Evacuating the Womb: Abortion and Contraception in the High Middle Ages, circa 1050-1300
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines contraception and abortion in high medieval legal, ecclesiastical, and medical rhetoric, focusing specifically on the negative perception of women detailed in these treatises and the suspicions their sexual bodies aroused in contemporary narratives. Gynaecological literature flourished during the high medieval period. Impacted by the influx of Arabic and Hebrew translations and the emergence of formalised university centres, medical knowledge represented a unique relationship between the religious and the secular. As most medical volumes were housed and disseminated in monastic libraries across Western Europe, the literate sections of medieval society were exposed to different perceptions of anatomy: female physiology was just one of these areas. However, these medical texts were overwhelmingly written by celibate men, creating methodological questions concerning the audience, purpose, and remedial expertise of these treatises. This thesis examines several perceptions of reproductive control, emphasising the fluid definitions ascribed to these terms. Firstly, this thesis examines sterility and infertility, discussing how both men and women who suffered from these ailments were perceived in medieval society and the inherent value placed on reproductive capabilities (Chapter I). In addition, some chose to deny their sexual functions in lieu of a life of abstinence, often portraying pregnancy and childbirth as undesirable, disgusting, and possibly hazardous (Chapter II). Those that did engage in sex were not always portrayed in procreative pursuits, as contraceptive techniques like coitus interruptus or penile barriers were prescribed in contemporary medical manuals, showing men to be as equally desirous of controlled reproduction as women (Chapter III). In addition, abortive methods were also prescribed in medical texts and these actions were usually associated with promiscuity and lascivious sexuality (Chapter IV). Finally, this thesis examines how these texts were disseminated and whether the female voice may be extrapolated from these male dominated manuals (Chapter V).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".