of Pregnancy, Birth and Motherhood in Ireland and Iberian Peninsula between 6th and 13th centuries (ongoing project)
This project focuses on medieval documents that address issues related to pregnancy, childbirth and maternity, aiming at understanding the rights and duties proposed by these to individuals. It is a comparative study between the Irish and the Iberian peninsula societies, however putting these two in a wider connected context within Western Europe.The main sources selected for this research are legal texts, in order to discuss how these issues were regulated in the ideal level of law, whether secular or canonical, produced between the 6th and the 13th centuries. In addition to legal texts, other documents, such as hagiographies, literature, and sagas, are taken into consideration in order to provide a broader reading of the ways in which medieval societies dealt with human procreation, the responsibilities of parents and society in general with the new lives generated, or with the aborted embryos and foetuses. When possible, archaeological information will also be analysed, to oppose written sources in order to problematize practices of these societies, in order to discuss whether the legal texts reflect ideal expectations, which disagreed with the reality practiced and lived by most people.
Keywords: Law, penitentials, representations, gender, women, pregnancy, birth, motherhood, Ireland, Iberian Peninsula
Research team:
Dr Elaine Pereira Farrell, (senior postdoctoral fellow)
Prof Dr Andréia Cristina Lopes Frazão da Silva, (mentor)
Mr Carlos Eduardo Beda, (co-supervised undergraduate student)
Institutional affiliation: Institute of History, Postgraduate Programme for Comparative History – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Funding body: FAPERJ – Research Support Foundations of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Timeline: from 01/12/2022 until 31/10/2023
Penance, Penitential Tradition, and Pastoral Care in the Middle Ages 