Interesting Baptismal Record

[cdemarco]

I was recently looking through the ecclesiastical records for the Pepe family, particularly for my 5th great-grandfather Matteo's baptism. I was able to find his record and learned that his mother's name was Maddalena Rotundo (I already knew his father was Francesco Pepe). Wanting to be thorough, I searched for siblings and found a few other children of Francesco Pepe and Maddalena Rotundo. However, one I found was different from the others. It had no name of the child that I could find and mentioned something about 'la prossima morte' and 'in Paradiso' which indicated, to me, that the child died before being baptized (my Italian is unfortunately highly dependent on GoogleTranslate). It seemed odd that the baptismal record would record a child that had died before being named in baptism. I was just wondering if anyone else had come across something like this.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz21d ... zhTUXMybmc - The second record for June 11, 1761. Also, I'm highly uncertain this link works so please let me know if it doesn't.

[erudita74]

There was a period of time when the church allowed a midwife to perform an emergency baptism so that an infant, born but near death, would be assured of going to heaven. That is why this infant was immediately baptized by the midwife, as soon as it was delivered by her. This infant had no chance of survival, and there was no time to get it to church to have a priest perform the baptismal ceremony. That's also the reason why the infant was not named. The infant expired soon after its birth.
Erudita

[cdemarco]

Thanks for the information! Good to know, I knew that emergency baptisms are a thing, but didn't make the connection.

[erudita74]

You're very welcome. Always happy to share info from my many years of research.
Erudita