Attitudes to Pregnancy, Childbirth and Postnatal Complications in Medieval English <i>Miracula</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This article re‐examines the evidence about childbirth and related topics in the posthumous miracle collections of English saints. It finds forty‐eight such miracles in collections of thirteen English saints, mostly from the century or so after 1170. The article argues that the context in which the stories were composed is vitally important to understanding how they can be used. Contemporary concerns with miracles that could be verified constrained what stories the hagiographers could use. The nature of pregnancy and birth also limited what information could come to the keepers at the shrine in charge of collecting such stories. However, the writers were not acting as an elite vetting the information, but rather cooperated with their informants and had a sympathetic and positive view of the pregnant women. The miracula reveal that, unfazed by even gruesome gynaecological issues, the male hagiographers showed some knowledge about the birthing process. By examining the body of stories, we show what the miracula can and cannot tell us about pregnancy and childbirth.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
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".