ABSTRACT
In early modern England, the hotly contested liturgical rite known as ‘The Thanksgiving of Women After Child-birth, Commonly called the Churching of Women’ involved a new mother’s appearance at her parish church in the company of her birth attendants, a series of blessings on her, prayers and responses by the officiant and congregation and a small monetary offering. Its form, from early medieval times up through the mid-sixteenth century, remained a highly visible, highly scripted, woman-centered ritual that originated in Judaic law and which was integrated into Catholic liturgy.1 But the ceremony’s emphasis shifted during the century in which puritanism transformed the Church of England2 and that shift affected the ways women recorded churching in their prayers, diaries and memoirs.3
