Although I have consulted mostly literary examples, they contribute significantly to the larger exploration of human emotions and affections in premodern times.152 We may confidently conclude that the paradigm established and popularized by Philip Aries through his famous study L'Enfant et la viefamiliale sous I'ancien rSgime, first published in 1960, now can be discarded. This does not mean that medieval children were regarded and treated just as modern children. Such generalizations do not make much sense in the first place, though James A. Schultz's blanket statement "that their idea of childhood was different from ours and that they may have valued childhood somewhat less than we do. Most cultures in the world, including most premodern European cultures, attach less importance to childhood than we do," seems to be another fallacy resulting from the assumption that the past has always to be viewed through the absolutist lense of otherness.153 Neither then nor today could we claim that childhood was the same in all western societies, among all religious and social groups, and in all families. Children were
149 See, above all, the contributions by Eva Parra Membrives, Diane Peters Auslander, Carol Dover, Marilyn Sandidge, and Jean E. Jost to this volume.
150 The Pearl. Medieval Text with a Literal Translation and Interpretation by Mary Vincent Hillmann (1961; Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967).
151 Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment (Gainesville, Tallahassee, et al.: University Press of Florida, 1995), 48.; see also the comments by William Vantuono in Pearl. An Edition with Verse Translation. Trans. William Vantuono (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 115-16.
152 Emotionalität: Zur Geschichte der Gefühle; see also Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes, ed.
Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, 1 (Dordrecht and Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002).
1 5 3 James A. Schultz, review of Nicholas Orme's Medieval Children in Medievalia et Humanistica 30
(2004): 156-59; here 159.
probably as often abused, neglected, and hurt in the Middle Ages as today.154 By the same token, many medieval parents loved their children as much as modern parents do, but the focus of the public discourse involving childhood has changed dramatically. In fact, the more documents are available from one society—as was the case at least since the twelfth century—the more we learn about all its members, groups, organizations, and administration, hence also about children.155 When Aries argued, for example, that "Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult" (51), he confused the official representation of children in the visual arts, for example, as heirs to the throne, with the emotional dimension of parent-child relations which many marginal accounts of children within courtly romances, chronicles, or on paintings reveal. Aries's paradigm of medieval childhood could only be maintained in its traditional form if a vast majority of sources would indeed confirm his claims. As we have seen, however, any more perceptive examination of vernacular biblical texts, hagiographical literature, courtly narratives, didactic treatises, but also of frescoes, sculptures, burial sites, and children's toys, not to mention official records, sermons, folkloric tales, and legal books, indicates the extent to which many, if not most, parents regarded their children with great love and expressed, for instance, their profound suffering when they had to part from them.156 Evidence for these observations can also be found in a wide variety of historical documents and literary narratives, as suggested by Robert Fossier in his La petite enfance dans VEurope157 and also by Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett in their Enfants au Moyen Age.)5R
Virtually all children were loved from the moment when they were born, and parents dedicated much of their energy and resources to raise their children to grow up into respected members of their society. As Geoffrey of Auxerre emphasizes in his biography of Bernard of Clairvaux, even before the child was born, his "mother loved him more dearly than all other [children], motivated as
154 Pierre Riehe and Daniele Alexandre-Bidon, "Uenfant au moyen age," 28.
155 Mathias Behr, Eltern und Kinder, 229-32, 42-44, et passim.
1 5 ί Κ. C. King, "The Mother's Guilt in Hartmann's Gregorius," Mediaeval German Studies Presented to Frederick Norman on the Occasion of His Retirement (London: University of London, Institute of Germanic Studies, 1965), 84-93. Both Lancelot's mother and his foster mother, the fairy, in the Old French Prose Lancelot and in the Middle High German Prosalancelot reflect profound pain when they lose the child, in the first case because of kidnapping, in the second because the protagonist has grown up and wants to move into the world of knighthood; see Carol Dover's contribution to this volume.
157 Robert Fossier, ed., La petite enfance dans l'Europe medievale et moderne: actes des XVIes Journees internationales d'histoire de l'Abbaye de Flaran, septembre 1994 (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1997).
158 Transl. as Children in the Middle Ages, 1999.
she was by the oracle sent by God."159 Hagiographical literature, though primarily composed for religious purposes, often contains significant information about deep-seated attitudes toward children, though here often children assume the function of saints and martyrs at a very early stage.160 Barbara A. Hanawalt emphasizes that "authors of the hagiographies called upon the everyday experiences of more conventional children to flesh out the childhood years of these miracle workers."161 Moreover, the miracles performed by saints often concern children who were the most accident prone and who therefore caused their parents the most worries, which the narrative accounts demonstrate vividly:
"They speak of the grief of the parents, and they even inform us that a female child of three was still nursing at her mother's breast."162 Furthermore, when children died, parents were often said to express their heavy grief through tears, screams, and laments. As Hanawalt concludes, "The medieval and Renaissance sources make clear the depth of emotion over the loss of children for both mothers and fathers."163 In fact, any careful examination of relevant passages in historical accounts and in literary narratives where mothers and their children interact will demonstrate the extent to which Aries was entirely wrong in his estimation of maternal love, mistaking official statements and visual representations of future rulers, for example, with the actual conditions within families, whether we think of Herzeloyde in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, of Floraete in Gottfried von Strasbourg's Tristan, or the widowed mother in Chaucer's Prioresse's Tale.m The anonymous narrator of the thirteenth-century msere "Dis ist von dem Heselin"
comments, for example, that children can always be delighted with simple gifts and do not care about political, military, and economic aspects. In fact, "ein kint den apfel minnet / und naeme ein ei vürz richste lant"(a child loves the apple and
1 5 9 Here quoted from Peter Dinzelbacher, Bernhard von Clairvaux: Leben und Werk des berühmten
Zisterziensers (Darmstadt: Primus, 1998), 3.
1 6 0 See, for example, David Tinsley's contribution to this volume. Mary Dzon also addresses this issue
in a slightly different vein in her article in this volume.
1 6 1 Hanawalt, "Medievalists and the Study of Childhood," 446.
1 6 2 Hanawalt, "Medievalists and the Study of Childhood," 447; see also Didier Lett, L'enfant des
miracles: Enfance et soceti au moyen age: Xlle-XIlIe siecle. Collection historique (Paris: Aubier, 1997);
see also Pierre Andre Sigal, "Les accidents de la petite enfance ä la fin du moyen age d'apres les recit de miracles," La petite enfance dans ('Europe medievale et moderne, 59-92.
1 6 3 Hanawalt, "Medievalists and the Study of Childhood," 454. Parallel evidence can be gathered in
the huge corpus of late-medieval and earl-modern funeral sermons ("Leichenpredigten"), see my study "Die Darstellung von Frauen in Leichenpredigten der Frühen Neuzeit: Lebensverhältnisse, Bildungsstand, Religiosität, Arbeitsbereiche," Mitteilungen des Instituts fiir Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 108, 3 - 4 (2000): 291-318; here 313.
1 6 4 Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages, 54-56.
takes an egg in the place of the richest country).165 Such a comment would not have made sense if the author could not have relied on his audience's confirmation of this psychologically sensitive observation of children's mentality.166
In the fifteenth century Albrecht von Eyb formulated the significant comment regarding the relationship between parents and children, quoting Ambrosius: "das die oeltern sollen gedencken wie sy auch kinder sind geweßt / so soellen die kinder gedencken / wie sy auch kuenfftig oeltern werden moegen" (that the parents should remember that they also once had been children, and the children should keep in mind that they will be parents one day in the future), emphasizing both obedience to the parents and parents' love of their children whom they ought to respect and acknowledge in what they truly are: children.167
Although many of the literary, religious, and historical sources from the Middle Ages pass over children because the authors are primarily concerned with adult issues, this does not mean at all that childhood was of no concern then. When the focus turns to children, which happens more often than has previously been assumed, then children emerge in their physical, emotional, and intellectual individuality, such as in manuscript illustrations where they stage mock tournaments on a donkey and a dog, play games of bowls, walk on stilts, keep busy with a swing, play board games, and other games.168 By the same token, family relationships seem to have been much more emotional and intimate at least since the twelfth century, than those scholars following Aries's lead have thought possible, especially because medieval society was acutely aware of the fundamen-tal need of establishing and maintaining a community in which children could be nurtured and raised sufficiently to grow into responsible and supportive adults.169
Care for and love of family members in all different stages prove to be hallmarks
1 6 5 Quoted from Novellistik des Mittelalters: Märendichtung. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und
kommentiert von Klaus Grubmüller. Bibliothek des Mittelalters, 23 (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1996), 590-616; here w . 54-55.
1 6 6 Johannes Grabmayer, Europa im späten Mittelalter, 2004, 123: "Die Geschichte der Kindheit als
'Albtraum/ aus dem wir gerade erwachen' (Lloyd deMause) zu betrachten oder Gefühle zwischen Eltern und Kindern erst in den letzten 300 Jahren entstehen zu lassen (Edward Shorter), das ist ein—wenn auch weit verbreiteter—gelehrter Irrglaube, der von den Quellen ad absurdum geführt wird. Die Ambivalenz der Thematik verbietet einfache oder monokausale Erklärungen und Rückschlüsse auf die Eltern-Kind-Beziehung des Spätmittelalters."
Albrecht von Eyb, Spiegel der Sitten, ed. Gerhard Klecha. Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 34 (Berlin: Schmidt, 1989), 426.
See the illustrations, all from manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages, unnumbered, between 70 and 71.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Narratives of a Nurturing Culture: Parents and Neighbors in Medieval England," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1995), ed. Nicole Clifton; here quoted from the online version: http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/voll2/hanawalt.html (last accessed on March 14, 2005).
of medieval society all over Europe, even though the mortality rate of young children was very high.170As much as we have to realize that children were well taken care of, as much do we have to comprehend that widows and grandparents were also embraced by the large family and found the necessary assistance in their weakened stage.171 If the family failed in this task, then hospitals and convents jumped in and offered an alternative, which teaches us to be more careful in the comparison between our present society and the medieval world, which was definitely not as barbaric and primitive as modern writers tend to imagine it.172
Insofar as parents, that is, husbands and wives, from many different social classes and cultural backgrounds demonstrated a considerable degree of emotional attachment to each other, it does not come as a surprise that the same observation can be made with regard to their children.173 A careful examination therefore quickly demonstrates that medieval didactic writers many times discussed children and their specific needs as to education, guidance, and leadership, before they could enter the world of adulthood.174
Considering the intensification of social interactions and the growth of the European society by the end of the fifteenth century, as witnessed by the development of urban life, we can agree with Katherine Lynch that by that time
170 Jean-Pierre Barraque and Adrian Blazquez, "Quelques aspects de l'enfance dans l'Espagne medievale," La petite enfance dans I'Europe medievale et moderne, ed. Robert Fossier, 109-31; here 116, mention the figure of 280 per 1000 children throughout the entire Middle Ages and even until the eighteenth century; accordingly, they assume, in surprising parallel to Philippe Aries, that medieval parents simply accepted the death of their children and hence cared comparatively little about them: "La sagesse commande done d'attendre et de se soumettre ä la volonte de Dieu."
Confusing statistics with actual reflections of people's feelings and attitudes, they argue: "La petite enfance est, done, une periode d'attente qui debouchera, peut-etre dans le meilleur des cas, ä l'integration progressive du jeune dans la vie sociale" (117). The statistics, even in greater detail, are confirmed by Orme, Medieval Children, 113-16, but this does not mean for him that the emotional reactions by the parents were those as proposed by Aries and his students.
171 This topic still represents a considerable desideratum, despite some general studies dealing with the ages of man; see, for example, J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
172 Susan Μ. B. Steuer, "Family Strategies in Medieval London: Financial Planning and the Urban Widow, 1123-1473," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1995), ed. Nicole Clifton; here quoted from the online version:
http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/voll2/steuer.html (last accessed on March 14, 2005).
1 7 3 Behr, Eltern und Kinder, 344-48; Sheehan, Marriage, Family, and Lazv in Medieval Europe, lkl-Π,
observes a remarkable interest in maritalis affectio, which was discussed specifically even among the theologians and jurists. See also Neil Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100-1300 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997).
174 See, for example, Thomasin von Zerclaere, Der welsche Gast, ed. F. W. von Kries. Vol. 1: Einleitung, Uberlieferung, Text, die Varianten des Prosavorworts. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 425,1 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1984), 1189-1322.
the nucleus family also grew in importance within the context of the larger community, being part both of the public and the private.175 It would be the topic of another study to analyze the extent to which marriage regained, maintained, or newly developed affective bonds between husband and wife. But recent research has convincingly demonstrated that affective relationships between both partners grew since the fifteenth century, which also affected parents' attitudes toward their children.176
The subsequent contributions will illuminate the complex of mental-historical perspectives on emotions, affections, feelings, and social structures within the medieval and early-modern family, with the particular emphasis on the child.
Whether they respond directly to Barbara A. Hanawait's appeal or not, all our contributors would certainly agree with the basic premise of her arguments with which she concludes her study: "it is perhaps time to look again at the extent of continuity or discontinuity. Much more could be done with literary evidence than has been done to date."177 The same applies to art-historical documents, archeolog-ical findings, and hagiographarcheolog-ical literature.
Of course, by the same token, a number of literary texts could suggest the very opposite in child-parent relationships, if we think of the many cases of early oblations and child abandonment, such as in Marie de France's lais Le Fresne and Milun. In Hartmann von Aue's religious tale Gregorius, the young boy is entrusted to the water by his own mother because he is the result of incest with her brother, which finds multiple literary parallels, such as in the legend of St. Alban. Many times children are even ordered to be killed (Wolfdietrich Β) or to be sold (Gautier d'Arras's Eracle, the anonymous Floris and Blanchefleur), but in those cases we have to be careful to assess the generic and typological strategies underlying the specific texts and to balance those with the implied assumptions about the emotional relations with the parents. In this sense, the many literary and ecclesiastical
1 7 5 (Catherine Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200-1800: The Urban Foundations
of Western Society. Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, 37 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
1 7 6 Arndt Weber, Affektive Liebe als rechte eheliche Liebe in der ehedidaktischen Literatur der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine Studie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Exempla zum locus Amor Coniugalis. Europäische Hochschulschriften. Reihe I: Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 1819 (Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, et al.:
Peter Lang, 2001); see also Sheehan, Marriage, Family, and Law; Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage; Peter Fleming, Family and Household in Medieval England. Social History in Perspective (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Hanawalt, "Medievalists and the Study of Childhood," 458; see also her fine overview article "The Child in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," Beyond the Century of the Child, 2003; for a remarkable step forward in the direction pointed out by Hanawalt, see Daniel T. Kline, '"My Sacrifice with Thy Blood': Violence, Discourse, and Subjectivity in the Representation of Children in Middle English Literature," Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1997.
accounts of incest ought not to be read as indication of children's proportionately excessive and terrible abuse in the Middle Ages, but rather as religious tales which served the purpose to provide uplifting moral and ethical teachings about falling into sin and recovering from it through repentance.178
As John Boswell has alerted us, child abandonment in those narratives practically always leads to a happy reunion later in life when the parents express their profound suffering because at one point in their past they had tried to get rid of their children. By the same token, child abandonment is consistently regarded with great empathy for the child's hard life, and the poets normally indicate that
"the foster parents or guardians who find the child are wholly devoted to him, in many cases better parents than their biological counterparts."179
At the end of our investigations we might discover that universal statements about childhood, such as Aries's thesis, do not hold water. However, the entirely opposite approach of idealizing the Middle Ages as a time when all parents treated their children with great love and respect, would be just as erroneous.
Consequently, the contributors to this volume focus on individual cases, and examine specific documents with great care, and only the collective effort promises, in its comparative and interdisciplinary approach, to yield the desired result: a more complex, diversified, but probably more accurate understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
This new understanding, however, can only be achieved in close collaborations of literary scholars, historians, art historians, and representatives of other disciplines. Criticizing Aries for his narrow perspective, mostly fed by a modernist agenda which is predicated on the notion that the Middle Ages were 'dark' and 'barbaric' in contrast to our present, will not be effective if we embrace the same methodological and documentary framework as he did. He might have, as P. J. P.
Goldberg, Felicity Riddy, and Mike Tyler suggest, simply looked "in the wrong
Goldberg, Felicity Riddy, and Mike Tyler suggest, simply looked "in the wrong