Uterine inversion is a rare though life-threatening complication of childbirth, often accompanied by hemorrhage and hypovolemic shock with associated morbidity. Risks include fundal placenta, placenta accreta spectrum, short umbilical cord, atony, maternal factors such as connective tissue disorders, uterine tumors or structural abnormalities, and congenital weakness of the uterine wall. The diagnosis is clinical, and mainstays of treatment involve prompt recognition and quick action. The focus of treatment is manual reduction, which may require tocolytics. In rare instances when manual reduction is not successful at the bedside, laparotomy may become necessary. Additional care involves uterine massage, uterotonics, and hemorrhage management.

Recent studies applying William Caplin’s form-functional theory to Richard Wagner’s music have focused on Das Rheingold and later music dramas. However, his earlier Lohengrin, the final work he titled ‘romantische Oper’, proves an ideal candidate for such a study, since it still retains certain conventions (such as subtly disguised ‘numbers’ and a fairly clear harmonic palette) while pushing the boundary on others (such as scenes built as ‘dialogue cycles’ and pervasive use of diminished-seventh harmonies). This study first focuses on the principal Leitmotivs of the work, those associated with Elsa, Ortrud, the Grail and the Frageverbot (forbidden question), examining their theme types and loosening features, then exploring their transformations in different appearances throughout the opera – particularly Elsa’s motive. It then considers selected passages constructed in ‘rotational form’, in which one or more of these leitmotivs are used as the backbone for the cyclic form.

Chapter 3 traces the history of bowing at the name of Jesus, one of the ritual actions inherited from the medieval church which survived into the post-Reformation period. Although it was included in the 1559 Injunctions, most Elizabethan writers regarded it as a matter of indifference and assumed it would gradually die out of its own accord. Yet in the early seventeenth century it unexpectedly resurfaced as a point of theological debate when some divines argued that it was directly commanded by scripture. The chapter challenges the idea that theological controversy was conducted at a high academic level with little relevance to the lives of ordinary people. The dispute over bowing originated in polemical exchanges between Protestants and Catholics in Westphalia, which were taken up by the Reformed theologian David Pareus at Heidelberg, and then spilled over into the Church of England when Pareus’s writings were translated into English. But while it began in Latin works of religious polemic, it also led to conflict at a parish level, and a study of these parish conflicts shows that the lay opponents of bowing were often very well informed about the theological issues.

Chapter 4 discusses the sign of the cross, another gesture with a long history going back to the early church. In the Middle Ages the cross was believed to have power to protect against evil, and was widely used both as a gesture of everyday blessing and in rituals and charms of healing. After the Reformation its use was discouraged, but it survived in the Prayer Book rite of baptism, where the minister was instructed to trace a cross on the child’s forehead. This necessitated a radical transformation in its meaning, removing the associations with exorcism and purification and redefining it simply as a symbol of allegiance to Christ. Yet the belief in the apotropaic power of the cross persisted in early modern England and was reflected both officially, in the ritual of the royal touch, and unofficially, in the use of the gesture as a form of protection against witchcraft. Even among theologians who regarded the cross as symbolic, there was still a sense that it was not ‘merely’ symbolic but retained some kind of operative power to effect change.

The conclusion traces a history of religious gesture from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. This period saw major changes in gesture and bodily habitus which we could characterise in three ways. First, there is the decline of uniformity, that is, the gradual abandonment of attempts to enforce bodily uniformity as a means of social discipline, whether in religious worship or in other forms of collective social activity. Secondly, there is the process that sociologists have labelled the decline of deference, whereby individuals in the modern West are, for the most part, no longer required to kneel or bow to social superiors, or to use gestures of reverence in sacred spaces. Lastly, there is the decline of formality, a growing discomfort with formal ritual which could also be described in terms of interiority or individualism, as a belief that the mind rather than the body is the true locus of selfhood. In all these respects it would be rather easy to see the world of early modern religion described in this book as a world we have lost. But I want to argue that this model is unsatisfactory, or at least incomplete.

Chapter 6 shows how female subordination was expressed and symbolised through head-covering, following St Paul’s injunction that ‘the woman ought to have power on her head because of the angels’ (1 Cor. 11: 10). While some theologians, including Calvin, sought to reinterpret the text figuratively rather than literally, the Reformation never completely lost sight of the idea of the church building as a sacred space hallowed by the presence of the angels. This idea was taken up in the early seventeenth century by Laudian divines who used it to promote the gesture of bowing to the altar. More surprisingly, it was also supported by a handful of non-Laudian divines, including Joseph Mede and Paul Micklethwaite. This complicates the standard picture of the early Stuart church as divided between Laudians and their opponents, and suggests that the Laudians were tapping into a more widespread concern about declining standards of reverence in public worship. It also challenges the view that the Reformation witnessed a desacralisation of sacred space, by showing how the belief in the sacredness of churches not only persisted long into the early modern period but rested specifically on the notion of supernatural presence.

Chapter 1 explores the use of gesture in preaching, with reference to the branch of rhetoric known as pronunciatio, which provided the theoretical basis for much of the discussion of gesture in the early modern period. The basic rules of pronunciatio were derived from classical sources, but were developed and adapted by sixteenth-century writers on sacred rhetoric. All these writers were united by a shared insistence on the need for decorum and moderation, but in the early seventeenth century a contrast began to emerge between the techniques favoured by Reformed theologians in the Ramist tradition, who stressed the importance of bodily restraint and self-control, and the more dramatic style of preaching pioneered by Jesuit rhetoricians in France. One of the unexpected findings of this chapter is that the Jesuit style was widely admired and copied by seventeenth-century English Protestant preachers as a way of giving their sermons more emotional impact. Against the common assumption of an anti-theatrical prejudice in early modern Protestantism, we should think of a dynamic relationship between the pulpit and the stage in which preachers and actors watched and learned from each other.