Opinion: The Nativity Midwives of Sussex
Have you heard about the midwives at Jesus’ nativity? They arrived too late but stayed with the Holy Family. For the last 1800 years they have been portrayed in thousands of paintings, though they are often forgotten today. Soon after the Norman Conquest, monks from Lewes Priory created cycles of Jesus’ life in several Sussex churches. Painted directly on wet plaster with a few local red and yellow pigments, they suffered the ravages of time and weather. Those that survive are mostly tantalising fragments. Read my new book to find out more!
The two women in this painting are Mary’s midwives. One was an instant believer. But the other insisted on examining Mary to see if she really was a virgin, and was severely punished - then healed by Jesus, in his first miracle.
The midwives were famous throughout Christendom, loved and celebrated for centuries. From the 2ndcentury onwards they appeared in apocryphal gospels, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, sermons, mystery plays and countless paintings, including works by Tintoretto and Van Dyck, and later Eric Gill and Paula Rego.
My book takes you on an adventure through the art galleries, palaces and churches of Sussex, Europe and beyond, also guided by Salome, Zebel and other witnesses. Rehabilitating the midwives as skilled workers, I consider their particular appeal to the women who painted them, commissioned images of them, and looked at them in parish churches and cathedrals. he extremely high death rates of mothers and babies throughout these centuries provides a sombre context, as does the antisemitic co-option of the midwives’ story in the Legend of the Doubting Midwife.
My book contributes to the wider contemporary debate about women’s roles as carers and leaders. It is rooted in my practical work, scholarship and advocacy in the UK and worldwide as a well-known nurse leader and best-selling nursing and midwifery author.