Summary: Motherhood, which stands at a disciplinary crossroads, has become a historiographic subject in its own right. It has gone from being viewed as an exclusively biological circumstance to being considered a key social factor in shaping the historical identity of the queens of Spain. This book analyses the ‘ritual’ surrounding the birth of royal offspring at the Spanish court between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the role played by queens, ladies-in-waiting and midwives in a cultural system based on a series of rites performed before and after childbirth. In her book De Carlos carries out an original and well-documented reconstruction of the culture of the births of the Spanish Habsburgs and the concept of female authority. She bases her study on very different sources, as she does not focus exclusively on moral and scientific treatises but takes as her starting point visual depictions related to royal pregnancies and births, which had hitherto often been considered almost literal transcriptions of reality. A study combining the biological, symbolic and social aspects of this phenomenon was lacking in the field of Hispanic research. This gap in our historiography has now been filled by the present book, which marks an important step towards reconstructing the phenomenon of motherhood and all its derivatives at the Spanish court of the Habsburgs.

Contents: 1. En busca de un heredero - Tratados obstétricos en la España moderna. Entre el conocimiento y la búsqueda de patronazgo - El potencial materno de las mujeres regias - Esperando un heredero - Ritual y reliquias. 2. El espacio del parto regio - Nacer en palacio - El puerperio - La cultura visual de la maternidad regia. 3. "Honestíssima arte" - comadres y autoridad femenina en la corte española - Comadres en la España moderna - Comadres regias y autoridad femenina en la corte de Madrid - Visualizando la autoridad. 4. El espacio simbólico de la maternidad regia: el oratorio de la reina - El contexto material: el oratorio de la reina y sus obras - Sucesión regia y ritual - Madre, Reina. Apéndices - Lista de personas reales nacidas en la corte española entre 1570 y 1644 - "Her[nan]do despejo, gu[ar]dajoias y gu[ar]daropa de su M[agesta]d. Que[n]ta, cargo y datta de los 3.000 d[ucad]os que se le libraron y cobró para prevenir lo neçess[ari]o al parto de la reyna, n[uest]ra señora el año de 1609" - "Lo que hacía la Capilla real en vida del rey n[uest]ro s[eñ]or que está en el çielo en los partos de la reyna n[uest] ra S[eñor]a y se hiço en el dichoso del rey n[uestro] s[eñ]or que Dios guarde por muy largos años" - Relación del nacimiento del infante Carlos Lorenzo, hijo de Felipe II y Ana de Austria, en Galapagar (Madrid) el 12 de agosto de 1573 - "Memoria de todo lo que la emperatriz embía a la R[e]yna de España para su parto" - Lista de comadres regias entre hacia 1618 y 1655 - Alonso de Carranza, Las mugeres que exercen el Arte de Comadres ... siendo Nobles y de Ilustre nacimiento no perjudican con este exercicio su nobleza - "De Purificatione post partum o Salida a Misa de las R[e]ynas" - Fuentes visuales - Fuentes manuscritas - Fuentes impresas. (^Available mid-December^)

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