Accessing Women's Agency in Medieval Europe: An Expanded Social History of Women's Reproductive Healthcare

Combining a variety of sources including medical treatises, archaeology, charms, hagiography, devotional manuscripts, artwork, and theological treatises, this essay proposes a more unified approach to understanding women's reproductive medicine. With a focus on understanding not only the practices elite women employed in the medieval period for their reproductive healthcare but also ordinary women of lower-rank, this study demonstrates women's agency to ensure successful outcomes in childbirth. Additionally, it places women in the center of their healthcare experience despite the professionalization of medicine that occurred in elite and intellectual circles. It argues for a more comprehensive, non-western definition for "medicine" in the Middle Ages not as the ancestor of western medicine but as the realistic obstetric and theological practices of women often shunned by patriarchal, intellectual spheres.No embargoAcademic Major: Histor