Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England

This paper will explore the ways in which medieval English couples are presented as responding to infertility, focusing particularly on the relationship between medical and non-medical responses. It will look at the way infertility is presented in two kinds of text: medical recipes, which offer cures for infertility, and miracle narratives in which couples experiencing reproductive problems are said to have had a child after appealing to a saint. Although these sources cannot be taken as simple records of real couples’ experiences, they can suggest the ways in which their authors imagined how couples would experience and respond to infertility. Medical recipes survive in large numbers from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and they tell us about which medical problems childlessness was associated with (failure to conceive, failure to beget, repeated miscarriage, menstrual problems) and about what a couple who sought medical advice might encounter, such as tests to see whether the problem lies with the man or woman, and a wide range of remedies both cheap and expensive. They also shed light on who was deemed responsible for seeking treatment: the man, the woman, or the couple jointly. Miracle narratives from late medieval England relating to childlessness are fewer in number but they offer a different perspective on the same issues. This paper will therefore explore where medicine fits into a broader possible set of responses to infertility.