Churching: A Mother’s Return to Church After Birth
Forty days after childbirth, a medieval Englishwoman returned to church in a rite the Church called “purification” but which everyone else by the fifteenth century simply called “churching” — a true celebration of safe delivery rather than the penitential ordeal suggested by its Old Testament roots.
The rite drew on Jewish purity laws, but the Church itself took care — in its own official guidance — to avoid any suggestion that a new mother was somehow unclean or unwelcome in the meantime: one Sarum manual rubric states plainly that women “may enter the church whenever they wish… nor is entry to the church to be denied them lest their pain seem to be converted to blame.” The actual ceremony began at the church door, the mother carrying a lit candle (echoing Candlemas itself) flanked by her midwife and two other women, the priest reading two protective psalms before leading her inside by the hand with the words, “Enter the temple of God so that you may have eternal life.” She then attended the mass that followed, going up to the high altar at the offertory to formally hand back her baby’s chrisom cloth — the white garment used at the christening itself — along with a customary small offering of a penny or two.
For anyone with the means, churching was also a genuine fashion moment: George Cely’s mistress Margery wrote to him in 1482 specifically requesting “raiment — as a gown and other things — against her churching, as she had the other time,” treating the event, quite reasonably, as an occasion worth dressing properly for. Female friends and neighbours typically accompanied the new mother, and a feast at home often followed for both women and men, complete with wine, sometimes music, and — for those who could afford it — a specially bought lamb for the occasion. It’s a genuinely warm, communal custom that survived largely untouched by the Reformation’s usual reforming zeal, only really falling out of favour once Puritan objections gathered force well after the medieval period had already ended.
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