Mothers and Children. Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe - Elisheva Baumgarten

49. R. Juda Kirchheim, Minhagot Wormeisa(Customs of Worms Jewry), ed. Isaac Mordechai
    Peles (Jerusalem, 1987), 317 [in Hebrew]. Hamburger, Shorshei Minhag Ashkenaz, 400, indicates
    that this custom varied and that in some communities, no synagogue ritual was held for the mother
    if her baby had died.
    50.MS Nürnberg 7058, fols. 43v–44r, dated 1589, published by Roth, “Al haHollekreisch,” 67–68.


50. Hamburger, Shorshei Minhag Ashkenaz, 398–400.


51. Glückel bas Judah, Memoirs, trans. Marvin Lowenthal (New York, 1977), 88.


52. Tracy Guren Klirs (ed.), The Merit of Our Mothers: A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s
    Prayers(Cincinnati, 1992), 130–31.


53. This reasoning seems distinctly Jewish, in light of Christian attitudes toward sexuality.


54. Lev. 12:1–8.


55. Most sources that deal with this problem seem to suggest that some women first attended
    the mikve more than eighty days following birth. See Zimmer, Society and Its Customs(Jerusalem,
    1996), 231–39 [in Hebrew].


56. Hamburger, Shorshei Minhag Ashkenaz, 398–400, 410–11 documents the geographic
    areas in which this custom was observed.


57. Leon Modena, Historia de Riti Hebraici(Venice, 1678), 102–103.


58. Most of the recent research concerning this ritual deals with the period after the Reforma-
    tion. Two books written in the early nineteenth century contain much valuable information that
    served as the basis for modern research: Peter Browe S. J., Beiträge zur Sexualethik des Mittelal-
    ters(Breslau, 1932), 15–35; Adolf Franz, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter(Freiburg,
    1909), 2:186–240. Franz’s book provides a detailed description of the liturgy of the ritual and its
    development, esp. 2:209, 223–27. Many books on medieval women mention the ritual in passing.
    For example: Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, 217; Alexandre-Bidon et Closson, L’enfant à l’om-
    bre des cathédrales, 67–71; Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World, 125–29; Clarissa
    Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, 184; Sylvie Laurent, Naître au moyen âge, 213–35; Henrietta
    Leyser, Medieval Women, 130. Two recent doctoral dissertations have addressed medieval church-
    ing: Paula Marie Rieder, Between the Pure and the Polluted: The Churching of Women in Medieval
    Northern France 1100–1500, Ph.D. Diss., University of Illinois (Urbana-Champagne, 2000); Becky
    Rose Lee, “Women ben purifyid of her childeryn”: The Purification of Women after Childbirth in
    Medieval England, Ph.D. Diss., University of Toronto (Toronto, 1998). For studies of churching
    in early modern Europe, see David Cressy, “Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of
    Women in Post Reformation England,” Past and Present141(1993): 106–46; idem, Birth, Marriage
    and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England(New York, 1997),
    197–228; Adrian Wilson, “The Ceremony of Childbirth and Its Interpretation,” in Women As
    Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, ed. Valerie Fildes
    (London and New York, 1990), 68–107; William Coster, “Purity, Profanity and Puritanism: The
    Churching of Women, 1500–1700,” in Women in the Church, eds. W. J. Sheilds and Diana Wood
    (Studies in Church History, 27), (Oxford, 1990), 377–87; Susan Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Rit-
    ual(London and New York, 1997), 74–78. My deep thanks to Professor Karant-Nunn for her help.


59. Rieder, Churching of Women, 1–46.


60. Caspers, “Leviticus 12, Mary and Wax,” 295–309.


61. Luke 2:22–32.
    63.On imitatio Mariae, see: Richard Kieckhefer, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,”
    in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (London and New York,
    1987), 2: 89–93; Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Marian Devotion in the Western Church,” in High Mid-
    dle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (London and New York, 1987), 2: 392–414. For medieval
    adoration of Mary, see Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin
    Mary(New York, 1976), 255–69. Warner emphasizes Mary’s connection to fertility and discusses
    the purification in passing, 67, 106; Stephan Beissel, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias im 16 und 17
    Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Religionswissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte(Freiburg, 1909), 320–21.

218 NOTES TO CHAPTER 3