A Woman’s Body

Today the United States Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that granted women the right to an abortion. In his majority opinion Justice Samuel Alito used increasingly dismissive language, calling Roe v. Wade “egregiously wrong.” We are in the midst of a sea change concerning the rights of women as well as trans, gender fluid and gender non-conforming and other persons with uteri, and not for the better. The future is uncertain, but the past has some dark lessons.

Rome was founded on rape, or so the historian Livy tells us. The earliest Roman settlers were men, and in order to ensure the continuity of their society they needed offspring. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one wanted to marry them. So, they invited the neighboring Sabines to a festival, abducted the women, “enticed” them into marriage, and forced them to bear the children of their rapists. Thus Rome flourished.

The Renaissance, with its penchant for ancient Roman history and imagery, seized upon this story as an illustration of the necessity of marriage and offspring to a civilization. It appears on furniture and paintings related to marriage as well as independent paintings, such as the canvas above painted during the Baroque period. We see a scene of furious action with theatrically broad gestures and overwrought facial expressions that clearly communicate the violent actions of the Romans. At the same time, Poussin utilizes poses from ancient Roman sculpture, particularly the outflung hand, to move us slowly and inexorably through the painting. The bloodlessness of the scene contributes to the sense that this is a staged abduction from which we can distance ourselves. Moreover, works depicting the Sabines are often titled Abduction of the Sabine Women, and you will see various apologies for this title amongst scholars and curators.

Yet, the sexual history of early modern Europe is full of rape and forced childbirth, suggesting that Renaissance people knew exactly what they were looking at. While men and women practiced various forms of birth control, including coitus interruptus, the use of sponges, and the uses of various acidic substances such as lemon juice, they could not be relied upon with any certainty. Though illegal, abortion also existed, and could take the form of purgatives such as artemisia, jarring physical exercise, and bloodletting, all prescribed or performed by a physician, as well as the use of various herbal remedies or the insertion of a sharpened object into the womb which might be done by a person with no formal medical training. Renaissance childbirth was dangerous and maternal mortality was as high as 1 out of every 20 women, compared to 8 in 100,000 in Europe today. Yet, abortion was similarly perilous, unreliable and difficult to obtain. The circumstances of forced childbirth were dire: social stigma, poverty, and desperation.

Earlier this summer while conducting research on mistresses and illegitimate children I found two remarkable letters detailing the rape and forced childbirth of a widow named Magdalena by Francesco I Sforza, the duke of Milan. They met when she approached the duke for a letter of safe conduct. Francesco invited her to his rooms where he locked the door, pushed her against a table, told her she could not have the letter unless she succumbed, and, in Magdalena’s words, “carnally knew” her. Afterward Francesco gave her the letter of safe conduct and four ducats, and brushed off her concerns of pregnancy and social shame.

Nine months later Magdalena gave birth to a girl, but by that time she had been disowned by her family. Soon after she appears to have been swindled out of her remaining funds by a man claiming he could persuade Francesco to recognize the baby, and thus provide for it. Magdalena paid a peasant family to care for the child and attempted to find work as a servant, but was unsuccessful. She had apparently taken to begging at the doorways of churches and hints that she may have to take up sex work in order to provide for her child. She begs Francesco to provide for his daughter, but defiantly reminds him that he “only won this body, and not this spirit.” She signs the letter as Buona femina Magdalena, which roughly translates as “Magdalena, a good woman.”

I don’t know what happened to Magdalena or her daughter. I’ll probably never know. I do know that Magdalena was enmeshed in legal and social systems which denied her control over her body. She was raped with impunity, forced to give birth, repudiated by her family and robbed of her inheritance, yet she was the one at the brink of starvation. If asked, the princes, judges and clergymen who created and benefited from this system would have said they acted in the best interests of Magdalena and her child because, as women, they could not be expected nor even trusted to act for themselves. I can’t help thinking that not much has changed.

For more on maternal mortality with a compelling statistical analysis of available data, consult Rachel Podd’s “Reconsidering maternal mortality in medieval England: aristocratic Englishwomen, c. 1236-1503,” Continuity and Change 35 (2020): 115-137. For the legal, medical and social attitudes towards early modern abortion, I suggest Elizabeth Cohen’s illuminating article, “Open City: An Introduction to Gender in Early Modern Rome,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17 (2014): 35-54 and P. Renée Baernstein and John Christopoulos, “Interpreting the Body in Early Modern Italy: Pregnancy, Abortion and Adulthood,” Past & Present 223 (2014): 41-75.