ABSTRACT
Diana's incarnation as the midwife goddess Lucina becomes especially relevant when we turn to the use of the Ephesian Diana by post-Reformation ministers. The persistent presence of the pagan Lucina within the new church was made visible in the ceremony known as churching—the mother's ritual return, with her midwife and gossips, to the Christian community. Churching came treacherously close to enacting this backsliding by opening the doors of the post-Reformation church to the midwife and the maternal bodies she attended—allowing the pagan goddess and her votaresses to enter in. As a ritual that brought mothers and their birth attendants together within a holy space, the churching of women after childbirth provided an analogue to the sexual activities of the pre-Hellenic Diana's worshippers. The conflation of the asexual Diana who protects the purity of women's bodies and the fertile Lucina who assists in their sexually reproductive activities is a central feature of the play.
