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- Title
Geordnete Intimität.
- Authors
Beck, Christoph Th.
- Abstract
The circular about doctors and surgeons addressed by the Unity Elders' Conference to the elders' conferences in the congregations in 1773 concerns the way in which doctors deal with female intimacy. It constituted a rule book that sought to regulate with extraordinary precision how male doctors should engage in every conceivable situation with single, married or widowed sisters. This codex was only possible in connection with theory underlying the division of the congregation into choirs. In the eighteenth century it was a rarity, not least because it gave detailed instructions to doctors but was not drawn up by doctors. The circular holds up a mirror to the relationship between doctors and congregation in the first years after Zinzendorfs death. It also displays vividly how the Moravian Church reacted to the challenges posed by the swift development of midwifery and the rise of the 'accoucheur'. The novelty of midwifery practised by men sharpened the problem of a possible infringement of female intimacy by doctors to an extent that had not previously been recognized. At that time, midwifery was practised in Herrnhut by female midwives, who have left significantiy fewer traces than the doctors who were active there. In all probability the circular is also one of the earliest documents in which the concept of marriage guidance given by one couple to another was developed. The choir structures, the Speaking and the fundamental requirement that only those who were themselves married could minister in the married people's choir offered a basis for this which was not present to the same extent in other churches and Christian communities.
- Subjects
INTIMACY (Psychology); MORAVIAN Church; PROTESTANT churches; MIDWIFERY; MORAVIANS
- Publication
Unitas Fratrum, 2017, Issue 75, p47
- ISSN
0344-9254
- Publication type
Article