Jacques Gélis, Les enfants des limbes: mort-nés et parents dans l' Europe chrétienne, Paris, Louis Audibert, 2006, pp. 396, illus., €23.00 (paperback 2-84749-068-X).

Abstract

Jacques Gelis examines how some parents and relatives responded to children born dead, without the benefit of baptism. According to the author, early modern Europeans could resign themselves to the physical death of a child, but were tormented by thoughts of its spiritual death; an unbaptized child was forbidden burial in consecrated ground, and would remain forever in a state of limbo. Hoping for a miracle, relatives might take the child to a sanctuaire a repit and lay its body before a sacred image of the Virgin while praying for its temporary resurrection and subsequent baptism. Gelis's study reveals that this practice was not uncommon in rural parts of north-eastern France, as well as in Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Between 1569 and 1593 in Faverney in Haute-Saone there were, for example, 459 registered cases of children baptized after their brief return to life (p. 75). Though religious authorities were suspicious of the ritual, the Roman Church did not attempt to suppress it until 1729. After that the number of sanctuaries diminished, but some remained active into the twentieth century. Drawing on accounts of miraculous resurrections recorded by the cures of various sanctuaries, Gelis provides a vivid picture of the ritual. Those caring for the child's body frequently travelled long distances on foot to a reputed sanctuary. The corpse they then laid before the sacred statue or painting was described as rotten, stinking, stiff, or black,? details both affirming its morbidity and enhancing the description of the transformation caused by the miracle (p. 97). Sometimes the child's dead body was taken immediately to the sanctuary, but in other cases it was dug up after days of burial, with traces of earth left on its frame. Once at the sanctuary, the parents or relatives watched the body carefully for any “signs of life” justifying its baptism. These signs were remarkably consistent: a rosy hue swept over the child's face, sweat appeared on parts of its body, traces of blood became visible at its nostrils, it opened and closed its mouth, or moved its arms ever so slightly. For the most part, it was female witnesses who determined whether or not the child had miraculously returned to life. They would then baptize it sous condition, cautiously declaring “if you are alive, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (p. 121). Gelis calculates that in Avioth, women from the region baptized the child 61 per cent of the time, with 15 per cent of those rites performed by female midwives (p. 123). These statistics suggest that midwives had an important role to play in distinguishing between the tenuous states of life and death, potentially infringing on the authority of medical men. Male practitioners could be summoned, however, to evaluate the condition of a child's body. At the sanctuary of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in Aix-en-Provence, surgeons were consulted in only two cases, but in Pontigny near Auxerre a local surgeon was regularly called to give his opinion on the supposed miracles (p. 245). These examples show medical men and women moving between religious and medical domains with no apparent contradiction. Overall, Gelis presents a convincing account of this ritual, shedding new light on cultural and medical practices in early modern Europe. In order to study the mentalites sustaining the miracle of repit, the author considers related issues such as historical understandings of children and baptism. Les enfants des limbes offers a sweeping narrative, spanning multiple countries as well as centuries, even as it attends to local differences and change over time. Yet the lengthy book is largely descriptive, with little overt analysis, though Gelis mentions that the ritual of repit functioned to promote solidarity between families and neighbours (p. 65). Despite his obvious mastery of multiple archival holdings, the author tends to cite secondary rather than primary sources, and sometimes makes broad statements without providing detailed evidence, practices capable of frustrating readers. All the same, Gelis covers the topic thoroughly, making an important contribution to scholarship on early modern medicine, family life, and childhood.