INTERPRETING THE BODY IN EARLY MODERN ITALY: PREGNANCY, ABORTION AND ADULTHOOD

On the night of Nov 13, 1569 the nuns of San Paolo Converso in Milan witnessed an unfamiliar scene: a childbirth. A boarder in their convent, Costanza Colonna, delivered a dead male child after three days of hard labor. All the many people present professed profound surprise. The 13-year-old Costanza, her servants, her physicians and her husband had all insisted until that very night that she was a virgin, that her husband was impotent, and that her growing belly was a symptom of oppilation (an obstruction causing fluid retention) resulting in dropsy (swelling) of the abdomen. The delivery forced a dramatic volte-face in the efforts under way to annul Costanza's marriage to Francesco Sforza, the marchese di Caravaggio. Here, Baernstein and Christopoulo explore how women themselves experienced the transitions of pregnancy and childbirth.