English Birth Girdles
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Mary Morse
About this book
In medieval England, women in labor wrapped birth girdles around their abdomens to protect themselves and their unborn children. These parchment or paper rolls replicated the "girdle relics" of the Virgin Mary and other saints loaned to queens and noblewomen, extending childbirth protection to women of all classes. This book examines the texts and images of nine English birth girdles produced between the reigns of Richard II and Henry VIII. Cultural artifacts of lay devotion within the birthing chamber, the birth girdles offered the solace and promise of faith to the parturient woman and her attendants amid religious dissent, political upheaval, recurring epidemics, and the onset of print.
Author / Editor information
Mary Morse specializes in medieval women’s devotional and childbirth practices. She is Professor Emerita of English and past director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Rider University.
Reviews
"[T]his is a sustained and thorough work of scholarship that brings all Morse’s previous work on the rolls together, along with a large amount of new material, into a compelling whole." (Sophia Adams in: Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 27 (2024), 231)
"This book will be invaluable to anyone working on birth girdles, medieval childbirth culture, and women’s devotional practices. […] As a culmination of years of scholarship, English Birth Girdles integrates Morse’s existing work with new material, providing an enormously valuable, comprehensive, and detailed companion to the birth girdles." (Kierri Price, in: The Medieval Review, Oct. 8, 2025, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/42339)
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgements
V -
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Contents
VII -
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List of Illustrations
IX -
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Introduction
1 -
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Chapter 1 Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives, olim Esopus
41 -
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Chapter 2 London, British Library, Harley Charter 43.A.14
83 -
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Chapter 3 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya Depository, Takamiya MS 56
93 -
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Chapter 4 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Beinecke MS 410
137 -
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Chapter 5 New York, Morgan Library & Museum, Glazier MS 39
157 -
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Chapter 6 London, British Library, Additional MS 88929 (Prince Henry’s roll)
219 -
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Chapter 7 London, British Library, Harley Roll T.11
271 -
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Chapter 8 London, Wellcome Collection, Wellcome MS 632
301 -
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Chapter 9 London, British Library, STC 14547.5
325 -
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Conclusion From Orthodoxy to Heresy
345 -
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Appendix 1 Two Childbirth Units in the Birth Girdles
351 -
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Appendix 2 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya Depository, Takamiya MS 56
373 -
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Appendix 3 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Beinecke MS 410
387 -
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Appendix 4 London, British Library, STC 14547.5
395 -
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Bibliography
401 -
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Index
453
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