Dear All,
The burial in unconsecrated ground of women who die in childbirth was of
concern to Burchard of Worms, who censures the practice, and proscribes
penance for it, in his *Corrector,* XIX: 5. The rationale for the practice,
according to Burchard, is to prevent the corpse of the unfortunate woman
from returning as a revenant. Apparently, in the area Burchard is writing
for, both stillborn infants and mothers dying in childbirth were
traditionally interred pinned to the ground with thorns and stakes, in some
out-of-the-way place, in the hope that such constraints would prevent them
from "rising up and harming many" (paraphrase). I don't have notes here on
how severe the penance was for burying a woman in this way.
Nancy Caciola
History, UC-San Diego
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