The present volume hopes to be a catalyst of this desired paradigm shift by focusing on a wide range of relevant documents that bring to light the emotive
181 Goldberg, Riddy, and Tyler, 7.
1 8 2 Goldberg, Riddy, and Tyler, 9.
183 Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children, 13.
1 8 4 Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 164.
relationship between parents and children, the awareness of childhood as an individual stage in human development, and the profound concern of the adult world—in the Middle Ages as much as in the Renaissance, and subsequently in the following centuries—for children in their characteristic appearance, behavior, attitudes, interests, needs, and perception of the world.185 The intention, of course, cannot be to paint a rosy, idyllic picture of medieval and early-modern adults loving children, and vice versa. Violence even against the youngest members of society seems to have been, alas, a constant in human history.186 Nevertheless, both aggression and love have always characterized human relations, and the purpose of our collective enterprise is focused on unearthing particularly the world of emotions concerning the relationship between adults and children in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and slightly beyond.
Aries and his students have insinuated a specific trend in the history of childhood, predicated on a progressive development of human emotions which eventually broke free in the eighteenth century or so, thus cementing the traditional, though certainly incorrect notion of the 'dark ages.' But even in the early Middle Ages people seem to have understood and cherished family life and to have taken complete physical and psychological care of their offspring because they loved them and appreciated them for what they were. Undoubtedly, we face more difficulties in discovering relevant evidence from the relatively sparse documents produced during the Carolingian period, for example, than from twelfth- or thirteenth-century documents. But a careful analysis can, as Valerie L.
Garver suggests, shed considerable light on how parents regarded their children and how they took care of them. She examines the broad interest in correcting lay children as well as those bound for the monastic life, which was a dominant concern in Carolingian culture. Insofar as many authors addressed the issue of how to correct and punish children's improper behavior, they obviously, though only indirectly, acknowledged children's lack of self-control and self-discipline, hence also their typical emotional immaturity and playfulness which naturally did
1 8 5 The papers in this volume were developed on the basis of presentations given at an international
symposium on Childhood and Family Relations in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, April 30-May 1, 2004. This symposium was made possible by a generous grant from the Vice President of Research and Graduate Studies, Dr. Richard C. Powell, and by contributions from the University of Arizona Library and Department of Special Collections, the University of Arizona Medieval Renaissance and Reformation Committee (UAMARRC), the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS, at Arizona State University, Tempe), the Departments of German Studies; Judaic Studies; Spanish and Portuguese;
Sociology; English; Anthropology; Russian and Slavic Languages; and the Institute for Children, Youth, and Family, all at the University of Arizona. I owe them all my deep gratitude.
Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents: Child Abuse Through the Ages and Today (New York, N.Y.: Plenum Press, 1990).
not accord well with the harsh rules of monastic life. Whereas adults were expected to suppress their instinctual urges and accept the convent rules as binding for all its members, the children who were supposed to be oblated and other lay children revealed much impulsiveness, outbursts of anger, silliness, and other behavior typical of children. Accounts of holy children who never misbehave shed significant light, at least e negativo, on the reality of children's existence outside of the convent. In other words, the more we hear about discipline, correction, and punishments in these early-medieval sources, the more we can fathom the extent to which the church authorities, who had to struggle with typical childhood problems, and thus, almost involuntarily, reveal significant information about the emotive evaluation of Carolingian children. In other words, they were fully recognized as children much in need of education and direction so that they could grow into the world of adults.
Eva Parra Membrives confirms the findings outlined above through a close reading of the anchorite Frau Ava's Leben ]esu (early twelfth century). The tenth-century nun Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, who never experienced motherhood personally, mostly describes the relationship between the Virgin Mary and her child Jesus in dispassionate terms, which is also the basic pattern in the four Gospels. By contrast, Frau Ava, who introduces herself as a widow and mother of two children, one of whom has already died, decidedly focuses on the intimate feelings of the mother for her son, and vice versa, and injects the biblical account with a new female, i.e., motherly perspective, insinuating to her female audience that they might best identify with Christ's passion through a reflection of their own motherhood and consequently of their love for their children. This love might also have been, as Frau Ava's case indicates, the decisive motivational drive to turn to literary writing.
According to Mary Dzon, many Middle English childhood of Jesus poems, which were based on apocryphal infancy legends and other texts, portray the Jesus child in his natural environment and introduce him as an occasionally quite rambunctious person who runs into conflicts with his neighbors and his parents, especially with his foster-father Joseph. However, Jesus enjoys their love and tender embrace as the case would be in most families both past and present.
Contrary to some contemporary criticism of this "realistic" image of the Holy Family, as Dzon suggests, the various conflict situations and their solutions invited the ordinary reader to identify with Jesus and his parents, leading to a sympathetic form of humble piety because the infinite distance between man and the Godhead was suddenly removed in favor of a sense of community with the hard-working and suffering parents Joseph and Mary, and with the lackadaisical, sometimes even aggressive, but then again very obedient and loving child Jesus. Dzon's findings are richly confirmed by numerous parallels in late-medieval art and
religious literature where a clear sense of the nature, needs, and endearing character of childhood comes forward. Dzon's article beautifully complements the results of Eva Parra Membrives's investigations of Frau Ava's considerably earlier Das Leben Jesu, and reconfirms the value of true interdisciplinary research in Medieval Studies.
Moreover, as we learn in Juanita Feros Ruys's contribution, the famous philoso-pher and theologian Peter Abelard did not hesitate to express his fatherly love for his son Astralabe in his poem Carmen ad Astralabium and clearly indicated to him how much his mother, Heloise, was also filled with strong feelings of maternal love. Certainly, Abelard did not sentimentalize his relationship with Astralabe, and formulated his ideas about childhood and a child's relationship with its parents in highly esoteric, perhaps even abstract terms, almost speaking like a philosopher and teacher to an advanced student. Nevertheless, he specifically acknowledged childhood as a particular stage in human development and recognized children's need for particular care, attention, and emotional embrace by their parents. Similar observations can also be made with respect to the numerous didactic texts composed throughout the Middle Ages, such as Dhuoda's ninth-century handbook of advice for her son William, Albertano da Brescia's thirteenth-century De amore Dei, or Chevalier de la Tour Landry's late fourteenth-century Livre pour l'enseignement de sesfilles. Even though the advice often sounds harsh or unemotional, the fact by itself that these authors, including Abelard, made such effort to provide written guidance for their children reflects a deep concern for their well-being. These writers undoubtedly recognized their children's need for support, direction, and instruction.187
Despite our best efforts to recover the history of childhood in the Middle Ages, however, we have to be careful in the interpretive assessment of specific textual genres and author's intentions. Not all children whom we encounter in hagiographical literature serve the purpose to reflect upon their parents' love and dedication to their offspring. In many saints lives, for example, the young protagonists demonstrate already at an early age their holiness , though it will fully emerge only later in their life. After having analyzed a number of relevant examples in the Golden Legend, David Tinsley turns to Hartmann von Aue's Der arme Heinrich and argues that the peasant's daughter who wants to sacrifice herself for her lord Heinrich because he can be healed only through the heart's blood of a nubile virgin willing to die for him, represents such a case. Her entire behavior, her arguments, and her determination to die strongly indicate her saintly nature, designed by the author in remarkable parallel to a traditional saint's life.
1 8 7 This finds convincing confirmation, though from the perspective of an early modernist, in Allison
P. Coudert's contribution to this volume.
Nevertheless, the young woman's performance has to be read before the foil of traditional children's behavior, which underscores her extraordinary spiritual empowerment through God and basically transforms her into a secular saint.
Although she is introduced as a child, through God's intervention the girl sheds her childish character and would have almost gained the status of a virgin martyr if the protagonist had not suddenly learned his lesson, embraced his destiny, and refused to accept the girl's sacrifice. Subsequently, Heinrich is both miraculously healed and the girl saved from her desire to die on his behalf. Hartmann thereby accomplishes two major goals; first, he reveals a clear awareness of childhood both in its physical and affective dimension; second, he argues that God's greatness could be perceived by people irrespective of their age, gender, race, and social status.
Carol Dover concedes that most courtly romances do not pay much attention to the protagonist's personal development from childhood to adulthood, and instead focus on his or her life at court, in dangerous situations elsewhere, on conflicts in marriage, and on other adult experiences. By contrast, the Old French prose Lancelot offers intriguingly different perspectives, similar to Chretien's Perceval and Wolfram's Parzival in terms of the childhood narrative. Here we are told in great detail how the young boy is kidnapped by a fairy and then raised by her as if she were his biological mother. Dover demonstrates that the poet paid great respect to the emotional bond between the fairy and Lancelot and carefully depicted the boy's growing up both in physical and psychological terms. In fact, this romance provides extraordinary insights into a child's character and also into the adoptive mother's bonding with him, which makes it hard on her at the end when he is about to depart from her to return to the normal world.188 There is a clear sense about the need to keep children at home until they have reached enough maturity, strength, and understanding to venture out into the world, which unmistakably refutes Philippe Aries's thesis even with the reference to this fictional text only. This (adoptive) mother never hides her profound feeling for
"her" child, though she has to allow him room for his personal growth and eventual separation. As any mother would react, this fairy is pained at the thought of Lancelot's leaving her to become a knight at King Arthur's court, but at the same time she is proud of his promising accomplishments, which then makes the next step in Lancelot's life possible. Dover's analysis contributes an important interpretation that solidly refutes Aries's, deMause's, Schultz's and others'
1 8 8 The same observation applies to the anonymous Middle High German romance Mai und Beaflor
(late thirteenth century) where Beaflor refuses the request by the Greek nobles that her eight-year old son Schoiflöris return with them and assume the governance as their ruler, simply because she deems him much too young for such a task (241,12-14).