A woman’s rite: rediscovering the ritual of churching in Denmark, c. 1750-1965

ABSTRACT

Taking Denmark as a case study, this article retraces the ritual of churching of women after childbirth 1750c-1965. Churching offers a new angle into women’s religiosity and perception of their procreative body. Placed at the intersection of religion and everyday life, churching was as much a clerical ritual as a social custom at the centre of communal life and a feast day for the married mother. Rooted in Levitical childbirth impurity, adopted as a Christian purification ritual, then redefined by Lutheran reformers as a thanksgiving rite, churching continued along parallel tracks in Europe into the nineteenth and twentieth century in many places. Yet churching has fallen out of common memory in Denmark as elsewhere. This article first examines the clerical rite, demonstrating how churching elevated a mother’s status in the congregation, affording her time, space and honour, a position she lost when churching ceased. The second part analyses the childbirth cycle from pregnancy to churching when society imposed different norms on women. Childbirth was dangerous and physical vulnerability compounded by widespread fears of evil spirits and a sense of being impure. Rather than simply a thanksgiving ceremony, churching often represented an apotropaic and healing passage back to safety.

KEYWORDS:

• Churching
• ritual
• women
• childbirth
• parishioners
• clergymen
• Denmark

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Acknowledgements

Warm thanks to Lyndal Roper and the members of her informal Oxford Workshop for their helpful discussion of the manuscript. Many thanks, also, for the insightful comments of Martin Schwarz Lausten and the anonymous reviewers of this journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Pontoppidan, Collegium Pastorale Practicum, 453–54. The agenda in question was the Church Ritual of Denmark-Norway of 1685, still valid in 1757 and beyond.

2. Rescript of 8 November 1748 and 22 November 1754, see Fogtman, Kongelige Rescripter, V, 1.

3. This article is based on M.M. Ahlefeldt-Laurvig’s doctoral thesis, The Ritual of Churching of Women after Childbirth in Denmark, 1500–1900, University of Oxford (2019). With regard to previous literature on Danish churching, the only study entirely devoted to the subject is a short 1882 study by Pastor L.J. Bøttiger. His ‘Childbed Matrons’ Churching’ (Kirkegangskoners Indledelse) gave a quiet defence of the rite through a well substantiated overview of the rite’s history. For brief chapters on churching, see also J.S. Møller, Moder og Barn (1940), B. Kaiser, Historien om barnedåben (1995) and A. Steensberg, Dagligliv i Danmark (1969–74). T.F. Troels-Lund, Dagligt Liv i Norden (1880–1890s) is important too, although it mainly focuses on the 1500s. Very brief references to churching can be found in the works of scholars such as Nina Koefoed, Charlotte Appel, Beth Grothe-Nielsen, Henrik Horstbøll, Grethe Jacobsen, Georg Hansen and theologian Ludvig Koch (1837–1917). For Sweden, the broad and excellent 1972 study by A. Gustavsson, Kyrktagningsseden, foregrounded that women actively shaped the ritual and that Lutheran churching differed little from its Catholic forerunner. For Norway, see the short work by A.H.B. Skjelbred, Uren og hedning (also 1972). Building upon a national survey of the mid-twentieth century, Skjelbred pointed to the crucial role that the nineteenth-century pastor played in the popularity of churching. For publications in English, see the brief discussions of the 1990s, which tended to fall into two categories. Scholars such as David Cressy and Adrian Wilson read the rite as a positive ritual chosen by women while William Coster and Susan Karant-Nunn saw churching as a means of male oppression. Karant-Nunn, however, offered scope for nuanced interpretations and felicitously called for further research: indeed, the title of this paper is a reference to her chapter, ‘Churching, a Woman’s Rite’, in the 1997 work, The Reformation of Ritual.

4. With thanks to Pastor Emeritus Johannes Stidsen (b.1934) for informing me that his brother, Pastor Erik Stidsen (1926–2015) performed a churching during his tenure in Ravsted parish, 1963–1970, at the behest of the mother using his handbook of 1955 for guidance.

5. G. McMurray Gibson, ‘Blessing from Sun and Moon’, 143–44. Gibson refers to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1844 play ‘Purloined Letter’, which centres on a letter lying in plain view, yet never found.

6. As discussed later, until the 1820s, a mother was prevented from participating in her child’s christening because the rule of law dictated that baptism should follow soon after birth when the mother was still observing her lying-in period (and therefore not supposed to leave home). However, this changed in the 1820s when the authorities legalised the postponement of christenings until the lying-in period came to an end (see also note 27). It could therefore be argued that mothers were afforded a new kind of visibility in Church after the 1820s and that this visibility continued, also, after the cessation of churching. But there was a crucial shift in focus. At a churching ceremony, the mother was the sole focus of attention – the child’s presence was neither required nor expected. At christenings, in contrast, the child was the main protagonist, not the mother.

7. For the door signs, see Kauslunde Church, Funen, 1857, see Kauslunde-Gamborg Archive, and Stenlille Church, Zealand, 1800s, see ’Stenlille Kirke’ in Danmarks kirker, Holbæk Amt, IV, 1 (1979), 464.

8. A detailed discussion of the churching database will be included in my forthcoming monograph on Danish churching to be published in the series ‘Women of the Past’ by Brepols Publishing.

9. Michael Bregnsbo has provided an insightful discussion on Danish sermons 1750–1848, although churching sermons are not examined, see Bregnsbo, Samfundsorden og statsmagt.

10. Due to space limitations, this article will only provide a few representative sources for each subject.

11. Hopkin, Voices of the People, 39.

12. Schwarz Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39, 74. The church agenda was printed in Latin in 1537 and in Danish in 1539, hence 1537/1539 is the customary annotation.

13. The Feast of Purification was also referred to as Candlemas due to an amalgamation of several church feasts on 2 February.

14. Letter of 14 November 1539 in Rørdam, Danske Kirkelove, I, 146–47.

15. Synodal regulation of 10 August 1540 in Rørdam, Danske Kirkelove, I, 158–59, and in Peder Palladius’ ’Visitation Book’, c. 1543, in Jacobsen, Palladius’ Visitatsbog, 106–15.

16. Danish National Archives, (henceforth DNA) Arkivalieronline, Todbjerg Enesteministerialbog 1665–66.

17. Christian V’s Danish Law of 1683, (2-8-9).

18. Burke, Popular Culture, 244–86.

19. Rescript of 20 November 1686 in Fogtman, Kongelige Rescripter, 1670–1699, II, 344. This privilege was revoked by rescript of 3 January 1741 §(1) but rescripts of 26 January 1742 and 3 July 1747 prove that pastors had little power to uphold the revocation, see Fogtman (1740–1746), 145–48 and 285–86 and Fogtman (1746–1754), 77. See also Matzen and Timm, Haandbog i Den danske Kirkeret, 491.

20. The Royal Horse Guard was in cantonment at the time, see Krogh, Meddelelser om Den kongelige Livgarde til Hest, 175–77.

21. For Queen Louise, see Hammerich, “Gluck som Kapelmester i Kjøbenhavn,” 442. The accounts of Countess Schulin are from a private family archive. In 1777, 16 Rigsdaler was the equivalent of the cost of an oxen.

22. Arkivalier Online: “Kirkebøger fra hele landet”.

23. Even so, churching and christening always remained separate rituals.

24. A ‘publication of christening’ includes all the steps of a normal baptism omitting only the absolution at the font.

25. Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Changing Interiors, 440.

26. Koch, “Udvalg af Biskop Balles Embedsbreve,” 654–56.

27. A rescript of 28 July 1821 Fogtman (1828) centred upon the issue of parents wishing to combine the day for churching and baptism. A rescript of 30 May 1828 finally lifted time constraints on baptism. Between 1771–72, delay of baptism had been allowed too.

28. Dalsgaard’s placement of the godmother and baptismal infant in the porch reflected the norms of the 1860s when the child’s christening and the mother’s churching often took place on the same day. Otherwise, Dalsgaard’s motif contains many artistic liberties. Thus, the churching choreography cannot be fully trusted, as nineteenth-century churchings mostly took place within the porch. Nor were folk costumes much in use by the 1860s and those depicted date from the 1840s. As for the porch itself, it is partly based on Dalsgaard’s painting of Taarup Church but with substantial changes. Crucially, the church door has been set in the West, which is extremely rare for Denmark, but it enabled a direct view to the altar in the (Eastern) background. See also Zenius, Genremaleri og virkelighed, 166.

29. DNA, Odense Amtsprovsti (1808–1837). ‘Korrespondance angående Bjerge og Åsum herreder’, 20 April 1833.

30. Quote from parishioners’ application for a churching bench in 1717, see DNA, Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland, Kirkesyn 1717. This study has so far identified fifteen churches with such benches, three of them extant. In addition, a far larger group of ‘possible churching benches’ has been identified, but unclear nomenclature prohibits certainty.

31. The churching instructions of 1955 no longer included directions on attendant matrons or offering, see Vejledning i den danske Folkekirkes gudstjenesteordning, 100.

32. ‘Danmarks og Norges Kirkeritual 1685’, 3. art., on www.retsinformation.dk.

33. Ussing, Det gamle Harboøre, 192; Høyer Møller, Den Gamle Præstegaard, 133–34. For Dalsgaard’s composition, see also note 28.

34. DNA, ‘Peder Hersleb’ in Generalkirkeinspektionskollegiet, Dokumenter til Ritualets Revision, 54–55.

35. Royal Rescript of 22 November 1754. See note 2.

36. DNA, Lunde-Skam herreders provsti. The change went well in Smid’s other parish of Allesøe.

37. Manuscript by parish clerk Christen Nielsen Sand, in Tang Kristensen, Minder og Oplevelser, 67.

38. Boisen, Plan til Forbedring ved den offentlige Gudsdyrkelse, 24–25.

39. In the nineteenth century, Swedish churchings had generally been relocated from the porch/near the entrance to the altar, see Gustavsson, Kyrktagningsseden, 253, 293.

40. Hjort, “Plan til forbedring,” No. 37, 582–83.

41. Krog, Landsbypræsten, 27–29.

42. Pedersen, Højtid og gæstebud, 79. From Strøby, c. 50 km south of Copenhagen. From c. 1880/90 onwards, pulpit churchings became steadily more common.

43. Circular of 24 February 1791 quoted in DNA, Liber Daticus, Borbjerg (1765–1798).

44. Waiting rooms were either entire rooms or a shielded-off part of a room. Some were solely for churching mothers and their retinues, but most also served as a waiting room for christenings and confessions. Them Church: church inspection of 11 November 1873.

45. Brammer, Kirkelige Leilighedstaler, II, 411.

46. Nielsen, Provsten i Højelse, 159–60.

47. Leth, Lejlighedstaler, published in 1844, 1852 and 1880.

48. This is obviously impossible to verify, but names and placements were always removed.

49. DNA, Holbæk-Tveje Merløse Pastorat.

50. Birch, Haandbog for Præster, 195–218.

51. World English Bible.

52. Ussing, Kirkeforfatningen, 505 and Høyer Møller, Den Gamle Præstegaard, 132–33.

53. Bloch, Kirkelige Leilighedstaler, 203–6.

54. Bishop Balle (1744–1816) in DNA, Danske Kancelli, Koncepter og Indlæg til Brevbøger, 1773–1799, (1791), image 95.

55. Calculated on 120 words/minute. Sermons generally became shorter towards the twentieth century.

56. Bregnsbo, Samfundsorden og statsmagt, 53.

57. Letter of 24 September 1827 in C. Daugaard, Biskop Daugaard, II, 23.

58. No. 571 in Wiberg, Personalhistorie.

59. Reimer, Nordfynsk Bondeliv, III, 341.

60. In contrast to the initial working premise of this study, none of the identified churching hymns turned out to be hymns for the Feast of the Purification of Virgin Mary. I therefore cannot support statements as to the use of purification hymns in churching made by Skjelbred and Mai, neither of whom provide documentation. See Mai “Se lige mig. …” and Skjelbred, Uren og hedning, 74–75.

61. Boye, however, remains well-known in Norway.

62. For the revision of Boye’s hymn see Malling, Dansk salmehistorie, VI, 79–83.

63. Timm, Huus-Psalmer, 83–91.

64. DNA: ’Malling, Anders’.

65. Nørgaard, “Landboforhold i Sydthy”; Møller, Moder og Barn, 494; Helgaard, Borris søndre grandelag, 40.

66. Møller, Moder og Barn, 494.

67. The mother paid the highest fee, the attendant matrons gave smaller contributions.

68. This study has identified twenty-nine churches which had churching pews near the altar, but the real number is much higher because of unclear terminology, such as ‘baptismal pew’ or ‘women’s pew’.

69. Wilson, “The Ceremony of Childbirth…,” 68–107.

70. Bircherod, Folketro og Festskik [1734], 45, 52–54, 86–87; Feilberg, Dansk Bondeliv, 65.

71. Ibid. and Lehmann, Overtro og Trolddom, 75–76, 118; For wider Europe, see, for example, Wilson, The magical Universe, 158–59.

72. Hviid Andreas Christian Hviids Europa, 232.

73. Uhrskov, Nordsjællandsk Landsbyliv, 111.

74. The warnings would also have given meaning to infant deformity in the lack of medical insight, see Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin, 87–89.

75. Ussing, Kirkeforfatningen, 494.

76. Mendelson and Crawford, Women in early modern England, 152. For Denmark, 1640-1700, see Bang, Kirkebogsstudier, 103. For Denmark 1700, see the National Museum, https://natmus.dk/historisk-viden/temaer/boern-1660-2000/boernedoedelighed/.

77. Ingerslev, Om Dødeligheden ved Barselfeber, 39, 51–53.

78. Based on Ingerslev’s corrected data from Danmarks Statistik, Ingerslev, Om Dødeligheden, 53–54.

79. Wilse, Physisk, Oeconomisk og Statistisk Beskrivelse, 420–21.

80. Olsen, “Gamle Ole Petersen fortæller,” 87.

81. Bircherod, Folketro og Festskik…’[1734], 52; Tangherlini, Danish Folktales, 78–79.

82. Magnusen, Den første November, 135; Uhrskov, Nordsjællandsk Landsbyliv, 113; Feilberg, Dansk Bondeliv, 73.

83. DNA, ‘Peder Hersleb’, 58; Kirkeforfatningen, 495.

84. The lying-in curfew was mandated by Danish Law (2-8-9) and by the Church Ritual of 1685, chap III, art. 3, but with no means of sanction. Impoverished nineteenth-century mothers typically had only 1–2 weeks of lying-in, see also Kofod, “Barselsskikke,” Den Store Danske.

85. Fabricius, (ed.), “N. F. S. Grundtvigs breve…,” Grundtvig-Studier, 5 (1), 50.

86. Pontoppidan, Fejekost, [1736], 55–56, and Bircherod, Folketro og Festskik, 52–55.

87. Friis, De Danskes Øer, I, 167.

88. Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 145, 313.

89. The stealing of the hat was immortalised in the Danish 1723 theatre play, ‘The Barns-Ale’ (Barselstuen) by L. Holberg. For nineteenth-century folklore narratives, see Tang Kristensen and others.

90. Troels-Lund, Dagligt liv, VIII, 108; Fløe, “Skikke og Levevis,” 300; Møller, Historiske Oplysninger om Slaugs Herred, 68–69.

91. “Sproget,” Berlingske Tidende, 44 (13 February 1987). Høyer and Petersen, Grevinge Sogn, 40.

92. Women from the Islands of Skarø, Hjortø or Birkholm, for example, typically held their churching breakfasts in the homes of Drejø matrons, see Tommerup, Topographie over Drejøe Sogn, 55.

93. From the memoirs of Mrs Prip, as quoted in Møller, Moder og Barn, 498.

94. Boisen-Møller, Eline Boisens erindringer, III, 328.

95. Leerbech, En Beskrivelse over Ringe Sogn, 86.

96. Ærø: Hübertz, Beskrivelse over Ærø, 269; Læsø: Bing, Physisk og Oekonomisk Beskrivelse, 184; Drejø: Tommerup, Topographie, 55; Fur: Møller, Moder og Barn, 489.

97. Høgsbro, (ed.), transcribed manuscript from interview with Sofie Brøndsted Jürgensen c. 1890.

98. Leerbech, En Beskrivelse, 86.

99. DNA Online, Justitsprotokoller, Tingbøger og Domprotokoller. Koldinghus Birkedommer (1719–1775), images 725–27.

100. A number of witness statements were taken but no sentence given.

101. Jensen, Die Nordfriesischen Inseln, 230–31.

102. Mrs Prip, in Møller, Moder og Barn, 498.

103. Pallas, Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen, 139

104. Lorenzen, “Sæd og Skik i Udbjerg Sogn,” 8; Møller, Moder og Barn, 495; Tang Kristensen, Skattegraveren, 189. The custom of circling the altar is also known in Norway.

105. See, for example, Zika, “Hosts, Processions, and Pilgrimages …,“ 118, 37–42.

106. Dirchsen, Hollænderbyen, 55.

107. Jansen, producer, Livstrappen, DVD, Amager Museum.

108. Terp, Erindringer, 119–20.

109. According to Lev 15:16–17, seminal emission was a source of impurity, not the sexual act itself, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 732–33 and Wright, “Unclean and Clean (OT),“ ABD 6, 730. According to scholars of late medieval churching, Levitical understanding of blood pollution as a threat to sacred space changed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to become a concern about the effects of pollution of a woman’s male sexual partner, see Rieder, On the Purification of Women, 167–69 and Lee, Purification of Women, 41–42, 80–88.

110. Adhering to Augustine’s tenet that childbirth impurity hinged on sexual pleasure, Gregory the Great (c. 600) could not defend barring a new mother from church because to him, she had already been punished through the pains of childbirth. Yet, if a bleeding woman should not ‘presume’ to attend church, she should be ‘commended’, see ‘Epistles of St. Gregory the Great’ (1895). Gregory’s ambiguous view was shared by several later popes. For Pope Innocent III, see Franz, Kirchlichen Benediktionen, II (1909), 218. For Pope Gregory IX (1239), see Bøttiger (1882), 17.

111. Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, 23.

112. As stated, for example, by Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24-79) and Archbishop Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636).

113. See, for example, McClive, Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France, 31–4, and Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 18–19. According to Galenic medicine, women continued to menstruate in the womb during pregnancy. Lochia was therefore thought to be pent-up menstrual blood.

114. Letter of 27 April 1878 in The British Medical Journal, quoted in Novak, Menstruation, 5.

115. Luther never fully committed for or against churching and left the rite in the category of adiaphora.

116. ‘Heden’, in Moths Ordbog, on https://mothsordbog.dk

117. According to Pastor Ussing, 1788, in Ussing, Kirkeforfatningen, 495.

118. Grimes, “Ritual Studies,” 12:422.

119. Catherine Bell operates with six types of ritual (a) life ritual, rites of passage; (b) calendar or annual rites; (c) rites of exchange and communion, sacrifice; (d) rites of affliction and healing; (e) feasts, festivals, and fasts; and (f) political ritual, civil ritual courts, nations, army, royalty, expressing power, hierarchy, and identity. Churching fits into the types (a) and (d). See Bell, Ritual Theory. Ritual Practice, 69–93.

120. Clausen, “Betænkninger …,” 581–82.

121. Pavels, “Anmærkninger,” 291–292.

122. Knap, “Bemærkninger …,” 234.

123. For 1893, see Kaiser, Historien om barnedåben, 205. For 1911, see DNA, Indberetninger om præstegårdes jordtilliggende.

124. The National Museum: ‘Nationalmuseets Etnologiske Undersøgelser’, begun 1957.

125. Susanne Stidsen related her Øster Snede churching to Johannes Stidsen shortly before her death in 1990, describing it as a ‘solemn and earnest occasion’. See also note 4.

126. For 1955, see note 31. Churching has never been officially abolished in Denmark, but the rite was omitted in the still valid 1992 rituals handbook.

127. Hansen, Præsten, 119.

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Notes on contributors

Mette M. Ahlefeldt-Laurvig

Mette M. Ahlefeldt-Laurvig holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford (2019). She is an associate member of the Faculty of History at Oxford and an external collaborator of the Institute for History at Luxembourg University. She is currently working on a monograph on the ritual of churching (Brepols Publishers, 2022/23) and has recently contributed to the forthcoming anthology, ‘Reformation and Everyday Life’ (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022/23). A social historian, Ahlefeldt-Laurvig’s research interests include the Reformation, marriage and the broader dynamics between pastor and parishioner.