Apparently, the investigation of childhood in premodern times has been severely hampered by the disinclination of many scholars to work on an interdisciplinary level and to use comparative approaches, which could include art history and religious study, history of mentality and literary studies.62 In partic ular, to comprehend medieval childhood fully in its historical and psychological dimensions requires more than a superficial examination of historical records. As we have observed above, both literary sources and historical documents, both art history material and psychological perspectives need to be consulted with respect to this highly complex topic. It would also not be enough to take into account only medieval courtly literature, or heroic epics, especially because both focus, by their own nature, on the world of adults either within the setting of the courts or within a military society where there was no room for children. In fact, no society spends much, if any time, on children if it is under military attack from the outside or faces severe challenges from the inside.
Only once a society enjoys extensive leisure time and offers the luxury to the individual to withdraw into an interior space, do themes concerning children, the family structure, and also erotic love emerge as well. By the same token, our modern understanding of the emotional relationship between husband and wife in the Middle Ages still suffers from profound misunderstandings derived from early-modern concepts of the family in which the husband ruled as the paterfamil-ias and emotions were basically banned from marriages. We are, of course, dealing with stereotypes and projections onto the Middle Ages that find little support in the actual historical and literary sources, but nevertheless are highly effective among the modern readership deeply shaped by "pastism" as the allegedly only possible approach to earlier periods in human history. This methodology
61 For a good overview of the relevant studies published post-Aries, see Mathias Beer, Eltern und Kinder des späten Mittelalters in ihren Briefen: Familienleben in der Stadt des Spätmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Nürnbergs (1400-1550). Nürnberger Werkstücke zur
Stadt- und Landesgeschichte, 44 (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, 1990), 12-22.
A good example to the contrary proves to be Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth - Fifteenth Centuries. Preface by Pierre Riehe. Trans. Jody Gladding. The Laura Shannon Series in French Medieval Studies (1997; Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).
"resolutely reifies alterity, positing a fundamental gulf of understanding between ourselves and our medieval subjects."63 Paradigms, often because of their mythical character and comfortable insinuation that a certain phenomenon is fully explained, tend to resist challenges and viscerally oppose any criticism against their basic premises. The very nature of scholarship, however, consists of the relentless and critical examination of our fundamental concepts and of raising often uncomfortable questions. This also applies to the history of childhood and family relationship in premodern times.64
The other major problem in our investigation of children proves to be not a historical, but an anthropological constant: adults tend not to discuss children seriously and instead elaborate on adult affairs in public, whereas the situation within the domestic sphere seems to be entirely different. Medieval people cannot be expected to provide more information about children, for example, in literary sources, than modern writers do. But our investigation of how childhood was perceived in earlier times cannot limit itself to courtly literature, heroic epics, political chronicles, and scientific texts. We also need to take into account hagiographical sources, urban and clerical records, accounts of accidents, and paintings and sculptures. As Robert C. Finucane alerts us, medieval "[ajdults realized that certain types of behavior were normal aspects of childhood. This awareness was acknowledged time after time in the miracle reports; children exhibited 'childish zeal,' 'youthful excess,' 'childish playfulness'; their accidents followed behavior 'typical of children' or infants."65
This phenomenon forces us to reconsider how we reach historical insights in the first place, and what sources we use to draw our conclusions from in general. As long as we ourselves do not develop specific interests in childhood, we will also ignore those texts that address children and their education. The reasons for this shortcoming are quite easy to understand because, first, we as adult scholars tend to be primarily interested in adult concerns, and so children figure only secondarily in medieval studies. Second, modern scholars have only recently
6 3 Juanita Feros Ruys, "Playing Alterity," 2004, 213.
6 4 A. Wilson, "The Infancy of the History of Childhood: an Appraisal of Philippe Aries," History and Theory 19 (1980): 132-53; Matthias Winter, Kindheit und Jugend im Mittelalter. HochschulSammlung Philosophie. Geschichte, 6 (Freiburg: HochschulVerlag, 1984); Linda Patterson, "L'enfant das la litterature occitane avant 1230," Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale 32 (1989): 233-45; Ursula Peters,
"Familienhistorie als neues Paradigma der mittelalterlichen Literaturgeschichte," Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1994), 134-62.
6 5 Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (1997; New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2000.), 10; see also Barbara Schuh, "Jenseitigkeit in diesseitigen Formen": sozial- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Aspekte spätmittelalterlicher Mirakelberichte. Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Geschichte, Darstellungen, 3 (Graz: Leykam, 1989), 105.
begun to explore the history of emotions and continue to shy away from making forays into the world of sentiments and feelings as displayed by medieval people.66 Fortunately, this has changed to some extent both in critical response to Aries's thesis and in light of many new medieval sources which lie outside of the traditional framework of literary investigations, yet offer significant insights into medieval mentality. Modern scholarship has certainly responded to the challenge by Mary Martin McLaughlin when she deplored a significant desideratum: "the history of their experience [the children's] of this life remains to be written; our impressions of it have been based largely on the monastic constitutions and customaries which, in their careful provisions for these youngest members of masculine communities, suggest a life of almost intolerable rigor and confine-ment."67 Nevertheless, both our methodological approaches to medieval childhood and our selection of relevant documents need to be refined and sensitized, which this volume attempts to deal with.
Miracle reports from the entire Middle Ages, for instance, suggest that parents were deeply afflicted by their children's death and accidents, including parents from all social classes and all geographical provenances. In Finucane's words: "the examples suggest that in medieval grief for children, overtly emotional behavior by women was expected or at least tolerated; among men, displays of grief were less expected, and, in fact, may have been felt to be inappropriate for them."68
As in so many cases, new perspectives toward the medieval past cannot be easily gained without innovative approaches, mostly interdisciplinary in nature. This is also the case with childhood which requires the combination of literary and historical sources, of architectural and archeological evidence, of musical and art historical documents. Moreover, children represent a group within society that does not normally accord them much space in the official records, even though they play an important role. As Sally Crawford emphasizes, children "are both within the boundaries of 'normal' society, learning how to occupy their place in it, but they are also outsiders, a group apart, with their own particular require-ments and rules. Because of this, evidence demonstrating adult attitudes towards children tends to be conflicting and baffling, but children as a distinctive group to whom distinctive rules apply, are worthy of separate and intensive study . . . ,"69
6 6 The contributors to Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, explore manifestations of anger, wrath, fear of death, bitterness and frustration, mourning, rage, desire, and insecurity, but none of them endeavors to investigate adults' feelings toward children.
6 7 Martin McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries," The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), 101-81; here 130.
6 8 Finucane, The Rescue, 158.
6 9 Sally Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1999), xvii.
This also necessitates a careful examination of those sources that normally lie outside of the horizon of literary and historical scholarship, such as burial sites, toys, genre scenes in paintings, linguistic evidence, manuscript illustrations, and also buildings.70 Often, however, it seems as if modern scholars, deeply influenced by Aries, approach the topic with the only purpose in mind to confirm that childhood was not discovered until the modern age, whereas before people badly mistreated their children, neglected them, or regularly spanked them brutally, if they did not even kill them in times of famine. Lloyd de Mause, Edward Shorter, Richard Lyman, and Shulamith Firestone uncritically pursued this perspective,71 not to mention cohorts of subsequent authors both in scholarly and non-scholarly literature. However, only a quick look into Bartholomew Anglicus's famous encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum (ca. 1245) would confirm that medieval people had a very clear idea of what childhood meant and how to evaluate childish behavior without resorting to adult norms and ideals. As he says in his chapter "De puero" (here in John Trevisa's translation from 1398):
And Jjerfore [for] purenes of kynde innocence suche children ben iclepid pueri. So seif) Isidre. t>an soche children [ben] neisch of fleisch, lethy and pliant of body, abel and li3t to meuynge, witty to lerne caroles, and wijboute busines, and f>ey lede here lif wijjoute care and busines and teilen pris onliche of merjje and likynge, and dreden no perile more j^an betinge wijj a 3erde. And (sey louen an appil more pan gold.72
7 0 Hansueli F. Etter and Jörg Ε. Schneider, "Zur Stellung von Kind und Frau im Frühmittelalter. Eine archäologische-anthropologische Synthese," Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 39 (1982): 48-57; Hans-Werner Goetz, Life in the Middle Ages from the Seventh to the Thirteenth Century. Trans. Albert Wimmer, ed. Steven Rowan (1986; Notre Dame and London:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 54.
71 Lloyd deMause, "The Evolution of Parent-Child Relationships as a Factor in History," idem, ed., The History of Childhood, 1-71; Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London: Collins, 1976); Richard Lyman, "Barbarism and Religion; Late Roman and Early Medieval Childhood,"
Lloyd deMause, ed., The History of Childhood, 75-100; Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for Feminist Revolution (London: Cape, 1971).
72 On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation ofBartholomseus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum.
A Critical Text [ed. M. C. Seymour et al.J (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1975), vol. 1,300. See also M. C. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus and His Encyclopedia (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1992). For a critical discussion of the manuscript tradition and the reception of the encyclopedia, see Heinz Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus:
Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von 'De Proprietatibus Rerum.
Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften, 77 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2000); here 379-81 (for Trevisa).
Further, as Bartholomaeus emphasizes:
Sep smale children often han iuel maneres and tacchis, and Rinken onliche on Ringes pat bej} and recchip nou3t of thingis J>at schal be, hy louej? playes and game and venytes and forsake most jaingis worth, and a3enward, for most worth pey holde lest worth or nou3t worth. t>ey desiren {sat is to hem contrarye and greouous, and teilen more of pe ymage of a childe pan of pe ymage of a man, and maken sorowe and woo and wepip more for pe losse of an appil panne fore pe losse of peire heritage . . . . Pey desiren and coueiten alle pinges {sat pey see, and prayep and askep hem wip voys and wip honde.... They holde no counsaile but pey wreyen and teilen out alle pat pey see and here. Sodeynly pey lau3e and sodeynly pey wepe (301).
Considering that Bartholomaeus approaches his topic as an encyclopedist, primarily interested in covering every possible aspect in human life and in nature, and considering that he drew his information mostly from the learned tradition, not having experienced fatherhood himself, unless as an observer and bystander, we can safely argue that he had a sharp eye and a solid understanding of human nature, clearly signaling to us that those medieval writers who set themselves to the task to discuss childhood knew very well how to describe it in an insightful, sensitive, and realistic manner. In other words, Bartholomaeus understood childhood, accepted children as what they are, and informed his adult readers about children's typical behavior, desires, and abilities.
One fascinating example of how much even the Anglo-Saxons were aware of the typical world of childhood can be drawn from linguistics evidence since "the Anglo-Saxons not only had words for children (did, beam), but also for the state of childhood (cildhad), and, perhaps most importantly, could identify and describe behaviour relevant to childhood: childish (cildisc), childishness (cildsung)."73 Even though burial sites generally do not indicate a particular dedication to children, all evidence points to considerable medical care given to children: "The number of remedies dealing with conception and childbirth, coupled with the complete absence of any contraceptive remedies, seems to imply that children were very much wanted, and women would go to some lengths to secure a child."74 Although it is much harder to determine the level of emotional bonding between mother and child during those early times, even here many burial sites confirm
"that when mothers and children died at the same time it was appropriate that they should be buried together in this sympathetic manner," meaning "where the skeletons of females are found with their arms curled round the bodies of infants.
«75
7 3 Crawford, Childhood, 45.
7 4 Crawford, Childhood, 101.
75 Crawford, Childhood, 117 and 116.
Anglo-Saxon fathers also seem to have taken an active role in the raising of their children, and often expressed their care, concern, and love for children through their wills, their daily contacts with their children, and in personal reflections.
King /Elfred, at the conclusion of his translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, offered the noteworthy comment "many a man would wish that he himself should die, rather than behold his wife and children dying."76 Of course, the early-medieval sources spend much less time on intimate aspects pertaining to the family for a number of obvious reasons, but children were not simply banned from their mental horizon.
In his contorted manner, the father figure Hildebrand in the eponymous heroic ballad Hildebrandslied (ca. 820 C. E.) seems to display similar emotions toward his son whom he encounters for the first time after he himself has spent thirty years in exile, except that both know only how to talk with each other in military terms and cannot overcome the deep distrust against each other, especially since the son Hadubrand is convinced of his father's death and does not recognize the man in the Hunnish armor. The less Hildebrand knows how to reach out to his son, the more his clumsy gesture with the gold rings which he would like to give his son as gifts reveals his desperate attempt to reach out to the young man.77 He does not even use the term 'father' or 'son/ instead he describes his motive as "huldi" (35;
grace, friendship, mercy, also pity), failing even further in expressing his true feelings. The poet, however, would not have presented this most awkward scene of father and son which reflects nothing but the devastating consequences of a purely military culture where there is no room for family and paternal love, if he had not intended it as a sort of criticism.78
Actually, many sources from the early Middle Ages provide remarkable insights into childhood and reveal how much both theologians and chroniclers cared about that early developmental stage. In a report about the miraculous healing power of the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours (before 594 C.E.), a young boy whose mother had died shortly after his birth and who is in danger of following her soon because of lack of food and a severe fever, quickly recovers as soon as the desperate father has placed him on the tomb. The author, Bishop Gregory of Tours, hardly pays attention to the father since his primary intention is to highlight the healing power
7 6 King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version ofBoethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, with a Literal English Translation, Notes, and Glossary, by Samuel Fox (1864; New York: AMS Press, 1970), 31; see also Crawford, Childhood, 117 (though she does not provide any reference for her slightly different quote).
77
William C. McDonald, '"Too softly a gift of treasure': A Reading of the Old High German Hildebrandslied," Euphorien 78 (1984): 1-16.
78 Althochdeutsche Literatur: Eine Textauswahl mit Übertragungen, ed. Horst Dieter Schlosser (Berlin:
Schmidt, 1998), 60-63.
of the saint. But in a short subordinate clause he briefly describes the father's behavior in face of his son's imminent death: "patre heiulante," which signals the deep pain he felt seeing his baby boy fading away fast, wherefore he turns to the ultimate resort, the saint's tomb.79 In Gerhard's Vita sancti Oudalrici episcopi Augustani (tenth century), an almost moribund child is rescued only because a cleric advises the parents to wean the child and to give him solid food. Thereafter the child quickly recovers and turns into a delightful child whom the parents regard with great joy and proudly display to the people around them: "gratanter eum intuerentur et aliis ostenderent."80
In the Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis (prior to 1200) we come across a remarkable account of the delight with which Bishop Hugo baptized the child and suddenly developed an almost intimate exchange with the infant who smiled at him and moved its body, apparently to signal its joy about the fatherly figure. The babe took the bishop's hand and licked at it for a while, and both apparently felt a deep sense of happiness about each other: "Pontifice infanti et infante pontifici, inauditum de se inuicem spectaculum delectabiliter exhibente, stupebant qui aderant."81 Although those who were present at the baptism expressed their great surprise about this phenomenon, the narrator openly admits his delight with the wonderful child who seemed to be obsessed with the bishop and even rejected the arms of the wet nurse when she wanted to take the child out of the bishop's hands:
"Ipsius quoque nutricis que eum gestabat, cum quodam fastidio manus sibi admotas respuens, oculis in episcopum intendebat, manibus illi applaudebat, ore indesinenter arridebat."82
The Vita Mathildis posterior (The "LaterLife" of Queen Mathilda) offers two intrigu-ing examples of how emotionally bound women could be both to their own children and their grandchildren. Queen Mathilda (ca. 890/895-968) was married to King Henry I of Germany (ca. 876-936) and enjoyed tremendous respect among her contemporaries both as a public figure and as a saintly person. Nevertheless, the anonymous author of her Vita also reveals how much she suffered emotionally when she received news of her son Henry's death in 955:
When the glorious queen learned from the letter that her beloved son had passed away, her visage grew pale; a cold shiver shook her entire body, and she buried her face in the book which she held in her hands. As soon as her shock began to wear off, she suddenly burst into tears and spent the entire day weeping, eating nothing that
79 Quellen zur Alltagsgeschichte im Früh- und Hochmittelalter. Ausgewählt und übersetzt von Ulrich
79 Quellen zur Alltagsgeschichte im Früh- und Hochmittelalter. Ausgewählt und übersetzt von Ulrich