Sixteenth-century authors explained monstrous births by mothers’ regard for images during conception
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
Category: Factual Claims
- FICTION: The maternal-imagination theory (a mother’s fixed gaze on an image shapes the fetus) is a rich worldview for historical fiction about the era.