"Be Fruitful and Multiply": Genesis and Generation in Reformation Germany

Abstract

This essay analyzes vernacular texts on reproduction from sixteenth-century Germany. It examines religious texts, including sermons and devotional treatises for pregnant women, as well as medical texts, such as midwifery manuals, books on the "secrets of nature," and anatomical treatises. Vernacular authors, both medical and clerical, ascribed enormous spiritual and symbolic significance to human generation. Conception, pregnancy, and birth were linked to the biblical account of the creation and fall of mankind. In the creation of the child in the womb, sixteenth-century Germans saw an echo of the original divine act of creation. And in the sufferings of a woman in labor they saw a reenactment of Christ's Passion. Discussions of reproduction thus served as a starting point for meditations on original sin, human mortality, and the relationship between body and soul.

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