Marston Childbirth Prayer

(Version 1)

All Powerful, Eternal God,
     without end of beginning,
     who created everything out of nothing;
by whose power the sea was created,
     which never extends to the furthest reaches;
who made the earth and contains the flow of winds in the caves,
     and who ever now brings forth seeds out of the hardest wood with unimaginable power;
who formed Adam from the dust of the earth, and forming woman from his side,
     joined her and him in matrimony,
and for the sake of growing future generations,
     gave them perpetual progeny and a blessing, saying:
"Be fruitful and multiply, 

     and fill the earth 

          and have dominion over the birds of the air 

          and the fish of the sea 

          and beasts too, of all kinds;" 

who extraordinarily made Abraham the Patriarch and his wife Sarah fertile, 

     granting the elderly pair offspring unexpectedly 

     despite their advanced age;
who also, with the Holy Spirit, 

     sent your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, 

     from your bosom to the womb of the immaculate Virgin,
so that he might lie hidden in the pregnant woman 

     as in a house in accordance with the human law,
and after the proper nine months of service, 

     as if heaving his bedroom, 

     with hs birth he leaves the Virgin's womb,
who furthermore, through that son, 

     and with twelve Apostles, 

I pray to you, God the Father,
     that the aid of your pity might extend to your pregnant servant,
          heavy with child,

     so that she may prevail in producing a child pleasing to you,

     without danger of death,
     and in nourishing a child worthy of serving you
          and devoted to worshipping you. 

By our same Lord, etc.

(Version 2)

All Powerful, Eternal God,
     without end of beginning,
     who created everything out of nothing;
by whose power the sea was created,
     which never extends to the furthest reaches;
who made the earth and contains the flow of winds in the caves,
     and who ever now brings forth seeds out of the hardest wood with unimaginable power;
who formed Adam from the dust of the earth, and forming woman from his side,
     joined her and him in matrimony,
and for the sake of growing future generations,
     gave them perpetual progeny and a blessing, saying:
"Be fruitful and multiply, 

     and fill the earth 

          and have dominion over the birds of the air 

          and the fish of the sea 

          and beasts too, of all kinds;" 

who extraordinarily made Abraham the Patriarch and his wife Sarah fertile, 

     granting the elderly pair offspring unexpectedly 

     despite their advanced age;
who also, with the Holy Spirit, 

     sent your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, 

     from your bosom to the womb of the immaculate Virgin,
so that he might lie hidden in the pregnant woman 

     as in a house in accordance with the human law,
and after the proper nine months of service, 

     as if heaving his bedroom, 

     with hs birth he leaves the Virgin's womb,
who furthermore, through that son, 

     and with twelve Apostles and other Christians,

made a promise, saying,

"Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you;" 

through that son, 

just as through the Holy Spirit,

I pray to you, God the Father,
     that the aid of your pity might extend to your pregnant servant,
          heavy with child,

     so that she may prevail in producing a child pleasing to you,

     without danger of death,
     and in nourishing a child worthy of serving you
          and devoted to worshipping you. 

By our same Lord, etc.

-- Anonymous (translated from Latin by Runqi Zhang). From a medieval manuscript known as the Marston Book of Hours, originally from England. While the original manuscript is dated from 1250, this prayer is believed to have been added later, in the 4th century. Found at the Global Medieval Sourcebook: A Digital Repository of Medieval Texts, at Stanford University.

As noted in the Introduction:

"Childbirth in medieval Europe was often the most dangerous experience of a woman's life. Because of poor hygiene and a lack of gynecological knowledge, scholars have estimated that as many as ten percent of women died during childbirth or immediately afterwards. Not only did mothers die in large numbers, but as many as thirty percent of children died in the process of childbirth. In the face of these dangers, medieval people used a wide variety of charms and prayers in an attempt to improve their chances of a successful delivery.

"The Marston Childbirth Prayer is a late 14th-century childbirth prayer from England, written in Latin. This prayer provides rare insight into the life of a medieval woman, speaking directly to one of the most intimate and dangerous experiences of her life.

"The prayer draws primarily on three stories from the Christian Bible: the creation of the world, the conception of Isaac, and the conception and birth of Christ. The first part of the prayer focuses on God's generative power: the creation of land and sea, plants and animals, and Adam and Eve. The next part recalls the birth of Isaac, focusing on the miraculous fertility of Abraham and Sarah despite their advanced ages. The prayer then turns to the conception and birth of Jesus, focusing both on Mary's pregnant body and on the divine nature of her son. The three biblical narratives referenced in Marston MS 22 are all concerned with generation and are the three main foundation stories in Christianity: the birth of the world, the birth of Judaism (through Isaac, the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel), and the birth of Christianity (through Christ). The prayer concludes with a reminder of Christ's promise that God would intervene on behalf of those who cry out in his name. This allows the prayer, in its final lines, to petition for both mother and child to survive the pregnancy.

"Of key interest here is the way this prayer may have been used to aid a woman in childbirth. By reminding her of the biblical birthing narratives, it links the individual medieval woman with her broader Christian community and the longer arc of Christian history. In this way, the woman may feel connected to the biblical mothers it mentions and draw confidence that she, too, will be able to safely give birth."

Citation: Anonymous. "Marston Childbirth Prayer." Trans. Runqi Zhang. Global Medieval Sourcebook. http://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/marston-childbirth-prayer. Retrieved on August 1, 2023.

     

This Was Written in 1648, When I Lay in, With my Son John (Poem 45)

Sad, sick, and lame, as in my bed I lay,
Lest pain and passion should bear all the sway,
My thoughts being free, I bid them take their flight
Above the gloomy shades of death and night.
They, overjoyed with such a large commission,
Flew instantly, without all intermission,
Up to that sphere where night’s pale queen doth run
Round the circumference of the illustrious sun.
Her globious body spacious was, and bright;
That half alone that from Sol’s beams had light;
The other was immured in shades of night.
Nor did she seem to me as poets feign:
Guiding her chariot with a silver rein,
Attired like some fair nymph or virgin queen,
With naked neck and arms and robes of green.
Lovesick Endymion oft hath thus her seen;
But as my thoughts about her orb was hurled,
I did perceive she was another world.
Thus being in my fancy raised so far,
This world appeared to me another star;
And as the moon a shadow casts and light,
So is our Earth the empress of their night.
Next, Venus, usher to the night and day,
Her full-faced beauty to me did display;
Sometimes she wanéd, then again increase,
Which in our humors cause or war or peace.
My fancy next to Mercury would run,
But craftily he popped behind the sun.
A wonder ’tis, the medium being so bright,
His splendency should be obscured by light.
Nor could I Sol’s refulgent orb descry:
His radiant beams dazzled my tender eye;
And now my wonder is again renewed,
That he, enlightening all, could not be viewed.
Yet to my reason this appeared the best:
That he the center was of all the rest
The planets, all like bowls still trundling round
The vast circumference of his glorious mound;
He, resting, quickens all with heat and light,
And by the Earth’s motion makes our day or night.
Next Jupiter, that mild auspicious star:
I did perceive about his blazing car
Four bright attendants always hurried round;
Next flagrant Mars, where no such moons are found;
Then Saturn (whose aspects so sads my soul)
About whose orb two sickly Cynthias roll;
Then on the fixed stars I would have gazed,
But their vast brightness so my mind amazed
That my affrighted fancy downward flew
Just as the Hours Aurora’s curtain drew,
At which the ugly wife of Acheron
Bid drive, and slashed her drowsy monsters on;
With her there went her firstborn brat, old Error,
And fierce Eumenides, poor mortals’ terror,
Who with their snakes, and whips, and brands, were hurled
To strike amazement to the lower world;
Being scared themselves at the approach of light,
To our antipodes they took their flight.
Sin’s curséd offspring with their dam did trace,
That most prodigious, incestuous race:
Pale, ghastly, shuddering Horror, lost Despair,
And sobbing Sorrow, tearing off her hair:
These of her sable womb were born and bred,
And from the light with her now frighted fled;
And then my maids my window curtains drew,
And, as my pain, so comforts did renew.
Unto the God of truth, light, life, and love,
I’ll such lays here begin shall end above.

-- Hester Pulter (nee Ley; pen-name Hadassah) (1605-1678), English poet who wrote extensively about childbirth and marriage. Located at The Pulter Project from Northwestern University. Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall. Found at https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ae/this-was-written-in-1648-when-i-lay-in-with-my-son-john/ 

Headnote for this poem:

Paralyzed on what might be your death bed, what could you do but think? Pulter—immobile after delivering her fifteenth child—defies paralysis and pain by exerting paradoxical control over her otherwise free thoughts: free from all but her bidding, anyhow. With god-like power she commands their almost angelic flight beyond the sickroom, first to join the speeding orbit of the moon. From this vantage, her astronomical discoveries counter other poetic claims: Pulter’s moon is no mythological goddess, for instance, but “another world” from which the Earth itself appears (quite radically) to be a moon. Her fancy spirals further yet to other astral bodies on which her reasoning proves informed by recent science; by dawn, however, the very illuminations of this flight of fancy prove overwhelming, and her dazzled thoughts are curtailed to her curtained bedroom, just as a classicized Night is driven out with her allegorical children (Error, Horror, Despair, Sorrow), all terrified of the coming light. The poem ends with an early modern version of that most paradoxical of endings: “To be continued…”—in this case, a promise underwritten by Pulter’s dedication of such verse to the deity whose various lights she is by turns informed, delighted, and frightened by.

As noted in the introduction about her:

Pulter gave birth to eight daughters and seven sons over the course of almost a quarter of a century (between 1624 and 1648). Evidence from the poems suggests more than one of these pregnancies and births was associated with periods of serious illness and associated confinement. All but two of these fifteen children predeceased Pulter, and a number of their deaths are mourned in her verse. Her own death is also anticipated and indeed often welcomed in many poems as a relief from earthly suffering, both physical (in references to her sick and aging body) and mental (not only grief but a more general melancholy and anxious insomnia). Pulter’s poems also show her taking comfort in a God roughly recognizable as the one endorsed by the Church of England, a spiritual position conforming neatly with her secular politics, or even inseparable from them. Theologically, her focus is most frequently on eschatology: especially her own eventual reunion with her soul and God in heaven at the Day of Judgment, long after her death and (often vividly imagined) corporeal dissolution.

Image: A Birth Scene (Lying In), Master of Charles of Durazzo (Francesco_di_Michele)  c. 1410 Harvard Art Museum

Junius Childbirth Charm (Medieval)

The Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ. The infertile Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist. I urge you, child, whether you are male or female, but the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, to come out and move beyond. Mat you not harm the child or make him foolish. Amen. The Lord, seeing the wailing sisters of Lazarus, wept in front of the tomb. In the presence of the Jews, he exclaimed, "Lazarus, come out!" And he who had been dead for four days came out with his hands and feet bound.

Write this in wax which has never been worked on and bind it under her right foot.

--Anonymous, English and Latin text, 11th century, translated by Runqi Zhang. Found at the Global Medieval Sourcebook: A Digital Repository of Medieval Texts, at Stanford University.

From the introduction:

"Childbirth in medieval Europe was often the most dangerous experience of a woman's life. Because of poor hygiene and a lack of gynecological knowledge, scholars have estimated that as many as ten percent of women died during childbirth or immediately afterwards. Not only did mothers die in large numbers, but as many as thirty percent of children died in the process of childbirth. In the face of these dangers, medieval people used a wide variety of charms and prayers in an attempt to improve their chances of a successful delivery.

The charm presented here was composed in England in the eleventh century CE and is an example of a “peperit charm”. The name comes from the Latin word peperit (“gave birth to”). This word occurs frequently in these charms, because they list the biblical women who gave birth to children. Indeed, a peperit charm can be identified by its sequence of holy mothers, one of the most widespread motifs in medieval childbirth charms. Typically, as is the case here, a peperit charm will invoke the names of holy mothers one by one. Some examples will contain other formulations, whether to add to the functions to the charm or to enhance its effects. This charm contains three additional features that can be found in other childbirth charms: an appeal to the unborn child to leave the womb; the account of Lazarus’s resurrection with its climactic words, “Lazarus, come forth!”; instructions for how to turn the prayer into an amulet that the laboring woman can wear on her body.

In the case of the Junius Peperit Charm, the instructions for turning the prayer into an amulet state that the charm should be written on wax that has never been used before and bound to the woman’s right foot. The requirement for unworked wax (also known as “virgin” wax) is interesting, seeming to emphasize the sacramental quality of the prayer. The instruction to attach the prayer to the pregnant woman's body suggests that there was a hope that she could connect with its content in an embodied way, drawing on its power to support her own body during childbirth.

In comparison to childbirth prayers, an example of which is presented in this collection https://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/marston-childbirth-prayer, this charm has minimal narrative content, focusing instead on the invocation of biblical names. It is quite possible that this charm, or at least the first part of it, would have been repeatedly chanted during a woman's labor. Hearing the familiar names of biblical mothers might have served to calm and encourage the laboring woman, reassuring her that she too could deliver her child safely.

Citation: Anonymous. "Junius Childbirth Charm." Trans. Runqi Zhang. Global Medieval Sourcebook. http://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/junius-childbirth-charm. Retrieved on August 1, 2023.

Undo the door, my spouse dear

"Undo thy door, my spouse dear, 

Alas! why stand I locked out here? 

   For I am thy mate. 

Look, my locks and also my head 

And all my body with blood bedewed, 

    For thy sake.” 

 “Alas! alas! evil have I sped, 

For sin Jesus is from me fled, 

    My true companion. 

Without my gate he standeth alone, 

Sorrowfully he maketh his moan 

 In his manner.” 

 Lord, for sin I sigh sore, 

Forgive, and I’ll do so no more, 

With all my might I forsake my sin, 

And open my heart to take thee in. 

For thy heart is cleft our love to catch, 

Thy love has chosen us all to fetch; 

My heart it pierced if I were kind, 

Thy sweet love to have in mind. 

Pierce my heart with thy loving, 

That in thee I may have my dwelling. 

Amen.

(MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION)


Vndo þi dore, my spuse dere, 

Allas! wy stond i loken out here? 

   fre am i þi make. 

Loke mi lokkes & ek myn heued 

& al my bodi with blod be-weued 

   For þi sake. 

 Allas! allas! heuel haue i sped, 

For senne iesu is fro me fled, 

   Mi trewe fere. 

With-outen my gate he stant alone, 

Sorfuliche he maket his mone 

   On his manere. 

 Lord, for senne i sike sore, 

Forʒef & i ne wil no more, 

With al my mith senne i forsake, 

& opne myn herte þe inne to take. 

For þin herte is clouen oure loue to kecchen, 

Þi loue is chosen vs alle to fecchen; 

Mine herte it þerlede ʒef i wer kende, 

Þi suete loue to hauen in mende. 

Perce myn herte with þi louengge, 

Þat in þe i haue my duellingge. 

Amen.

(ORIGINAL MIDDLE ENGLISH)

--Found in the 1372 "commonplace book" of the Franciscan friar John of Brimstone of Norfolk, England.

From the Art & Theology blog, I learn that I am using this blog and my notebooks as "commonplace books" for my preaching and writing. Glad to have a word for it!

Image: William Holman Hunt, 19th century pre-Raphaelite painter, "Light of the World (Manchester edition)

"Commonplace books were notebooks used to gather quotations and literary excerpts, with entries typically organized under subject headings. Preachers often kept them for homiletic purposes, gathering potential material for sermons. Grimestone’s is remarkable because it includes, in addition to much Latin material, 239 poems in Middle English. (English friars at the time regularly used vernacular religious verse in their sermons.) It is unknown whether Grimestone composed these verses himself or merely compiled them; likely, it is some combination. The first two stanzas of this particular poem are found, transposed, in another manuscript from almost a century earlier. Grimestone revised them slightly and added the third stanza. 

Belonging to the Christ-as-lover tradition, “Undo thy door” is based primarily on Song of Solomon 5:2, cited in Grimestone’s manuscript: “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” In a clever interpretation of the Old Testament source, the poet imagines the dewdrops on the Beloved’s brow as blood, thus identifying him with the thorn-crowned Christ. His bride is the human soul. Revelation 3:20 is provided as a further gloss by Grimestone: Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

So in the poem, the speaker is shacking up with sin and has locked out her true lover, Christ. Christ stands at the gate of her heart and implores her with great ardor to let him in and to send sin packing. Wet with the wounds of sacrifice, tokens of his love, he is persistent in his longing for her.

Christ’s entreaties provide the impetus for the speaker’s repentance, expressed in the final stanza, which changes awkwardly in form and meter. His love has pierced her to the core, undoing her resistance. She resolves to break the sin-lock—to turn away from wrongful deeds—and answer Christ’s call so that they can enjoy sweet union together, dwelling in one another’s love. It was his heart that opened first—it was cleft by the centurion’s spear as he hung on the cross—and she is compelled to respond with similar openness, receiving what he has given, requiting his desire."

God's Word is in all Creation

No creature has meaning

without the Word of God.

God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.

The Word is living, being,

spirit, all verdant

all creativity.

This Word flashes out in

every creature.

This is how the spirit is in

the flesh – the Word is indivisible from God.


--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1197), German mystic poet and religious


Photo: love locks on a bridge in Barcelona, 2016

Antiphon for the Angels

Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,
O angels, insatiably
into God’s gaze.
Perversity could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.
But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings – he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam –
that a mud – bound spirit might soar.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German mystic poet and religious, translated by Barbara Newman, from Women in Praise of the Sacred (ed. by Jane Hirshfield), 2016

Expands His Being

All beings

are words of God,

His music, His

art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps in our souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.

I know that may be hard

to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best

to help God in His birth

of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.

He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent

for a while,

worlds are forming

in my heart.

--Meister Eckhart (ca 1260-ca 1328) German mystic, poet, theologian, and philosopher, from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from East and West, ed. by Daniel Ladinsky