Document Type
Postprint
Publication Date
11-2022
Journal / Book Title
Social History of Medicine
Abstract
Hildegard of Bingen was a German nun who wrote medical treatises in the Middle Ages that interpreted the female body as a positive and purifying agent of God’s creation and salvation at a time when negative connotations of female physicality prevailed in medicine. In particular, she described the female body as an active vessel, in opposition to the predominant image of the female body as passive. Her explanations of conception, pregnancy and childbirth in her medical book Cause et Cure represent the female body as actively advancing, nourishing, purifying and caring for future generations in the form of the baby, creating an analogy between the woman’s power of reproduction and God’s power of creation. This article concludes that Hildegard’s vessel imagery is a result of her high regard for the female body and its capacity for reproduction. Hildegard’s novel interpretation of the vessel provides a uniquely woman-empowering image for discussing the broader complex of gender and body in medieval medicine.
DOI
10.1093/shm/hkac006
Book Publisher
Oxford University Press
Journal ISSN / Book ISBN
0951-631X
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Lee, Minji, "The Womb in Labour: Representing the Woman’s Body as an Active Vessel in Hildegard of Bingen’s Cause et Cure" (2022). Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 9.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/religion-facpubs/9
Published Citation
Minji Lee, The Womb in Labour: Representing the Woman’s Body as an Active Vessel in Hildegard of Bingen’s Cause et Cure, Social History of Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 4, November 2022, Pages 1183–1199, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac006
Included in
Catholic Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, History of Christianity Commons, History of Religions of Western Origin Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Medieval Studies Commons
Comments
This article has been accepted for publication in Social History of Medicine, published by Oxford University Press. The final version can be found at https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac006