Funerary monuments of mothers and children

VI Born to die and to be reborn

Given the enormous dangers linked to pregnancies and childbirth, as well as the high rates of death for both mothers and children during these processes, it was not rate that both died within only a few hours or days of each other. When that happened, it was quite usual that mother and child would be buried together, especially if the baby had lived long enough to receive one of the urgent religious rites that were usually administered when people feared babies would not live long enough to receive a formal baptism. Sometimes, the baby was buried with his/her mother in the same sarcophagus or coffin, in a tomb identified only as belonging to the departed adult, without making any mention of the deceased baby that rested with her. But in other cases, the causes of the mother’s death were explicitly illustrated, and the baby that accompanied her was mentioned. As examples of this last case, we present here three funerary monuments of women who died in childbirth during the Early Modern period, and that were buried with the babies that died with them. 

The first one is the funerary monument of Elizabeth Williams, conserved at Gloucester cathedral. She died in childbirth when she was seventeen years old, together with the baby she gave birth to. Her father, bishop Miles Smith, paid for this monument in which the mother appears lying on her side and resting on her elbow, dressed as if she was alive, and holding a book in her free hand. By her side, we find the likeness of a banded baby, a reference to the deceased infant buried with her, represented as if the child was alive. 

In the second image we can see the impressive cenotaph in memory of the British princess Charlotte of Wales, who died in 1817 because of the difficult delivery of her son, who was stillborn. Princess Charlotte was the only daughter of the Prince Regent, the future king George IV, and the only legitimate grandchild of king George III, so it was expected that she would inherit the throne of Great Britain one day. The lack of legitimate descendants of the numerous children of George III had provoked a great expectancy regarding the reproductive future of the young princess after her marriage with Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Thus, Charlotte’s death when she was only twenty-one years old, together with her child, provoked a dynastic and national crisis.  The princess was buried in the same sarcophagus as her child, that was placed at her feet, and the precious cenotaph we can see here, made by Matthew C. Wyatt, was paid for through public donations. In it, the princess’s corpse appears hidden by a shroud, while her soul ascends to the heavens accompanied by her child’s spirit, who sleeps in the arms of one of the angels that accompany them. 

Last but not least, we have the image of the impressive tomb of Maria Magdalena Langhans, created by Johann August Nahl. This monument does not appear, in his original site, as we see it here, as it is placed horizontally over the church’s ground. Maria Magdalena was the wife of pastor Georg Langhans and she died giving birth to their first child, when she was twenty-eight years old. The baby died just a few hours later and they were buried together. Nahl designed this monument for them, in which both of them break the binds of earth and the lid of the coffin that traps them when they are resurrected during the second coming of Jesus Christ. [Rocío Martínez]