icance women attached to the ritual led the rest of medieval society to view it
as important. The churching ceremony and the process that preceded it were
a period in which women expressed themselves as women and identified with
other mothers. Through this process, these women expressed their awareness
of their bodies and their ability to give birth.^93
These approaches, alone or in combination, expose the complexity of a so-
ciety with many competing forces. The participants in the ritual process, the
women who were so central to it, as well as the men, each understood it differ-
ently. From a male perspective, the period after birth was one in which the par-
turient was removed from society, while for the women this was a phase in
which their female social experience was greatly enhanced. The arguments in
early modern Europe over whether or not to do away with the churching rit-
ual express these different perspectives and needs.
This suggestion, for an understanding of the postpartum process that in-
cludes the different needs and perspectives of men and women in the society,
accords with our discussion of birth in chapter 1. We saw before how an at-
tempt to explain churching as an expression of female power was complicated
by the regulative aspects of churching. So, too, an attempt to explain birth as
an exclusively female domain proved difficult. In both cases, we witnessed
practices that created a unique niche for women, enabling them to express
themselves in spite of the constraints of patriarchal societies. At the same time,
we saw how male society regulated and supervised these processes.
The Jewish ritual can be better understood through many of our observa-
tions of the Christian ritual. If for the women this period was characterized by
a different social order, while the churching ritual represented a return to the
quotidian social order, the ritual in the synagogue also symbolized the return
to mundane household and community responsibilities. As we have seen, the
Jewish and Christian rituals share many features. The common interpretation
of both the Jewish and the Christian rite strengthens the social explanations of
the Christian rite proposed by scholars. Our insights into the Jewish rite can
also explain why Christian women attributed such importance to this ritual.
They help us understand why this was a ritual that women thought was worth
fighting for. Our analysis also points to a social structure and framework of ideas
common to both Jews and Christians. Because gender differentiations played
such a crucial role in the functioning of the two societies, the common Jew-
ish-Christian understanding implied by the temporary change in social order
during the lying-in period is of even greater importance. The fact that the rit-
ual was explained primarily in terms of impurity seems to correlate with other
moments of breach in social order in which ritual impurity or the threat of rit-
ual impurity leads to certain changes in the ordinary social hierarchy.
While I would not go so far as to suggest seeing the postpartum rituals mainly
as a form of resistance to patriarchal authority, some aspects of this are hinted
at in the sources. We saw a reference to this in the previous chapter, when
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
#1