The history of breastfeeding lies at the heart of the history of humanity. And it was much talked about in the Middle Ages. The image of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus at her breast was pervasive in medieval Europe.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-1206226788-9f434d6.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>In some ways, this perfect image denigrated real women, who could never hope to live up to this lofty ideal. But breastfeeding was nevertheless widely eulogised, particularly by theologians and medical writers.<\/p>\n
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, a 13th-century scholastic, wrote that a mother \u201cconceives her children voluptuously, having carried them in her womb where they are nourished by her blood, she bears them in pain, she loves them and kisses them: because of her love, her nursing is the best, and the nursing helps to sustain her motherly love\u201d.<\/p>\n
He was echoing the dominant view among medieval (male) thinkers that infants should best be breastfed by their biological mothers, rather than wet nurses or even milk substitutes being used.<\/p>\n
Moreover, he saw love and affection at the heart of this physical bond. Bartholomaeus talks about how the mother\u2019s blood nourished the child during pregnancy and that breast milk was the logical next stage. He was following the medieval belief that breast milk was effectively a transformation of blood which would continue to sustain the infant once out of the womb.<\/p>\n
Some medical beliefs were idiosyncratic and seem problematic to us: colostrum, the substance which is produced by new mothers right after birth \u2013 now recognised as essential for the well-being of the infant \u2013 was deemed poisonous. Medics suggested a range of ways to dispose of it, including hiring old women or orphans who could suck it off the breast of the new mother.<\/p>\n
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- Listen | Joanna Wolfarth investigates what we can learn from changing attitudes to breastfeeding through history<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Contraceptive effect<\/h2>\n
Many medical beliefs, drawing on ancient and Arabic thinkers, were less bizarre. It was widely believed that breastfeeding had a contraceptive effect. A 15th-century physician from Padua, Michele Savaronola, even went so far as to recommend that new mothers should breastfeed in order to protect their bodies from having to deal with another pregnancy too soon. It was a rare moment of concern for nursing mothers, whose well-being was not usually the motivation so much as that of the infants.<\/p>\n
Part of the concern also came from the widespread belief that breast milk also had the potential to pass on certain characteristics to the child. This was rooted in medieval ideas about complexions. Medieval people believed that the complexion \u2013 that is, the appearance, temperament and character \u2013 of the mother subsisted in, and could be transferred through, the milk. Interestingly, these claims seem to have originated in the work of moral philosophers, rather than medical texts per se.<\/p>\n
There was a pastoral dimension, too. Breast milk was believed to be imbued with the love of a mother for her child. The 14th-century saint Catherine of Siena was apparently her mother\u2019s 24th child. She was the only one to be breastfed by her own mother, and her hagiographer tells us that this accounted for her very special bond with her mother.<\/p>\n
But this is the history of nursing mothers, not just male intellectuals who wrote about what they should do. And we know a surprising amount about the practices of breastfeeding, and how breastfeeding women across the social spectrum felt. Miracle stories (which were compiled in order to demonstrate that a particular dead person deserved to be canonised as a saint) provide wonderful insights into the travails and joys of parents who prayed to saints for cures for their infants.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | Pregnancy & childbirth in the 19th century<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Miraculous recovery<\/h2>\n
Breastfeeding until the age of two was typical \u2013 interestingly, this is in line with modern medical advice from the World Health Organisation, and certainly at odds with modern social norms. The little boy Roger, who was rescued from the moat of Conwy Castle, was a two-year-old toddler.<\/p>\n
Another miracle story tells of a little girl who was \u201csuckling at the breast and crawling\u201d. She apparently crawled towards a river and fell in. Her parents prayed to Count Simon for her miraculous recovery, and she was resuscitated. Her parents were thrilled, but even more so when they set their little girl down after giving her a cuddle and \u201cshe then walked for the first time\u201d. The parents\u2019 pride in the moment at which their little girl learned to walk is palpable. And she was still being breastfed.<\/p>\n
There is also clear evidence that medieval infants were fed on demand rather than according to a strict routine \u2013 a debate that persists to this day. In another story, we hear of a mother who went to find her child to nurse him when she heard him crying: his wails were her cue to breastfeed. We learn, too, that many infants were nursed in their parents\u2019 beds. Sadly, some of this evidence comes from legal cases after infants were accidentally smothered by their parents in the night.<\/p>\n
A story with a happier ending from medieval Italy tells of a mother who fell asleep while breastfeeding two of her children simultaneously in her bed, crushing one. He was apparently miraculously resuscitated after entreaties to Nicholas of Tolentino (who was later canonised). Many modern mothers will surely identify with the sheer sense of exhaustion at the heart of this story.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>A woman helps a mother with her child in a 15th-century illustration. Communities often rallied round breastfeeding mothers. (Image via Bridgeman)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Most importantly, though, medieval breastfeeding is not simply the history of exclusive mother-baby bonds. Medieval nursing was about wider family and wider community. The story of little Roger in Conwy is typical. He was spotted in the moat by a passer-by, rescued by members of the community, joyfully held by both his parents, and celebrated by a large number of friends. This was not just a story of a devoted mother and baby, but one involving a whole network of people who cared about Roger.<\/p>\n
In another miracle tale, a woman was unable to bond with her baby. It was the priest\u2019s partner who helped her to feed the child, placing the infant on her lap and standing beside her. Milk sharing was also not uncommon: one woman named Johanna recalled in a later legal case how she had breastfed a baby, Katherine, when her mother could not. Medieval breastfeeding embedded mothers and children in wider networks of support.<\/p>\n
Disapproving preachers<\/h2>\n
Milk sharing is obviously a different phenomenon to that of wet-nursing, which, as a contractual form of labour, was commonplace. Preachers and physicians disapproved strongly of wet-nursing, urging mothers to breastfeed their own children \u2013 and yet they offered advice on how best to choose a wet nurse for one\u2019s child. The 13th-century intellectual Aldebrandin of Siena told parents that they should ensure any prospective wet nurse was of good character, partly to ensure that the baby would receive good care.<\/p>\n
![\"An]( "\\"Bas-de-page")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Bas-de-page scene of a woman on stilts, nursing an infant. (Image from British Library Board)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Bernard of Gordon, a medical professor in Montpellier, advised that parents should avoid cowardly, greedy, stupid, melancholic or drunken wet nurses, because they would neglect their charges. But this was also because the milk itself would apparently be affected by the nurse\u2019s character. Some believed that the milk itself was altered by the emotional state of the lactating woman and could become more or less nourishing. The belief that the milk might also pass on aspects of the complexion and disposition of the carer made choosing a wet nurse a fraught decision.<\/p>\n
Wet nurses were most sought after by families of high social status: this was, after all, an expensive way to nourish one\u2019s child. Importantly, since breastfeeding was believed to delay conception, wet nurses were particularly popular among wealthy families seeking to safeguard their lineage with as many pregnancies as possible.<\/p>\n
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