A few weeks ago, the cradle for life, heir of the ancient ruota degli esposti, was back on everyone’s lips: it unleashed the keyboard lions, fomented an increasingly fan-like public opinion and less and less empathic. But what is it and how does it work? What is its story?
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Let us set out, without moral judgments or with the gaze of the present, on a journey à rebours to discover the roots of this phenomenon. First stop: ancient Rome. The reasons that pushed the citizens of the Urbe not to recognize a child were many: economic difficulties, physical malformations, illicit or incestuous relationships. The girls, were more subject to abandonment, because they were considered an economic burden, as they needed a dowry. The children were then left at the foot of the Columna lactaria, located near the Forum or the market. Sheltered from the weather and protected by the statues of the goddesses Postevorta and Antevorta (gods of the past and future, respectively protectors of the unborn in a breech and cephalic position), they waited for someone to help them or adopt them. For some they represented, unfortunately, a source of profit: they could in fact be taken as slaves and subsequently resold.
Today there is no trace of Columna in Rome, although several sources place her presence near the Marcello theatre.
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For the first real structure of reception for the esposti (abandoned children, n.d.r.), it is necessary to wait for 787. The archpriest of Milan Dateo, "saddened and exasperated that so many poor innocent victims of adultery or misery were so cynically abandoned in the streets", founded the Xenodochio (from the Greek ξενοδοχεῖον: xénos guest, and dochèion, from dèchomai received)in the current Silvio Pellico street, a few steps from the Duomo. This building, no longer visible today, represented a place of salvation of the body as well as of the soul: according to the Church, in fact, children left on the street, not receiving baptism, were damned for eternity; only Christian charity could save them.
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The wheel mechanism was introduced by Pope Innocent III, the pontiff of the Fourth Crusade and the approval of the Franciscan rule. According to legend, troubled by recurring nightmares in which he witnessed the discovery of newborns drowned in the Tiber, in 1198 the pontiff instituted, at the Archhospital of Santo Spirito in Saxia, the first wheel of the exposed: a rotating cylinder in wood with two faces, one facing inside the structure and one facing outside. Through a hole in a grate, the child was deposited, the wheel was turned, and a bell rang to warn the nuns of the hospital. It was common to leave small offerings and items for the newborn. This instrument is still visible today: a few steps from Via della Conciliazione, outside the Complesso Monumentale S. Spirito in Saxia, you can see a small canopy that protects the mechanism.
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In the following centuries, the phenomenon spread throughout Europe and throughout the Italian peninsula you can find traces of their presence in large cities. Famous is that of the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence, active from 5 February 1445 to 30 June 1875, adorned with this plaque: "This was for four centuries, until 1875, the wheel of the innocent, a secret refuge of misery and guilt, to which perpetual help, that charity that does not make doors".
In the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to the demographic exploit following the industrial revolution, the phenomenon of relying by wheels intensified (only on Italian territory there were over 1200), with a consequent worsening of the conditions of European brephotrophs. In Italy, they were slowly suppressed, until total abolition in 1923, by the fascist regime. The only possibility remained the direct delivery of the newborn.
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Only in the Nineties will open again the debate on the reuse of the ancient tool, with a view to preventing infanticide and abandonment: they begin to sprout cribs for life, modern in operation but direct heirs of the wheels. The result of this is the opening, in 2006, of the first cradle inside a hospital: as for the ancestor of wood, it is Rome, precisely the Policlinico Casilino, to host it. Further support for mothers who choose to entrust (not abandon, as often the chronicle reports) is given by law: art. 30 comma 2° del d.p.r. 3 novembre 2000 establishes in fact the right to the choice on the acknowledgment and obliges the sanitary staff to the respect "of the eventual wish of the mother not to be named". Numerous are the non-profit organizations that raise awareness and inform of the existence of this possibility: there are in fact online maps in which the cradles for life are indicated for each region.
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Recourse to the crib should not be exploited as a unique and just alternative to abortion (who has the right to decree what is more right?!); inversely you cannot automatically accuse of anti-abortion positions who informs and who uses it. An insidious terrain, today as in the past, that touches people’s consciences and ignites the minds of the debate, with the real risk of losing sight of the most important element: freedom of choice, which can only be achieved if there are more alternatives and fewer processes to intentions.
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Image Tommaso Pecchioli on Unsplash
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