Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Men’s Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which medieval English men were presented as responding to infertility, focusing particularly on the evidence provided by collections of medical recipes. These recipes survive in large numbers from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and they offer a variety of treatments to help couples conceive children, or conceive a son in particular. They also shed light on who was deemed responsible for seeking treatment: the man, the woman, or the couple jointly. Using as a case study one widely circulated recipe collection, the Liber de Diversis Medicinis (Book of Diverse Medicines), this chapter argues that although it was rare for medical recipes to discuss male infertility explicitly, men were expected to play a role in seeking out and administering fertility remedies, either alone or more often with their wives.

The research for this chapter was supported by a Leverhulme Trust research fellowship and a Santander Scholarship which allowed me to consult manuscripts in the USA.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Jean-Claude Bologne, La naissance interdite: Stérilité, avortement, contraception au Moyen Age (Paris, 1988), pp. 62–3; Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age (Paris: 1989), pp. 49–5; Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 241–3.

  2. 2.

    Amy Lindgren, ‘The Wandering Womb and the Peripheral Penis: Gender and the Fertile Body in Late Medieval Infertility Treatises’. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Davis, 2005. Editions include Pedro Conde Parrado, Enrique Montero Cartelle and María Cruz Herrero Ingelmo (eds), Tractatus de Conceptu, Tractatus de Sterilitate Mulierum (Valladolid, 1999).

  3. 3.

    Laurent, Naître au moyen âge, p. 48; Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1990), p. 37; Deborah Youngs, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c.1300-c.1500 (Manchester, 2006), p. 43.

  4. 4.

    Cadden, Meanings, pp. 249–53; Parrado, Cartelle and Herrero Ingelmo (eds), Tractatus de Conceptu, p. 23; Kristen Geaman, ‘Childless Queens and Childlike Kings: Negotiating Royal Infertility in England, 1382–1471’. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southern California, 2013, p. 77.

  5. 5.

    Catherine Rider, ‘Men and Infertility in Late Medieval English Medicine’, Social History of Medicine, 29:2 (2016), pp. 245–66.

  6. 6.

    See for example Frederick Pedersen, ‘Privates on Parade: Impotence Cases as Evidence for Medieval Gender’, in Per Andersen, Mia Münster-Swendsen and Helle Vogt (eds), Law and Private Life in the Middle Ages (Copenhagen, 2011).

  7. 7.

    Laurence M.V. Totelin, Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Leiden, 2009), p. 118; Rebecca Flemming, ‘The Invention of Infertility in the Classical Greek World: Medicine, Divinity and Gender’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 87:4 (2013), p. 575.

  8. 8.

    Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster, ‘Childless Men in Early Modern England’, in Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster (eds), The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 172–3.

  9. 9.

    Fiona Harris-Stoertz, ‘Pregnancy and Childbirth in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century French and English Law’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 21 (2012), p. 264.

  10. 10.

    Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford, 2008), pp. 194–6.

  11. 11.

    Becky R. Lee, ‘A Company of Women and Men: Men’s Recollections of Childbirth in Medieval England’, Journal of Family History, 27 (2002).

  12. 12.

    Berry and Foyster, ‘Childless Men’, pp. 178–81; Patricia Crawford, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (London, 2004), pp. 38–40.

  13. 13.

    Linda Ehrsam Voigts, ‘Multitudes of Middle English Medical Manuscripts, or the Englishing of Science and Medicine’, in Margaret R. Schleissner (ed.), Manuscript Sources for Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays (New York, 1995), p. 192.

  14. 14.

    See Päivi Pahta and Irma Taavitsainen, ‘Vernacularization of Scientific and Medical Writing in its Sociohistorical Context’, in Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds), Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English (Cambridge, 2004); Linne R. Mooney, ‘Manuscript Evidence for the Use of Medieval English Scientific and Utilitarian Texts’, in Richard Firth Green and Linne R. Mooney (eds), Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg (Toronto, 2004).

  15. 15.

    Mooney, ‘Manuscript Evidence’, p. 186.

  16. 16.

    Mooney, ‘Manuscript Evidence’, p. 188.

  17. 17.

    Margaret S. Ogden (ed.), The Liber de Diversis Medicinis in the Thornton Manuscript (MS Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2), Early English Texts Society o. s. 207, revised edn (London, 1969), pp. x-xiv; George R. Keiser, ‘Robert Thornton’s “Liber de Diversis Medicinis”: Text, Vocabulary and Scribal Confusion’, in Nikolaus Ritt and Herbert Schendl (eds), Rethinking Middle English: Linguistic and Literary Approaches (Frankfurt, 2005), p. 33.

  18. 18.

    Monica H. Green, ‘The Possibilities of Literacy and the Limits of Reading: Women and the Gendering of Medical Literacy’, in Monica H. Green, Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 45–7.

  19. 19.

    Peter Murray Jones, ‘Witnesses to Medieval Medical Practice in the Harley Collection’, Electronic British Library Journal (2008), p. 3; Mooney, ‘Manuscript Evidence’, p. 188.

  20. 20.

    Keiser, ‘Robert Thornton’s “Liber de Diversis Medicinis”’, pp. 30–41.

  21. 21.

    Ogden, Liber de Diversis Medicinis, pp. 44, 56–7.

  22. 22.

    Henry Hargreaves, ‘Some Problems in Indexing Middle English Recipes’, in A. S. G. Edwards and Derek Pearsall (eds), Middle English Prose: Essays on Bibliographical Problems (New York and London, 1981), p. 92.

  23. 23.

    Jennifer Evans, Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 90–100; On catmint, see Monica H. Green (ed. and trans.), The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Cambridge, 2001), p. 91.

  24. 24.

    Evans, Aphrodisiacs, pp. 116–20.

  25. 25.

    Keiser, ‘Robert Thornton’s “Liber de Diversis Medicinis”’, p. 40. For dates see George R. Keiser, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, vol. 10 (New Haven, CT, 1998), p. 3841. I have consulted all manuscripts except Cp, where I have used the edition in Tony Hunt and Michael Benskin (eds), Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 2001), and the Thornton Manuscript, where I have used Ogden, Liber de Diversis Medicinis and Derek S. Brewer and A. E. B. Owen, The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral MS 92) (London, 1975).

  26. 26.

    ‘To wyte qweyer it es lange on ye man or on ye woman yat scho bers na childe.’ Ro, f. 65r.

  27. 27.

    Ar, f. 41r; Mn, f. 3r; Pp, p. 103; Rw, f. 41v; S1, f. 4v; S2, f. 155v; S4, f. 45r; T1, f. 239v; Ogden, Liber de Diversis Medicinis, p. 56.

  28. 28.

    ‘yan may men help yam to haue child thorgh medicynes’. Ro, f. 65r-v.

  29. 29.

    Totelin, Hippocratic Recipes, pp. 181–2.

  30. 30.

    Green, Trotula, pp. 76–7.

  31. 31.

    ‘Nota bene hic’: Ogden, Liber de Diversis Medicinis, p. 56.

  32. 32.

    Ar, Mn, Pp, Ro, S1, S2, S4, T1.

  33. 33.

    Ro, f. 63v; S2, f. 155v; ‘Her ben medicines to don a man þe raþere to bigeten a child and wimmen to beren a child.’ Pp, p. 103. See also T1, f. 239v; Ar, f. 41r; Mn, f. 3r and S1, f. 4v.

  34. 34.

    S4, f. 45r.

  35. 35.

    Ro, ff. 63v-64r.

  36. 36.

    S2, f. 155v; S4, f. 45r, Pp, p. 103, T1, f. 239v.

  37. 37.

    Ro, ff. 64v-65r; Cf. Green, Trotula, p. 77.

  38. 38.

    Pp, p. 103; T1, f.239v; S2, ff. 155v-156r; S4, ff. 45r-v.

  39. 39.

    Green, Trotula, p. 77.

  40. 40.

    ‘Tak ye ballokes of a hare and ye ballokes of a grys [piglet] and brin yam to poudre and gif ye woman to drynk yis poudre wyth wyne or scho ga to bed.’ Ro, f. 64r.

  41. 41.

    ‘Anoþer vt mulier cito concipiat neptam cum vino coque ad. iii. partem et da ei bibere ieiuno stomaco per iii. dies.’ T1, f. 240r. Cf. S2, f. 156r; S3, f. 50v.

  42. 42.

    Keiser, ‘Robert Thornton’s “Liber de Diversis Medicinis”’, pp. 32–8.

  43. 43.

    Ogden, Liber de Diversis Medicinis, p. 56.

  44. 44.

    Rw, f. 41v.

  45. 45.

    For example Warren R. Dawson (ed.), A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (London, 1934), p. 171; Willy Louis Braekman (ed.), Studies on Alchemy, Diet, Medecine [sic] and Prognostication in Middle English, Scripta, 22 (Brussels, 1986), p. 134.

  46. 46.

    ‘For defaut of issue of man or woman: Tak þe ballokes and þe midrefe of a pyg male, whan þe sowe fallouþ bote one [when the sow has only given birth once], and dre hem and make poudre, and 3if [give] þis pouder ate euene to þe man þat may no3t engendre, and to þe woman barayn.’ Braekman, Studies, p. 133.

  47. 47.

    Braekman, Studies, p. 133.

  48. 48.

    ‘For a wommane yt may not bere no chyld for colde blode: Take and let hire blode and take triasandali and diapendion [two recognized medicines composed of a variety of ingredients] and take and ley yem togedere with hony and ete iche day yerof and [she will] haue blode bothe hote and gode.’ London, British Library MS Harley 2378, f. 57v. On the ownership of the manuscript see the British Library catalogue entry: http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?docId=IAMS040-002032704&vid=IAMS_VU2&indx=1&dym=false&dscnt=1&onCampus=false&group=ALL&institution=BL&ct=search&vl(freeText0)=040-002032704&vid=IAMS_VU2. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  49. 49.

    London, British Library MS Sloane 783b, f. 168v.

  50. 50.

    ‘Do hym enyont his priue menbres wiþ þe galle of a bullock.’ Braekman, Studies, p. 129.

  51. 51.

    ‘For to make a woman for to conceyue tak an oynement of ye braynes of a crane and ganderes grece & lyones grece and anoynte ye mans 3erde. If ye wyman my3te nouth be forn conceyue after yat sche xal.’ London, British Library MS Sloane 706, f. 169r.

  52. 52.

    ‘Ut mulier concipiat: Da sibi lac equinum ipsa ignorante ad bibendum et statim si quis cum ea coierit, concipiet.’ Harvard University, Houghton Library MS lat. 235, ff. 20v-21r. On this manuscript see Linda Ehrsam Voigts, ‘A Handlist of Middle English in Harvard Manuscripts,’ Harvard Library Bulletin, 33 (1985).

  53. 53.

    Antonella Sannino, Il De Mirabilibus Mundi tra tradizione magica e filosofia naturale (Florence, 2011), p. 127.

  54. 54.

    Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, pp. 194–5.

  55. 55.

    James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, IL, 1987), p. 201.

  56. 56.

    Brundage, Law, pp. 453–4; Frederick Pedersen, ‘Did the Medieval Laity Know the Canon Law Rules on Marriage? Some Evidence from Fourteenth-Century York Cause Papers’, Mediaeval Studies, 56 (1994), pp. 150–2.

Research Resources

  • Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster, ‘Childless Men in Early Modern England’, in Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster (eds), The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 158–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  • Warren R. Dawson (ed.), A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1934).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jennifer Evans, Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England, (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2014).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rebecca Flemming, ‘The Invention of Infertility in the Classical Greek World: Medicine, Divinity and Gender’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 87:4 (2013), 565–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: the Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  • Monica H. Green, ‘Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women’s Medicine’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser. II (2005), 1–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monica H. Green (ed. and trans), The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Deborah Youngs, The Life Cycle in Western Europe c.1300-c.1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Catherine Rider

Authors
  1. Catherine Rider
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Catherine Rider .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gayle Davis

  2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

    Tracey Loughran

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Rider, C. (2017). Men’s Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_15

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-52079-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52080-7

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation