Midwife Diplomacy. The Recruitment of a Midwife for Empress Margarita María Teresa de Austria (1666-1673)

During her stay in Vienna, from 1666-1673, empress Margarita María Teresa de Austria, who was of Spanish origins, gave birth four times and died when she was pregnant with a fifth child. The question of what midwife would best serve her was repeatedly discussed at the highest diplomatic level. The reputation of these midwives depended not only on their performance in the delivery room. Royal midwifery was linked to culture and language, to the intrigues of rivalling parties at court or frictions between the different branches of the Casa de Austria. Midwifery thus offers the opportunity to study from a new perspective the mechanisms of dynastic alliances and the symbolic value attributed to the body of female aristocrats

Einleitung

Ein grundlegendes Thema vieler Religionen ist die Frage nach der Fülle des Lebens im Angesicht begrenzter Ressourcen. Weniger an Nahrung, Arbeit, Sexualität und anderem ist in diesem Sinne oft mehr. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge fragen nach der Lebensqualität, die jenseits von Konsum und materiellem Wachstum entstehen kann. Dabei werden Chancen aber auch Ambivalenzen philosophischer, frühjüdischer, jesuanischer, frühchristlicher, historischer und gegenwärtiger sowie weltweiter asketischer Traditionen und Praktiken diskutiert. Mit Beiträgen von Gerlinde Baumann, Andrea Bieler, Ulrike Eichler, Christine Gerber, Judith Hartenstein, Elisabeth Hartlieb, Nina Heinsohn, Christiane Krause, Susanne Luther, Barbara Müller, Silke Petersen, Angela Standhartinger, Angelika Strothmann und Pearly Walter

Coming Back to Life: The Permeability of Past and Present, Mortality and Immortality, Death and Life in the Ancient Mediterranean

The lines between death and life were neither fixed nor finite to the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. For most, death was a passageway into a new and uncertain existence. The dead were not so much extinguished as understood to be elsewhere, and many perceived the deceased to continue to exercise agency among the living. Even for those more skeptical of an afterlife, notions of coming back to life provided frameworks in which to conceptualize the on-going social, political, and cultural influence of the past. This collection of essays examines how notions of coming back to life shape practices and ideals throughout the ancient Mediterranean. All contributors focus on the common theme of coming back to life as a discursive and descriptive space in which antique peoples construct, maintain, and negotiate the porous boundaries between past and present, mortality and immortality, death and life