Miracles and Misadventures: Childhood and Public Health in the Late Medieval Low Countries

ABSTRACT

Administrative sources and miracle accounts from six Netherlandish urban shrine cults help to explore the interests of inhabitants and urban institutions in intervening in children’s safety, behaviour, and upbringing. Care for children was much more central to the politics of communal well-being in the late Medieval Netherlands than often assumed. Various agents, including both lay and religious authorities, participated in what we call the biopolitics of childhood: a type of power negotiation in which knowledge of health was employed in local politics and as part of the broader governance of a population. This approach offers new directions in both the study of public health and medieval childhood, as it emphasises the complex meaning and function of caring for children and the social-political interests involved in such acts.

KEYWORDS:

• Low Countries
• childhood
• accidents
• civic/urban religion
• miracles
• health
• biopolitics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The cult was named in Dutch the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Nood Gods, and was located in the Sint-Ursulakerk or Nieuwe Kerk. Miracles were recorded between 1381-1516. ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, ed. D. P. Oosterbaan, Haarlemse Bijdragen 65 (1958): 32–304 (124–25).

The authors want to thank the two anonymous peer reviewers and the editors of the Journal of Medieval History, as well as the members of the Healthscaping Urban Europe Project, Lola Digard, Guy Geltner, Léa Hermenault, Claire Weeda, and Taylor Zaneri for their comments and suggestions. We are greatly indebted to the KUNERA project, who were so kind and generous to share their data on the's Hertogenbosch cult with us, and to Jonas Van Mulder for sharing his unpublished dissertation.

² Danel was about 47 years old at the time of the miracle. ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 125.

³ Ian Forrest, Trustworthy Men: How Inequality and Faith Made the Medieval Church (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020); Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts: Autoriteit, authenticiteit en religieuze ervaring in mirakelcollecties in de Bourgondische Nederlanden (1381-1534)’, (Ph.D. diss.,University of Antwerp, 2016).

⁴ The sum entailed 50 Philippusgulden. In December 1536, the same enormous sum and call to justice was issued for the crime of throwing an infant into a well at St Julian’s Hospital. FelixArchief Antwerp, Gebodboek A (PK#914), fols. 73v, 230r. See also ‘Index der Gebodboeken 1489-1620’, ed. P. Génard, Antwerpsch Archievenblad 1 (1864), 120–464 (160, 208).

⁵ Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 99; Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1381-1603, eds. H. Hens et al. (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 1978), 404–5. One miracle involved a man on a barge spotting a drowning child; the man shouted: ‘There is a child in the water!’ Yet he was advised by a woman walking nearby to leave the child in place. ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 100–1.

⁶ Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 1–8.

⁷ Barrie Thorne, ‘Crafting the Interdisciplinary Field of Childhood Studies’, Childhood 14 (2007): 147–52.

⁸ Nick Lee and Johanna Motzkau, ‘Navigating the Bio-Politics of Childhood’, Childhood 18 (2011): 7–19.

⁹ Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, translated by Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 2020); Lemke, Biopolitics, 1–8; Michel Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended’: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976, transl. David Macey (London: Penguin, 2004), 244–6.

¹⁰ Lee and Motzkau, ‘Navigating the Bio-Politics of Childhood’.

¹¹ David F. Lancy, ‘Children as a Reserve Labor Force’, Current Anthropology 56 (2015): 545–68.

¹² See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, transl. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 6. Most scholars, including Lee and Motzkau, follow Foucault in assuming that a modern national state and public health apparatus as found in contemporary Euro-American and post-colonial societies are prerequisites for biopolitics. Lee and Motzkau, ‘Navigating the Bio-Politics of Childhood’. See on biopolitics as a field of research Lemke, Biopolitics, 5–7; Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burcell et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–104; Majia Holmer Nadesan, Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life (New York: Routledge, 2008), 2–9.

¹³ Maurizio Meloni, ‘The Politics of Environments before the Environment: Biopolitics in the Longue Durée’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 88 (2021): 334–44.

¹⁴ Dyan Elliott, The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal and the Medieval Clergy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 5–6; William F. MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’: Cultural Anxieties Over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

¹⁵ Elliott, The Corrupter of Boys, 5; Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of the Family, translated by Robert Baldick (London: Alfred A. Knopg, 1973 [1962]). Strikingly, like the persistent image of the dirty medieval city, Ariès’ refuted claim that childhood was non-existent in the Middle Ages persists beyond specialists. See for example Lucia Mantilla Gutiérrez, ‘The Biopolitical Construction of Infancy and Adulthood: The Child as Paradigm and Utopia’, Global Studies of Childhood 6/2 (2016): 211–21; ‘In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as childhood. How perceptions of children have changed through history’, The Economist (1 March 2019). https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/01/03/in-the-middle-ages-there-was-no-such-thing-as-childhood.

¹⁶ Guy Geltner, Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Carole Rawcliffe and Claire Weeda eds., Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019); Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013). See on the Low Countries Janna Coomans, Community, Urban Health and Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

¹⁷ One exception is Eleanora C. Gordon, ‘Child Health in the Middle Ages as Seen in the Miracles of Five English Saints, A.D. 1150-1220’, Bulletin of the history of Medicine 60/4 (1986): 502–22.

¹⁸ Key studies that are based on such sources are Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City: Women, Children, and the Family in Fourteenth-Century Ghent (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).

¹⁹ See for the financial problems concerning orphans in Late Medieval Ghent: Marianne Danneel, Weduwen en wezen in het laat-middeleeuwse Gent (Louvain: Garant, 1995), especially 36.

²⁰ See for an overview Anne E. Bailey, ‘Miracle Children: Medieval Hagiography and Childhood Imperfection’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 47/3 (2016): 267–85 (267–68). The classic study here is R. C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

²¹ Material and archaeological aspects are explored in Sally Crawford, Dawn M. Hadley and Gillian Shepherd, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Annemarieke Wil-lemsen, Kinder delijt: Middeleeuws speelgoed in de Nederlanden (Nijmegen: KU Nijmegen, 1998); Dawn M. Hadley and Katie A. Hemer, eds., Medieval Childhood: Archaeological Approaches (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014).

²² Albrecht Classen, Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005); Viktor Aldrin, ‘Parental grief and prayer in the Middle Ages: Religious coping in Swedish Miracle stories’, in Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Mia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2015), 82–105; Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1990); James A. Schultz, The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). See for a summary of the debate Miriam Müller, Childhood, Orphans and Underage Heirs in Medieval Rural England: Growing up in the Village (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 9–13.

²³ Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents; Didier Lett, L'enfant des miracles: Enfance et société au moyen âge (XIIe-XIIIe siècle) (Paris: Aubier, 1997).

²⁴ Clerics used them in sermons, saints’ vitae, hagiographies and canonization procedures; chroniclers added them to their histories, and they were a central part of the promotion of local relic cults. Simon Yarrow, Saints and Their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–14; Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, eds., Miracles in Medieval Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions, and Methodologies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018); Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London: J. M. Dent, 1977); Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (London: Scolar Press, 1982). See on the interaction with saints as a social strategy Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Demonic Possession and Lived Religion in Later Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

²⁵ Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts’. Key Dutch studies are Willemsen, Kinder delijt; Gerrit Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie: Delft als bedevaartplaats in de Late Middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel, 1992).

²⁶ The editions we have used are: ’s-Hertogenbosch: Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch; Dordrecht: ‘Het mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, ed. Gerrit Verhoeven, Archief voor de geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland 27 (1985): 104–39; Amersfoort: In het water gevonden: Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek naar het handschrift Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I, 8179-8180, eds. Dick E. H. de Boer and Ludo Jongen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2015); Arnhem: ‘De verering van Sint-Eusebius’, ed. W. Jappe Alberts, Archief voor de geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland 4 (1962): 1–9; and Bolsward: Wonderlijk: Bolswards Mirakelboek ontsloten voor iedereen, eds. Arjen Bultsma et al. (Baarn: Adveniat 2020), 117–131. Delft had four cults. The ‘Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Nood Gods’ cult (1381-1516) is published in: ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’. The other three, namely ‘Onze-Lieve- Vrouw Maria Jesse (1327-1438)’; ‘Het Heilig Kruis “mitten hair” (1412-1511)’, and ‘Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Zeven Smarten (1506-1519)’ are published as appendices in Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie, 200–308. For the latter three, we will, for the sake of clarity, refer to the name of the cult, and the page number and miracle number in Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie. Finally, most of the editions have numbered the miracles. These numbers will be indicated in between parentheses. Our database includes the dataset of the miracles of ’s-Hertogenbosch, kindly supplied by the Kunera research project of the Radboud University Nijmegen. https://www.kunera.nl/

²⁷ It was discovered miraculously unscathed after a large urban fire. ‘Het mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, 104; Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 18-20.

²⁸ Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 132–64.

²⁹ If one tale mentioned multiple miracles to different people, we have entered each miracle separately in our database.

³⁰ In addition, minors also featured in miracles benefitting their family members. We have only counted those miracles in which the child was the beneficiary of the miraculous event, and not the ones in which they feature in the stories. This also excludes the 37 birth miracles in which the mother was the miracle’s beneficiary.

³¹ Bailey, ‘Miracle children’; Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Stanford University Press, 1987); Daniel Smail and Monica Green, ‘The Trial of Floreta d’Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and Obstetrics in Later Medieval Marseille’, Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 185–211; Tom Johnson, Law in Common: Legal Cultures in Late-Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Barbara Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill Repute: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 124–38; Dick de Boer and Ludo Jongen, ‘Inleiding’, in Dick de Boer and Ludo Jongen, eds., In het water gevonden: Het Amersfoortse mirakelboek (Hilversum: Verloren 2015): 11–34 (11–13)

³² Yarrow, Saints and Their Communities; Michael E. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle, 1150–1350 (London: Routledge, 2007); Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts’, 27–40. See also Gabriela Signori, ‘The Miracle Kitchen and Its Ingredients: A Methodical and Critical Approach to Marian Shrine Wonders (10th to 13th Century)’, Hagiographica 3 (1996): 277–303.

³³ Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts’, 14–15. See also Andrew Brown, ‘Civic Religion in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 42 (2016): 338–56.

³⁴ While most miracles happened to people living in the city of the cult itself (although Amersfoort is an exception to this rule) or in nearby villages or farmsteads, many of the cults also attracted visitors and thus performed miracles over considerable distances, especially since promising a pilgrimage or donation rather than physically travelling to the shrine was sufficient to receive miraculous help.

³⁵ Bailey, ‘Miracle Children’, 275; Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, 15–18.

³⁶ Sometimes the pilgrimage itself was enough, but the miracle tales also often emphasized that miracles’ beneficiaries brought valuable offerings in the form of wax, wine, wheat, gold and silver.

³⁷ Religious institutions sought the support of local bishops and even papal permission to purchase relics. Verhoeven, Negotie en devotie, 32–38.

³⁸ This is reflected in miracle tales by the explicit references to shrines visited without success – such as one couple first visiting with their epileptic child the Kornelimünster Abbey near Aachen, and then the Holy Virgin of Amersfoort. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 114 (no. 200).

³⁹ Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 5–7.

⁴⁰ A miracle required reliable (eye)witnesses. Furthermore, it referred to specific details, such as people’s full names, occupation and provenance, and to local and familiar practices and places. Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts’, 177–219.

⁴¹ Conversely, Elliott argues that for sexual crimes, age was not a decisive factor. Elliott, The Corrupter of Boys, 7–8.

⁴² Illnesses comprise a total of 343 events, when mental illnesses and infectious diseases (of which relatively few mentions are made) are included. Furthermore, in twenty cases, the tales tell of a sudden death (and revival) without any clarification.

⁴³ Children inflicted with an unspecified disease comprise 31 cases (9%). The percentage of children inflicted with an unknown disease is considerably higher in Finucane’s collection (25%). Eye diseases – blindness and otherwise - comprise 14.6% and 13.4% epilepsy, compared to 7% each in Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, 97.

⁴⁴ The seventh-century Paulus Aegineta, for instance, included many aspects specifically with regard to child health care in his On medicine; several diseases were added to his description for this purpose. In the late Middle Ages, this practice was still up and running. The Italian physician Michele Savonarola prescribed a powder of ground peony to treat children with epilepsy in his De regimine pregnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium. Luke E. Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara CA/US: Praeger, 2013), 143; Luke E. Demaitre, ‘The idea of childhood and childcare in medical writings of the middle ages’, The Journal of Psychohistory 4 (1977): 461–90 (463); Orme, Medieval Children, 106–7.

⁴⁵ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 120 (no. 14); ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 164-165, 174 (1510, 1512); ‘Mirakelen van Maria van zeven smarten, brief 4’, 279–280 (no. 119); ‘Het mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, 112, 115, 123, 124 (no. 001, 011, 035, 038).

⁴⁶ Italian case-studies on plague suggest that the percentage of victims under the age of 12 in the period 1348–1390 was high. Samuel K. Cohn, ‘The Black Death: End of a Paradigm’, The American Historical Review 107 (2002): 703-38, (734, 737). See on the Netherlands Daniel Curtis and Joris Roosen, ‘The Sex-Selective Impact of the Black Death and Recurring Plagues in the Southern Netherlands, 1349-1450’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164 (2017): 246–59; Leo Noordegraaf en Gerrit Valk, De gave Gods. De pest in Holland vanaf de late middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996), 60–1.

⁴⁷ Lett, L’enfant des miracles, 165; Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, 95–96. See on this topic also Eleanora C. Gordon, ‘Accidents among Medieval Children as Seen from the Miracles of Six English Saints and Martyrs’, Medical History 35/2 (1991): 145–63.

⁴⁸ Bailey, ‘Miracle children’, 271.

⁴⁹ Mental illnesses comprise anxiety, possession by the devil, insanity or rage.

⁵⁰ The miracles also reveal glimpses of arrangements alternative to the norm of the married family. For example, a five-year-old boy in Zoetermeer was being raised or under the guardianship of a widow. She lost the child out of sight and could not find him for over an hour, which neglect was understandable since she also had to take care of the mentally ill father of the child. ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 169–70. Another tale mentions that a couple paid someone to take care of their child, while the mother regularly came by to visit her daughter. Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 397–98 (no. 219).

⁵¹ ‘In tears and with pain in her heart’, she promised a pilgrimage and offering, which brought it back to life. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 132–34 (no. 242).

⁵² Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 162 (no. 308).

⁵³ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 190–92 (no. 377).

⁵⁴ Lancy, ‘Children as a Reserve Labor Force’, 546–47.

⁵⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 236 (no. 465).

⁵⁶ See on education in the Low Countries Hildegarde Symoens and Bert De Munck, ‘Education and Knowledge: Theory and Practice in an Urban Context’, in City and Society in the Low Countries, 1100–1600, eds. Bruno Blondé et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 220–54.

⁵⁷ One girl climbing to the attic in her father’s house fell through a gap in between two planks, and lay paralysed until a passer-by told the father of the powers of the Holy Virgin of Amersfoort. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 42 (no. 14), 84 (no. 140), ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 143–45 (1494); ‘Mirakelen Heilig Kruis Delft’, 216 (no. 32, 1414); Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 272 (no. 98), 437–39 (no. 248), 443–45 (no. 253). Among other things, the necessary arrangements were made for orphans regarding their maintenance during an apprenticeship with a craftsman. Besides the labour force provided by the child, this obviously also served to educate the child. Danneel, Weduwen en wezen, 44, 80-83.

⁵⁸ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 88 (no. 146), 202 (no. 399); Bolswards Mirakelboek, 122 (no. 34, 1524) Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 169 (no. 1), 226–29 (no. 50); ‘Het Mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, 132 (no. 111, 1464), 134 (no. 157, 1480), 136 (no. 174-75).

⁵⁹ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 180 (no. 348).

⁶⁰ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 586–87 (no. 370).

⁶¹ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 339 (no. 165).

⁶² Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 382–83 (no. 205).

⁶³ Lancy, ‘Children as a Reserve Labor Force’. See a highly detailed story in ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 160–61 (1509).

⁶⁴ The miracle noted that ‘coincidentally a mason from Holland went by’, advising the father to promise a pilgrimage – which he did, with the addition that he pledged not to eat any meat until he had completed it. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 258 (no. 506).

⁶⁵ Francine Michaud, ‘From Apprentice to Waged-Earner: Child Labour before and after the Black Death’, in Essays on Medieval Childhood. Responses to Recent Debates, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), 73–90.

⁶⁶ Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth-Fifteenth Centuries (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 73–98; Lancy, ‘Children as a Reserve Labor Force’. Such arrangements are hardly visible in the shrine collections – one exception was Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 491–93 (no. 283). For a comprehensive overview related to ‘learning by doing’ in a historical perspective, see Learning on the Shop Floor. Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship, eds. Bert De Munck, Steven L. Kaplan and Hugo Soly (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).

⁶⁷ Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound. Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), 12, 87–8.

⁶⁸ Compared to Hanawalt’s results, our percentage (72 percent) seems rather high. She reports that ‘About a third of children’s bodies were found by members of their family’ (Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound, 184). In addition, she found a percentage of 26 when it concerned accidental deaths.

⁶⁹ See for a recent overview Jelle Haemers, Andrea Bardyn and Chanelle Delameillieure, eds., Wijvenwereld: Vrouwen in de Middeleeuwse stad (Antwerp: Vrijdag, 2019).

⁷⁰ See on neighbourhood culture and especially on more formal organisations Kees Walle, Buurthouden: De geschiedenis van burengebruiken en buurtorganisaties in Leiden (14e-19e eeuw) (Leiden: Ginkgo, 2005); Llewellyn Bogaers, ‘Geleund over de onderdeur: doorkijkjes in het Utrechtse buurtleven van de vroege Middeleeuwen tot in de zeventiende eeuw’, Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 112 (1997): 336–63; Myriam Carlier, ‘Solidariteit of sociale controle? De rol van vrienden en magen en buren in een middeleeuwse stad’, in Hart en marge in de laat-middeleeuwse stedelijke maatschappij, eds. Myriam Carlier et al. (Louvain: Garant, 1997), 71–93.

⁷¹ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 120 (no. 213).

⁷² Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 120 (no. 216).

⁷³ The Kunera project maps the miracles’ provenance: https://www.kunera.nl/Kunerapage.aspx.

⁷⁴ The whole group was present when the parents ceremoniously handed over the promised donation of the child’s weight in wine and wheat to the church. Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 319–20 (no. 143).

⁷⁵ ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk Delft’, 153–4.

⁷⁶ Nissi argues that miraculous cures did not compete with other profane healing methods. Our source material, however, suggests that – at least as a narrative strategy – this competition is definitely present. Jyrki Nissi, ‘Death in a Birth Chamber. Birth Attendants as Expert Witnesses in the Canonization Process of Bernardino of Siena’, in A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections, eds. Sari Katajala- Peltomaa e.a. (Leiden: Brill 2021), 226–48 (228).

⁷⁷ They made a lavish donation when the child was miraculously healed. Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 579–80 (no. 363). Jenni Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages: Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016); Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment (London: Routledge, 2013).

⁷⁸ Eventually, a vision convinced the mother to promise her pilgrimage with the child and to donate gold, silver, wheat and wine. The child healed and the family completed their pilgrimage. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 276 (no. 539).

⁷⁹ ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 176–77. See on this topic also Joseph Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine: The Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine 12 (1999): 191–225.

⁸⁰ ‘Kroniek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Delft’, 176–78 (1513).

⁸¹ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 68 (no. 89).

⁸² Especially the major pilgrimage sites, such as ’s-Hertogenbosch, Amersfoort and Amsterdam were fierce competitors, and their records regularly mention unfulfilled promises or pilgrimages to competing sites. Smaller sites, such as Bolsward and Arnhem address a (geographically) more limited and specific group and contain fewer such references. See for Amsterdam: Charles Casper and Peter Jan Margary, Het mirakel van Amsterdam: Biografie van een betwiste devotie (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2017), 15-52.

⁸³ Gregory Roberts, Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228–1326 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 20–24.

⁸⁴ Karl Steel, ‘Biopolitics in the Forest’, in The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain, eds. Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), 33–55.

⁸⁵ Rudolf Ladan, Gezondheidszorg in Leiden in de late middeleeuwen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), Frank Tang and Margriet Wigard, Amsterdamse gasthuizen vanaf de middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). Tiffany A. Ziegler, Medieval Healthcare and the Rise of Charitable Institutions: The History of the Municipal Hospital (Cham: Palgrave, 2019).

⁸⁶ On orphans see: Danneel, Weduwen en wezen; Müller, Childhood, Orphans and Underaged Heirs. As Barbara Hanawalt notes, abandonment and infanticide were so rarely noted in England that debates resume if it happened at all. Barbara Hanawalt, ‘Medievalists and the Study of Childhood’, Speculum 77 (2002): 452–53. The classic study on this topic is John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). See on education and violence Ben Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018).

⁸⁷ Guido Marnef and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Civic Religion: Community, Identity and Religious Transformation’, in City and Society in the Low Countries, 1100–1600, eds. Bruno Blondé, Marc Boone and Anne-Laure van Bruaene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 128–61; Anne-Laure van Bruaene, Om beters wille: Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1400–1650 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008). See on confraternities in Ghent Paul Trio, Volksreligie als spiegel van een stedelijke samenleving: de broederschappen te Gent in de late middeleeuwen (Louvain: Universitaire pers, 1993) and for Leiden Maartje D. van Luijk, “‘Ter eeren ende love Goodes’”, Jaarboek der sociale en economische geschiedenis van Leiden en omstreken 10 (1999): 23–58; Parsons, Punishment and Medieval Education.

⁸⁸ Van Mulder, ‘Wonderkoorts’, 48–63.

⁸⁹ Rechtsbronnen der stad Amsterdam, ed. Johannes C. Breen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1902), 175–76, 197–98; ‘Index der Gebodboeken 1489-1620’, 262.

⁹⁰ ‘Index der Gebodboeken 1489-1620’, 203.

⁹¹ On playing see De middeneeuwsche keurboeken van de stad Leiden, ed. Hendrik G. Hamaker (Leiden: S. C. van Doesburgh, 1873), 243 (1450), and snowballs 43 (1406)

⁹² Rechtsbronnen der stad Gouda, eds. Louis Marie Rollin Couquerque and Adriaan Meerkamp van Embden (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1917), 316.

⁹³ Stadsarchief Kampen (SAK), Oud Archief, 8, ‘Decretum dominorum cum picturis alias Digestum Vetus [hereafter: Digestum Vetus]’, (1454–73), fol. 32v (1459).

⁹⁴ On the dog slayer, in charge of culling strays: SAK, Digestum Vetus, fol. 123r (1472) and on strangers fol. 125v (1473). See a verdict on misbehaving children in Leiden, Stadsarchief Leiden (SAL), Correctieboek B, fol. 277r (1477). See on soldiers: ‘Index der Gebodboeken 1489-1620’.

⁹⁵ On the latter see for instance Rechtsbronnen der stad Haarlem, ed. Johan Huizinga (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1911), 322, 330 (1557).

⁹⁶ See a decree to keep children away from the papegaaischieten, an archers’ game. SAL, Correctieboek B, fol. 220v (1470). This decree had, aside from being confronted with inappropriate behaviour, probably also to do with the risk of getting injured by accident as a bystander (cf. Miracle in which a boy gets injured during the papegaaischieten in Amsterdam and is miraculously healed, Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 198 [no 394]). And in Kampen the city council issued a limit on the amount a group could drink in case of a celebration when children were around. SAK, Digestum Vetus, fol. 51v (1463).

⁹⁷ See a verdict in Leiden for swearing in the presence of children. SAL, Correctieboek B, fol. 85r (1456). Similarly immorally reckless – that seems the miracle’s undertone – was a group of Hansa merchants in Bruges, playing a game in the streets trying to hit a pot with a club while blindfolded, but accidentally giving a five-year-old child a fatal blow. Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 429–32 (no. 243).

⁹⁸ See cases on foundlings SAL, 0508, Correctieboek 4C, fol. 149r (1486) and in Streekarchief Midden Holland (SAMH), Gouda, Oud archief, 176–1: Vonnisboeken (1447–1558), p. 186, 205. The number of cases that can be found in Antwerp’s sixteenth-century ordinances is exceptionally high and deserves further research. ‘Index der Gebodboeken 1489-1620’, 294–95, 313–17, 323, 369, 398, 415, 432, 440.

⁹⁹ See for instance SAL, Correctieboek C, fol. 107r-v (1483).

¹⁰⁰ See two rape cases involving children in Leiden Correctieboek A, p. 82 (1436); Edward T. van der Vlist, ‘De onnoemelijke daad: Sodom en Leiden in de vijftiende eeuw’, Jaarboek der sociale en economische geschiedenis van Leiden en omstreken 9 (1998): 23–31. An abduction is noted in SAMH, Gouda Vonnisboek, p. 57 (1459). See a more general discussion of the topic Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill Repute,124–41 and Elliott, Corrupter of Boys.

¹⁰¹ See for instance a public verdict in Leiden, SAL, Correctieboek A, p. 236 (1447).

¹⁰² This was certainly the case for Antwerp during the sixteenth century, which case deserves a separate study. Here the urban authorities announced several murders of children, while also regularly repeating prescriptions on how to bury dead children, and regulating their behaviour by issuing bans on children disrupting processions, fighting in the streets, and mingling with soldiers. See also note 98.

¹⁰³ ‘Mirakelen van Maria van zeven smarten, brief 1’, 240 (no. 22). See also Sara Butler, The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Later Medieval England (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

¹⁰⁴ ‘Mirakelen Heilig Kruis Delft’, 217 (no. 39).

¹⁰⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 140 (no. 256).

¹⁰⁶ See among others William A. Corsaro, The Sociology of Childhood (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 1997); Heidi Dawson, Unearthing Late Medieval Children: Health, Status and Burial Practice in Southern England (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2014).

¹⁰⁷ SAMH, Gouda Vonnisboek, pp 100, 152, 157.

¹⁰⁸ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 123 (no. 39).

¹⁰⁹ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 130 (no. 87).

¹¹⁰ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 129 (no. 80).

¹¹¹ See for an outline of the discussion the Introduction and several chapters in Manon van der Heijden et al. eds., Serving the Urban Community: The Rise of Public Facilities in the Low Countries (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009).

¹¹² Peter Laslett, ‘Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: a Consideration of the “Nuclear-Hardship” Hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 152–75; Katherine A. Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

¹¹³ Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie, 36–37.

¹¹⁴ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 302–3 (no. 125, 1383).

¹¹⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 156 (no. 297, 1449-1450).

¹¹⁶ See on the role of witnesses during canonization processes: Nissi, ‘Death in a Birth Chamber’.

¹¹⁷ The miracles in which the mothers were the beneficiaries have not been included in Table 2.

¹¹⁸ Peter Stabel, ‘Het alledaagse sterven: Demografische en maatschappelijke realiteit van de dood’, in Tussen hemel en hel: Sterven in de middeleeuwen, eds. Sophie Balace and Alexandra De Poorter (Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2010), 19-29(19-20).

¹¹⁹ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 257 (no. 80).

¹²⁰ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 393–94, (no. 216, 1383).

¹²¹ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 186 (no. 361, c. 1451).

¹²² ‘Mirakelen Heilig Kruis Delft’, 221 (no. 51, 1431).

¹²³ Punishments in forms of adversity were common if people did not fulfil their promises to shrines. ‘Mirakelen Heilig Kruis Delft’, 214 (no. 25, 1414).

¹²⁴ Johnson notes how much the debate on childbirth is divided by source type. Rebecca Wynne Johnson, ‘Divisions of Labor: Gender, Power, and Later Medieval Childbirth, c. 1200–1500’, History Compass 14:9 (2016): 383–96. Childbirth as a contested area of expertise of female healers and male medical authorities is explored by, among others, Myriam Greilsammer, ‘The Midwife, the Priest and the Physician: The Subjugation of Midwives in the Low Countries at the End of the Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21/2 (1991): 285–329. Monica H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). See for a recent overview Costanza Dopfel et al. eds., Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). The presence and professionalization of midwives is discussed by Fiona Harris-Stoertz, ‘Midwives in the Middle Ages? Birth Attendants, 600–1300’, in Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, eds. Wendy Turner and Sara Butler (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 58–87 (87).

¹²⁵ Johnson, ‘Divisions of Labor’, 384–85.

¹²⁶ Kathryn A. Taglia, ‘Delivering a Christian Identity: Midwives in Northern French Synodal Legislation, c. 1200-1500’, in Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, eds. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (York: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), 77–90 (87). See also on the topic Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990).

¹²⁷ Ginger Smoak, ‘Midwives as Agents of Social Control: Ecclesiastical and Municipal Regulation of Midwifery in the Late Middle Ages’, Quidditas 33 (2012): 79–96 (94); Katharine Park, ‘Managing Childbirth and Fertility in Medieval Europe’, in Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day, eds. Nick Hopwood et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) 153–66 (157).

¹²⁸ Smoak’s argument is based on evidence from Swiss and German cities. Smoak, ‘Midwives’, 85–94.

¹²⁹ Netherlandish urban authorities also commonly endorsed statutes of medical guilds. J. van Herwaarden, ‘Medici in de Nederlandse samenleving in de late Middeleeuwen (veertiende-zestiende eeuw)’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 96 (1983): 348–78; Frank Huisman, Stadsbelang en standsbesef: gezondheiszorg en medisch beroep in Groningen 1500–1730 (Rotterdam: Erasmus Publishing, 1977); Catrien G. Santing, ‘Pieter van Foreest: Propagating Academic Medical Knowledge and Professional Practitioning for the Sake of the Republic’s Health’, in Cultural Mediators: Artists and Writers at the Crossroads of Tradition, Innovation and Reception in the Low Countries and Italy 1450–1650, ed. Annette de Vries (Louvain: Peeters, 2008), 65–85.

¹³⁰ Ladan, Gezondheidszorg, 167; M.A. van Andel, ‘De chirurgijn in dienst der justitie’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde 12 (1932): 90–4.

¹³¹ SAL, Correctieboek A, p. 61 (1436).

¹³² There has been some interest in childbirth miracles, yet, as Johnson notes, this consists more of cataloguing than an in-depth analysis. Johnson, ‘Divisions of Labor’, 390.

¹³³ Smoak refers to an example in Regensburg Germany where a council of ‘honourable women’ coordinated and assisted midwives. Smoak, ‘Midwives’, 93.

¹³⁴ ‘Het mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, 117 (no. 017).

¹³⁵ ‘Mirakelen Heilig Kruis Delft’, 213 (no. 20, 1413)

¹³⁶ ‘Mirakelen van Maria van zeven smarten’, 233 (no. 5, 1506).

¹³⁷ Johnson, ‘Divisions of Labor’; Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Princeton University Press, 2006).

¹³⁸ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 126 (no. 59).

¹³⁹ A ‘candle was placed in her hands’. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 192 (no. 378, c. 1451).

¹⁴⁰ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 124 (no. 53).

¹⁴¹ De oudste rechten der stad Dordrecht en van het Baljuwschap van Zuid-Holland, Volume 1, ed. J. A. Fruin (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1882), 339 (1487).

¹⁴² De oudste rechten der stad Dordrecht, 319 (1461).

¹⁴³ See two birthing miracles: ‘Het mirakelboek van het Heilig Hout te Dordrecht’, 134 (no. 154, 1480), 122 (no. 033, 1459).

¹⁴⁴ Such events of collective joy were sometimes so elaborate – especially for wealthier families – that city magistrates in bylaws tried to curtail excessive noise, disturbances, or gatherings of crowds. See for instance. Dit sijn de coren van der stad Antwerpen (Ghent: n.p., 1852), 49 (14th century); De middeneeuwsche keurboeken van de stad Leiden, 45 (1406), 163 (1450); SAL, Correctieboek A, p. 258.

¹⁴⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 114 (no. 201).

¹⁴⁶ Hanawalt, ‘Medievalists and the Study of Childhood’, 448–49. In England it was compulsory to report every unnatural death, and therefor also those of children. The official procedure prescribed an active role for the four neighbours who lived the closest to the place a body was recovered. Orme, Medieval Children, 99.

¹⁴⁷ ‘Mirakelen van Maria van zeven smarten, brief 2’, 260 (no. 76); ‘Mirakelen van Maria Jesse’, 201 (no. 2); ‘De verering van Sint-Eusebius’, 8-9.

¹⁴⁸ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 44 (no. 25).

¹⁴⁹ For example, when laying on her lap, Jan, son of Diederik and Hille, pulled a pin from his mother's sleeve and put it in his mouth, where it got stuck in his throat. The Holy Virgin of ’s-Hertogenbosch freed the child from his predicament. Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 639 (no. 451). Suffocation occurred only in the age categories of newborn, 0–2 years and 3–5 years old.

¹⁵⁰ Alexandre-Bidon and Lett, Children in the Middle Ages, 98.

¹⁵¹ For instance, Didier Lett reports a percentage of circa one-third of the cases and Barbara Hanawalt fifty percent. (Cited in:) Didier Lett, ‘Les lieux périlleux de l'enfance d'après quelques récits de miracles des XIIe-XIIIe siècles’, Médiévales 34 (1998) 113–25 (115-6).

¹⁵² Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 297 (no. 219).

¹⁵³ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 186 (no. 360).

¹⁵⁴ Before this age, most children lack the strength and motor skills to swim for a long period or distance.

¹⁵⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 94 (no. 159).

¹⁵⁶ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 182 (no. 353).

¹⁵⁷ Orme, Medieval Children, 99; Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 404–5 (no. 227).

¹⁵⁸ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 122 (no. 219).

¹⁵⁹ Bolswards Mirakelboek, 130 (no. 91).

¹⁶⁰ Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Running Amuck? Urban Swine Management in Late Medieval England’, Agricultural History 87/4 (2013): 429–51. See on the Low Countries: Coomans, Community, 202–10. Similarly, Dordrecht’s magistrates also noted that stray dogs roaming the city streets caused ‘much grief’ for children. De oudste rechten der stad Dordrecht, 351 (1510).

¹⁶¹ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 56 (no. 53).

¹⁶² Felixarchief Antwerp, Gebodboek A, fol. 112r (1524).

¹⁶³ See for instance Rechtsbronnen der stad Amsterdam, 63, 224, 527; De Voorgeboden der stad Gent in de XIVe eeuw, ed. Napolein de Pauw (Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1885), 129 (1374), 138 (1375); De oudste rechten der stad Dordrecht, 327 (1465); SAK, Digestum Vetus, fols. 18r (1455), 31r (1458).

¹⁶⁴ They returned and revived the child by promising a pilgrimage. Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 240 (no. 477).

¹⁶⁵ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 276 (no. 537).

¹⁶⁶ Het Amersfoortse Mirakelboek, 84 (no. 135); Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 378 (no. 201), 628–9 (no. 435).

¹⁶⁷ Mirakelen van Onze Lieve Vrouw te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 294–96 (no. 118).

¹⁶⁸ ‘Mirakelen van Maria van zeven smarten, brief 4’, 277–8 (no. 114).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council [grant no n°724114].

Notes on contributors

Janna Coomans

Janna Coomans is Assistant Professor at the Department of Medieval History, Utrecht University. She is the author of Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries (2021, Cambridge University Press). She was a postdoc in the ERC project ‘Healthscaping Urban Europe’ and currently works on various related topics, including childhood, poverty, and a VENI (Dutch Research Council) project on fire risks in the Low Countries, 1250-1600.

Bente Marschall

Bente Marschall obtained her master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam in 2020 with a thesis on hospitals in late medieval Amsterdam. She is currently preparing a PhD thesis at the University of Antwerp on the impact of extra-territorialities in the late medieval city in the Low Countries. Her research interests include socio-economic life in cities, and health care in particular.