Bible, the sacrifice was brought to the Temple forty days after the birth of
a male and eighty days after birth of a female, and the ritual surrounding
this event included atonement through sacrifice, and purification through ritual
immersion.^55 In early modern Germany, this was not the case. Women went to
the synagogue four to five weeks after birth, whether they had given birth to a
son or a daughter. The immersion in the mikve, which allowed the parturient to
resume conjugal relations with her husband, took place forty or eighty days post-
partum (in some cases even later), depending on the sex of the newborn.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the practice of going to the mikve only
forty or eighty days postpartum was relatively new. In medieval Ashkenaz, ac-
cording to twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources, women immersed them-
selves twice, following Lev. 12—once shortly after birth and a second time forty
or eighty days after birth. Eric Zimmer has shown that, despite differing prac-
tices prior to the fifteenth century, after the fifteenth century, it became widely
accepted for women to immerse only after forty or eighty days and, at times,
even later.^56 For the purpose of this discussion, it is important to note that the
ritual immersion was not timed to correspond with the Sabbath ritual and
seems to have taken place at some later date.
The early modern sources thus distinguish between two separate processes.
During the month or so after birth, the parturient refrained from her house-
hold chores, and her friends and neighbors took care of her. This period ended
with her going to the synagogue, after which she resumed her duties. What-
ever the reason for this practice, once this process was complete, the woman
was still pending ritual immersion in the mikve. This immersion purified her
from the impurity of birth and enabled her to return to her conjugal duties. In
other words, two different timetables operate here. One timetable structured
the return to the household and social roles, while the other shaped the return
to the conjugal bed. If the timetable concerning the immersion in the mikve
may be understood in light of the instructions in Leviticus, there is no clear ex-
planation for the Sabbath ritual and its timing. This is so in spite of the attempt,
in sixteenth-century ritual books, to connect the Sabbath ritual with Lev. 12.
The postpartum ritual of the communities in Germany is also attested to in
early modern Polish sources. We can assume that German immigrants to
Poland brought the custom with them.^57 In Italy, a similar custom was also
common.^58
ChurchingThe Christian ceremony known in modern times as churching, was known in
Latin as “Ordo intrandi mulieres in ecclesiam post partum,” and in German as
Kirchengang orAussegnung.^59 This ritual is known from the fourth century in
Eastern Christianity, and became widespread in Western Europe from the sev-
enth century on. Paula Rieder has argued that in Western Europe the church-