children to Object of God's Care: Abortion in Classical and Late Antique Society
- 2 The Word of God: Abortion and Christian Communities in Sixth-Century Gaul
- 3 Church and State: Politicizing Abortion in Visigothic Spain
- 4 Medicine for Sin: Reading Abortion in Early Medieval Penitentials
- 5 Tradition in Practice: Abortion under the Carolingians
- 6 Legislative Energies: Disputing Abortion in Law-Codes
- 7 Interior Wound: The Rumour of Abortion in the Divorce of Lothar II and Theutberga
- 8 Unnatural Symbol: Imagining Abortivi in the Early Middle Ages
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction - Thinking about Abortion in the Early Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Note on Translation
- Introduction Thinking about Abortion in the Early Middle Ages
- 1 From Hope of Children to Object of God's Care: Abortion in Classical and Late Antique Society
- 2 The Word of God: Abortion and Christian Communities in Sixth-Century Gaul
- 3 Church and State: Politicizing Abortion in Visigothic Spain
- 4 Medicine for Sin: Reading Abortion in Early Medieval Penitentials
- 5 Tradition in Practice: Abortion under the Carolingians
- 6 Legislative Energies: Disputing Abortion in Law-Codes
- 7 Interior Wound: The Rumour of Abortion in the Divorce of Lothar II and Theutberga
- 8 Unnatural Symbol: Imagining Abortivi in the Early Middle Ages
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
According to the apostle Paul, Eve's sin led to the fall; but she would be saved by childbearing. The author of a sixth-century biblical commentary thought carefully about the implications of Paul's words: ‘But she will be saved by generation of children. Not Eve, but woman: because Eve was used as an example, it was not being said specifically about her, through generation of children, by rearing, not by killing or aborting.’ The good works of the righteous widow, Paul went on to write, included bringing up children. Again, concern over abortion entered the author's mind as he interpreted Paul's words: ‘If she brought up children, if she brought up those born, and not by receiving abortion, nor has she killed [children] already born.’
Our commentator was not alone in considering abortion as an obstacle to salvation. A Carolingian poem probably from the late ninth century commemorated a Merovingian bishop who had once saved a soul by thwarting an abortion. Many early medieval bishops acted on abortion from the pulpit or council chamber, but Germanus of Paris (d. 576) had acted from his mother's womb:
[W]hen, before he was born to the world,
He shone in mother's womb through a miracle of virtue:
Mother had conceived him more quickly than usual,
By drinking poisons she wanted an abortion flung out,
Unaware a woman duly brings forth in the seventh month
Any offspring that moves on the seventieth day.
But whom divine providence had prepared for the world,
No detriments could harm, no potions either;
A warrant preserved the chosen one and rendered untouched;
The mother, lest she became a parricide, was thwarted.
He who wanted John to rejoice in the womb,
Brought forth Germanus here through a miracle before birth.
Childbearing was one path to salvation in early medieval Christianity. Monasticism offered a different path defined by the renunciation of sexuality and its consequences, including childbearing.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500–900 , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015