Dark Ages Tragedy: The Baby in the River

By Kim Rendfeld 

The day must have started out like any other in eighth century Bischofsheim. A peasant woman was about to draw water from the river. What she saw in the water horrified her: a drowned newborn in swaddling.

The woman screamed uncontrollably and attracted a crowd. Rudolf of Fulda, Saint Lioba's hagiographer, says the villager was "burning with womanly rage." When she was able to speak, she said one of those Saxon nuns from Britain had borne and murdered the child and then contaminated the water with the corpse. The nuns led by Lioba protested their innocence and held prayers and processions for God to exonerate them.

A vision like flames appeared around a crippled girl, who publicly confessed. She was a beggar and had received food and clothing from the sisters, but she had been absent for a while, claiming illness. Rudolf said the nuns wept with joy at the revelation, but perhaps it was relief that everyone knew they were indeed guiltless. I would like to think that at least some of the nuns were shocked that someone they had helped not only ended her baby's life but, with the lack of baptism, also condemned the infant's soul.

Le Jeune Mendiants by Léon Perrault

This was not the only time or place parents killed their infants during the Middle Ages, and that practice contributes to the perception that medieval parents were not emotionally attached to their newborns. The reaction of the woman in the village shows otherwise. She was as appalled as we would be.

Rudolf sees this incident as the Devil using the girl to try to destroy Lioba and her abbey and the young mother's confession as a miracle that furthered Lioba's cause. She and the women who braved the Channel crossing and overland travel to today's Tauberbischofsheim, Germany, had a lot at stake. Their abbey was part of Saint Boniface's mission to spread and solidify Christianity on the Continent. If the very people the nuns were trying to help believed the women capable of such evil, the laity might turn away from the religion, and many souls would be lost.

The sisters' greatest obstacle was that they were foreigners. Lioba was born in the Saxon kingdom of Wessex and grew up in the abbey of Wimbourne. She and the other nuns would have stood out, even if they didn't wear habits. Their accents and manner of speaking would be different, and many were literate when the vast majority of the population could not read.

Some of you may recognize the story about the newborn in the river from an earlier post I did about the Saint Lioba (link below). Whether or not the vision happened as Rudolf described, I have a sickening feeling the murder of the baby is true.

The unnamed "poor little crippled girl" was an outcast. A medieval audience would have thought her disability was a curse from God, perhaps a punishment for her parents' sin, like conceiving a child on a Sunday. She was probably a teenager, old enough to marry by medieval standards, but her disability, poverty, and lack of family and connections made her undesirable as a wife.

Medieval folk also would have believed the nuns did all they could for the girl, who sat near the convent's gate and begged for alms. Her food came daily from Lioba's table. The nuns provided garments and other necessities as an act of charity.

Rudolf says only that the girl succumbed to the Devil's suggestions and committed fornication, but I have a feeling there is more. We know nothing about the baby's father. Perhaps, a man paid the girl and used her so that she could have some means to support herself in case the nuns no longer wished to provide for her. Or did someone get her drunk and take advantage? Maybe, a man told her she was pretty or was simply nice to her—a powerful thing to someone told she's undesirable her whole life. Did she hope the man might marry her, especially if she was fertile?

When she realized she was with child, did the girl turn to the man who impregnated her? If he agreed to acknowledge the infant as his and support the child but not marry her, a medieval audience would think he was doing the right thing, and if he had a wife, she was supposed to put up with it. But what if he refused to take any responsibility? How was a girl with no home, relying on charity for food and clothes, going to support a baby?

How I wish this girl would have left the newborn on the church steps and allowed her child to be taken to a monastery for the Church to raise. But she must have been alone when she gave birth, without even a midwife on hand. If she suffered from extreme post-partum depression, she might have thought the baby was better off dead.

Perhaps, she confessed to the murder because she did not want to see the people who had shown her the most compassion to be punished. Yet the girl's end is as sad as her child's. Rudolf wrote: "But the wretched woman did not deserve to escape scot-free and for the rest of her life she remained in the power of the devil."

It's uncertain what Rudolf means. Church legislators would forgive a mother who "kills her child by magical practice by drink or any art," but they required penance such as a pilgrimage when travel was dangerous and unpleasant, fasting, alms-giving, not bathing, and prayer. The penance would last seven years if the death was to conceal adultery; three years if the reason was poverty. I suspect the girl committed suicide, an act beyond God's grace in the medieval mind.

What the girl did to her baby was heinous—no other word can describe it. Still when I think about her, I see a frightened teenager young enough to be my daughter, without friends or family. Had one caring person been with her at that fateful moment, could the tragedy for both mother and child have been avoided?

Saint Lioba: Trusted Friend of a Martyr

Sources

Medieval Sourcebook: Rudolf of Fulda's Life of Leoba

Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne by Pierre Riché, translated by Jo Ann McNamara

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in early medieval Francia and is working on a third. In The Cross and the Dragon, Alda, a young Frankish noblewoman, must contend with a vengeful jilted suitor and the fear of losing her husband in battle. In The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, Saxon peasant Leova will go to great lengths to protect her children after she's lost everything else.

The Cross and the Dragon will be rereleased August 3, 2016, in print and ebook formats. You can preorder the ebook at Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, or Barnes and Noble. The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar will be rereleased in November 2016. Preorders are available at Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. It will soon be available on Amazon.

The Shape of Georgian Beauty

by Maria Grace

Life in early modern societies was rife with bodily threats often resulting in bodily deformities. Nutritional deficits, disease and accidents all resulted in sometimes horrific alterations to the human form. Skin conditions, tumors, both benign and cancerous, and conditions like gout marked individuals in all walks of life. Moneyed and poor alike were subject to the debilitating effects to daily life.

Improvements in medical science focused on the prevention and correction of disfigurements. Progress in infant health and nutrition helped prevent many conditions and assistive technologies such as wooden legs and rupture trusses improved the productivity and general quality of life for many of those injured.

Assistive technologies quickly crossed the line from improving function to merely improving aesthetics. Though some argued whether it was acceptable to attempt to improve upon God’s creation by artificial means, even the Puritans came to accept man-made means to improve upon nature’s imperfections.

Deformity

By the eighteenth century, with the developing culture of politeness, the ‘deformed’ or ‘defective’ body presented a quandary for polite society. While some emphasized the moral virtue that developed as a result of bearing with bodily disfigurement, others registered concern for the lack of social ease evident when those bearing obvious ‘defects’ were present. Etiquette required that polite individuals avoided anything which would draw attention to another’s ‘weakness’. However, it was also recognized that a crooked body prevented one’s acceptance in polite society, being more prison than palace for the individual. The imperfect body was often referred to as dismal and miserable and jarring the sensibilities and discomposing the cheerfulness of mind, stealing pleasure from an otherwise pleasant experience.

Straightening a child's posture

Nicolas Andry (1743) suggested that polite society should shun anything ‘shocking’ like visible impairments which might threaten virtuous interactions. Moreover, individuals who permitted, by their neglect, their bodies to become ‘ugly’ offended both society and God’s intentions. Thus, ‘orthopaedic’ intervention to restore the proper aesthetics to the body was an act of social and moral responsibility.

Causes and prevention of deformity

Experts concluded that preventing deformity was preferable (and easier) than curing it. Many suggested ignorant management in childhood was at the heart of many disfigurements and as such, more ‘scientific’ management might be applied to remedy them.

Towards the end of the Georgian era, malformations were classified by their causes including:

Those produced before birth

The result of tight lacing of long corsets, thought to impede the mother’s digestion, breathing, circulation and to even displace the womb itself. This practice was thought to impede the proper growth of a child resulting in dwarfism or other deformities of shape. Teaching mothers not to wear tight garments during pregnancy offered a simple remedy to this malady.

Those produced by ignorant nursing

In this case nursing referred to the care of the child in infancy. Infant bones were considered soft and unfinished, and the joints susceptible to injury by rough handling. Caregivers were directed to handle the infant as little as possible, allowing them to lie on mats and cushions without restrictions, and prevented from sitting and standing too soon.

Those produced by clothing in infancy

The practice of tight swaddling was still practiced in the Georgian era. However, toward the end of the period, the practice fell out of favor. The tight constriction of the infant was thought not only to be painful, but to restrict blood flow and to impede normal growth, forcing limbs and spine into unnatural shapes. Nurses were advised to adopt a looser mode of dress, but not so loose as to fail to support ‘feeble’ infant muscles, and to avoid dressing an infant too warmly and causing sweats in the night.

Those produced by dress in youth

Putting pressure on muscles was thought to weaken them. So the use of corsets, tight sleeves or garters was advised against; they might result in twisting the body out of natural position. Children’s clothing should be comfortable and allow the blood to flow freely and the body to move easily.

Those produced by position

Sleeping on the same side of the bed every night, sitting on the same side of the window or fire every night or in any way that twists the body was to be scrupulously avoided. While reading, writing, sewing or practicing music, young ladies must maintain perfectly erect posture to avoid permanent deformation of the spine.

Correcting deformity

Once deformity occurred, Sheldrake argued that the amelioration of such irregularities was imperative as "not only their appearance is disagreeable, but by impeding the function of viscera, they will in time destroy that balance of the constitution which is so necessary to health and longevity.”

Stay makers and truss makers of the mid to late eighteenth century flooded the market with a cornucopia of devices to train young people’s bodies—particularly those of young women—as one trained young plants to grow strong and straight, often using braces and other contraptions made of newly available cast steel.

Braces and other devices

Devices to improve posture and keep and individual ‘straight’ were as varied as the manufacturers who made them. Large pieces of metal called backirons were hidden at the back of clothing and prevented slouching. Steel collars forced wearers to obey mothers’ and governesses’ injunctions to keep heads up, sometimes assisted by shoulder braces which pulled shoulders back. Neck swings stretched the spine by suspending the ‘patient’ in a block and tackle type device so that only their toes touched the ground.

Education chairs which forced the ‘patient’ to balance in a small hard seat without a support to lean against while windlass contraptions and stretching chairs performed similarly to neck swing. Despite the discomfort and pain these devices caused, they were widely sold throughout the eighteenth century.

As the century drew to a close and the nineteenth century dawned, a shift of perspective occurred leaning toward a more natural beauty, unencumbered by the rigorous management and training of the previous generations. The second part of this article will examine these changing conceptions of beauty and how to achieve it in the Regency era.

Bibliography

Andry, Nicolas. Orthopaedia: Or, the Art of Correcting and Preventing Deformities in Children . Vol. 1. London, 1743.

Buc'hoz, Pierre-Joseph. The Toilet of Flora Or, a Collection of the Most Simple and Approved Methods of Preparing Baths, Essences, Pomatums, Powders, Perfumes, Sweet-Scented Waters, and Opiates for Preserving and Whitening the Teeth, &c. &c. With Receipts for Cosmetics of Every Kind, That Can Smooth and Brighten the Skin, Give Force to Beauty, and Take off the Appearance of Old Age and Decay. For the Use of the Ladies. Improved from the French of M. Buchoz, M.D. London: Printed for J. Murray, Mo 12 Fleet-street and W. Nicoll, No. 51, in St. Paul's Church Yard, 1784.

Corbould, H. The Art of Beauty, Or, The Best Methods of Improving and Preserving the Shape, Carriage, and Complexion ; Together with the Theory of Beauty. London: Printed for Knight and Lacey ... and Westley and Tyrrell, Dublin, 1825.

Duties of a Lady's Maid with Direction for Conduct and Numerous Receipts for the Toilette. London: James Bulock, 1825.

Jeamson, Thomas. 1665. Artificiall embellishments. Or Arts best directions how to preserve beauty or procure it. Oxford: Printed by William Hall, amm. D.

Sanford, Victoria. "Public Reaction to Rising Waists During the Late 18th Century: Regency Fashion." Jane Austens World. June 2, 2010. Accessed January 9, 2015. https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/public-reaction-to-rising-waists-during-the-late-18th-century-regency-fashion/.

Sheldrake, Timothy. An Essay on the Various Causes and Effects of the Distorted Spine ; on the Improper Methods Usually Practised to Remove That Distortion ; In Which That Recommended by Mr. Pott Is Considered, and the Bad Effects of Vacher's (commonly Called Jones's) Spinal Machine Are Pointed Out: With the Description of an Instrument That Is Better Calculated to Remove Those Distortions than Any Hitherto Made Use Of, and That Will Not Be Productive of the Pernicious Consequences That Have Been Caused by Most of the Other Machines. To Which Are Added, Some Observations on the Treatment of Ruptures ; Intended to Shew the Impracticability of Curing That Disorder by Any Other Means than the Use of Proper Truffes, and the Superior Utility of the Improved Elastic Truffes with Flexible Pads, Made by T. Sheldrake, Jun. London: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry ;, 1783.

Snively, John H. A Treatise on the Manufacture of Perfumes and Kindred Toilet Articles. Nashville: C.W. Smith, 1877.

The Art of Preserving the Hair on Philosophical Principles. By the Author of The Art of Improving the Voice. London: Printed for Septimus Prowett, Old Bond Street, 1825.

The book of health & beauty, or the toilette of rank and fashion: embracing the economy of the economy of the beard eye-brovs gums nails breath eye-lashes hands skin complexion feet ips teeth eyes hair mouth tongue, 8::- 81c. With recipes, and directions for use, of safe and salutary cosmetics— perfumes—essences-simple ‘vaters—depilatories, etc. And a variety “ select recipes for the dressing room of both sexes. 2nd ed. London: Joseph Thomas, 1, Finch Lane, Cornhill, 1837.

The Hand-book of Bathing. London: W.S. Orr, 1841.

The Hand-book of the Toilette. 2nd ed. London: W.s. Orr and, 1841.

The New London Toilet: Or, a Compleat Collection of the Most Simple and Useful Receipts for Preserving and Improving Beauty, Either by Outward Application or Internal Use. With Many Other Valuable Secrets in Elegant and Ornamental Arts. Containing near Four Hundred Receipts under the following General Heads. Perfumes Fine Waters Baths Cosmetics Conserves Confectionary Snuffs Pastes Wash Balls Scented Powders Pomatums Fine Syrups Jellys Preserved Fruits, &c. With Every Species of Cosmetic That May Be Useful in Improving Beauty, or Concealing the Ravages of Time and Sickness. To Which Is Added a Treatise on the Art of Managing, Improving, and Dressing the Hair on the Most Improved Principles of That Art. London: Printed for Richardson and Urquhart, under the Royal-Exchange, 1778.

The Toilette of Health, Beauty, and Fashion: Embracing the Economy of the Beard, Breath, Complexion, Ears, Eyes, Eye-brows, Eye Lashes, Feet, Forehead, Gums, Hair, Head, Hands, Lips, Mouth, Mustachios, Nails of the Toes, Nails of the Fingers, Nose, Skin, Teeth, Tongue, Etc., Etc., : Including the Comforts of Dress and the Decorations of the Neck ... with Directions for the Use of Most Safe and Salutary Cosmetics ... and a Variety of Selected Recipes for the Dressing Room of Both Sexes. Boston: Allen and Ticknor, 1833.

Turner, David M. Disability in Eighteenth-century England: Imagining Physical Impairment. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Turner, D. M. and Withey, A. (2014), Technologies of the Body: Polite Consumption and the Correction of Deformity in Eighteenth‐Century England. History, 99: 775–796. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12087

Withey, Alun. "(Dis)ability? Living with Impairment in Early Modern Britain." Dr Alun Withey. September 28, 2012. Accessed January 9, 2015. https://dralun.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/disability-living-with-impairment-in-early-modern-britain/.

Withey, Alun. "Sit up Straight! Bad Posture and the 'Neck Swing' in the 18th Century." Dr Alun Withey. January 15, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2015. https://dralun.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/sit-up-straight-bad-posture-and-the-neck-swing-in-the-18th-century/.

Withey, Alun. "Steel and the Body in the Enlightenment:." Dr Alun Withey. June 7, 2012. Accessed January 9, 2015. https://dralun.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/steel-and-the-body-in-the-enlightenment/.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Maria Grace is the author of Darcy's Decision,  The Future Mrs. Darcy, All the Appearance of Goodness, and Twelfth Night at Longbourn and Remember the Past, and A Jane Austen Christmas, .  Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, follow on Twitter or email her.