Original scientific paper Discourse on reproductive infertility in the Croatian Glagolitic written culture (Croatian: Govor o reprodukcijskoj neplodnosti u glagoljaštvu) is written by Ana ŠIMIĆ, PhD (Old Church Slavonic Institute), principal investigator on the FEMIGLA project.
The paper is published in Filologija 85 (2025), pp. 155–210.
It is available at: https://hrcak.srce.hr/clanak/501677.
Abstract
The paper analyses premodern Croatian Glagolitic written culture with regard to the topic of (unwanted human) reproductive infertility. The analysed corpus includes Biblical, literary and canon law texts (written in the Glagolitic script) as well as folk medicine books (written in the Cyrillic script). Most of those texts are medieval or early modern. Folk medicine books are the youngest, dating from the 17th up to the 19th century.
Three research questions are addressed: (1) what is written about infertility, (2) how is infertility written about (i.e., what language expressions and linguistic tools are used), and (3) are women at the centre of the discourse about reproductive infertility. Answers to those questions provide insight into the representation of human infertility in the Glagolitic culture (Glagolitism) and the perception of infertility that the Croatian society that created and used these texts may have had.
Regarding the first research question, the following insights stand out. Apart from one notion in a folk medicine book of a younger date (18th century), there is no mention of men being also possibly responsible for lack of conception, i.e. infertile. However, that particular notion matches corresponding passage from the Latin medieval texts on women’s medicine known as the Trotula (12th century). Furthermore, most often the analysed texts bring forth a story about married couple that doesn’t have offspring because the wife is infertile. With God’s intervention – and without any medical help – she manages to conceive and give birth to, typically, a son. There is only one story in which the parents are called upon to raise a non-biological, i.e. adopted child. That story, however, doesn’t end well. There is no representation of a couple wanting children and remaining childless.
Regarding the second research question, negation is the primary linguistic tool used to convey infertility on both syntactical and lexical level. Typical clause for expressing infertility consist of a negated transitive verb and an object. Potential parents or God are subject, while the object is a noun denoting the expected result of reproduction, i.e. the child as the object of parents’ desire. At the lexical level, a distinction is made between childlessness (beĉed-) and infertility (beplod- / neplod-) with both group of lexemes having a negative prefix (bez- ‘without’ and ne- ‘non-’, ‘in-’). Lexemes denoting infertility (as a condition of being unable to reproduce) are regularly used with regard to women while lexemes denoting childlessness (as a mere state of not having children) are regularly used with regard to men.
Following the mentioned data about the wife being responsible for the couple’s inability to conceive a child and, therefore, being referred to as infertile it is evident that women are the centre of the discourse about reproductive infertility. Some other insights confirm that norm as well. In folk medicine books there are no prescriptions aimed for men exclusively. Prescriptions are to be applied either by women only or by the couple (wife and husband together). Also, in the overall Croatian Church Slavonic lexical corpus denoting infertility and childlessness there is only one lexeme denoting a person. It is the feminine noun neplodi (‘infertile woman’) that does not have a masculine noun counterpart.
Within the analysed Glagolitic corpus there is a distinct text that does not follow the presented dominant discourse on infertility. It is the part of the Protoevangelium of James narrating the story about st. Joachim and st. Anne. Within the given corpus there are also some comforting thoughts regarding infertility and a canon law rule that prohibits husbands to divorce a wife if she is infertile.