Maternal imagination was believed capable of birthing black, Moor-like infants.

Evidence

Damascenus a grave author doth assure this to be true, that being present with Charles, the iiiv. Emperor and king of Bohemia, there was brought to him a maid, rough and covered with hair like a bear, which the mother had brought forth in so hideous and deformed a shape, by having too much regard to the picture of S[aint] John clothed with a beast’s skin, the which was tied or made fast continually during her conception at her bed’s feet. By the like means Hippocrates saved a princess accused of adultery, for that she was delivered of a child black like a Ethiopian, her husband being of a fair and white complexion, which by the persuasion of Hippocrates, was absolved and pardoned, for that child was like unto a [picture of a] Moor, accustomably tied at her bed. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 311

Categorization

• QUESTION: The Hippocrates case is remarkable: maternal impression doctrine could legally absolve an adulteress, making a ‘black’ birth evidence of nothing more than a looked-upon picture. Worth chasing how this doctrine interacted with ideas about real African bodies.
• SHARE: The idea that women gazing at St. John portraits could birth hairy bear-children, or that a Moorish picture explains skin color, is a bizarre niche for medieval-medicine enthusiasts.
• XREF: connects to: Shakespeare’s Moor and Jew characters encoded pre-modern racialized difference. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 27; Black Baptists deliberately manufactured black dolls to build healthy race identity in children. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 763