CHURCHING OF WOMEN, the Christian ceremony of thanksgiving on the part of mothers shortly after the birth of their children. It no doubt originated in the Mosaic regulation as to purification (Lev. xii. ; cf. Lk. ii. 22). In ancient times the ceremony was usual but not obligatory in England. In the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches to-day it is encouraged. No ancient form of service exists, and that which figures in the English Prayer Book of to-day dates only from the middle ages. In the Prayer Book of 1549 the rite was called the Purification of Women; but this was altered in 1552 to the present form, Thanks giving of Women after Childbirth. (See Hooker, Eccl. Pol. V. lxxiv.) Custom differs, but the usual date of churching was the fortieth day after confinement, in accordance with the Biblical date of the presentment of the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus at the Temple. It was formerly regarded as unlucky for a woman to leave her house to go out at all after confinement till she went to be churched. It was not unusual for the churching service to be said in private houses. In some parishes there was a special pew known as "the churching seat." The words in the rubric re quiring the woman to come "decently [i.e. suitably] apparelled" refer probably to the custom of wearing a veil upon the head.
The "convenient place," which, according to the rubric, the woman must occupy, was in pre-Reformation times the church door. In the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. , she was to be "nigh unto the quire door." In the second Prayer Book (1552), she was to be "nigh unto the place where the Table standeth." Bishop Wren's orders for the diocese of Norwich in 1636 are "That women to be churched come and kneel at a side near the Communion Table without the rail, being veiled according to custom, and not covered with a hat." At her churching a woman was expected to make some offering to the church; the Prayer Book of 1549 orders that she shall offer the chrysom or robe used in the baptism; when, however, the use of the chrysom was dis continued, the reference to "accustomed offerings" was retained.