Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds 9781317168935, 1317168933

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Childhood in History

Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings – each of us – human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices. Reidar Aasgaard is professor of intellectual history at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published numerous books and articles on the New Testament, early Christianity, Christian Apocrypha, Augustine, and children and the family in antiquity. He is director of the research project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe”. Cornelia Horn is full professor of Christian Oriental studies at the MartinLuther-University in Halle, Germany. She has published extensively in the fields of religion, literature, history, and society in the Mediterranean world, focusing in particular on women, children, extracanonical traditions, interreligious relations, and Syriac and Arabic Christianity. Oana Maria Cojocaru earned her PhD degree in intellectual history (Byzantine studies) at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her doctoral thesis, which is part of the research project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe”, deals with representations of children and childhood in medieval Byzantine hagiography.

Childhood in History Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Edited by Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru, to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Aasgaard, Reidar, editor. | Horn, Cornelia B., editor. | Cojocaru, Oana Maria, editor. Title: Childhood in history : perceptions of children in the ancient and medieval worlds / edited by Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017005873 | ISBN 9781472468925 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315571133 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Children—History—To 1500. | Children—Social conditions. Classification: LCC HQ767.87 .C478 2017 | DDC 305.2309—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005873 ISBN: 978-1-4724-6892-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-57113-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Figures Front cover Biographical notes Acknowledgements 1 Introduction

viii ix x xv 1

R E I DA R A A S GA A R D A N D C OR N E L I A H OR N, W I T H OA NA M A R I A C OJ O CA RU

2 Roots of character and f lowers of virtues: a philosophy of childhood in Plato’s Republic

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M A L I N G R A H N -W I L DE R

3 Aristotle on children and childhood

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H A L LVA R D J. F O S S H E I M

4 Roman conceptions of childhood: the modes of family commemoration and academic prescription

56

W. M A RT I N BL O OM E R

5 Greco-Roman paediatrics

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PAT R IC I A BA K E R

6 Ancient Jewish traditions: Moses’s infancy and the remaking of biblical Miriam in antiquity

94

H AG I T H S I VA N

7 Slave children in the first-century Jesus movement M A R I A N N E BJ E L L A N D K A RT Z OW

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Contents

8 Aspects of childhood in second- and third-century Christianity: the case of Clement of Alexandria

127

H E N N Y F I S K Å H ÄG G

9 Children and childhood in Neoplatonism

142

E YJ ÓL F U R KJA L A R E M I L S S ON

10 Childhood in 400 CE : Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine on children and their formation

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R E I DA R A A S GA A R D

11 Children in Oriental Christian and Greek hagiography from the early Byzantine world (ca. 400–800 CE)

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C OR N E L I A H OR N

12 “Pour out the blood and remove the evil from him”: the creation of a ritual of birth (‘aqīqa) in Islam in the eighth century

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M OH A M M E D H O C I N E BE N K H E I R A

13 Conceptions of children and youth in Carolingian capitularies

209

VA L E R I E L . GA RV E R

14 Children and youth in monastic life: Western Europe 400–1250 CE

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BR I A N PAT R IC K Mc GU I R E

15 Childhood in middle and late Byzantium: ninth to fifteenth centuries

240

A L ICE - M A RY TA L B O T

16 New perspectives on parent-child relationships in early Europe: Jewish legal views from the High Middle Ages

257

I S R A E L Z V I G I L AT

17 Voci puerili : children in Dante’s Divine Comedy

273

U N N FA L K E I D

18 Viking childhood Á R M A N N JA KOB S S ON

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Contents vii 19 Reactions to the death of infants and children in premodern Muslim societies: children in Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s plague and consolation treatises

305

AV N E R G I L A DI

20 Perceptions of children in medieval England

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N IC H OL A S OR M E

Bibliography Index

334 371

Figures

1.1 Children’s Games, painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1560). 4.1 The funerary monument of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, who died aged eleven in 94 CE and was celebrated for his virtuosity in Greek and Latin literature (late first century CE). 4.2 An altar of the Claudian era, now in the Vatican Museum, commemorates Maena Mellusa with her two children, three months old and three years old, who died before the possibility of their own free status and education (mid-first century CE). 4.3 The sarcophagus of Marcus Cornelius Statius with scenes from his childhood, whose life stages end with his interrupted education (third century CE). 4.4 Children on the Ara Pacis, Rome (9 BCE). 6.1 Replica of a wall in the Dura Europos synagogue (third century CE). The Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. 6.2 Moses found in the river. Fresco from the Dura Europos synagogue (third century CE).

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63 65 101 101

Front cover

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Walters Ms. W.171, Duke Albrecht’s Table of Christian Faith (winter part), fol. 30r: Seven ages of man, shown as seven heads (detail), 1400–1404. Historiated initial, gold, and paint on parchment. Netherlands. The Walters Art Museum (CC-BY-SA 3.0 license). Boy with dog. Great Palace Mosaic Museum, Istanbul. Photograph © Reidar Aasgaard. Portrait of girl with laurels, first century CE. Paint on wood. Roman, Egypt. Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam. Photograph by Rob Koopman. Wikimedia Commons. The Finding of Moses; A Handmaid of Pharaoh’s Daughter Nurses Moses (detail) by unknown artist, ca. 1400–1410. Tempera colors, gold, silver paint, and ink on parchment. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. Madonna mit dem lesenden Kinde/Madonna with the reading child (detail) by Jan van Eyck, 1433. Oil on wood. Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain. Youth Swinging from a Tree (detail), French manuscript, ca. 1300. Parchment with ink and paint. Gothic. The Walters Art Museum. Creative Commons license. Portrait of Maria Salviati de’ Medici with Giulia de’ Medici (detail) by Pontormo (Italian, 1494–1557), ca. 1539. Oil on panel. The Walters Art Museum. Creative Commons license. A boy shoots an arrow through a ring placed on top of a dome and claims it (detail), fifteenth century. Ink and paint on parchment. Iran. The Walters Art Museum (CC-BY-SA 3.0 license). Stasime, daughter of Stasimos, funerary bust found in Milo, first century CE. National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Photographer: Marsyas. Creative Commons license.

Biographical notes

AASGAARD, R EIDAR (Oslo, Norway) Reidar Aasgaard is professor of intellectual history and history of ideas at the University of Oslo. He has published books, chapters, and articles internationally on the New Testament, early Christianity, Christian Apocrypha, Augustine, and children and family relations in antiquity, and also teaches courses on the history of childhood. He has been director of the research project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe” (2013–2017), funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the University of Oslo. BAKER, PATRICIA (Kent, United Kingdom) Patricia Baker is senior lecturer in ancient history and archaeology and chair of the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent, with her PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. She has published widely on the subject of ancient medicine, including Medical Care for the Roman Army on the Rhine, Danube and British Frontiers from the First through Third Centuries AD (2004, her PhD), and The Archaeology of Medicine in the Greco-Roman World (2013). She has also co-edited books on medical history and archaeology. BENKHEIRA, MOHAMMED HOCINE (Paris, France) Mohammed Hocine Benkheira has been a professor at the universities of Oran, Algiers, and Rouen. Since 1999, he has occupied the chair on Islamic law at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne. He has published two books, L’amour de la Loi. Essai sur la normativité en islam (1997) and Islam et interdits alimentaires. Juguler l’animalité (2000). With Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Jacqueline Sublet, he has published L’animal en Islam (2005), and with the same colleagues and Avner Giladi, La Famille en Islam, d’après les sources arabes (2013). BLOOMER, W. MARTIN (South Bend, Indiana, United States) W. Martin Bloomer is professor of classics at the University of Notre Dame. His chief areas of research lie in Roman literature, ancient rhetoric, and the history of education. His books include Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (1993), Latinity and Literary Society at Rome (1997), The

Biographical notes

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Contest of Language (2005), The School of Rome (2011), and The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Education (2015). COJOCARU, OANA MARIA (Oslo, Norway) Oana Maria Cojocaru has a PhD degree in intellectual history/history of ideas (Byzantine studies) at the University of Oslo (2016). Her doctoral thesis Between Ideal and Ordinary: Representations of Children and Childhood in Byzantine Hagiography (Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries) is part of the project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe”, funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the University of Oslo. Her research interests include gender, family relationships, family emotions, and children’s disabilities. EMILSSON, EYJÓLFUR KJALAR (Oslo, Norway) Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson is professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo (BA, University of Iceland; PhD, Princeton University). He is the author of Plotinus on Sense Perception (1988), Plotinus on Intellect (2007), and Plotinus (2017), as well as numerous articles, mainly on the Platonic tradition. Emilsson is also translator of Plato’s Republic and other dialogues of Plato into Icelandic and of the Sophist into Norwegian (with Håvard Løkke). FALKEID, UNN (Oslo, Norway) Unn Falkeid is professor of history of ideas at the University of Oslo. She has published extensively on Dante, Petrarch, and early modern literature. Among her recent publications are The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch (2105), co-edited with Albert Russell Ascoli, and Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry (2015), co-edited with Aileen A. Feng. Her monograph The Avignon Papacy Contested: Power and Politics in FourteenthCentury Literature (2017) explores how the city of Avignon became a context for textual and intellectual exchanges between different cultures of early modern Europe. FOSSHEIM, HALLVARD J. (Bergen, Norway) Hallvard J. Fosheim is professor in ancient philosophy at the University of Bergen. He has previously held positions as professor II in philosophy at the University of Tromsø, and as director of the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Fossheim has published articles on Plato and Aristotle, as well as on contemporary topics in ethics. Among his main interests is moral psychology. GARVER, VALERIE L. (DeKalb, Illinois, United States) Valerie L. Garver is associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University where she teaches medieval history and studies. She is the author of Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (2009). Recent articles include “Textiles as a Means of Female Religious Participation in the Carolingian World” (2013) and “Childbearing and Infancy in the Carolingian World” (2012).

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She is also the co-editor with Owen M. Phelan of Rome and Religion in the Medieval World (2014). GILADI, AVNER (Haifa, Israel) Avner Giladi is professor at the Department of Middle East History, University of Haifa. His fields of research and teaching are the history of family, childhood, and gender in premodern Islamic contexts. He is the author of Children of Islam: Concepts of Childhood in Medieval Muslim Society (1992), Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Pre-modern Middle East (forthcoming), and La famille en Islam d’après les sources arabes (2013, with others). He is co-editor of Children and Childhood in World Religions (ed. Browning and Bunge, 2009). Giladi has authored various articles and encycopedia entries. GILAT, ISRAEL ZVI (Netanya, Israel) Israel Zvi Gilat is a rabbi and a lawyer with a PhD in law. He is associate professor at the School of Law, Netanya Academic College, Netanya, Israel, and at the School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Professor Gilat’s research interests include Jewish law, family and inheritance law, social legislation, and education law. Gilat has published a book on this topic titled Family Law – The Relations between Parents and Children (Heb.; 2000). GRAHN-WILDER, MALIN (Helsinki, Finland) Malin Grahn-Wilder received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Helsinki and is an independent scholar and lecturer. She is the author of Gender and Sexuality in Stoic Philosophy (2017), and of various articles and encyclopedia entries, with a focus on gender, for example “Psychology of Gender – Ancient Theories” (2013) and “Free Philosophers and Tragic Women: Stoic Perspectives on Suicide” (2014). Her fields of interest are ancient philosophy, philosophy of equality, emotions, and dance. She is a professional dance educator, and has extensive experience of working with children and youth. HÄGG, HENNY FISKÅ (Kristiansand, Norway) Henny Fiskå Hägg is associate professor at the University of Agder, Norway. Her areas of research include early church history, philosophy and theology of the Church Fathers, especially of the Greek Orthodox tradition, and religious praxis and spirituality of the early church. She is the author of Knowing the Unknowable: Clement of Alexandria and the Origins of Christian Apophaticism (2006) and related articles. She is the editor of Language and Negativity: Apophaticism in Theology and Literature (2000) and Attending to Silence: Educators and Philosophers on the Art of Listening (2012, with Aslaug Kristiansen). HORN, CORNELIA (Berlin, Germany) Cornelia Horn, PhD, Dr. phil. habil., is full professor of Christian Oriental studies at the Martin-Luther-University in Halle (Saale), Germany. She studies religion, literature, history, and society in the Mediterranean world.

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Her current work focuses on interreligious relations and social questions. Relevant publications include “Let the Little Children Come to Me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity,” with John Martens (2009); and Children in Late Ancient Christianity, co-edited with Robert Phenix (2009). Other work examines, for example, Palestinian and Syriac Christianity in history and intersections between biblical and Qur’anic traditions. JAKOBSSON, ÁRMANN (Reykjavik, Iceland) Ármann Jakobsson is professor of early Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. He is the author of Í leit að konungi (1997), Staður í nýjum heimi (2002), Tolkien og Hringurinn (2003), Illa fenginn mjöður (2009), Nine Saga Studies (2013), and Íslendingaþ ættir (2014). Furthermore, he has edited six anthologies and three text editions, including Morkinskinna in two volumes for the Íslenzk fornrit series, on his own and with other scholars. He has also published three novels and one collection of microprose. K ARTZOW, MARIANNE BJELLAND (Oslo, Norway) Marianne Bjelland Kartzow is professor of New Testament studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. She has published two monographs (Gossip and Gender: Othering of Speech in the Pastoral Epistles, 2009; Destabilizing the Margins: An Intersectional Approach to Early Christian Memory, 2012), and co-edited several volumes, including Bodies, Borders, Believers: Ancient Texts and Present Conversations (2015). She is currently co-editing (with Valérie Nicolet) an anthology titled The Complexity of Conversion: An Intersectional Approach to (Religious) Change in the Ancient World and Beyond. MCGUIRE, BRIAN PATRICK (Roskilde, Denmark) Brian Patrick McGuire is emeritus professor of history. He holds a D.Phil. in history from Oxford University, United Kingdom (1971). He has had teaching positions at Copenhagen and Roskilde Universities, Denmark. McGuire has authored monographs on Cistercian history and literature. He is also responsible for numerous publications on medieval mentalities and life, in Danish, English, and French. At present he is working on a new biography of Bernard of Clairvaux. ORME, NICHOLAS (Exeter, United Kingdom) Nicholas Orme is emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. He has published widely on children, childhood, education, and schools in the Middle Ages, particularly in medieval Britain. Among his books are Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages (2012), Medieval Children (2001), Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England (2006), and Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (1989). SIVAN, HAGITH (Lawrence, Kansas, United States) Hagith Sivan has written extensively on many aspects of late antiquity and ancient Judaism. Her books include several biographies (Ausonius of Bordeax,

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Galla Placidia); regional studies (Palestine in Late Antiquity); gender studies (Dinah’s Daughters, Between Woman, Man, and God ); edited essays (Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity); and the theme of childhood ( Jewish Childhood in the Roman World, forthcoming). She is especially interested in combing literary, visual, and material culture in order to contextualize the study of Jewish childhood in the widest possible background. TALBOT, ALICE-MARY (Washington DC, United States) Alice-Mary Talbot was director of Byzantine studies at Dumbarton Oaks from 1997 to 2009, and is currently editor of the Byzantine Greek series of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. She served from 1984 to 1991 as executive editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Her research has focused on Byzantine monasticism, hagiography, and family life, especially on women and children. In 2006 she co-organized (with Arietta Papaconstantinou) the Dumbarton Oaks symposium Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium (published in 2009), to which she contributed an essay on “The Death and Commemoration of Byzantine Children”.

Acknowledgements

A great number of people have been engaged in the work on this book. We want to thank the contributors, both chapter writers and respondents, who involved themselves in the project with all their competence and energy. They contributed to scholarly and collegially stimulating discussions during, but also between, the workshops held in Oslo (May 19–23, 2014; April 8–10, 2015). We wish to thank the local and international core group members for their very valuable contributions to the project: Marcia J. Bunge, Christian Laes, Marijana Vukovic, and Ville Vuolanto, as well as the research assistants Camilla Christensen, Rakel Diesen, Lars Fredrik Janby, Cecilie Krohn, and Camilla Roll for their diligence. A special thanks goes to Brian McNeil for very skilled and efficient translation of one chapter (from French, by Mohammed Hocine Benkheira), proofreading of the whole volume, and other valuable input. Thanks also are due to the colleagues at the history of ideas section for keeping up a friendly atmosphere for the work on the book. We are grateful to Routledge for accepting our book for publication and to Michael Greenwood, Kerry Boettcher and the other staff for flexibility and much support during the publishing process. This book is one of the outcomes of the project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe” (2013–2017), hosted by the history of ideas (intellectual history) section at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas (IFIKK), Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo. We are indebted to the Research Council of Norway, the Faculty of Humanities, and IFIKK for providing the funding and other resources necessary to accomplish this major research project and produce this book.

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Introduction Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru

In 1560, the then thirty-five-year-old Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted the picture Children’s Games, which is reproduced here (Figure 1.1).1 It is a remarkable painting. For at least two reasons, it is of particular interest for this book. First, the picture portrays a vast number of children, about two hundred, of both genders, of varying social standing, and belonging to different age groups, from early childhood to late teens. Bruegel shows them as being engaged in a wide variety of games, nearly eighty in total. Through its representation of a large number of children, the painting makes visible what other sources from earlier times mostly conceal – namely that in the ancient world children were omnipresent nearly everywhere. In premodern times, they would have made up about half of the population.2 As far as we know, never before had so many children been gathered together on one canvas, and certainly they had not been represented as being occupied with such playful activities. Although the painting was made at a date that is slightly later than the period that is our concern in this book, many of the games played by the children in the painting had been known already from a thousand or even two thousand years earlier: archaeological remains of knucklebones, depictions of youngsters rolling hoops, and records of children playing role games have come down to us from the very beginning of this long stretch of time – and a large number of the games are still played today. What we see here is children’s culture in full bloom. If we could look further back, about one or two millennia from the time depicted in Bruegel’s painting, we would probably observe much the same: although the clothing or playthings might have had a somewhat different shape, the overall scene would not be fundamentally different. The second point that makes the picture very special is grounded in what is not shown, but what we might expect to have been present: adults are nearly missing from the painting. Indeed, we see a scene that almost exclusively features children.3 Nevertheless, adults are still prominently present in the picture. First, they are there through the painter’s perspective which identifies with that of an adult observer. The artist who arranged the scene, who may or may not have been Bruegel himself, selected the kinds of children and situations to

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Figure 1.1 Children’s Games, painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1560). Source: CQEeZWQPOI2Yjg at Google Cultural Institute, Public domain https://commons.wikimedia. org/w/index.php?curid=22003495

be represented, painted the buildings which had been constructed by adults, and chose the perspective from which the cityscape was to be viewed; it is not a coincidence that the long street to the right leads up to and ends at a church, and that the city square to the left opens onto a rural landscape with trees and water. Although Bruegel decided to remove the grown-ups from the scene, the imprint of the adult world is present everywhere, even down to the role games which many of the children in the picture play. Furthermore, the perspective taken by adults is also present in the audience of the painting, in those who commissioned it, and in those who would have the opportunity to see it. Not much is firmly established here, but it is likely that the painting was produced to fit in with contemporary ideas and ideals about childhood and about children’s education in an urban, middleor upper-class merchant milieu in Antwerp.4 Perhaps the painting hung at an appropriate place, maybe in a private space, such as a dining room or in one of the many private secondary schools established at the time in this city.5 Whether it was indeed ever placed where children could see it we do not know. What we see in the painting, then, is some kind of a children’s world, but it is a world that is still viewed through the eyes of adults and shaped by adult attitudes of what childhood was about, or what it should be about.

Introduction

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The matters briefly reflected on here are among the topics we shall deal with in this book. In this introductory chapter, we will (1) present the general motivations and background for the volume, (2) set out its rationale and distinctive profile, and (3) give a survey of what we regard as some of the book’s main contributions to the study of childhood in history.

Motivations and the state of research The past two decades have witnessed a steady growth of interest in the lives of children and in understanding the experience of childhood in history. At present, this interest is flourishing both within academic research and among the general public. The reasons for this increase are many: over time, there has built up a robust awareness of the fundamental importance of infancy and childhood for the life-long development of human beings. At the same time, an equally strong attentiveness to the vulnerability of children has developed, dependent as they are on adults for their survival and thriving. In a world marked by serious challenges, including ecological crises and increasing social and economic disparities, securing and strengthening the well-being and the rights of children are tasks that are ever more necessary. Indeed, acting on behalf of children has become a central social and ideological concern for many.6 The great social and cultural diversity we experience in our modern societies has made us aware of how the differences among us have been shaped by the past, by the various ethnic, religious, ideological, and other traditions within which each of us has grown up. It is clear to many that, as human beings, we are not only biological or social beings but also historical beings. These are important reasons why the study of children and childhood has become a point of focus in historical research. In addition, however, we have become alerted to the simple fact and paradox that, whereas children at any time in history have constituted a large percentage of every population, their lives and living conditions have hardly been studied. There has been, and still is, a glaring discrepancy between the number and importance of this group of human beings and the extent to which they have been given, or rather have not been given, attention in our studies of the past. In order to do justice to this subgroup of humankind and this area of research, but also in order to advance historical research in general, obligated as we are to produce a nuanced and adequate portrait of the past, a deeper and more extensive investigation of children’s lives and experiences is required. The need for further study is obvious. One final rationale for inquiring into historical children and childhood to be mentioned here is that such an inquiry informs us about other related and crucially important matters. The ways in which any society deals with its less privileged or more vulnerable groups tell us a lot about this society in general: its attitudes, values, and priorities – in fact, its perceptions of the human being in general, and the basis and nature of human dignity. The study of historical children and childhood is an inquiry into the fundamentals of anthropology, of ideas about the human being and her or his status as a living creature. How

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children are viewed and treated serves to uncover value conflicts and power struggles within society at large. For instance, the status allotted to the infant, whether unborn or newborn, compared to the adult reflects perceptions of what constitutes the value of a human being. The varying goals that are set up for the formation and education of children mirror different, and often conflicting, ideas of what or how a human life should be, or what kind of ideals one envisions for society as a whole. Inquiring into historical childhood is an especially appropriate way of approaching the perennial and essential question that no one can avoid in some form or another, namely the question of what it is, in our own view and in that of others, that makes humans – each of us – human. Some of the works that have been published so far are especially apt as guides to the earlier developments and to the present state of research on children and childhood within the history of European civilization, which is the main sphere for this volume. One of these works is the comprehensive sixvolume A Cultural History of Childhood and Family (2010), edited by a diverse set of scholars. The work presents historical overviews of a broad range of topics, such as cultural, social, economic, and political issues.7 Another volume, The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (2013), edited by Paula S. Fass, also gives historical surveys, with its main focus being on the modern period.8 An important early, but still valuable, work is The Child in Christian Thought (2001), edited by Marcia J. Bunge, which deals with central historical figures and movements in Christianity from the New Testament onward.9 The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies (2009), edited by Jens Qvortrup, William A. Corsaro, and Michael-Sebastian Honig, presents surveys of socialscientifically oriented research, and of central areas and approaches to the study of childhood, including the history of childhood. One might also refer to the historical articles of the “Childhood Studies” section of the web-based Oxford Bibliographies, edited by Heather Montgomery, which give systematic overviews, summaries, and assessments of a great number of central scholarly contributions to the field.10 Within the area of childhood history, there has been a marked, and growing, interest in research on premodern history. This has been particularly the case with the Roman period, early Christianity, and the Middle Ages. Research on children and childhood in the Middle Ages was the first area to emerge, largely as a reaction to the very influential but much-criticized book by Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (1962).11 During the last fifteen years, however, research on childhood in the Roman Empire and early Christianity has bloomed, with increasing attention more recently, within the last decade, to late antiquity. Some research – with a few particularly prominent works – has been done on classical Greece, the Hellenistic period, and the Byzantine world, but to a considerably less extent.12 Among important studies in the ancient and medieval worlds which summarize the state of research, one should mention the monograph by Mark Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (2015, second edition), and the anthology edited by Judith

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Evans Grubbs, Tim Parkin, and Roslynne Bell, The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (2013).13 Within the Christian tradition, another book edited by Bunge, The Child in the Bible (2008); a volume edited by Cornelia Horn and Robert Phenix, Children in Late Ancient Christianity (2009); the monograph by Cornelia B. Horn and John W. Martens, “Let the Little Children Come to Me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (2009); and Odd Magne Bakke’s When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity (2005) present broad surveys of this field of research.14 For late antiquity, including Christianity, the volumes edited by Christian Laes, Katariina Mustakallio, and Ville Vuolanto, Children and Family in Late Antiquity: Life, Death and Interaction (2015), and by Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto, Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Antique World (2017) have updated surveys of research and present recent advances, trends, and methodologies.15

Writing children’s history or a history of childhood? The title of this volume, “Childhood in History”, needs some clarification. It can be interpreted in at least two ways: it can refer to perceptions of children and childhood on the part of adults – that is with the focus being on adults’ attitudes, mentalities, conceptions, and ideals. Or it can refer to the history of children –that is it can identify a history that deals with the lives of the children themselves, such as their living conditions, roles, and experiences, and with the social and cultural conditions and environments they encountered in the family and in society. Whereas the latter (to oversimplify) is concerned with “realities”, the former deals with “ideas”. Clearly, however, it is not possible to make a clean separation between these two aspects. For example, the attitudes of adults toward children will influence how adults treat them, and consequently contribute toward shaping children’s lives and even their self-perception. The ways in which children respond to adults likewise impact how adults perceive them and how adults act themselves. Interpreted this way, even “ideas” will form part of what we call reality. Nevertheless, we believe it is generally viable, and for analytical purposes even necessary, to distinguish between the two aspects: seeing children and childhood from the perspective of adults will lead to views that differ significantly from what childhood looks like when it is seen from the perspective of children and of how they experienced their own lives, and not least their relations to adults. The former perspective is shaped in a conversation with ideas reflecting the times and changes with them (Stoic, Romantic, idealistic, etc.); the latter perspective is strongly – but far from exclusively – related to features that are specific to children, such as physical size and ways of reasoning, and the material and social conditions that children at any given time are exposed to, in ways quite similar to other vulnerable individuals and groups in society. In this book, our emphasis is mostly on ideas about children and childhood. As our subtitle indicates, we focus on “perceptions of children in the ancient

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and medieval worlds”. Our aim is to trace significant ways of thinking about children and childhood through this long historical period, with attention to matters such as the interplay between material and social conditions and cultural and ideological conceptions, the interchange of different religious traditions, and continuities and changes, but also to how these patterns may have shaped children’s lives. However, because the two aspects intersect in various ways, we shall later come back to a couple of examples of this. At any rate, our main focus in the following chapters will be on the “history of childhood” perspective. The immediate context for our Childhood in History book has been the project “Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe” (2013–2017).16 The present book, together with the volume Children and Everyday Life edited by Laes and Vuolanto, is one of the central outcomes of this project. Unlike our book here, however, the emphasis of their volume is on the lives of the children themselves. Thus, the two books serve to illuminate the study of children and childhood in history from different yet supplementary perspectives. This difference in emphasis is not merely a matter of editorial choice. It arises almost necessarily from the difference in methodological approach and in the material studied. Whereas the contributions in Children and Everyday Life consider more prominently societal and archaeological evidence of various kinds, the chapters in our volume focus more on literary and related texts. Both material evidence and textual evidence preserve traces of children’s lives, although children and concerns about them appear to have had less access to texts, and less opportunities to shape them, than is the case with material culture. Clearly, some objects and some texts show an awareness of children and of the life stage of childhood – or at least, they were almost unintentionally produced under the influence of thoughts and considerations about children. These, however, had a greater impact on the production of the material environment of the past than on the intellectual environment. It is a task for the present and the future to change this.

The rationale of this book The “Tiny Voices from the Past” project has been hosted by the history of ideas section at the University of Oslo, with about sixty international scholars contributing.17 In the project, the motivation for the present book was to follow up on research that traces perceptions of children and childhood in particular historical traditions, such as some of the volumes referred to previously. Traditionally, research has often dealt with the “intellectual history” or the “history of ideas” of childhood as part of social history and children’s “own history” or “own perspective”, without duly distinguishing between the broader area of social history and the undeniably narrower one of children’s history or the history of children. In addition, research since the 1960s on the history of childhood in the ancient world has generally been driven by discussions of

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ideas about childhood, rather than by considerations of the lives of the children themselves, although this, as we have noted previously, has to some extent changed over the last few years.18 This has frequently caused problems and even confusion. As a consequence of this, in the planning of the “Tiny Voices” project, the decision was made explicitly to separate the two viewpoints from one another, in order to inquire into and discuss them more directly and intentionally on their own specific terms. Thus, unlike Children and Everyday Life, the present Childhood in History volume, in the manner of the history of ideas tradition, aims to uncover aspects of the interplay between thinking and mentalities on the one hand, and contemporary social and cultural contexts on the other hand. At the same time, the volume sketches the longer trajectories in the history of childhood from Plato to the High Middle Ages, paying attention both to continuities and to changes. Unlike most of the books mentioned previously, the focus of this volume is different and broader in scope. Our intention is to inquire into a wide range of fields, such as philosophy, religion, pedagogy, medicine, literature, and history, as well as into a broad range of genres, such as philosophical, theological, and educational treatises; law, art, and poetry; hagiography and autobiography; school lessons; and sagas. We do not, of course, aim to provide a full coverage of our topic within these fields and genres. This would be impossible, because each area and genre would require at least one book, if not several, in order to address our research question exhaustively; in fact, some of the chapters in our volume demonstrate that in certain areas of inquiry, the quest for children and for the concept of childhood have rarely or never been investigated before. Instead, our aim is to bring these diverse fields together and into conversation with one another, in order to see whether an approach that starts from different angles together can throw new light on, and reveal new insights into, the history of childhood. We hope that this may stimulate others to conduct further research on the questions within each of these and other related areas of inquiry. In pursuing our goal, we follow some specific strategies, which are visible throughout, and which are reflected in the form, choice of areas and topics, and selection of contributors. With regard to form, the chapters introduce the readers to earlier studies and findings on children and childhood in each of the areas treated. At the same time, they aim to present fresh research in the form of case studies of primary material. The balance between these two concerns necessarily differs from chapter to chapter, depending, for example, on the greatly varying amount of research that has been carried out in each area. Here we hope to assist our readers, whom we do not expect to be familiar with many or even any of these areas of inquiry, to obtain a fair overview of each field, and to gain some familiarity with its most current scholarship, or with the directions into which research is moving. Within our selection of areas and topics, we focus chronologically on periods that have been considered as foundational for later periods. We decided to highlight times and regions that contribute in significant ways to later

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thinking and attitudes within a European context, which includes aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity, early Judaism and early Christianity, and the Middle Ages, primarily the High and late Middle Ages. These are periods with a relative abundance of sources, whether in the form of texts, objects of art, or archaeological evidence. When considering the High and late Middle Ages, we pay attention to regional and cultural diversity, including, for instance, material from Italian, British, Byzantine, and Nordic contexts, as well as Jewish and Islamic traditions.19 We invited scholars from different disciplines to contribute to the book and challenged them to present material on children and childhood within their specific area of expertise.20 Bringing together scholars from such different fields, both academically and culturally, to produce a volume on children and childhood in history was in several respects an experiment, but one that proved fruitful for those involved. At the same time, the variety in points of departure and expertise remains visible in the chapters. Scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, history, theology, and art history will inevitably approach the topic of children and childhood in different ways. Provided that the dialogue is constructive, this difference is in any case beneficial: given the fragmentary nature of the evidence, an interdisciplinary approach is not only useful but also crucial for a research area such as this.

Chronological limits This book embraces a period of nearly two millennia, from the fifth century BCE to approximately the fourteenth century CE, covering the epochs that are usually referred to as antiquity and the Middle Ages. One might object that the book is overstretching its limits and tries to do too much in its attempt to cover such a long period, and to some extent, we agree. Our aim, however, was to produce a book that would include both antiquity and the Middle Ages in order to probe whether there are elements that link these epochs together with regard to the field of children and childhood: a single book is in a better position to reveal elements of significant continuities that exist across the centuries. Besides this, the changes can be seen more clearly when the epochs are set in relief against one another. When viewed together in one book, the relationship between antiquity and the Middle Ages becomes more clearly visible, not only by way of comparison, but also from the perspective of the history of reception: to what extent and in what ways did adults in the Middle Ages appropriate and make use of perceptions about childhood and children which they inherited from antiquity? Did they continue to use, for example, ideas derived from classical Greek philosophy, such as Platonic and Aristotelian thinking, or from the JewishChristian religious traditions? Thus, including both epochs has been a conscious choice of ours, motivated by a desire to consider trajectories that stretch over a longer period of time.21 It is widely accepted within scholarship that attitudes and mentalities related to family and to intrafamilial relationships are

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characterized, at least as far as premodern times are concerned, by considerable continuity. We shall return to the question about continuity and change later. Some may find the chronological end point of our volume, the fourteenth century, artificial. Our choice is based on the view that, in important respects, this period provided the basic building blocks for what later came to be understood as European culture, and even later and more broadly, as Western culture. For the Renaissance and thereafter, the preceding centuries served as a reservoir for a variety of perceptions of childhood as a stage of life and of children as human beings. To some extent, later thinking and mentalities are variations and reinventions of what can already be found in that early period, although of course these ideas were reshaped to a large extent by the historical, demographical, social, and cultural changes that took place in the later epochs. The study of children and childhood during epochs such as the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment also calls for more research; and several scholars have begun to pay attention to this inquiry.

General features in the contributions of the book It is now time to address in more detail the contributions in our volume. As briefly indicated previously, we have intentionally included a broad range of ancient figures, movements, and traditions, as well as material, both literary and nonliterary. One important reason for grounding our studies in such a wide spectrum of sources is the conviction that such diversity serves to better illuminate the history of children and childhood. Although change is already on its way, earlier studies often focused on specific kinds of sources, whether from a particular tradition, for example Christianity, or from a particular scholarly field, for instance archaeology. By including a wider spectrum of material, we are able to get a fuller picture of ancient perceptions of children and childhood. The simple fact that more types of sources, such as texts, art, and objects, are taken into consideration contributes to a richer picture. Examples of written sources of these kinds in our volume are texts from the philosophical realm and texts from religious traditions beyond the historically dominant Christian tradition. The former are represented by Plato, Aristotle, and Stoic and Neoplatonic material, the latter by writings from mainstream Jewish and Muslim traditions. The focus on classical philosophy and on Jewish and Muslim thinking, and not least on the integration of these two quite different areas in one volume, are far from common in earlier scholarship. In addition, the breadth of sources included brings about a shift of the balance among the sources used by scholars: as far as conceptions of children and childhood are concerned, the traditional “canon” – whether literary, philosophical, religious, or other – has its limitations in value, because it is shaped by its focus on the elite layers of society and with topics and concerns other than childhood being prominent. Expanding the canon to include sources that have been studied less frequently, but which often address more directly issues that are related to children, enables scholars to reconstruct a more adequate picture of the past.

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Instances of this kind are the study of juridical material dealing with children’s rights and obligations, as presented by Valerie L. Garver on children in Carolingian capitularies and by Israel Zvi Gilat in his investigation of Jewish legal views of childhood, or by adducing as evidence children’s school books, as described by Nicholas Orme in his chapter. Such material, which also reflects other social levels or groups beyond the elite, may in fact be more fully representative of views about children and childhood than the more traditional views: often, these newly considered sources contributed more significantly to shaping children’s lives, or even formed part of the lives of the children themselves. We have arranged the contributions in a rough chronology, although some scholars deal with a long stretch of time and with historical developments. This is particularly the case with Hagith Sivan on the biblical figure of Miriam, Brian Patrick McGuire on children in monastic contexts, Alice-Mary Talbot on childhood in Byzantium, and to some extent with Cornelia Horn on children in Oriental saints’ lives. In addition, Avner Giladi’s chapter, which focuses on the mourning of children whose lives were lost in plagues, also presents sources that more indirectly have a long prehistory. A majority of the scholars, however, have their main focus on specific figures and a limited span of time. Those that deal with fairly contemporary traditions also allow for interesting comparisons, such as Henny Fiskå Hägg on Clement of Alexandria and Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson on Plotinus, and the chapters by Horn and Reidar Aasgaard, which have their main focus on Eastern and Western Christianity respectively, but with side glances at the other tradition. Similarly, the contributions that concentrate on the High Middle Ages, for example by Ármann Jakobsson on Viking childhood and Unn Falkeid on Dante, demonstrate how differently childhood is presented in the sources, although these are of a literary nature. At the same time, they have interesting points of convergence, to which we shall return later. Some contributions that deal with very different epochs, such as Patricia Baker on Greco-Roman pediatrics and Talbot on children’s living conditions in middle and late Byzantium, nevertheless offer points of comparison, because they focus on related topics. Many of the scholars who contributed to this volume have already published extensively on the topic of historical childhood. Here, they aim at synthesizing and developing their previous research further, or they push on with new material within their specific area of interest. Others, however, have entered a new area in relation to their particular field of expertise. Interestingly, several of them note how little research on children and childhood has in fact been carried out with the starting point in their sources, which are in fact texts that otherwise have been studied well, and even extensively. Looking at the sources with a different set of glasses, so to speak, can open up a new area of inquiry into this material. This seems to be the case in particular with regard to the more philosophically oriented chapters, notably by Malin Grahn-Wilder on Plato, Hallvard J. Fossheim on Aristotle, and Emilsson on Plotinus. Yet it may

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also be the case with material from Muslim and Jewish traditions, as exemplified by Mohammed Hocine Benkheira’s presentation of an early Islamic birth ritual and by Gilat on children’s legal rights and obligations. Approaching these areas from the perspective of children and childhood makes it clear that more research is needed – and not only for the “childhood cause” but also perhaps even for a fuller understanding of these sources themselves. We might ask what the ideas about children imply for the conceptions of these sources with regard to questions concerning the human being and the value of human life in general. Several chapters, for example those by Baker and Talbot, show that both ancient and medieval writers engaged in lively discussions about how to distinguish between age stages within childhood, taking their point of departure from biological, psychological, and social criteria.22 Clearly, they were very attentive to such matters. In our volume, however, we do not deal more broadly with this topic. In general, we consider the years that belong to the period from conception or birth to a person’s early teens to belong to the period of childhood. The contributions in this book highlight central issues with a view to both approach and substance. They should be read with attention to the specific topics and sources each of them deals with and on the basis of their own merits. Rather than summarizing or discussing each chapter separately, we shall now draw attention to what we consider to be some important issues when one reads the contributions in relation to one another. What common concerns become visible about children and childhood? What ideas emerge concerning children as human beings? How do the scholars look upon the matter of historical development? What might be paths to follow for further research and for future research collaborations? The areas we touch on briefly are methodology, some topics of common interest and concern, and the question of continuities and changes over time. Our reflections are, of course, preliminary and fragmentary. Others may see things differently, or see other things.

Methodology As we have noted previously, characteristic of several of the contributions to this volume is that they approach their sources with new glasses – that is with a view to children and childhood. In itself, this is an important methodological turn: the fact that experts contextualize childhood within their field and their distinctive intellectual traditions is likely to lead to interesting findings, which doubtless will contribute to the study of childhood in history, and may possibly even be of value for research within their own specific research area more generally. Like many of the other contributors, most of these too employ well-tried approaches in the study of their sources, whether they analyze them from a historical, philosophical, theological, gender, or literary perspective.

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Some contributors use approaches and sources from different disciplines, and thus cross disciplinary boundaries quite actively. This is evident in the chapters by W. Martin Bloomer and Sivan, who employ both literary and art historical material in support of their analyses: Bloomer in his study of Roman ideas and ideals in the formation of children, and Sivan in studying the historical transformations from antiquity to the Middle Ages in the character of Miriam, Moses’s sister. Although this particular combination of approaches is not new, it helps significantly to fill out and contextualize their respective topics more broadly. In similar ways, Talbot makes extensive use of insights from medicine, archaeology, and social history in her portrait of children’s lives in middle and late Byzantium. Some scholars make use of less conventional tools, with elements borrowed from the field of psychology. This is, for example, the case with Jakobsson in his presentation of the Saga of Egill, utilizing social history and social psychology, and with Falkeid in her analysis of Dante’s transformations in the Divine Comedy; she draws on developmental psychology, even if she does not articulate this explicitly. Interestingly, both of these texts from the High Middle Ages, though geographically very far apart, show great interest in the personality and psychology of their very different characters. A more recent and fresh methodology in research on childhood is the intersectional approach. This is central in the chapter by Marianne Bjelland Kartzow. It is also occasionally (but less explicitly) touched on in other contributions. Intersectionality, which is an amalgam of approaches, aims at drawing attention to the variety of perspectives one needs when inquiring into historical childhood, with regard both to the history of childhood and to children’s history. In either case, whether the primary focus is on conceptions or on some kind of reality, diversity needs to be taken into account. Factors such as social class, gender, ethnicity, health, and age, and the ways these factors are configured in the sources, must be considered both when studying the adult beholders and their conceptions of children, and when studying actual children living their individual lives. Finally, a few contributions take a children’s perspective in parts of their analyses, by focusing on children as agents and on children’s own experiences.23 Examples of this are to be found in the chapters by Sivan, Horn, Aasgaard, and Jakobsson. Sivan interprets the wall paintings of the Dura Europos synagogue with a view to how children may have seen them. Horn reflects on the psychological impact that the loss of parents would make on children who joined groups of ascetic Christians. Aasgaard and Jakobsson refer to material that documents children’s own experiences, albeit as mediated through adults: the former in his analysis of Augustine’s descriptions of his childhood, and the latter in an authentic saying of the child-king Hákon, which immediately became proverbial. These examples show one of the reasons why it is not possible to distinguish clearly between the “history of childhood” and “children’s history”: adults have at all times in history attempted to take a children’s perspective of the world, and have probably sometimes also succeeded in doing so.24

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Topics of common interest and concern The chapters cover a wide range of material and topics with a diversity of approaches, and reflect a variety of ideas and attitudes to children and childhood. Even so, there are a number of points on which the chapters converge, sometimes in surprising ways. Here, we will elaborate a few of these points; some will be central concerns in the respective chapters, whereas others will be more tangential. It is important to note that several contributors deal with the character formation of children. This is a central concern in the most philosophically oriented chapters. Unsurprisingly, Grahn-Wilder’s chapter on Plato and Fossheim’s on Aristotle point out several similarities between the two ancient philosophers, not least in their understanding of the soul and their use of agricultural metaphors of growth to describe children’s development of character. But the chapters also indicate differences: whereas Grahn-Wilder holds that, for Plato, a child’s character grows out of some kind of innate capacity, Fossheim emphasizes that in Aristotle’s view, children are characterized by a lack of character – although they do have a potential, a promise, for character. Emilsson presents the Neoplatonic variant of this process, in which the child receives his or her own rational soul at birth, but a soul that, at the shock of coming into this world, experiences a lapse from which it will have to recover by means of a demanding process of formation. We should note that the embryo, according to Neoplatonic thinking, is without a soul, whereas it is generally viewed in contemporary Christianity as a person, as created in the image of God.25 The chapters by Horn and Aasgaard on late antique Christianity also deal with character formation. Interestingly, they appear to be in tension on this matter: with Augustine as a case in point, Horn considers his view of children and their potential for character development as more negative than Aasgaard. She holds that the example of Augustine reflects a difference in anthropology between the East and the West, at least as far as later reception history is concerned. The place of and attitudes toward children’s autonomy, or self-determination, are discussed in a number of contributions. McGuire and Horn focus on very different geographical areas and historical periods, but with interesting points of intersection, particularly in relation to children’s involvement in monastic and ascetic settings. Education as an organized activity is taken up in several chapters. The need and importance of this for children’s formation, as well as for securing the transmission of cultural values across the generations, are seen to be important in different traditions; this is particularly highlighted by Bloomer, Hägg and Aasgaard, and Gilat for Roman, Christian, and Jewish traditions, respectively. In comparison, the apparent lack of such a focus in the Neoplatonic tradition, as signaled by Emilsson, is worth noting. Why this is so, and whether this is due to a lack of surviving sources or a lack of interest in theoretical reflection

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on this, of interest in early education, or of children and childhood in general are questions that deserve further scrutiny. Closely related to the topic of education, and more specifically to that of educational tools, is the question of corporal punishment. Although the necessity of chastising children physically was commonly accepted and applied in the ancient and medieval worlds, some of the chapters show that reservations and protests against such practices crop up in very different historical contexts, most notably in the works of Quintilian, Augustine, Anselm, and Ensfrid. Emotional aspects, particularly related to death and mourning, turn up in chapters dealing with different areas and periods. The impact that the loss of children had on parents, and the strategies used to handle such dramatic experiences, can be seen in the chapters by Bloomer on Roman commemoration, by Talbot on Byzantine parents’ grief at the loss of offspring, and not least in Giladi’s material from Muslim tradition reflecting the mourning for children who died in the many plagues during the Middle Ages. Here, Giladi points to the many similarities in the strategies of consolation across times and traditions. Issues of death and mourning are also taken up by Horn, but – importantly – from the opposite perspective, by asking what consequences parents’ deaths had for their children and their development. During antiquity and the Middle Ages, losing parents at an early age was no less common than losing children, but the sources describing the former have been little studied and discussed in research. Whereas medical texts referring to children and children’s diseases have received some attention, as exemplified in this volume particularly by Baker and Talbot, legal texts have been less studied. It is interesting to see how the otherwise very diverse chapters by Garver on Carolingian capitularies; by Gilat on Jewish law, particularly Maimonides; and by Orme on criminal law in medieval England all demonstrate the importance of studying this literary genre. Irrespective of whether the laws mirrored reality or ideals, or what influence they had on practices toward children, the legislation also reflects a concern to take care of children’s interests, both materially and mentally; the latter is particularly seen in the legal discussions of the age at which children could be seen as accountable and responsible for their actions or possessions. The topic of gender and childhood, such as ideas about biological, social, and cultural differences, is not taken up systematically in any of the chapters.26 The crucial nature of this topic in a child’s life makes it impossible to deal with gender in any depth in this book. It has, however, been a central concern for many of the contributors – implicitly for some, but explicitly with others, with some focusing mainly on girls, others on boys. Girls are in focus particularly in the chapter by Sivan, and boys in the chapters by Bloomer, Benkheira, Gilat, and Jakobsson. As for methodology, gender has a central role in the intersectional approach of Kartzow in her chapter. Rituals, for example transition rites, clearly played an important part in structuring the lives of children, but also in shaping attitudes of adults toward childhood as a stage of life. In Christianity, baptism has a special position. The

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high value placed on baptism is particularly touched on in the chapters by Hägg, Talbot, and Orme, and – from a somewhat different perspective – in Falkeid’s discussion of the fate of unbaptized children in Dante’s Limbo. As a parallel to Christian baptism and Jewish circumcision (which is not dealt with here), Benkheira presents and discusses the Muslim ‘aqiqa birth ritual, with a focus on its origin, development, and function. Further research on the ideologies, practices, and customs associated with the various rites of passage in ancient childhood will certainly be valuable. Finally, as we have already noted previously, descriptions of children and childhood in the ancient sources often serve other purposes. Sometimes, such descriptions reflect specific perceptions of what a human being or a human life is considered to be. At other times, children and childhood are seen as symbols for some particular social or cultural values. In both cases childhood is used as a lens, or a window, on to something else. In the ancient sources, adults do show a genuine concern for children and their welfare. In a sum, this is central in the picture that emerges from the contributions in our book. At the same time, however, this concern is strongly conditioned by what adults themselves see as fundamental guidelines in their own lives. In one way or another, this too becomes visible in the chapters of this volume: children are seen as the promise of a future for their family or their society, as conveyors of specific religious and cultural traditions, as showroom windows that display a family’s success to the outside world, as providers of social security for elders, as playmates for adults in need of diversion, as human beings who are born as malleable clay, or as seeds sprouting and growing according to some specific model – examples of these and other ideas are to be found in all the chapters.

Continuities and changes over time? When approaching the question of continuities and changes in perceptions of children and childhood over time, it is crucial to be aware of what specific aspects of continuity and change are in view.27 Do we have perceptions of children as human beings, of their human value compared to adults, particularly in view? Or children’s nature and potential? Their roles in the family? Their functions in society? Or even their position in the order of the world, in relation to God or the gods? Clearly, all these aspects – and others – are relevant for assessing the issue of continuity and change. What kind of implications we draw will vary depending on our emphasis. To a considerable degree, our ideas about continuity and change will also be influenced, whether consciously or not, by our own value judgements, by what we consider to be important, good or bad, desirable or undesirable. In addition, phenomena such as perceptions and attitudes are notoriously difficult to measure: how representative are the sources studied for a particular period or area? Even the category of “continuity” is problematic, because what looks like similarities across time may not reflect long-term traditions or trajectories, but only be coincidental, for example conditioned by similar social and economic circumstances.

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Despite these caveats, it remains possible to point to some such historical trends. For more recent periods, for example, most scholars hold that the perceptions of childhood during the periods of the Enlightenment and Romanticism were prominently shaped by the ideas characteristic of these periods in general. For earlier periods than these, and in particular for some periods, making such assumptions is more difficult, not least due to a scarcity of the sources, or of research. Some of the contributions in our volume point to certain changes, however. For example, McGuire argues that a new attitude toward children, with a stronger respect for their integrity, developed during the twelfth century. In a similar way, Orme presents evidence from England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that seems to show a heightened attention to children’s immaturity, and to the consequent limitations in their responsibilities. The two scholars appear to differ somewhat, however, in their view of the causes for such developments: whereas McGuire focuses on changing attitudes toward anthropology, Orme emphasizes economic and social changes. Falkeid points to research on fourteenth-century Italy that shows a marked appreciation of childhood as a life stage with its own characteristics.28 In the case of late antiquity, Hägg supports the idea that the introduction of Christianity led to a higher valuation of children as human beings and a stronger attention to their vulnerability; this is particularly exemplified in the rejection of infant exposure and of the sexual abuse of youngsters.29 Somewhat in tension with the aforementioned views, Aasgaard argues that differing ideas about children as human beings could coexist at the same time, even within the same ideological movement, for example Christianity, and also that such different attitudes would recur in other historical contexts, although in new shapes.

Conclusion In this introduction, we have aimed at drawing attention to why the history of ancient childhood should by studied, how this may be done, what the present state of the field is, and what the prospects for further research can be. Taking our point of departure in the contributions of this volume, we have given a number of examples of sources and of topics that will be useful for such a study, and we have also presented approaches that can strengthen such an inquiry. As we have indicated, there are many areas that are in need of further research, whether according to region (geographically), ideology (philosophically, religiously), in terms of topics and historical periods, or otherwise. In the chapters that follow, this will be spelled out in a variety of directions and in far more detail. Our intention here has been to alert ourselves and others to our own preconceptions: to the experiences, value judgements, and perceptions of history and of the world that we all – consciously or subconsciously – bring to the study of childhood and, in our case, of premodern childhood. These are preconceptions that we should strive to uncover: we are all part of history ourselves, and each one of us has been a child. And to some extent, we still remain children.

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Notes 1 We are grateful to Anne Marie W. Eilertsen, Christian Laes, and Ville Vuolanto for their very valuable input for this chapter. For a thorough analysis of the painting, its background, audience, and reception history, see Orrock 2012, with references. 2 This, of course, depends on where we set the age limit between children and adults. 3 The exceptions are a few adults who facilitate the children’s play; Orrock 2012: 16–17. 4 See Orrock 2012: 1–4, 8–14. 5 Ibid., 3–4, 11–14. 6 In the public arena, this is strongly reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx) and in its reception history. In research, this is seen, for example, in Qvortrup et al. 2009. 7 Foyster and Marten 2010. Volumes 1 and 2 deal with antiquity (eds. Harlow and Laurence) and the Middle Ages (ed. Wilkinson), respectively. 8 Fass 2013. 9 Bunge 2001. 10 See http://oxfordbibliographiesonline.com. 11 Ariès 1962 (originally in French, Ariès 1960). For a bibliographical survey, see http:// w w w.ox fordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791231/obo9780199791231-0091.xml. 12 The comprehensive online bibliography edited by Ville Vuolanto and others, Children in the Ancient World and the Early Middle Ages: A Bibliography (Eighth Century BC – Eighth Century AD), displays the growth and variety of research within this field; see http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/research/projects/childhood/index.html. 13 Other works that also deserve mention are Harlow and Laurence 2010; Wilkinson 2010; and Laes 2011. 14 Bunge 2008 (with Fretheim and Gaventa); Horn and Phenix 2009; and Horn and Martens 2009. A volume that will present an updated and extensive overview of research, edited by Sharon Betsworth and Julie Faith Parker, is scheduled for 2018; see Betsworth and Parker (2018). 15 Laes and Vuolanto 2017b. 16 The project website can be accessed at http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/research/ projects/childhood/index.html. The project has been funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo. Locally, at the history of ideas/intellectual history section, the project group has consisted of a postdoctoral scholar, two PhD students, and the project leader, with a core group of international scholars having a special responsibility for the edited volumes. 17 A third volume is Nordic Childhoods 1700–1960: From Folk Beliefs to Pippi Longstocking, edited by Reidar Aasgaard, Marcia J. Bunge, and Merethe Roos; cf. Aasgaard et al. 2017. 18 See the introductory chapter by Laes and Vuolanto (in Laes and Vuolanto 2017b); also Harlow et al. 2007. 19 Although there was obviously a rich regional and cultural diversity during antiquity too, we consider this less relevant than for the historical periods from the Middle Ages onward. 20 Most of the scholars have taken part in both conferences held in Oslo (May 19–23, 2014; April 8–10, 2015), where they presented preliminary versions of their chapters, and also responded to and discussed the contributions of the others. 21 For a similar approach, see the publication series based on the Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages conferences (http://www15.uta.fi/trivium/passages). See also the discussion in Katajala-Peltomaa and Vuolanto 2013: 21–4. 22 See Rawson 2003; Laes 2011; and Parkin 2013 for detailed presentations of ancient views about this.

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On this, see also Aasgaard 2015b, and many of the chapters in Laes and Vuolanto 2017a. For more on this, see Laes and Vuolanto 2017b. See, for example, Lindemann 1995; also Bakke 2005: 110–39. Whereas research on women and gender has been at the center of many scholars’ attention for more than half a century, research on children and childhood has lagged markedly behind, but now profits greatly from the approaches used and insights gained in the field of gender studies. 27 For similar reflections, see Bakke 2005: 280–6; Golden 2015: 141–53. 28 All three explicitly reject Philippe Ariès’s view that childhood was unrecognized as a distinct stage of life in the Middle Ages. 29 Hägg supports here the view of Bakke 2005.

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Roots of character and flowers of virtues A philosophy of childhood in Plato’s Republic Malin Grahn-Wilder

“Do you not know, then, that the beginning of everything we undertake is most important, especially in any young and tender creature? That it is most malleable and takes the impression that one wishes to stamp upon it.”1 Thus speaks Socrates in the Republic of Plato (ca. 429–347 BCE), in a part of the dialogue that discusses the early education of the rulers of the ideal state.2 As this quotation indicates, the discussion attaches great importance to childhood. One’s early years of life seem to have a crucial significance, because one’s development during this phase lays the foundations for later growth into virtuous and rational adulthood. This chapter explores the views about children and childhood in Plato’s Republic. Plato’s views on education have been the subject of a considerable amount of research. Christopher Gill has investigated Plato’s consideration of the education of character (1985). Gabriel Richardson Lear has analyzed the importance of beauty for the learning process (2006). Malcolm Schofield has paid attention to the unique position of music in early education (2010). However, it is striking that up to now, there has hardly been any scholarly work that focuses particularly on children.3 One might object that the reason for this is that Plato did not formulate a theory of childhood and that most of his views about children are expressed in the context of education. These objections are legitimate – it is correct to state that Plato did not explicitly present a theory of childhood and did not seem particularly interested, for example, in children’s experiences. However, given the immense importance of childhood for the Platonic educational view, it is crucial to take children as the focal point of philosophical inquiry. Furthermore, focusing specifically on children makes us pose new and original questions to this classic text that has already been the object of so much comment. Thus, reading the Republic from the point of view of children opens up new perspectives on the text itself and increases our understanding of the position of children in ancient philosophical theories.4 Before we enter the Republic from the novel point of view of children, I will first briefly situate my analysis within the context of the philosophy of childhood and clarify what kinds of problems are at stake when we approach childhood philosophically. In my reading of the Republic, I will, first, discuss the family reform and children’s position in the ideal state. Second, I will explore

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Plato’s views of children’s capacities and educability. Third, I will scrutinize the process of character formation and acquiring virtue. In Plato’s Republic, children are educated for a reason: in order to develop a perfectly just state. According to Plato, a perfectly just state consists of perfectly virtuous citizens, and that is why the moral development of children is so crucial. This leads me to investigate the ideal or goal of childhood: how does the educational process attempt to modify children, and why? In the course of my analysis, I will emphasize the role of the arts (poetry and music) in the process of education. I shall show how the arts are presented as the optimal way of preparing the child’s soul for the later intellectual education. My reading suggests that we should rethink the relationship between emotions and intellect, because, when we read Plato carefully, we see how the development of the latter is actually based on the development of the former. In the context of arts education, I also draw evidence from the later Platonic thinker Plutarch (b. ca. 46–47 CE). As I will show, both Plato and Plutarch use an agricultural analogy to illustrate the process of character development. Plutarch, however, gives us even more insight into an important question that remains somewhat obscure in Plato’s Republic – namely how exactly should we understand the role of music and poetry in the process of cultivating virtuous characters? I also claim that the connection between the arts and character formation is one of the most topical ideas in Plato’s Republic from the point of view of contemporary discussions of childhood and pedagogy. Admittedly, when we read Plato’s Republic from the point of view of children, it is easy to find positions that from today’s perspective are clearly unacceptable and completely absurd, such as the advice to kill all the children with a wrong genetic heritance, or to create fearless children by bringing them to war. Such positions should neither be ignored nor explained away. But these proposals are separate from the philosophical discussion of character formation, and these views do not presuppose each other. Thus, in order to open up historical and philosophical perspectives for the Western conception of childhood, I shall keep the main focus of this chapter on the philosophically relevant question of the child’s character and how it could or should be affected through the arts in early education.

Exploring the territory: childhood and education as philosophical questions Before we enter the Republic from the point of view of children, a few words should be said about the territory in which such a philosophical inquiry takes place. Above all, it is important to differentiate between a philosophy of education and a philosophy of childhood. The philosopher Harvey Siegel defines the philosophy of education as “that branch of philosophy that addresses philosophical questions concerning the nature, aims, and problems of education.” In addition, this field of philosophy investigates questions such as the criteria of evaluation, the institutions and authorities of education, moral education, and so on.5

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Plato has often been placed in the context of a philosophy of education. Indeed, Socrates and Plato are frequently spoken of as the forefathers of this branch of philosophy within Western thought. Scholars in the fields of philosophy and pedagogy have paid attention in particular to the so-called Socratic method presented in many of Plato’s dialogues, a method based on engaging in a dialogue with the “student” (keeping in mind Socrates’s refusal to call himself a teacher, cf. e.g. Apology 33a–b), and posing questions that make the students, through the process of answering, become aware of their beliefs and fallacies of thought.6 For example, by applying the famous method of questioning (elenchos) to the young, up-and-coming politician Alcibiades, Socrates makes him realize that he has no clear conception of those things that he seeks out to understand, as one who is going to exercise political power. Answering Socrates’s questions makes Alcibiades contradict himself. Finally, he realizes that he does not know what justice is, and cries out, “By Heaven, Socrates, I do not even know what I mean myself!” (Alc. 1.127d).7 Socratic education is often presented, in a nutshell, as a process of activating the student’s own thinking, rather than one where the teacher embodies the authority of knowledge by handing down his wisdom to the student. A central achievement of this type of pedagogy is an increasing self-knowledge, not the knowledge of a subject matter or topic that is external to the self. This educational ideal corresponds to the popular image of Socrates philosophizing in the agora, eager to engage in a dialogue with anyone who wants to accept the philosophical challenge. Yet this is not quite the image of Socrates that we encounter in the Republic. Here Socrates, most of the time, is speaking rather than asking questions. He seems to be making very strong statements, instead of maintaining the role of the one who does not have knowledge but is in search of it.8 According to Gill, the Republic combines the Socratic model of education with the traditional Athenian model. In other words, in this work, the dialectical model of learning is not enough. A state-governed systematic program is required as well.9 When the Republic is placed in the context of a philosophy of education, one has to carefully scrutinize this educational program with its goals and methods, rather than analyze the work as a pedagogical model for activating philosophical thought. In their entry on the philosophy of education in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the philosophers D. C. Phillips and Harvey Siegel point out that the most important questions in this field “were addressed in one of the early masterpieces of the Western intellectual tradition – Plato’s Republic”. The Republic thus holds an unquestionable place among the early works of the Western philosophy of education. More recently, the philosophy of childhood has established itself as a research area in its own right and has distinguished itself from other related fields. Gareth Matthews, in particular, has had a remarkable impact on the growing recognition of the importance of children and childhood as a topic of philosophical investigation. Matthews’s works Philosophy and the Young Child (1980) and Philosophy of Childhood (1994) pay particular attention to children’s

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own thinking, children as “natural philosophers”, and how we as adults think about children. In addition to these questions, the philosophy of childhood has a general interest in philosophical views of children and their capacities, as well as in childhood as a special phase in human life. Matthews and Amy Mullin give the following definition in their entry on the philosophy of childhood in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The philosophy of childhood takes up philosophically interesting questions about childhood, changing conceptions over time about childhood and attitudes toward children; theories of cognitive and moral development; children’s interests and children’s rights, the goods of childhood; children and autonomy; the moral status of children and the place of children in society. Matthews and Mullin also pay attention to moral development as a central topic in the philosophy of childhood. They mention Plato’s Republic as an early work that presents a curriculum for developing virtue. However, they do not explore more deeply how the Republic presents the connection between childhood and virtue. I will address this problem in the following sections.

Children of the totalitarian state In The Open Society and Its Enemies, the philosopher Karl Popper presents a celebrated critique of Plato’s ideal state as a totalitarian system. Popper claims that Plato’s political system builds on two main principles: strict class-division and “the identification of the fate of the state with that of the ruling class”.10 These are building blocks for a closed and, in Popper’s words, purely totalitarian political program. In his article “Plato’s Totalitarianism”, the Plato scholar C.C.W. Taylor agrees. According to his definition, totalitarian states are characterized by authoritarianism (where ordinary citizens cannot affect the political decision-making processes in any significant way) and ideology (a pervasive set of values dictated from above and institutionalized to govern public and private life). Taylor concludes, “It can hardly be disputed that by these criteria the ideal state of the Republic is a totalitarian state.”11 The aspect of totalitarianism that is particularly important from the point of view of this chapter is the way in which the ideal state governs the family, and thereby the immediate conditions of the lives of children. Probably one of the best-known political reforms of the ideal state is the demolishing of the traditional family as a social, juridical, and economic unity. When describing how the life of the ruling class should be organized, Socrates declares that the proverb “good things of friends are common” should also apply to the marriages and families of the rulers. In other words, they should share their spouses and children (423e–424a). Later he repeats this proposal in the following words: “[T]hese women shall all be common property of all the men: none shall live with any man privately. Their children too shall be held in

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common and no parent will know his or her offspring, nor any child his or her parent” (457c).12 Thus, the children of the ruling class would grow up without ever getting to know their biological parents. The focus in the Republic is so strongly fixed on the ruling class that the dialogue is not very specific with regard to the conditions of life of “ordinary people”; presumably their families stay intact. Similarly, childcare and education are envisaged as detached from the family and assigned to appointed professional nurses and teachers. The private family is replaced by the entire community of rulers, which is presented as a large family. Instead of having two parents, the ruling-class children regard all the male guardians as their fathers and all the female guardians as their mothers. The proposal to do away with the traditional family is connected to the wider reform of private ownership, of which private families are allegedly a particular case. One motivation for this reform is to end jealousy and other problems that arise when people cling to things as their own, their families included (464d). Not only child-rearing, but also child-making, falls completely under the power of the state. This shows how the Republic clearly fills Taylor’s aforementioned criteria of totalitarianism as affecting citizens’ private lives. Even the most intimate parts of life, sexuality and procreation, are subordinated to the interests of the state. What is often called the eugenics of the Republic signifies creating a cunning and complicated process of fraud and matchmaking to induce the best guardians to copulate with each other, in order to create children with the best possible genetic heredity (458a–461e; cf. 496a ff.).13 The biological mothers collectively breastfeed all the newborns of the ruling class, but the text mentions specifically that they should not be allowed to recognize their own infants. The remainder of the care of infants is left to nurses (including the “trouble of wakeful nights”) in order to make child-rearing “a great relief” for the female guardians (460d). The dialogue pays no attention to the emotional aspect of this arrangement, whether from the point of view of the mother or of the child. These suggestions point to a more general feature of the way in which children and childhood are discussed in the Republic. The philosopher Julia Annas has argued that Plato’s Republic cannot be called a feminist work because it is not interested in women at all: the reforms concerning women are not intended to make their life better, but to serve the utility and functionality of the state as a whole.14 A similar point can be made with regard to children. The discussion is dictated by its end. Children are important, not in their own right, but as the future citizens they will be one day. For the modern reader, perhaps the most disturbing part of the discussion of children in the Republic is, however, when the eugenic plan leads the character Socrates to suggest that children with inferior genetic heredity or with birth defects (anapêros, literally: maimed, mutilated, crippled) should be “concealed in some secret out of the way spot, as is appropriate” (460c).15 In passages like this, it is obvious that the child as such has no value in the scheme of the Republic, but is seen only as a resource for the functioning of the state.

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The family reform, together with the eugenic practices and the gruesome treatment of unwanted children, does not signal to the reader any appreciation of the stage of childhood in its own right: children’s own voices are nowhere to be heard. However, the discussion of education opens up a rather different approach to childhood. Here too, admittedly, the discussion is conducted from the point of view of adults, with the focus remaining on the task of molding good citizens for the ideal state; but this context brings up central topics of the philosophy of childhood, such as children’s character formation and moral development. These philosophical arguments are also independent of the disturbing views discussed in the current section.

Cultivating good seeds: inborn capacities and educability Socrates uses an agricultural analogy to illustrate how the surrounding society participates in the development of a person’s capacities. When asked which of the existing societies is best suited for practicing philosophy, he declares that none of them is “worthy of the philosophic nature” and continues by comparing the philosophical character to a rare seed. Just as a delicate seed does not grow in just any soil and climate, the philosophically endowed soul cannot flourish in just any sociocultural setting. In the wrong climate, the plant would be overcome by the original vegetation, and it would have to adjust itself in order to survive. Similarly, the philosophically endowed person who lived in the wrong society would have to bend to the prevailing circumstances and customs (497b).16 The obvious aim of the educational program of the Republic is to create the perfect climate for the good seeds to grow. But how should we understand the connection between the seed and the soil in this agricultural analogy? Who, exactly, are these “rare seeds”, and what does the analogy suggest about inborn capacities and educability? The assumption that underlies the Republic’s educational program is that becoming a philosopher requires an inborn disposition, just as a rose will grow only from a rose seed. This is also implicit in the famous “metal analogy”, or the so-called noble lie, which consists of telling the inhabitants of the ideal state that each one of them was born with a piece of metal in their souls: gold, silver, or brass (415a–c). The idea corresponds to another famous analogy between the soul and the state, both of which are divided into three parts. According to the Platonic view of a tripartite soul, the soul consists of a rational, a spirited, and an appetitive part (logistikon, thymoeides, epithymêtikon). Likewise, society is divided into the philosopher-rulers or guardians ( phylakê ), the warriors, and the productive class. There is a wealth of scholarly debate about how this analogy should be understood, as well as about Plato’s theory of the soul. Without entering this wide area of inquiry here, it suffices for our purposes to point out that, although there is a clear hierarchy between the three parts, all of them are necessary for the successful functioning of both the soul and the state. The goal is to achieve the right harmony between the parts in which each fulfills its own function in the best possible way.17

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The metal analogy suggests that we are already born with the capacity that determines our future role in society. This is presented as the best for the state and for the individual, because the best thing for a part is to belong to a wellorganized whole. Likewise, the whole process of eugenics builds on the idea that talent is inborn and is most probably genetically inherited. However, the Republic makes it clear that genetic heredity does not of necessity determine our capacities, because gold parents might get a child with brass in his or her soul, and similarly, a philosophical talent might be born to working-class parents. This suggests that the seed in the agricultural analogy is very important. Questions arise, however, about whether every child is seen as educable, and who exactly are the children who are taken into the educational program. On the one hand, the highest aim of education is clearly to produce future rulers, those few individuals who, as adults, will occupy the highest positions of society. This would seem to imply that education is reserved to the elite. This reading is supported by the fact that in the Republic, the different social classes seem to have only minimal interaction with each other, although the extent to which this concerns children remains unclear. On the other hand, the dialogue assumes that a person’s talent is not immediately obvious. A vital concern of the educational program is to test children in order to recognize the individuals who are endowed in special ways. Gill suggests that early education should be understood as being more commonly available. This suggestion is supported by the aspect of testing, as well as by the fact that the first part of education concerns primarily the lower parts of the soul. According to Gill, the “philosophical element” required by this phase of education “may signify nothing more than a ‘passive’ rational capacity, the ability to absorb the moral norms presented to it in the educational program.”18 Thus it seems that, on Plato’s own criteria, every child would have the necessary skills to receive the first part of education. It seems indeed plausible to assume that in Plato’s view, every child is educable, but not for one and the same goal. Not every child is born with the rare philosophical seed, but all children have the capacity to let their own internal talent flourish, whatever it may be.19 Furthermore, the fact that the soul consists of three parts is true of every individual. Thus, every child has the capacity to develop a certain harmony of character. The political analogy implies that the majority of people is seen as dominated by the appetitive aspect, others as predominantly spirited, and a few as having reason as their dominant part. Nevertheless, all of them have all these three parts, and the ideal for everyone is a harmony among the three parts. Accordingly, none of the classes should be seen as being outside of rationality; in the same way, the ruling class should not be seen as lacking the emotional part. As the philosopher Jonathan Lear points out, the just state requires that the appetitive class too exercises some reason, in order to be able to take care of its tasks in the best possible way.20 Plato, however, seems utterly uninterested in the lower classes. Throughout the Republic, the focus is on the guardians. And the highest level of education

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is reserved to those few who have the capacity to perfect their characters with a well-functioning reason and who ultimately are able to understand the deepest truths of the world.21 The idea of a connection between class membership and limits of educability, as presented in the Republic, is very different from the ideal of Socratic education discussed previously. Because the “Socratic model” is based on dialogue and on asking and answering philosophical questions, it seems that virtually anyone could participate in the dialectic process and, if one was open and willing, could go through the transformations it may offer. For example, in the dialogue Meno, we encounter the striking example of the slave boy who solves the geometrical problem of reduplicating the area of a square by answering Socrates’s questions (82b–e). Because the slave boy was uneducated in geometry, the intended conclusion is clearly that all human beings, simply by using their reason, can infer the right conclusions even in matters about which they have received no teaching. There is no assumption that the highest form of rationality would be reserved only to an endowed minority. The dialogue clearly implies that all humans have similar souls and inborn rational capacities.22 This, I claim, is the presumption of Socratic education, centered on the principles of “know yourself” ( gnôthi seauton), and “take care of yourself” (epimeleia heautou). The Republic, however, is expressly a discussion about justice, which is manifested in the perfectly just state. The discussion here is concerned with developing a program that does not leave room for failures in the production of justice, as, of course, the Socratic method unavoidably does, because it is ultimately up to the student to draw the benefits from the process. It is important to point out that although the Republic assumes that the highest rationality can be achieved only by the few, no distinction is made between girls and boys. Plato presents a position that is radical in its own time by suggesting that both girls and boys could and should be educated; that they should be educated in the same way, including the physical part of education; and that both of them have equal possibilities to qualify through even the highest stages of education. Children are seen as educable by virtue of their soul. Because gender difference is explicitly seen as a mere difference of the bodies (“the female bears and the male begets”), it does not affect educability. Another consequence is that the ideal society would not “produce” differences between men and women on the level of character or intellect, because both would receive exactly the same education and, presumably, would turn out exactly the same, except for the necessary biological differences (451d–454e, 452b–e; 457b).

Turning the soil: Plato and Plutarch on the poetic education of children The preceding discussion concerning inborn capacities may suggest that the agricultural analogy is all about the seed. As this section demonstrates, however, Plato’s discussion of education turns this picture around completely. Here the soil is assigned the principal responsibility for what grows out of it. Indeed, it seems

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that plants are more or less products of their natural surroundings. It may be that only a rose can grow out of a rose seed, but Plato clearly assumes that in a bad soil and climate it would grow into a crooked and wicked rose, the “roseness” of it having become unrecognizable. Mutatis mutandis, although certain important capacities may be inborn, they are nevertheless, in important ways, subject to social, cultural, and educational impact. According to Lear, “For Plato, we are culture-vultures: we ‘feed’ our psyches by internalizing cultural influences.”23 In order to create the optimal climate for the growth of the young philosophical talents, Socrates proposes starting their education ( paideia) with “gymnastics for the body and music for the soul” (376e).24 Mousikê is a broader term than the present-day concept of “music”. The dialogue makes it clear that it includes stories and poetry too. I will discuss the two parts, poetry and “music proper”, separately, starting with poetry. Plato’s proposal of the censorship of poetry is known to many, and he is sometimes presented as a hater of the arts, for whom art is nothing but a harmful imitation of reality.25 This criticism ignores the fact that the arts constitute most of the early part of education. Admittedly, both the styles and contents of the mousikê are strictly controlled, but those that are accepted into the educational program have a foundational role in the molding of children’s and youngsters’ characters. As I will demonstrate, this early work of “character molding” forms the basis for their entire future development. The Republic gives numerous examples of contents that are unsuitable for children: gods fighting or giving in to pleasures, especially sexual pleasures, and heroes lamenting or being impious. Whereas scholars usually tend to look for Plato’s legitimation of censorship in the nature of poetry itself, I suggest that a significant part of the answer lies in his view of the nature of children. The quotation at the beginning of this chapter already indicates that the child’s mind is extremely sensitive and receptive to external influence. Like dry earth, it quickly absorbs any nutrition it receives. Besides this, Plato sees children as imitative or mimetic by nature, eager to follow the examples given to them. This is another reason why it is urgent to provide children with noble role models and to protect them from bad influences. Furthermore, the censorship of poetry is motivated by the idea that children still lack certain capacities at this stage of development. With reference to the part of the dialogue where Socrates claims that the young cannot yet discern an allegory (hyponoia ; 378d), Lear claims that although Plato clearly was not interested in children’s subjectivity, he is still pointing to an important characteristic of childhood experience: that even if children can in some sense recognize that they are being told a story, part of its thrill, part of the thrall in which it holds them, derives from the fact that they can’t quite locate the story as such.26 Lear also points out that hyponoia means not only an allegory but also more generally “the deeper or real meaning which lies at the bottom (of a thing)”.27

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Because Plato believes that children have not yet achieved this skill, he thinks it better to shield them from contents they are not able to handle. They might take stories in a literal sense and believe them to be true. The classicist Ruby Blondell argues that Plato’s Republic makes the role of children and youngsters passive: for example, they are not encouraged to interpret poetry.28 The later Platonic thinker Plutarch avoids this problem in his discussion of how to educate virtuous and intellectual youngsters. Very much in the same way as Plato, Plutarch emphasizes the role of poetry in early education, and warns that as a mimetic and emotional art form, poetry is potentially dangerous, because it appeals to the irrational parts of our souls. For this reason, students ought to learn how to read poetry and absorb the underlying philosophical teachings even when the story deals with difficult cases, for instance killing one’s own children as in Euripides’s Medea. It remains important that the student learns that poetry is a mimetic art form: “Poetry is vocal painting and painting silent poetry” (How the Young Man Should Study Poetry, 18a3). Plato himself, however, does not suggest including any kind of art theory in the curriculum, nor any other means that would help the student to evaluate the poetic contents critically. The reason for this omission is that Plato clearly presumes that there is something about poetry that we humans experience as naturally pleasant and that helps the poetic expressions to find their path into the depths of our souls. And children, as Plato observed, love to hear stories. Children remain outside the realm of rationality, because they are still in the process of developing toward it, and this means that the child simply does not have the necessary capacities to evaluate the contents of poetry. The procedure of censorship is thus motivated by the order in which Plato presumes the child to acquire different skills. Because children learn essentially through imitation, it is crucial that poetry should provide them with good role models. Imitation easily leads to habituation, and the longer one practices this imitation, the more deeply rooted will these character traits become. Socrates speaks: But if they do imitate then they must imitate those things which are appropriate for these people from earliest childhood: brave, temperate men, pious, free, and all such things, but they must not do anything contrary to liberty, nor be good at imitating it, nor anything else which is classed as shameful, in order that they may gain no enjoyment of the reality from their imitation of it. Or have you not observed that if imitations continue from childhood on, they become natural habits (ethê ), physically, vocally and mentally? (395c–d)29 Education in poetry is a process that fosters good character traits. Socrates gives a long list of character traits that poetry should display: courage (andreia); being unafraid of death; to be destined to be free (eleutheros) and to fear slavery

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more than death; to honor one’s parents, gods, and friends; to be self-sufficient (autarkês); not to be prone to lamentation; and to bear misfortunes moderately (286a–387e). In accordance with the agricultural analogy, the whole process of education resembles gardening: providing the good seeds with sun, water, and nutrition while preventing garden weeds from taking over. Poetic education prepares the ground for the later part of education, which consists of mathematical subjects, and finally, and most importantly, for philosophy. Plutarch will give us an even clearer picture of the intricate relationship between poetic and philosophical education. The oeuvre of this Platonic thinker includes two treatises, The Education of Children and How the Young Man Should Study Poetry, which provide an elegant solution to how poetry prepares the soul for philosophy.30 Plutarch’s discussion builds on the agricultural analogy. His views help us to see more fully how poetry affects the young soul and why poetry is the best way to prepare the child for his or her future philosophical education. I read Plutarch as essentially capturing Plato’s view of poetic education, but transferring the discussion from the ideal state into a “real-world context”. Plutarch is also more explicit than Plato about the details of the agricultural analogy. This means that we can find plausible answers in Plutarch to certain questions that remain somewhat unclear in Plato. Plutarch gives a vivid description of the cultivation process of both plants and souls. Just as the soil must be prepared before sowing, the seed carefully selected, and the fields watered in the right proportions to get a good harvest, so too the soul must be nourished and provided with suitable surroundings in order that it may flourish and bear the fruits of virtue. Like Plato, Plutarch presents philosophy as the culmination of all education, including ethical doctrines of right and wrong or metaphysical theories of the human being. However, before the philosophical seeds are sown, the soil of human nature must be properly prepared. This is best done by poetry, which softens the soul and makes it receptive to philosophical ideas, because although poetry stems from the same source as philosophy, namely reason, poetry mediates the philosophical ideas in a more attractive and pleasant form that is easier for young people to swallow. Plutarch describes the reading of poetry as a kind of mental nourishment, which he also compares to bees gathering pollen from flowers. Similarly, the ideas absorbed from poetry become a part of readers’ souls and a resource for them in that it produces something new (The Education of Children, 2.4a–c; How the Young Man Should Study Poetry, 32e12). Plutarch’s way of using the agricultural analogy is in agreement with Plato’s view. But even more explicitly than Plato, Plutarch suggests that the role of poetry in early education is motivated by the way it makes the soul receptive to the future philosophical education. The poetic form is more pleasant and approachable for the young, but still, at its best, poetry is talking about the same things as philosophy. In other words, the young might be more receptive to listen to Euripides’s Medea (which Plutarch would include in the curriculum, but Plato probably not) than to a lecture on moral philosophy, but having enjoyed the former during their youth, they would be better equipped

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to appreciate the latter later in life. This, I believe, demonstrates one important reason for the use of poetry in the educational program of the Republic. It is true that this idea is not expressed quite so clearly in the dialogue, but it too assumes that being introduced to noble action in poetry prepares the soul for understanding the rationale of noble action later on. And in Plato’s model too poetry is employed to establish a character that derives pleasure from studying and reaching toward higher stages of wisdom. Thus far, I have discussed the pedagogical aspects of the content of poetry, which introduces children and youngsters to beneficial role models who exemplify good character traits and good action, and to philosophical themes which are brought to them in a nonphilosophical form. It is precisely the pleasing form of poetry that renders it a powerful pedagogical tool. This points to another aspect of using the arts in education that is connected not so much with the content, but more with the way in which the arts are immediately experienced. This aspect is particularly prominent in Plato’s discussion of music, to which I shall now turn. The way in which music is used in education shows that for him, the emotional development precedes the intellectual, and that the two should not be seen as separate processes.

Toward flourishing: music and the harmonious character In the Republic, Socrates offers a motivation for the use of music in early education in the following words: In that case, Glaucon, I said, isn’t an education in music (en mousikê[i] ) most sovereign (kuriôtatê ) for these reasons, in that rhythm and melody (rhythmos kai harmonia) above all penetrate (kataduetai) to the innermost part of the soul (eis to entos tês psychês) and most powerfully affect it, bringing gracefulness (euskhêmôn), and, if one is brought up correctly, make one graceful; if not, isn’t the result the opposite? And furthermore he who has been brought up in the arts as he should have been, will be most acutely aware of what has been omitted and not well made, or not well nurtured, and he would rightly disparage it and approve and rejoice in what is beautiful, allow it into his soul, feed on it and become beautiful and good (kalos kagathos). On the other hand he would rightly reject and hate what is shameful even while still young, and before he is able to reason these things out, and, because he has been brought up in this way, when reason (logos) does come would he welcome it because he recognizes its utter fitness for him? (401d–e)31 There is something direct and immediately felt in music. In this passage, Socrates claims that the very components of music, its rhythm and harmony (or mode or melody) penetrate, or literally sink (kataduô), into the innermost part of the soul (eis to entos tês psychês). Here I agree with Schofield who emphasizes

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that it is exactly “music in senso stretto” that is assigned such a crucial role in the education of young guardians.32 Thus, here we are talking, not about the lyrics of a song, but about the very qualities of music itself. According to Schofield, music takes on a crucial role in the developmental psychology of the Republic because it “powers aesthetic, ethical, and intellectual habituation.” Schofield notes the progression from “unconscious beginnings” to “conscious perception and assimilation of beauty until finally, at a point of human development when someone becomes capable of reason, they want to be rational because they respond to reason’s beauty.” He also draws attention to the connection the Republic makes between musical education and the important characteristic of philomathês, one who loves to learn. In sum, Schofield’s analysis shows that music prepares the way for reason because it establishes the wish to strive for rationality, and not only to admire it but also to be rational.33 As we have seen previously, the contents of poetry provide children and youngsters with role models and images of different types of behavior, but music affects the person’s character in a more direct way. In Plato’s moral psychology, the notion of character (êthos, physis) is closely connected to our emotional responses. A timid person might get scared of the wind rattling through the leaves, whereas the brave person would stay calm even in the eye of the hurricane. Our characters are reflected in our immediate responses to the different situations we encounter in life: whether we react with joy, fear, courage, disgust, anger, lust, or in other ways. Furthermore, our characters are linked to our aspirations and goals, to what we avoid or aim at. When we have to make choices, our characters make us seek certain types of things rather than others. A lustful character, for instance, will seek pleasure, or a lazy character, leisure. In the passage quoted previously, Socrates draws attention to the importance of learning to enjoy and to detest in the right way. This must be learnt already as a child, because our disposition, in important respects, is formed during the tender phase of childhood. This is exactly where musical education comes in.34 One central goal in the Republic for character formation during childhood education is the right balance between softness and hardness (410d–e). As a case in point, Socrates describes a person uneducated in music: even if there was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened. (411d) On the other hand, an education only in music would make the soul too soft: the counterbalancing effect of gymnastics is needed. In accordance with the idea of a tripartite soul, one could also point out that gymnastics exists especially for the spirited or willing part (thymoeides), although, as Schofield also points out, this part requires music as well.35 The main point, however, is that

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children should develop both strength and sensitivity in their character. Both of these are important for cultivating a harmonious soul, and both are needed, if the philosopher-ruler is to have the required courage and gentleness. We also saw previously that a child should love learning ( philomathês) and that music will establish in children a love of beauty. These two loves are connected. The unmusical person is characterized by insensitivity and ignorance; he or she is a mere hater of rational arguments. By contrast, musically educated children will learn to recognize and appreciate beauty not only in works of art but also in the world, in other people, and in themselves. This is important not only for the aesthetic orientation of the child but also for his or her ethical and intellectual orientation. This connection is suggested by the very term kalos, which is used to describe beautiful art works, as well as beautiful characters. It often occurs, as in the aforementioned passage, in combination with the term agathos, good. The ethical and cognitive importance of the admiration of beauty is also manifested in Plato’s Symposium, where Socrates’s celebrated speech declares that loving the beauty in an individual helps the soul to ascend to the love of the idea of beauty itself. The right admiration of beauty is essential not only for Plato’s philosophy of education but also for his ethics and metaphysics. By teaching children to appreciate and enjoy beauty, the character Socrates brings them to the core of Plato’s philosophy. Richardson Lear emphasizes that the musical-poetic education of young guardians provides them with a desire directed toward beauty, and that this desire affects the philosophical aspects of their characters. Poetry and music establish the right attitude to beauty, which then provides the right attitude to truth. She also notes another presumption in the Platonic view of children, namely that the desire of beauty as such is not learnt, but is innate, and she claims that this also applies to the desire to want to be beautiful, because this is what children want to be in the eyes of their parents or other significant adults. Thus, the educational program does not instill the aesthetic interest in beauty, but helps children to strengthen it and to direct it toward goodness.36 The connection in Plato between hearing beautiful music and developing a beautiful character is fascinating and multilayered. On one level, this connection is about developing an aesthetic taste that allows the child to enjoy beautiful rather than ugly things. On another level, one learns to enjoy beauty, not only in an aesthetic, but also in an ethical sense: a child educated in this manner would enjoy learning rather than ignorance, and justice rather than injustice. Here one may recall that at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates is faced with the challenge of demonstrating that a life of justice is better and more enjoyable than a life of injustice. For Plato, ethics is all about being virtuous, and thus on the third level, music leads one to wish to establish beautiful characteristics in oneself. Music also establishes the admiration of reason and the desire to be rational. In Plato’s thinking, of course, all of these layers are interwoven, but it is interesting to specify all of these different aspects because they show that although rationality develops only later on in life, this development can succeed only if

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the other parts of the soul, the appetitive and the spirited, are first habituated in the right way. Children must already have acquired a certain character that makes them want and enjoy in accordance with virtue. Thus, the “emotional” and the “rational” education are not two separate processes, because the seeds for the latter are already present in the former. Finally, music not only leads children’s souls in the right direction by affecting them in an uplifting way and providing virtuous enjoyments of beauty. The very ideal of education is presented in musical terms: as a harmonious soul where all the parts are in their right place (443d; cf. 412a). Music thus gives children a model and an immediate experience of harmony, which help them to direct themselves to the goal of becoming harmonious adults.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have demonstrated that although scholars have shown surprisingly little interest in children and childhood in Plato’s Republic, this work is a rich source of philosophically relevant ideas that pertain to the topic. By placing the Republic in the context of the philosophy of childhood, I have opened up new perspectives on this classic work and on Plato’s understanding of the human being in general. The discussion has also contributed to our understanding of the views on children in the history of Western philosophy. When it is read from the point of view of children, the Republic shows two different faces. On the one hand, we have the gruesome suggestions about getting rid of unwanted children, together with a family reform that does not explicitly take children’s experiences or subjectivity into account. On the other hand, however, we find a refined philosophical discussion of the use of the arts in early education. I have shown that the underlying assumption in the Republic is that childhood is a distinct phase, characterized by specific features that children show, which differ from those of adults. Because of these specific features, and because of the importance of childhood for the entire development of the person, a specific pedagogy must be applied in childhood education. Plato’s use of music and poetry, as well as the need to censor their contents, is motivated by children’s unique nature. Children are seen as naturally mimetic. This is why poetry has the important responsibility of providing them with good role models. Furthermore, children’s nature is sensitive and receptive. It is during childhood that their natural, inborn inclination toward beauty must be nurtured and supported and that they should enjoy beautiful art works and experience the perfection of musical harmony, in order to orient themselves toward the goal of beauty and harmony of character. Children are considered to be outside rationality, but, as I have suggested, rationality develops from the good characteristics that are established through musical-poetic education. Because pleasures and pains play an important role as motivational factors in the life of children, they have to be oriented aright

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so that children, already at an early age, learn to enjoy beautiful and detest ugly things. This is an important factor for the later orientation, not only to aesthetic values, but also to ethical values: virtuous adulthood requires that we have developed the right tastes, tendencies, and preferences, so that we choose to rejoice at justice rather than at the selfish pleasures of injustice. Plato assumes a certain correspondence between music and the soul of the educated person. He describes both of these in terms of harmony and balance. The educational program of the Republic recognizes the importance of childhood for the entire future development of the person, and the way in which our characters are formed by the cultural environment to which we are exposed as children. Plato opens up here an informative historical perspective on contemporary debates about the roles of the arts in education. I have emphasized the relevance of music and poetry to the development of rationality. What could be called the affective part of the soul needs to be educated prior to the – pure – intellect. By implication, my reading also questions any straightforward antithesis between reason and emotion, because the emotional education is necessary for the intellectual education.

Notes 1 Rep. 377a–b. Emlyn-Jones and Preddy’s translation modified. 2 Socrates himself did not write philosophy. Most of our knowledge of him derives from Plato’s works. Scholars have debated the relationship between the historical Socrates and the “character Socrates” whom we encounter in Plato’s dialogues. Another debate concerns the extent to which statements made by the character Socrates can be identified with “Plato’s thoughts”. To take a stance in these debates lies outside the aims and focus of this chapter. When I refer here to a line or a part of a speech that is presented as coming from Socrates’s mouth, I refer to the “character Socrates” without assuming any connection to the historical Socrates. On methodological issues concerning Plato’s dialogues, see, for example, Rowe 2010. 3 Schofield 2010: 229 points out that the term “music” occurs only rarely in the index of standard works on the Republic. One can observe the same with regard to children: not only are they left out of the topics and titles of research books and articles (when childhood is dealt with, it usually falls under a discussion on education), but many standard volumes also omit “child” and “children” from their index. 4 Recent scholarship in social history has made important contributions to topics such as children’s position in the family and the school systems in the ancient world. However, these topics fall outside of the scope of my inquiry, which is motivated exclusively by purely philosophical interests. See Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World 2013. 5 Siegel 2009: 3. On the philosophy of education and its history, see, for example, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education 2009. 6 On recent scholarly contributions on the Socratic method, see, for example, Brickhouse and Smith 2009. 7 It should be mentioned, however, that all of Socrates’s interlocutors of Plato’s “Socratic dialogues” are young men. Although these dialogues are fascinating with regard to their dialectic form and their topics, they do not contain any systematic account of childhood or children’s education. 8 Brickhouse and Smith 2009: 183 critically comment that in many “Socratic dialogues”, Socrates seems to have some preexisting understanding of the matters of discussion

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17 18 19

20 21

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(e.g. on geometry in Meno). Sometimes, Socrates “quite obviously leads his interlocutors in ways they find difficult to follow, and to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to take their willingness to agree to the premises subsequently introduced as genuine beliefs they actually hold.” Gill 1985: 5–6. Popper 1963: 86–7, cf. 169. Taylor 1997: 32. Translation Emlyn-Jones and Preddy. I provide a more detailed discussion of the effects of the family reform on women in Grahn-Wilder (forthcoming 2017); cf. Annas 1996; and Okin 1977. On eugenics and biopolitics in Plato’s Republic, see Ojakangas 2016: 59–76. Annas 1996: 7–8; cf. my discussion of feminism in the context of ancient philosophy in Grahn-Wilder 2017. Emlyn-Jones and Pretty’s translation slightly modified. Many other ancient philosophical sources illustrate childhood development and education with recourse to an agricultural analogy (e.g. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, many Stoic sources, and Plutarch). Analogies are important forms of arguments and ways of deriving knowledge in the ancient philosophical tradition. I suggest, therefore, that the agricultural analogy, too, should be taken seriously, to see what it proposes about a child’s character and the influence of education. For scholarly discussions of Plato’s theory of the soul and the analogy between the soul and the state, see, for example, Lorenz 2006; and Anagnostopoulos 2006. Gill 1985: 13, 24–5. The passage concerning the killing of the ruling-class children who are seen as possessing a wrong heritage causes a problem: why would Plato assume that some children are born with no internal “seed” at all – no talent that could be brought into flourishing through the appropriate education? It would seem more consistent if Socrates were to suggest placing the children in their appropriate places in society – in other words, placing them in such a way that allows them to lead that kind of life that best suits her or his inborn inclination. Lear 1997: 72. This part of the theory has been criticized by pointing out that Plato would leave a major part of the population outside the actual explanations. Eamonn Callan and Dylan Arena 2009: 118 use the Republic as an example of indoctrination, where education is used to instill true beliefs in “masses of citizens”, many of whom will never come to understand the grounds of those beliefs. Plato would probably answer this criticism by pointing to his theory of inborn capacities, which was discussed previously, and which he does not see as being distributed equally among individuals. The idea that all humans have similar souls is also suggested by the discussion of virtue, in the course of which Meno answers Socrates’s questions and concludes that virtue is the same for all human beings: men and women, children and grown-ups alike (Meno 71e–73c). Lear 1997: 65. In this part of the argument, Socrates says that this way of educating has been “discovered a long time ago.” Given Plato’s and Socrates’s (in Plato’s dialogues) critical attitude towards the Ancient Greek polis culture in general, and towards education in particular, it seems surprising that “tradition” should give support to the educational program outlined in the Republic. Cf. the lengthy discussion on proper and improper contents and styles of poetry in 376e–401d. Lear 2006: 28. Ibid., 27. Blondell 2002: 214–6. I would add that education in the arts is passive in the sense that children and youngsters are merely the receivers and listeners of poetry and music, not

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Malin Grahn-Wilder creators of them. Plato did not consider the creative possibilities of arts education to let children invent their own songs or make music, which are at the core of present-day art pedagogy. Translation Emyl-Jones and Preddy. It is important to pay attention to the difference between “right and wrong mimêsis”. Plato’s critique of mimetic arts is famous, but it is worth emphasizing that the dialogue states that “good art forms” are good imitations of virtuous character. For example, music imitates noble speech. Cf. Schofield 2010: 236–8. The essay The Education of Children is included in volume I of Plutarch’s Moralia, but it was probably not written by Plutarch himself. Because this essay is interesting in its own right, as it sheds more light on our understanding of poetry and the education of young people, I use it as a part of my discussion without committing myself to a particular position in the debate on the authenticity of the text. My point is to try to analyze the agricultural analogy, in order to deepen our understanding of the view of children and their souls in Plato’s Republic. Further, I find it interesting to see how the agricultural analogy is used after Plato to illustrate the process of (poetic) education. Emlyn-Jones and Preddy’s translation modified. See Schofield 2010. Ibid., 232–3. On the notion of character and Plato’s moral psychology, cf. Gill 1985. Schofield 2010: 233. Richardson Lear 2006: 104–20.

3

Aristotle on children and childhood Hallvard J. Fossheim

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) is known as one of the great Greek philosophers, a student of Plato in Athens and later head of his own school, the Lykeion.1 The manuscripts we have available today make Aristotle the father of philosophy in the sense that, whereas Plato has left us with dialogues and Socrates has left us with nothing from his own hand, Aristotle wrote treatises on almost everything he could get his hands on and many things he could not: the Nicomachean Ethics and other works on ethical theory, the Politics, On Rhetoric, Poetics, On the Soul, Physics, Metaphysics, two Analytics, and a host of biological works – such as Parts of Animals and History of Animals – are among the many titles still at hand.2 All these works by Aristotle have been central to shaping thinking and intellectual traditions through much of the time since their composition, and are still read. Although some of them are today perhaps consulted mainly for historical interest, others, such as the ethical and political texts, are taken very seriously as valuable sources of reflection. To name but one example among the current philosophical developments for which Aristotle can in some sense be deemed responsible, contemporary virtue ethics constitutes a flourishing strand in ethical thought where Aristotle is consulted on a daily basis. So although the term “Aristotelian” in what follows shall refer primarily to themes and theories in Aristotle’s corpus, it is also meant to indicate broader strands of thought going down to our own times. This chapter articulates the view of children and childhood in Aristotle’s treatments of human development, which are found in his ethics and political theory. In order to ferret out these insights, which are often implicit in what he states, we consider and explain several tenets that characterize his philosophy more broadly. Central parts of what Aristotle has to say about the topic depend on his theories concerning other important Aristotelian themes: teleology, virtue, psychological tripartition, vital heat, and mimesis. I will explain and go into these themes in turn as they become relevant for understanding Aristotle’s view of children and childhood. Together, these theories provide us with a framework for understanding how habituation and upbringing can shape the individual and in the end lead to the establishment of a fully developed character.

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Lack as characteristic of childhood What place does the concept of childhood have in Aristotle’s writings? If we base our conclusion on the results of a hunt for explicit references, Aristotle says surprisingly little about children or childhood.3 His few comments that can be said to deal with the topic also do not reveal much interest in or respect for children or childhood. Paradigmatic in this respect is his remark in the Nicomachean Ethics that his course is not suitable for the young (ho neos), and that it does not “make any difference whether a person is young in years or immature in character” (EN 1.3.1095a6–7).4 Here, he sees children primarily in terms of what they lack. They live by emotion – that is they lack the stability required for prolonged attention and focus over time – and they lack experience, the “input” on which to base Aristotle’s instructions and explanations. Similarly, there is no hint of any sort of romanticism concerning the experiences of childhood in his texts. Judging from the few explicit references, there is no evidence of Aristotle taking an interest in, for instance, what it is like to be a child. As we shall see, the background for these assertions on Aristotle’s part is a complex one. One part of it we can begin to unravel by considering the following statement. About practical wisdom and similar qualities of the mature individual, he says that these states actually seem to grow naturally, so that while no one seems to have natural wisdom (sophos), people seem to have natural consideration, comprehension and judgment ( gnômên . . . kai sunesin kai noun). A sign is our thinking that they also correspond to someone’s age, and the fact that understanding and consideration belong to a certain age, as though nature were the cause. We must attend, then, to the undemonstrated remarks and beliefs of experienced and older people ( presbyterôn) or of intelligent people, no less than to demonstrations. (EN 6.11, 1143b6–13) When reading Aristotle, it is always crucial to pay attention to how each consideration figures in his argument and presentation as a whole. His procedure is usually that of first setting out the various opinions and relevant practices which he picks up from intellectual traditions, ongoing practices, and popular opinions, and then to develop his own thought on the basis of that. As a consequence, statements placed at the beginning of a discussion serve to set out the phenomena. We cannot always be certain that Aristotle himself will hold on to all of them in the end. However, he says nothing in the further course of his discussion to counter the remarks quoted previously. They constitute a general musing to the effect that understanding well, and acting well on the basis of one’s understanding, is something that comes with time. Equally important is the second hint: although such a development, building on experience, tends to grow slowly

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and evenly so that it seems like a function of nature, like the growing of a tree, this is not the case. Human development, by which is here meant primarily human ethical development, is not simply a folding out of inner, natural propensities. Although our development certainly depends on our nature, and could not take place without it, nature is a condition rather than a cause. As long as the conditions are present, it is the activity of socialization, that is our own activity in suitable social and political surroundings, that makes us what we become ethically. As we have already seen, Aristotle’s basic assumption is that children are characterized by lack, or, to use a more positively turned expression, by promise. Yet at the same time, according to Aristotle’s own judgments, children are in a way the most fascinating human group and childhood is the most crucial stage of life. To mention only a metaphor for the stages in human life that became popular later on, Aristotle seems to subscribe to a “sowing and harvesting” model, in that life’s later seasons depend on what was invested earlier.5 Childhood and youth are crucial because during this phase everything has to be shaped in the right way so that there can be a real chance of future virtue and success. If things go wrong at this stage, there is little or no hope for the individual later on in life. The period from childhood to early youth is the time for laying a foundation which cannot be secured at a later stage. Serious flaws in this foundation also cannot be corrected later on. Children have a unique fascination from an Aristotelian point of view because they constitute the one group lacking what is otherwise a universal characteristic in the sphere of things human: they are human beings without character. Aristotle’s ethics is built around the notion of the individual as a more or less harmonious and integrated set of features – character traits – belonging on scales between virtues and vices. Yet here, in our midst, are beings who by definition lack character, and whose motivational setup is thus strangely alien to the moral psychology which Aristotle offers. Children’s lack of character also means that they function more directly according to a basis set up by nature rather than one mediated by character. In the case of children, “living by emotion” (to kata pathos zên, EN, 1.3, 1095a8) thus means something other than what it means in the case of someone whose immaturity is not defined in years.

The importance of character and virtue Before discussing the psychology that is specific to children, it is helpful to consider how Aristotle classifies states of character, including ethical virtues like courage, temperance, or generosity. Character is all about how one relates to oneself and one’s surroundings: it consists of a stable set of dispositions that yield a correspondingly stable form to one’s actions. A character consists of traits analyzed in terms of virtues and vices. A virtue, arête, is an excellence of character. Each virtue of character, for instance courage, constitutes a mean between two vices – in this case, rashness and cowardice. As long as the individual is not

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stunted by nature, acquiring a good character (i.e. one consisting of harmoniously interrelated virtues) comes about through habituation. It is similar in the case of ethical vices, in that cowardice is the result of a misguided socialization no less than courage is the result of a successful one. Let us see how Aristotle himself presents the bigger picture here. A virtue of character is concerned with emotions and actions, and these admit of excess, deficiency and an intermediate condition. We can be afraid, e.g., or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, in general have pleasure and pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well; but [having these emotions] at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue. (EN 2.6, 1106b16–23) Nature has endowed the child with an ability for emotive reactions. Whereas an emotion is a way of perceiving an aspect of the world and acting on it, virtues (and vices) are character traits that include emotions as shaped by socialization, how they are experienced, and how they are given expression in action. A state of character is thus an ethical state – this is more obvious in the Greek, because the term which we translate as “character” is êthos (from which we have our word “ethics”). That children and immature people act from emotions that are as yet unbridled by character is striking, because Aristotle’s ethics depends and builds on the idea of character as something not reducible to abilities or features we have from nature. To Aristotle, a character is a stable basis for agency. He believes in the relative stability of the mature human individual; even if someone is unstable in some respect, Aristotle seems to think that that person is then stably unstable. Yet before a certain age, the situation is very different. Children do not have character. Until around the age of seventeen, the individual is still ethically unstable in this technical sense. That is to say he or she may be still open to radical alterations, because the socialization process, through which is instilled a stable character as a bulwark against alterations, is not completed. In Aristotle’s view, character is also to be considered in connection with explanations, as a particular kind of cause. Proper explanations are the heart and soul of Aristotelian science and philosophy. A cause that is valid as a proper scientific explanation should be something which is true always or at least almost always. Character traits are stable and solid in this way. Reference to them can thus explain a given action. Yet immature agency, agency lacking in such stability, cannot properly function as an explanation in this way. To simplify matters, if a grown individual makes a choice and acts on it, this is indicative of his character, and his character is a real part of the explanation of why he did what he did. If a child does something that looks similar to what the adult did, however, we do not have access to character as a kind of “first cause” (in the relevant sense). There simply is no causal character-entity or

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structure there that can explain what happened. The act does not stem from the integrated form of agency that a set of character traits is supposed to constitute. This is due to the fact that in the life of the young person, the process which takes its point of departure from the individual’s natural endowments still has not resulted in the formation of a character. If children lack character, what do they have instead?

Tripartition of the soul Character is not the rock bottom in the history of the individual. Preceding character, there is another level of things in our human psychology. In order to come to grips with what Aristotle has to teach us about the moral psychology of children and young people, we need to turn to this basis for character. This move can also help us see the relationship between two theories that are present in Aristotle’s psychology but lack an obvious connection. For the theory of habituated states – that is of virtues and vices (discussed in the previous section) – is not his only take on our psychological setup. In addition, Aristotle also refers to a model which amounts to a psychological trifurcation, that is a classification of desire and motivation into three broad types. According to Aristotle’s tripartition (known also, albeit in a slightly different form, from Plato’s Republic and Phaedrus), objects of desire are divided into pleasant and painful, noble and shameful, and good and bad. Whereas pleasure and pain are with us from nature ( physis), an appreciation of the noble or beautiful is instilled through habituation. The grasp of what is in a full sense good is realized only with reason. As helpfully conveyed in John Cooper’s explicating translation, there are three objects of choice (ta eis tas haireseis) and three of avoidance: the kalon (the noble, fine, beautiful), the advantageous, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the aischron (the base, shameful, ugly), the harmful, and the painful. In relation to all these the good person gets things right, while the bad person gets things wrong, but especially in relation to pleasure. (EN 2.3, 1104b30–34)6 This and similar passages help us fill out the theory of habituated states, in that they specify what Aristotle takes to be the three ethically relevant dimensions of value that direct us: pleasure and pain, the beautiful and the shameful, and the good or advantageous and the harmful. Adding yet another perspective on this basic trifurcation of the ways in which we relate to and act in our surrounding world, Aristotle spells out the dimensions of human agency in terms of types of desire: appetite, thymos, and (reasoned) wish. Thus the initial trifurcation into different objects of choice turns out to be indications of a corresponding tripartition in our psychology.7 Let us look briefly at these three dimensions of human psychology one by one.

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The first of these three dimensions of human psychology, the one that consists in pleasure and pain, is there by nature, from the beginning of the individual’s life. According to the much broader strokes Aristotle offers in his work On the Soul, having a capacity for experiencing pleasure and pain is just what it means to be an animal, as opposed to being a plant. Both plants and animals are alive, but their life principles are different. Plants are by definition beings that grow and multiply. Animals do this too, but they have another, higher principle which changes everything and constitutes their core: the animal psychê (soul or life principle) consists in the ability to perceive. Perception (aisthêsis), to Aristotle, is not just registering the world through one of the five senses. Perception is always interested or concerned in one way or another. At the basic animal (and thus human) level, that engagement takes the shape of not least pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain are, so to speak, the modes of perception. They are what moves us from the very start to relate to our surroundings by striving for some things and avoiding others. Thus all animals also have some means of reacting to their surroundings. This is as it should be. According to Aristotle, nature does nothing in vain. An animal – that is a being with perceptive powers – which is unable to respond to its perceptions would be an animal characterized by futility. The world presents the newborn with a wide variety of things to pursue or flee from. The child will respond from the very outset by trying to move in relation to those alternatives and also to express what in the practical sphere corresponds to affirmation and denial in the theoretical sphere: liking and disliking, pursuit and avoidance. These responses become much more intricate when we add the broadly and vaguely self-reflective aspect that is inherent in thymos, which I have aligned previously with the beautiful and the shameful. The beautiful or noble and the shameful relate not simply to what is to be pursued or avoided, but to that more complex social triangulation of oneself and the external object which characterizes most human actions. Thymos, and the beautiful or noble and the shameful, are not simply about wanting something, but about wanting to express, defend, or otherwise position oneself and one’s own worth and values in a social reality. Even if there is competition about something that is at first simply perceived as pleasant, social competition makes the pursuit of that thing a way of showing oneself, one’s values, and one’s relation to others. So whereas the ostensive object of pursuit remains the same, the sort of motivation that makes it happen has changed drastically. The good, meanwhile, is grasped by reason as a potential that is realized fully only as the zenith of mature human development. As a kind of motivation, the good has more intellectual features that are not directly available to mere pleasure or mere thymos. The good is not accessible in the simple way that a pleasant thing in the world is available, or even in the relatively simple way that an occasion for self-affirmation may be available. The good is available only as a deeper understanding of the whole into which any such item fits – a whole

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that ultimately concerns one’s existence and perhaps that of the cosmos as well. We shall have occasion to return to both of these kinds of desire, each of them also as a separate principle for human development. The details we have traced here are not purely academic distinctions, but real forces inside the agent, forces that in the well-developed individual play on the same team. In most of us, unfortunately, they are not perfectly aligned, and can therefore come into conf lict with each other in certain situations.8 Although Aristotle considers the desire to know as a strong factor, and although he investigates many things for no ulterior purpose, he develops and discusses these principles and what they entail with practical aims in view, such as ensuring the optimal upbringing and socialization of the young in the community. Aristotle thus states that “[t]here are three things which make men good and excellent; these are nature, habit, reason.”9 In order for all to go well, each of them has to do its part in the individual’s development. If each of them does do its part, then this is all it takes for an individual to be, or become, good. Of course, this does not mean that the individual will be happy or enjoy a long life, only that he or she will be of a certain ethical quality.

Emotion: a basis for human agency In order to delve deeper into emotion as an aspect of Aristotle’s moral and developmental psychology, let us confer with his On Rhetoric. It should first be admitted that Aristotle does not have a term reserved for our “emotion”, because pathos can also mean (and in Aristotle sometimes does mean) “affliction” or “being moved” in a much broader sense that can include lifeless objects. In spite of this historical and linguistic state of affairs, it is still safe for us to speak of emotions in this context. Emotions, present in the child from the very beginning, are pleasures and pains that provide the child with basic interpretations of things. In the second book of On Rhetoric, Aristotle analyses a series of emotions to help the prospective orator calculate the emotive effect his words have on an audience. The theory has a much wider application than assisting the budding orator, however. Let us glance at Aristotle’s definition of two central emotions, anger and fear: Let anger be [defined as] desire, accompanied by [mental and physical] distress, for conspicuous retaliation because of a conspicuous slight that was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one. (On Rhetoric 2.2) Let fear [ phobos] be [defined as] a sort of pain or agitation derived from the imagination of a future destructive or painful evil; for all evils are not feared (for example, [a person does not fear] that he will become unjust or slow-witted) but [only] what has the potentiality for great pains or

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destruction, and these [only] if they do not appear far-off but near, so that they are about to happen. (On Rhetoric 2.5) Both fear and anger include interpretations of selective parts of the surroundings. The emotion is then not so much tagged onto an aspect of one’s experience. More than that, the emotion can be how that aspect is realized or noticed at all, and thus how there is an experience in the first place. Fear is not simply a bodily feeling attending some entirely independent perception. It is an inherent aspect of one’s perception. It is what makes the fearful entity available and a central concern for one, and makes one start looking for ways to escape. Similarly, anger constitutes an interpretation of something as belittling, which is already a desire to react to the belittling act in a certain way. Furthermore, we can see in both cases that emotion is characterized in terms of pleasure or pain; in the case of anger, for instance, Aristotle goes on to describe the pleasure of hoping to retaliate. Whereas both fear and anger require the agent to have some conception of oneself and one’s relation to others, only the latter allows us to make a direct acquaintance with thymos. As may have been guessed from the brief presentation of it in the previous section, thymos has no simple contemporary equivalent in English, but denotes that part of one’s motivation which concerns one’s own relative worth, and where the emotive reaction is motivated by concerns of position, appearance, respect, and self-respect. Put very simply, if you snatch the last piece of cake because you desire something more to eat, that is a function of the pleasures and pains of mere appetite. If you help yourself to the last piece of cake because you want to demonstrate to me that you are the one who deserves it, then that is thymos speaking. Anger has its seat in thymos in that it concerns not the simple desire for a given object, but the desire to retaliate because one thinks oneself – or someone sufficiently close to one to be considered part of oneself – the victim of a slight to one’s worth, position, self-esteem, rights, or whatever. Applying more modern terms, we might say that whereas appetite concerns the simpler object-subject relation, thymos concerns subject-subject relations (often with an object thrown in as the apple of contention). We can see that Aristotle allows for the entire gamut of emotional experience, from basic pangs of hunger or thirst to the experience of having been treated as less than one is worth and wanting to retaliate for this apparent slight. It is important for our purposes to notice that Aristotle admits all of this without recourse to the virtues and vices with which he is normally identified. In other words, Aristotle’s trifurcation affords us with an Aristotelian analytical tool for understanding the motivations and psychology of children and the young – of people who do not yet have a character. This leads to our next question: how does the transition take place from a precharacter mode of existence to possessing a character? To answer this question is to uncover the process that thoroughly engages the child and ends with the individual being a child no more.

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Habituation as the creation of character Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching, and hence needs experience and time. Virtue of character [i.e. of êthos] results from habit (ethos); hence its name “ethical”, slightly varied from “ethos”. (EN 2.1, 1103a14–17) “Virtue of thought” denotes the perfections of reason, the third basis for human development. “Virtue of character” is a quality like courage (in relating to fear and what is fearful) or mildness (in relating to anger and things that provoke it), the sort of excellences that can be seen broadly as a perfection of the emotional cognition and responses treated in the previous section. Both virtue of thought and virtue of character are spoken of in the last citation in an overarching way: there are several specific virtues of character, like courage, moderation, and wit; and several virtues of thought, like scientific knowledge, wisdom, and phronêsis – although among them, phronêsis, often translated as “practical wisdom” to distinguish it from theoretical wisdom or sophia, is by far the most important in a practical, ethical context. Very briefly expressed, theoretical activity is thinking simply for its own sake, whereas practical thinking is thinking with a view to action; theoretical and practical wisdom, respectively, is the intellectual virtue of each of these activities. In Aristotle’s ultimate analysis of the relationship between virtue of thought (or intellectual virtue) and virtue of character toward the end of Nicomachean Ethics 6, it becomes clear that no one is good unless virtue of character and practical wisdom are so intimately intertwined in the person that it is impossible in practice to say where one stops and the other begins. Nevertheless, the two are radically different if one looks to how they come about. Aristotle often emphasizes the origin of something in order to distinguish it from something else. Thus although it is not easy, and perhaps not even possible, to separate in a mature person what comes from his or her natural, inborn capacities and what comes from his or her upbringing, the two are crucially different partly in that they come to be in entirely different ways: the mechanisms of natural heredity are not at all like the features of a process of maturation and training in a social and political environment. Just as the difference between nature and nurture has to do with the different causal forces that are in play, this is also true of the difference between virtues of thought and virtues of character. The all-important establishment of a decent character (êthos), which is the basis for good agency and a necessary requirement for happiness, comes about through habit – ethos – in a process of habituation (ethismos). Aristotle makes much of the fact that whereas theoretical, abstract knowledge is reached by intellectual training and teaching, the practical insight lodged in a decent character is reached by habituation. The distinction between this process and the process of teaching should not make us think that habituation is an unthinking, mechanical process, however. Aristotle makes it evident that

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habituation requires much cognitive work on the part of those being formed, as well as on the part of their educators, parents, and others. Aristotle sums up his account of habituation as follows: To sum up, then, in a single account: A state [of character] arises from [the repetition of] similar activities. Hence we must display the right activities, since differences in these imply corresponding differences in the states. It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth; rather, it is very important, indeed all-important. (EN 2.1, 1103b21–25) For Aristotle, this is what childhood is about more than anything else. One becomes what one does. Only by performing a certain sort of activity can one come to possess the corresponding quality or competence in the shape of an ethical virtue (a virtue of character). Correspondingly, if one performs other, vicious kinds of activities, one ends up with the corresponding vices as one’s psychological qualities. One of the most striking features of this theory is the metaphysics it implies, and how this sets the habituation process apart from natural phenomena like the growth of a tree or the motions of planets. In fact, it is from Aristotle’s work that we have the term “metaphysics”. Aristotle’s seminal work Metaphysics was originally so named by some librarian because the rolls were placed right after the rolls constituting his investigations into nature, the Physics: ta meta ta physica simply means something like “the stuff after the stuff on physics”, where “physics” means “nature” ( physis). And the placement is apt, because generally, the term “metaphysics” applies to an investigation into issues that concerns the first principles of things, whether conceived in terms of being or of God. According to this metaphysics as it is spelled out both in the work by that name and other places, reality comes in degrees, with some things existing as potentials, others as fully realized; some as abilities, others as fullblown activities. The world and everything in it makes sense as a teleological (telos: aim, end) structure of degrees of actuality or realization. For something to be potential means that it can, or will, become a reality, like the acorn that becomes a fully grown tree or the child that becomes an adult. Some actualities are beings, like a tree, whereas other actualities are activities – in Greek, energeiai. An example of an energeia according to Aristotle is seeing, as opposed to looking for something; or thinking, as opposed to trying to solve a puzzle. Seeing and thinking share this status because they do not take place with a view to realizing anything beyond themselves, but are activities in the full sense of being ends in themselves. Acting well from a settled disposition like the ethical virtue courage, for instance, is also an energeia in this sense. The disposition to act courageously is a potential in one way, and the general human ability to become a person with such a disposition is a potential in yet another way.

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The metaphysical framework of potentialities and actualities affords us some help in grasping what is peculiar to the process of habituation. Things that come about through habituation are peculiar, if compared to things that come about through nature. When nature brings forth something, there is first a potentiality, which is then actualized. For instance, when kittens actualize their capacity for sight, the capacity is there before they open their eyes for the first time. When they do open them, the potential for seeing is actualized for the first time. Habituation does not work like that at all. In the case of habituation, there is no corresponding ability before the activation. In fact, the temporal relation is reversed: the actuality must somehow be there before the potentiality is present. In becoming virtuous by doing virtuous things, the individual builds up or creates a potential or disposition by repeatedly performing the suitable activities. From nature, we have the potential to become good, but we have it in such a way that we also have the potential to become bad. Nature does not guarantee ethical virtue, only the possibility of developing virtue. What is also required for a lucky result is that many things go well in the process of habituation. This lack of an unambiguously directed potentiality from nature thus amounts to a terrible risk in upbringing. Although it is true that an acorn too needs water and light in order to develop, the analogy with a child’s upbringing falters: young human beings risk not only not maturing and developing but also being affected to the core of their being through their own activities. Again, a child’s capacity for acting is a capacity both for bad and for good. Exposing the young to the wrong impressions and options, and having them inculcated through habituation, instills in them the potential for bad rather than for good on the level of their states of character. Although it is a great and wonderful thing that we in our habituation go beyond what nature has placed in us, it thus presents us with great challenges as well, because we can go wrong in ways that would have been impossible if nature were our author in full. We should note that habituation as Aristotle expounds it is a matter of concern not only, or even primarily, for the one being formed but also for others who are in positions of guardianship over him. The one being formed is precisely too young and immature to be able to judge for himself what patterns of activity he should allow himself to get into, and which patterns he should strive for. Aristotle’s oft-quoted saying that man is a political animal is thus also an expression of our radical need for each other. “Political” means not least that one lives in a polis, a city-state, a complex form of social structure that ensures living and makes possible good living. The child needs a social setting not just for physical care, but also to be able to become fully human. If all goes well, the process of habituation is a process of unifying something like a hornets’ nest of impulses, appetites, and desires into a more holistic perspective on activities, ethical qualities, and how they relate in the living of a life. From a practical point of view, such unity should first and foremost characterize the agent’s own doings, as a condition for happiness (eudaimonia) as the aim of our existence: a life well lived in terms of virtuous activities.

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Physiology: the relevance of nature The theory of habituation as the instilling of character, outlined previously, is the most important perspective in finding out about Aristotle’s views on children and childhood. I have therefore presented it first, even though there is another aspect to the human being that also needs to be treated in some more detail, and that some might think of as more basic: our nature. In other contexts, Aristotle presents us with a physiological theory that can complement what he tells us in his sketch of habituation. In his biology and philosophy of nature, he sketches a theory of vital heat, pneuma, as the main phenomenon defining the presence of organic life in all its various shapes and forms.10 The theory of pneuma underlies all the three parts of our souls recognized in Aristotle’s psychological tripartition, discussed previously, but has a special affinity with thymos through its role in anger and self-affirmation. To Aristotle, the heart is the seat of all our basic psychological powers and of their coordination. The concentrated heat that is located in the individual’s heart is the seat for anger and fear from the beginning of life on, and, in later stages of our social development, of pride and shame. Pneuma is vital heat in the form of organized movement. Perhaps in analogy to cooking and metalwork, the notion that heat is related to organized production and life is not unreasonable. The basic idea is that the heat of natural organisms is not an accident, but intimately connected to the fact that they are alive. We know from other areas that heat acts on and shapes things, and the same explanation applies here. In nutrition, vital heat acts on what we eat and drink, and through organized movement both shapes it into materials for bodily growth or repair work and performs that work of upholding our lives as unified organisms. Similarly, in biological conception, a portion of the father’s vital heat, present in the semen, gets to work on the menses (themselves refined products of the woman’s vital heat) in order to produce a new being.11 A link between the physiologist’s explanation in terms of pneuma and ethically more obviously relevant sides of youthful behavior can be seen by turning to On Rhetoric again. In his chapter about the young, Aristotle describes them as being ruled by changeable desires and impulses, but also as being trusting and hopeful (because of not yet having been deceived much and not having experienced much failure). They are filled with good hopes, “for like those drinking wine, the young are heated by their nature” (2.12, 1389a18–19).12 Speaking of the old in the next chapter, he says that they are cowardly and fearful ahead of time about everything; for their disposition is the opposite of the young (tois neois). (They are chilled, but the young are hot; so old age has prepared the way for cowardice; for fear is a kind of chilling). (On Rhetoric 2.13, 1389b29–32) Some caution is due, for although neos can refer to anyone from a child to someone in his twenties (at least), Aristotle’s agenda in this context must be

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supposed to concern primarily people of an age where they can form an audience for persuasion by someone mastering the rhetorical art.13 Although this means that his characterizations are not offered primarily with that group in view, it seems reasonable to include children among those he refers to here. In talking of the heat of youth, Aristotle does not speak merely in metaphors. Human generation, growth, and organic upholding depend on pneuma. In the case of the young, pneuma also contributes to explaining their volatility and what it means in their case to live by emotion. An overarching comment is in order at this point concerning a less palatable part of Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle is well known as a defender of hierarchies between people outside political relations narrowly construed, resulting in defenses of the husband’s rule over the wife and of slavery. Part of his explanation for the sexist aspect of this systematic discrimination is in fact physiological, building on the notion that women’s vital heat is weaker than men’s, and that in procreation, the mother provides the material whereas the father provides the unifying form.14 Accordingly, the virtues he analyzes in the texts handed down to us concern primarily the male ideal. Although we today tend to take his descriptions as applicable to humans as such, we must presume that a corresponding description of women’s virtues from his hand would have deviated from these sketches. For instance, courage is paradigmatically the warrior’s virtue. To the extent that the battlefield is seen as its arena, this is to say that to both Aristotle and most of his contemporaries, it is a male virtue – in most Greek city-states, a woman’s role should not and could not include virtue on the battlefield, and the very word, andreia, is derived from anêr, meaning “man” in a specific sense, distinct from “woman” or “wife”, as well as from “god” or “youth”. The fact that Aristotle’s virtues are meant primarily as filling in the features of a male ideal, or that he thinks there is a principled difference in the roles of the two sexes in procreation, or that men should possess overall authority in the familial sphere, does not imply that Aristotle thinks there is a difference between the sexes as far as the basic tenets of socialization are concerned, however. Nor does he provide us with any textual hint in support of such a view. Accordingly, on the level of analysis explicated in this chapter, the best interpretation seems to be that Aristotle means it to apply to children and young people irrespective of gender.

Reason Aristotle has told us that there are three things that make us good: nature, habit, and reason. Each of these three principles plays a crucial role for understanding the child’s being and becoming, and together they constitute the whole story. Nature, the first of the principles, is the one that kicks in first, through the child’s basic cognitive apparatus shaping his or her emotional views of and responses to the world by means of pleasure and pain. Habituation is the structuring and shaping of nature’s basic patterns into cultural,

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linguistic, and artistic expressions of nobility, fineness, and beauty – and their contraries. But what about reason? Reason (logos) is the third and last principle to manifest itself. Indeed, Aristotle indicates that for most people, it never does. In order to see that this opinion is not as strange as it sounds, it is important to keep in mind that logos (and related terms) is not simply the ability to “think” in our modern sense, for instance by adding two and two, or by figuring out that if I want to make a lot of money, I should not opt for a career as a philosopher. Historically speaking, Aristotle is the one who establishes the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Phronêsis, the pinnacle of practical reason, is not identical to being able to calculate the means to a given end, but requires a perfect eye for what is the right end in each case. If you possess phronêsis, you will always choose what is right and good. Similarly, for theoretical reason, a high point of which is theoretical wisdom or sophia, a perfection of theoretical insight into the highest things, its presence in an individual is not confirmed by that person’s ability merely to perform calculations, but by his or her deep understanding of the actual principles and realities of nature, and of their logical interrelations. For both practical and theoretical reason, then, it is true to say that their presence requires thorough knowledge – and, where relevant, perfect emotional attunement – to reality. Judging by Aristotle’s standards, this is something few of us possess at best. And given his teleological take on human development, children will in important respects be further removed from these realizations (in both senses of the word) than others, through their lack of character, experience, and intellectual training. His teleology, outlined previously, is an important reason for interpreting childhood partly in terms of lack, as well as for the relative lack of discussions of childhood in Aristotle’s work. Typically, in discussing something, Aristotle will glance to its fully developed form, and treat earlier stages primarily as just that: stages on the teleological way from potentials toward fulfilment. Aristotle has no doubt that, in most ways, actuality has priority over what is potential. After all, a difference between the two is that one lacks what the other displays. The child’s potentialities are potentialities for really being something. This notwithstanding, it is true that Aristotle acknowledges cognitive abilities in children that we would count as reason. It is also true that he advocates an educational system which contributes to developing reason in the child from an early age. In order to make this clear, we must distinguish between “reason” and “rationality”, where reason is deep, substantive insight into what is and what should be, and rationality is the capacity for rational – logical and articulate – thinking. Thus, whereas he holds back from attributing reason to children and young people, Aristotle is not in doubt that rationality comes into play at an early stage and can be engaged not only through everyday activities but also, in a more systematic fashion, through education. In this sense, both nature’s emotions – for example the cognitions that let one fear the fearful – and the self-shaping work of habituation – the generalizations required to

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recognize and instantiate something by habit – involve rationality. Once a character is in place, it is the partly emotional compass of ethical virtue which provides a starting point for intellectual virtue.

Reason in education The last two books of Aristotle’s Politics are to a great extent devoted to fleshing out his take on the ideal city. To a perhaps surprising degree, Aristotle concentrates on specifying the educational system such a city should offer, and more generally the cultural exposure it should provide for children and the young. He is representative of what seems to be typical ancient Greek attitudes, in their attention to the shaping of those who are to take over the rule and defense of the city-state. Aristotle is clear that, beyond the need for active training in speaking and writing, there is also a need for control of linguistic influence: [Those responsible for education] should be careful what tales or stories the children hear, for all such things are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life. (Pol. 7.17, 1336a30–33) [T]here is nothing which the legislator should be more careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the light utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful actions. The young especially should never be allowed to repeat or hear anything of the sort. (Pol. 7.17, 1336b3–8) Here language is not thought of primarily as a neutral reservoir of facts, but as something which has important and complex ethical effects on those exposed to it. Hearing something amounts to more than registering sounds or even the opinions of others. What is taken in affects the thought, speech, and actions of the hearer. Again we are back at our basic starting point: that children and young people lack the internal stability provided by character. This state of affairs should dictate and limit what they are exposed to. What about the nature of children’s more formal education? According to the same discussion in the Politics (7.17), children should start attending school at five years of age. During the first two years, they should exclusively witness how the older children partake in instruction, without themselves actively participating. For the next seven years (Aristotle broadly holds on to a classical division of life into seven-year stages), that is from the age of seven until the age of fourteen, there will be a combination of physical and, increasingly, intellectual exercises, whereas the phase from fourteen to seventeen is characterized exclusively by nonphysical education. Strenuous physical exercise follows thereafter. Behind this regime is a belief that one should avoid combining extremes of mental and physical training during the same period.15

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Aristotle is not explicit about how reason is to be developed among the older groups in his educational program, but dialectic is probably to be considered an important means of developing the individual’s reasoning ability.16 For Aristotle as for Plato, dialectic is the intellectual activity par excellence, consisting in exchanges of a strictly logical form about topics imported from lay and professional sources of knowledge. Aristotle devoted a work to the study of dialectic, and many of his other works bear the mark of a dialectical approach.17 Through dialectical training, the young person would acquire both an ability to see which assertions imply which other assertions (and which clash with which) and an intimate knowledge of an array of popular and less popular topics and the relationships and implications that exist between them. Although Aristotle is not clear on these matters, it seems reasonable to think of this training as a further formalization of the more implicit logical structure that characterizes all valid and good thinking, both practical and theoretical. From early physical exercises to the trappings of advanced dialectical practice, reason is always seen as an irreducible aspect of the further development of the individual’s emotional and habitual resources. Being a rational animal does not mean that reason is abstractly tacked on to an animal nature, but that the being as a whole realizes its potential in a deeply integrated and harmonious fashion. Indeed, harmony is a requirement for the virtuous state of a human being. Reason is a fully integral part of such a state.

Active engagement as mimêsis Socialization and education do not consist in passively receiving the relevant qualities. What must be appreciated is Aristotle’s view – a view he seems to share with Plato – of children not as beings who are passively shaped by external forces, but as driven primarily by their own engagement with the external world, and in this sense as shaped through their own agency. This is an insight with wide ramifications because it ensures a framework according to which children do not primarily need to be coerced into ethical training, even given the elitism and hierarchy that many feel compromise Aristotle’s writings. Rather, as it is indicated in the Politics, as well as the Nicomachean Ethics, children’s constitution is such that they must be shielded from all that is bad. The challenge is not to make them do what is – or leads to – goodness, but to avoid having them do what can lead them toward vice. There are several ways in which one might develop this idea so that it coheres with, and builds on, Aristotle’s writings. I wish to end by suggesting one such way: applying what Aristotle says elsewhere about mimêsis (pl. mimêseis), often translated as “imitation”, to the question of ethical training.18 Here, the notion of play is also highly relevant, because it partly overlaps with mimêsis. We might embark upon the discussion by focusing on the role of pleasure. In the context of considering habituation and upbringing, Aristotle states that it is pleasure that causes us to do base actions, and pain that causes us to abstain from fine ones. Hence we need to have had the appropriate

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upbringing – right from early youth, as Plato says – to make us find enjoyment or pain in the right things; for this is the correct education. (EN 2.3, 1104b10–13) Here we see combined the two main topics of pleasure and pain as a basic dimension of ethical motivation and shaping, and the echo of Aristotle’s emphasis on habit in habituation. How can the two be combined? That is what do we have at our disposal which might trump the pleasures and pains dragging us off in the wrong direction? Going from the idea that nothing can trump a pleasure as well as another, suitable pleasure, I suggest we follow a lead that presents us with such a source of joy and that Aristotle explicitly links to our broader cognitive development. In the unexpected context of the Poetics, he informs us of what must be considered a main source of pleasure to us: It can be seen that poetry was broadly engendered by a pair of causes, both natural. For it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to engage in mimêsis (indeed, this distinguishes them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimêsis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that everyone enjoys mimetic objects. (Poetics 4, 1448b4–10)19 A mimêsis is a representation, portrayal, dramatization, or imitation of something. If you draw a flower, this is a mimêsis of a flower. If you assimilate the gait and the manner of speaking of an admired friend, this is a mimêsis of the friend’s qualities. If you write or stage a tragedy, this is a mimêsis of human action and character and the conditions of human life. In the passage just quoted, Aristotle says that from a very young age, we take great pleasure both in perceiving others’ mimêseis and in ourselves performing mimêseis. Enacting (or reenacting) what we are cognitively confronted with, says Aristotle, moreover constitutes a major source for our earliest understanding of the world. Here we have an indication of what motivates the young to perform actions of a given sort repeatedly. These activities are motivated simply by one’s having been exposed to their models or sources. The main task of the parent, guardian, or responsible politician is thus not to force anyone to act, but to protect the young from things that might blight them by functioning as bad models. Aristotle continues, we enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful to us, such as the forms of the vilest animals and of corpses. The explanation of this too is that understanding gives great pleasure not only to philosophers but likewise to others too, though the latter have a smaller share in it. This is why people enjoy looking at images, because through contemplating them it comes about that they understand and infer what each element means, for instance that “this person is so-andso”. For, if one happens not to have seen the subject before, the image will

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not give pleasure qua mimêsis but because of its execution or colour, or for some other such reason. (1448b10–24) The mimêsis of something has its own inherent pleasure, a pleasure of a deeply cognitive nature which is so forceful it makes us love representations even when we find the original to be disgusting or otherwise undesirable. Whether in play or in training, we see here in concrete terms what it means that we, by nature, have a desire to learn and to understand, and that this desire shapes not only our knowledge of the world but also our own being as well.

Conclusion We have seen that Aristotle’s ethical theory by implication places children among the most fascinating beings in his moral universe, precisely because they lack what adults have: an ethical character. Whereas Aristotle ostensibly construes the young primarily in terms of lack, his theory caters to the fact that the human being, and especially the young human being, is not reducible to its rationality, but – as the psychological trifurcation shows – harbors a multidimensional set of motivations, desires, and potentials. As is evidenced by both Aristotle’s moral psychology and his views on education, taking this complexity into consideration is necessary for the proper development of a virtuous character through habituation. Reason is the crowning achievement of such a development, but never to the detriment or exclusion of the less rational or nonrational aspects of human nature analyzed in terms of thymos and appetite. Although the young person is barred from fully grasping what he or she is becoming, the process is nonetheless one in which the individual is the main agent. Through their own engagement, children are in a process where the nature of the human being aims at transcending mere human nature, understood as natural potentials seen in isolation. One way of grasping this process in its central features of engagement, cognition, and shaping is by means of Aristotle’s theory of mimêsis.

Notes 1 I am grateful for the constructive comments I received on earlier drafts from participants at the two workshops we enjoyed as part of the production of this volume. Special thanks go to W. Martin Bloomer and Ville Vuolanto, who had both prepared written comments, and to the editors of this volume. 2 A useful and solid presentation of Aristotle as a philosopher is Barnes 2000. 3 Given the great scholarly interest in Aristotle, and given his interest in development and process, it is even more surprising how little secondary literature is available on the topic. One notable exception, which places emphasis on the importance of the child’s coming to grasp the absolute status of moral demands, is Broadie 1991: 103–10. The other notable exceptions of which I am aware will be mentioned in the course of the chapter.

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4 All references to Aristotle’s work follow the standard Bekker pagination, which is included in most editions and translations. Citations from the Nicomachean Ethics (EN ) are given from Irwin’s translation. 5 Cf. Fossheim 2015 for a discussion of the ways in which Aristotle appears to instantiate such a view. 6 As expounded in Cooper 1999: 265. This article also provides a good introduction to the place of trifurcation in Aristotle’s psychology. 7 Besides Cooper 1999, Burnyeat 1980 is a classic on the question of the complexity of the ethical learner’s motivation. 8 In fact, the possibility of conflict is a main source of evidence for the tripartition’s correctness, because we notice via conflicting desires that we have more than one source of motivation in us. 9 Politics (Pol.) 7.13, 1332a38–40; Reeve’s translation. 10 Those shapes and forms are by Aristotle broadly classified into three kinds of soul: the nutritive soul possessed by plants, the perceptual soul that animals have, and the intellectual soul we humans enjoy. The best study of Aristotle’s physiology that I know of is Freudenthal 1995, to which the following paragraphs are indebted. I have included a section on this theory also because it reminds us that Aristotle takes seriously the material aspect of beings and processes, and that his thought can be more alien to us than we tend to acknowledge. 11 The first organ to be constructed is the heart. Once the new heart is constructed, this becomes the hearth of the organism’s unified and unifying vital heat, producing and upholding the rest of the individual. 12 This is also why drinking wine can make one feel young again: the sun’s vital heat, having helped developing the grapes, is present in the wine and affects one a bit like one’s own vital heat affected one in younger years. 13 A discrepancy between Aristotle’s properly ethical works and this text is that in works like the Nicomachean Ethics, he describes people as they should be, and analyzes all others from this perspective, whereas in On Rhetoric, he describes people as they are. This takes nothing away from the relevance of the following descriptions, however. 14 Witt and Shapiro 2016 provide a synoptic view, with several exemplifications from Aristotle, of the complex issue of relating to sexism in the philosophical canon; cf. especially sections 1.1–1.2. 15 Important among the educational efforts is one field which combines intellectual focus with the partial shaping and fine-tuning of êthos: music. Music represents emotions and states of character. So it is important to use this tool well in the shaping of the young. Although enjoying music correctly is in this way relevant to being well constituted ethically, the activity of playing and singing also contributes to the individual’s ability to judge the quality of music – not as an expert, but as an educated layperson; professional musicians were in the main not a respected group, but overlapped with, for example, the groups of prostitutes and slaves. 16 For a related discussion, cf. Ryle 1965. 17 Aristotle devoted his Topics to an investigation into dialectic, and many of his works bear the mark of a dialectical approach. A recommendable presentation of the roles and features of Aristotelian dialectic is provided by Smith 1997. 18 Cf. Fossheim 2006, where I develop these ideas in greater detail. 19 For a thorough treatment of Aristotle’s concept of mimêsis in the Poetics, cf. Halliwell 2002, chs. 5–8.

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Roman conceptions of childhood The modes of family commemoration and academic prescription W. Martin Bloomer

In her fine book on Roman children, the eminent historian of Roman childhood Beryl Rawson (1933–2010) began with the case of a little boy, Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, who died about 94 CE at the age of eleven (see Figure 4.1).1 His proud parents had erected an elaborate funerary memorial for him, a sculpted relief of an altar which includes a depiction of the boy in a toga with a papyrus roll and also two inscriptions: in Latin, his parents’ account of his victory in a poetry contest and, in Greek, the winning poem, Zeus’s words explaining why he had killed the young Phaethon whose perilous driving had brought his father’s sun chariot so close as to scorch the earth.2 It is one of the strong virtues of her book and indeed of the approach of Roman social historians that the physical evidence from the non- or subelite is considered as central. Such material history is more than a complement or corrective to the written evidence that survives from antiquity. The great majority of the written record is in fact oblique notices about children and childhood in the ancient literature. The literary evidence reflects the attitudes of elite writers and is partial in another sense: the discomfiting fact is that for most of the philosophical tradition and even for the educational writers before the famous rhetorician and educator Quintilian (35–100 CE), the child is simply not that important.3 Rather the adult male citizen was the focus of the combined interests of various ancient theoreticians of what we would now call psychology, as well as philosophy. One can glean bits of detail about the treatment of children – we read, for example, that Roman children might be given a little honey on the lip of their cup of medicine – and one can glean attitudes toward children; but often we have to read with a partisan eye, again gathering together the occasional thoughts or dispersed remarks that an ancient writer drops almost in passing. Broadly speaking, those ancient writers who treat children as an important social or cultural category take one of two approaches. Children can be understood as typifying social virtues because they are human beings before the deleterious effects of social ambition or personal vice. Thus children’s behavior can be employed as an incentive to the virtues of generosity, sympathy, and charity of spirit. They can represent an ideal state, as dead children can represent the loss of such a state. Yet, when perceived as unformed persons driven by unruly appetites and desires, children also appear as an image of all that is in

Figure 4.1 The funerary monument of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, who died aged eleven in 94 CE and was celebrated for his virtuosity in Greek and Latin literature (late first century CE). Source: © Roma, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali – Musei Capitolini.

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need of reformation. Thus, when ancient thinkers wrestled with the question of how people can change for the better or how a future worthy of the past can be won for society at large, their answers tended to focus on the formation of children. This chapter considers two modes in which Romans used children to communicate important social and cultural ideas: the material record by which parents commemorated their prematurely dead child, and the prescriptive treatise of the great Roman educator Quintilian. I have not preferred the former as more authentic. Rather both modes of talking about children challenge the historian of education to understand the entangled representations by adults of the children of the Roman Empire as valuable agents of their society. The case of young Quintus Sulpicius Maximus has an attractive particularity, especially in contrast to the idealizations and generalizations of the philosophers and even of Quintilian. The monument reports his and his parents’ names, his exact age, their verse on their sense of loss, and his extemporized verses, and offers a twenty-eight-inch portrait of the boy. Nonetheless we are still dealing with adult commemoration of the child. Certainly, the historian of childhood must be alert to the distortions of parental expectation, pride, and grief just as to the idealizations of the ancient teachers and educational theorists. In addition, in trying to determine conceptions of ancient childhood the historian has often to consider far less direct evidence. In the course of their topic literary authors may include some information about childhood. For example, Aristotle’s (384–322 BCE) Nicomachean Ethics does have a high concentration of remarks on children.4 These ideas about children although not central to the philosopher’s argument would, however, have a long life, for they entered the philosophical and literary traditions and would be influential in Roman times as well. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has in summary the following remarks about children: a child cannot be happy, because children cannot engage in the activities of a virtuous man; children live according to pleasure (1.8–9; 3.12; 7.11–12); children cannot engage in philosophy, although they can engage in mathematics (6.8); a man cannot be the friend of a child (the relationship cannot be one of equality; 8.4; 8.7; 8.12); a child should do what his tutor tells him (3.12); “satisfactory children” are a necessary condition for (parental) happiness (1.8); children and animals act voluntarily from desire (3.1–2); children base friendship on pleasure; children have different standards of value from adults (4.2; 7.13); child abuse can lead to unnatural or brutish inclinations in adults (7.5; Aristotle is writing of pederasty as arising in some by habit); children and animals possess inclinations to virtue (6.13); and for a man to worry that he might be insulting children does not make him a coward (3.6).5 Such list making, however, would miss a central question for the philosopher: how should children be raised, or how are moral adult citizens produced? In this chapter I shall try to ascertain what the important questions regarding children among Romans of the later republic and early empire were. Here I do not focus much on the continuity of ideas; for example, the Greek philosopher Epictetus (55–135 CE) writing at Rome makes frequent

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observations about children, but in a vein similar to earlier philosophers. He remarks, for instance, that children feel joy at the coming of the Saturnalia (Epist. 1.29) and that they can amuse themselves, for example by building sand castles (Epist. 3.13), but his point here is that the uneducated man, the unphilosophical man, is a child. Rather than trace the continuity of the fairly consistent philosophical denigration of the child, my chapter considers the evidence for the thinking in the Roman world that highly valued children, especially as a potential good. The children here imagined, it must be said, were elite children or children whose parents or teachers hoped would become the elite. In funerary monuments for their dead children parents communicated their grief and their high valuation of what their children could have been. This graphic evidence that announces the lost potential of children I connect to and contrast with the observations and recommendations for educating children by the groundbreaking theorist, the educator Quintilian. Childhood was not a universal experience nor, even for a minority, was it a static practice. The historian of Roman childhood Christian Laes has made clear with his careful studies of apprentices that there were many kinds of child experiences in Rome.6 Ancient thinking about children was thus multifaceted: the media of commemoration belonged to several disciplines; there were several kinds of childhood; and childhood itself, although indirectly and sporadically studied by the ancients, could also be thematized so as to represent other important social, cultural, and political phenomena. By singling out the eleven-year-old paragon of education, Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, the historian follows the lead of his proud parents. This child becomes more visible and eclipses the nameless many without education. The sentiment and motivations of the parents, nonetheless, have much to tell us. The grief of the boy’s parents is not idiosyncratic or excessive but is meant to be exemplary. It stands as one monument among many lining the roads outside the city of Rome. The very form of the monument expresses an appropriate and measured sentiment. The appropriateness derives not simply from authenticity of experience and depth of feeling but from the status of the family involved and the media that express their grief. In the case of this child who has died in the midst of his educational career, his freed ex-slave parents engage in the distinguished practice of having an inscribed and sculpted monument erected on a main street leading to and from Rome, here along the Via Salaria leading northeast from the city. The funerary monument of the child communicates crucial social claims.7 The parents commemorate their son’s death not as a lost source of labor or income, but as an education cut short, which might still be worthy of their peers’ regard. The child helps them enter into a visual culture that values education, familial ties, and the strongly symbolic resonances of a balanced, artistic grief.

The graphic evidence: five types of children The increased attention of Romans of the late republic and early empire to the representation, education, and commemoration of children is clear from literature and from graphic representations, especially funerary monuments.8 Along

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with political sculpture, these reveal five strong types: the educated child, the dressed-up child (as citizen), the child as little prince (citizen, but in the iconographic tradition made famous by Augustus’s monuments), the negligent child, and the child eternally at play. All of these show the hand of the adult in the form of their commemoration; in practice, however, these types often overlap. In this chapter, I will more broadly conclude that the graphic evidence either celebrated children as a promise for the future or mourned them as a hope lost. The latter category is perhaps of greater interest for it leads not so much to a sentimental understanding as to a broader and not so instrumental estimation of the child’s value. Certainly the visible monument celebrated the dead child as one marker of the family’s excellence, as, for instance, a fine house or a public munificence advertises the family’s ongoing worth and importance to the body politic. The funerary monument turned the lost child into a marker of Roman excellence, but this functional symbolism in turn drove a reappraisal of the conceptions of the child. The child commemorated is not simply an individual lost to a family but also a paragon of Roman virtues, and the commemoration is a statement of solidarity that connected this child to other children living and dead, and this family to other families. The artistic conventions of the genre were derived from upper-class and even imperial monuments, and so the generic commemoration sought to create a society with upward aspirations – eleven-year-old Quintus is in his costume, interests, and family sentiments a version of the Augustan prince. The iconography that communicates such social ambition was not functional in any strict sense; the freedmen erecting monuments for their children were trying to be like, not to be, Augustus. This being like meant that children were to be valued and to be used as social and cultural markers. As we shall see from Quintilian, such sentiment and social action resulted in the development of special education for children and in a greater attention to the psychology of the child, especially to the psychology of the child as a learning agent. Roman social historians have been much interested in commemoration. They have especially clarified the purposes of commemorating the dead for the survivors. The commemorative representation of a small, toga-clad child could be an icon of the imperial dynasty or an aristocratic family, or down the social ladder, it declared the citizen status of a freed couple. Such prospective commemoration celebrates fecundity, that is to say the productive vitality of Roman families concentrated in the single child. It is true that the child was dead and that the parents might be beyond childbearing years, but the display of fecundity, as if this were a young prince, the hope of the empire, deflects that dynastic ambition to a token of community. There may be ongoing vitality, but it now stems from the recognition of merit which the community of viewers should see in the tomb and its survivors. Such acts of commemoration have then a social valence that verges on or mixes with the religious. The monument makes a promise of sorts; it reflects a faith in future fecundity or future community health. The family will go on, the family divinities will not be neglected, and their contribution to the Roman community will not perish.

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The Roman funerary monument demonstrates a family’s devotion of resources to the individual. The inscriptions on these commemorations certainly reflect adult attitudes or ideals. This commemorative language is often stereotyped: children are pious, good, and sweet, and their parents are mournful.9 In terms of social function, this commemoration again advertises the status of the Roman family. In particular the family’s emotional coherence seems to function as a sign of that family’s social legitimacy. Through the marker of their grief, the parents express their own solidarity, the “domestic comfort of the conjugal unit” in the apt expression of Suzanne Dixon, a historian who has shed much light on the Roman family.10 Grieving parents who erected epitaphs for their children often chose to commemorate their child as the educated child. An altar from the Claudian era (41–54 CE) offers an attractive picture of family intimacy.11 A mother, Maena Mellusa, is depicted seated, cradling her three-month-old son in her left arm so closely (his head scarcely reaching her shoulder, his little left hand lifted to touch her face) that he seems an extension of her own body. Her older son, identified by the inscription as three years old, stands on one leg, somewhat nonchalant, as his mother reaches her right hand toward him but does not quite touch him (see Figure 4.2). The scene has great pathos, in a Roman context, because the names of the dead indicate that the husband was free, she was an ex-slave, and the boys seem to have died before her manumission and so too have lost their chance at freedom. Plenty then to grieve for, but of course this slightly unusual family has the status, as well as the resources and inclination, to display their grief. For our purposes, the most interesting figure may be the three-year-old set off on the left and detached from his mother’s touch. The movement of the child from nursling to toddler has been arrested here. The next stage in life would have been to get him farther away from his mother, for instance by sending him to school or even by having him play alone. He cannot yet be celebrated as a puer senex, a child who shows the praiseworthy qualities of the adult, because he has not been to school.12 The proper progression, or the more customary arrested progression, can be seen on a sarcophagus from Ostia, the main port of Rome, of one Marcus Cornelius Statius ( Figure 4.3).13 The child’s life moves from left to right in four scenes: on the far left, his seated mother suckles him while his father looks on, slightly inclined toward them but leaning on an altar which separates him from any touch. Instead he quite literally supervises the scene. Second, the father stands holding his young heir in his right hand but without any direct touch of flesh, the father’s right hand touches the child’s clothes, the left hand is raised toward him. The son’s eyes are almost level with his father, whereas in the previous scene the eyelines of the son, the mother, and the father were distinct, vertical strata. In the third scene, the child races along in a toy chariot with sword drawn. In the fourth the boy is taller, his eyeline at the level of the chin of his teacher, who is seated. The boy holds a papyrus roll in his lowered right hand, he gestures with his left while reciting, and the teacher also has a roll, in his left

Figure 4.2 An altar of the Claudian era, now in the Vatican Museum, commemorates Maena Mellusa with her two children, three months old and three years old, who died before the possibility of their own free status and education (mid-first century CE). Source: © Vatican Museums.

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Figure 4.3 The sarcophagus of Marcus Cornelius Statius with scenes from his childhood, whose life stages end with his interrupted education (third century CE). Source: © Paris, Louvre. Sculpture 2016. © Photo Josse/Scala, Florence.

hand, and props his chin on his right, suggesting a level of supervision but also a near equality of the two figures. Here the story stops, but the child’s mirroring of the teacher’s pose and the mirroring that is the performance of the homework suggest that he is a quasi-adult, already showing the virtues of bodily disposition and literate performance that make him a puer senex. Certainly the movement is toward death – we are looking at a sarcophagus – but there is no graphic admission of that, save the fact that the panels end too soon. These two remarkable funerary monuments communicate the parents’ celebration of their children’s identities as students.14 Likewise, a first-century BCE funerary inscription commemorates a fourteen-year-old girl as schooled and learned (erodita ) in all the arts.15 Roman funerary inscriptions express in a generic, almost rigid economy the identity of the dead, and of the living heirs or survivors.16 Of course, name, notice of filiation, age at death, notice of free or freed status, and titles express in formulary mode the identity of the dead. But this is an identity tied to the survivors. The two examples discussed here in their content and design commemorate the child as prestudent and student respectively. Certainly, one needs to tread carefully with the notion of identity. It must be noted that by recording the dead child’s name, the parent is in fact recording his or her own name by virtue of the notice of filiation. As Jesper Svenbro in his study of the anthropology of Greek reading wrote about archaic and classical Greek practice, “the name of the son is an epithet for the father or grandfather.”17 The funerary commemorations considered here extend the idea of how the son or daughter can be an epithet for the parents.

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Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, was depicted as a miniature adult (the dressed-up child). With toga and scroll we know that he would have been an orator, or at least he was on his way to a proper education which had the orator as its ideal, even though many educated Romans did not in fact become orators. His parents have written to posterity that he did well in a competition in verse composition. His poem is inscribed on his tombstone so that we may read and believe. Similarly, the sarcophagus of Marcus Cornelius Statius starts with him as an infant at his mother’s side and moves to the final scene, in which he holds a scroll: he is not merely reading but performing his recitation for his seated schoolmaster.18 A metrical inscription records the identity of the girl Magnilla, who died aged seven but who was “learned beyond her years”, super annos docta.19 This remark is more than parental boast; it is the justification for a more elaborate commemoration which includes text as well. The monument is laid out as a nearly square page. The elegiac couplets with their well-formed letters are presented one metrical line at a time, a mise en page so to speak that respects the verse form. Another relief has sculpted the six-year-old Marcianus, facing front as if to engage the passerby. The parents tell us through the inscription that the Muses had given him eloquence. The image of Marcianus shows him stopped on his way to school. With his bulla, an amulet traditionally worn by Roman schoolboys, clearly visible about his neck, he has set down his book bag at his feet and gestures to the inscribed notice of his virtues and early death with his right hand which reaches into the inscription while his head turns to eye the top two lines. He is as tall as the inscription; in some sense it is his equal or his substitute for his survivors and readers as he guides us to read it.20 Marcianus remains the good student, performing his script, perhaps even identical to it.21 These funerary monuments, with and more often without reliefs, were probably the most common communication of the identity and worth of a child. Placed along the streets just outside the Roman city, they formed something of a koine for representing children and childhood experience. We have considered previously the most elaborate of those communications that celebrate the educational achievements of the children. The lexicon and themes of the vast majority of child funerary commemorations were in fact small and formulaic.22 But the “formulaic” holds special value for the historian of concepts. The expression of a child’s potential as extraordinary – learned beyond his or her years, learned in all arts, a poetry prizewinner – undoubtedly indicates the importance of having a child educated and making a display of that educated child. Those poorer parents who could only have inscribed the name of their children and the fact that they lived so many years, months, and days contribute to the economy of child commemoration as much as the aristocrat whose epitaph records that he was aedile, but not praetor or consul, contributes to the economy of the commemoration of Roman men. Clearly if a Roman were consul or if he or she were educated and had the resources for a grander sort of commemoration, then funerary commemoration advertised these markers of importance. The humbler do not simply contribute as the

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unmarked or lesser-marked participants in the discourse. They also have a relation to the form and motives of grander commemorations: they help to enroll the dead children and their families into the society of those remembered as Romans, and they help to perpetuate that society and its hierarchical values. At the upper end of the spectrum of funerary commemorations of children is not the dead child lost to education and to citizenship, but rather the dead child as positive exemplar. The Roman child as miniature citizen is perhaps the most famous adult mode of picturing the child. With a certain degree of flippancy, we may call this type the dressed-up child. It is not altogether a flippant observation because the child, despite adult costume, is still to be identified and appreciated as a child.23 This and the next two types owe a great debt to the most famous and influential depiction of Roman children (see Figure 4.4), the Ara Pacis of the emperor Augustus, whose interest in children included legislation to encourage childbearing, his own education of his grandchildren (teaching them even his handwriting), and the elevation and adoption of his family’s children for dynastic purposes. Above all the depiction of Augustus’s young family members on the Ara Pacis, the monumental altar founded in 9 BCE which welcomed travelers coming from the north to Rome and directed them on past Augustus’s grand series of buildings on the Campus Martius to the city itself,

Figure 4.4 Children on the Ara Pacis, Rome (9 BCE). Source: By isawnyu – www.flickr.com/photos/isawnyu/7556343002/ (CC-BY 2.0)

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had a strong influence on the future commemoration of the child as promise for the future and symbol of legitimacy.24 The exterior frieze constituted a “who’s who” of the imperial family, the elite senators, and priests, who in all likelihood gathered to inaugurate the altar itself – a rite to be repeated each year. The pictured children are, it must be stressed, only one demonstration or symbol of the fecundity (and legitimacy) that marks the monument and by implication the emperor, his family, and Rome itself. They seem to be Germanicus, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, Domitia, and a barbarian prince whom scholars had, wrongly, identified as Gaius Caesar. The inclusion of the miniature Roman citizens and future rulers of Rome and their royal hostage catches the eye. The little boys are about to participate; they need to be faced forward and told to move with the procession. In effect, their small stature and backward-turned bodies offer a relief to the series of adult heads that encircle the altar at the top of the frieze. They are little Roman citizens, wearing the republican garb, but their connection to the imperial family is amply marked by their physical proximity to and even physical contact with men of the imperial family. The children play an important role in integrating dynastic promise with ritual, because the rites of the altar will be celebrated each year. The young are included in the long pompa, parade, forward and back. The child emerges as a type of imperial propaganda, a promise of fecundity, like the ritual itself, but also as a key to the functioning of the work of art and of the rite, a way for the future viewer to enter this story.25 The child as little prince type is most pronounced in the isolated form of the portrait bust. Again, the imperial family has provided the precedent, through coins as well. The head of Lucius Verus, who would be emperor from 130 to 169, displays the characteristic combination of the idealized representations of the imperial family: the portraiture reflects the boy’s own appearance, features from the imperial, dynastic tradition and from Hellenistic sculpture.26 All of this contributes to the sense of a serene, imperial, beautiful, vital child in what is not so much an idealization as a fusion of modes: the present actual child, the past Roman exemplum, and the Hellenistic artistic conventions. Such a combination of interests reflects the nature of elite and even subelite Roman identity, as free citizens and freedmen would imitate those canons of representation. My penultimate category, the negligent child, also arises from the Ara Pacis. The little children are not quite paying attention to the pompa of which they are a part. A hand needs to be held. They are looking in the wrong direction. The child may be a prince, but nevertheless needs his father or a child tender to be directed forward. A third-century fresco from Ostia now in the Vatican collection shows children in procession to Diana. Again they are almost in procession: there is a little conversation going on, and not everyone is facing the right way.27 Children’s sarcophagi are now perhaps the best known Roman representations of children, especially those that show children in eternal play.28 The

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scenes are a kind of happy free-for-all, again an adult maximization of what a childhood cut short by death could mean. The implication of our observation that the children at play seem to be younger than school age may be that if the children had died at school age, they would have been commemorated as scholars. The iconographic type where several panels show progress from mother and infancy to literacy and father or schoolmaster would not have been appropriate. The children at eternal play, which seems to have a sentimental hold on modern viewers, are in fact connected neither to their mother, teacher, nor father. They have no relationship to the adult world but can only play with their peers. This does not mean that free-spirited childhood is best: it is a stage before adult value or beyond any familial or social interaction and identity. The Romans of this period – especially Quintilian but also Epictetus, as we see from his occasional remarks – show real interest in the play of children.29 Quintilian recommends play but for the purpose of motivating the prejudgmental child to the hard work of education, whereas Epictetus uses it as a negative argument, the kind of anecdote that would arouse his readers’ attention and lead them from sentiment to critical reflection. The connection of representations of children to Roman thinking about life stages was in fact an innovation at the time. Sarah Currie has observed that the use of putti, the chubby male infants often depicted on children’s sarcophagi, was not simply testimony to a new sentimental understanding but rather a displacement of the female body as a signifier. Specifically, the use of putti – rather than the tradition of using women’s bodies – to represent the seasons encoded the child’s body as the archetypal iconography of the perpetual order of nature.30 Of course, the toga-clad youth represented a stage more cultural and social. These five types of child depictions, which are by no means always distinct, constituted the most widespread contemporary thinking about the Roman child. Childhood seems to have been perceived as two stages on the road to adulthood, preschool and school. Both of these stages had value – these graphic representations after all show real vitality and hope, even if it is a hope that is lost, so much so that it has often encouraged a sentimental reading. But as a stage of human life and as a sphere of reflection and communication, childhood is a precursor to adult life. The children are marked distinctively as adult manqué: the child frozen in a mode and era before adulthood, and the child in need of an adult guide or, as in the case of imperial portrait busts, the child growing into Caesar.31 Undoubtedly, funerary representations of the child also served the personal purposes of the commemorator by communicating important emotions – affection, pride, grief, ambition – that were also talismans of the family’s status as free Romans. Nonetheless, the children are dynamic, at times inclined to the playful and the errant, but they lived in a purposeful way. They were anticipating and rehearsing adult roles and brimming with evident potential. They testify to the value of education and beyond to the service of that education for Roman virtues and society and to the family that recognizes and displays such Roman sentiments.

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Roman theoretical reflection on the child as a student The graphic evidence of funerary and political sculpture testifies to a wideranging reestimation in the Roman world of the child as a real asset and as a symbol of social worth. For Roman adults, representing affective relationships with children was important, for the various reasons outlined previously. Indeed, modern scholarship has rightly emphasized the primary importance of the family unit in this commemorative culture of the late republic and early empire. The child’s new prominence has thus been connected to the identity and ambitions of the family. Although I do not propose a return to any sentimentalization of the child, I emphasize that the specific category of the child began in this period to attract the interest and concern of thinkers. This seems to be in part a consequence of social changes but also of the spread of common educational methods and of developments in Roman intellectual life, especially in the increasingly sophisticated and self-conscious rhetorical and philosophical thinking that characterized the period from Cicero’s youth in the 90s BCE through the years and work of inter alios Seneca, Quintilian, and Epictetus in the first two centuries CE. The Roman theorists have important debts to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Isocrates (fifth to fourth centuries BCE), and also to Cicero (106–43 BCE). In addition, the practices of the Hellenistic schoolroom, especially the intensive training in skills of memory, reading, writing, and speaking, had influenced the development of Roman schools and schooling. Cicero and Quintilian were not simply transmitting Greek ideas about childhood and education. They sought a Roman inflection on the Hellenistic training of the child into a good citizen, with ethical and rhetorical abilities. Their writings expose specifically Roman values and goals and express a growing confidence that the proper management of childhood could improve the broader society. Quintilian has left the greatest synthesis of rhetorical theory and educational practice from the ancient world. Of Spanish origin, Quintilian was a leading advocate in Rome and the most prominent educator of his era and of the Roman tradition. His famous school was closed to new students when he was selected to educate the emperor Domitian’s heirs. His great, systematic work The Training of the Orator (Institutio Oratoria), detailed in twelve books how to take the child from illiteracy to consummate skill in oratory. In this process the student also became adept in all the liberal arts, and the reader was introduced to rhetorical theory and practice.32 Quintilian writes always of the boy, although girls were also educated in Rome, and his curriculum, probably, was followed by girls, though perhaps at home and not in school.33 The latter stage of education, when the boy was sent to the rhetorical school to learn declamation, had no girls in attendance. At this stage, past puberty, Roman boys were playing at being adult orators.34 This stage of adolescence is beyond our proper subject, but it is important to stress that in Quintilian’s terms and Roman terms more generally, childhood is, in fact, boyhood. He is describing an ideal childhood spent in ideal education.

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Girls and slaves might have a similar education, and elite girls had what we must call childhood; but these do not receive Quintilian’s attention. Quintilian gives far more attention than had his predecessors to the child as a learning agent.35 He vigorously redescribes the topic of education with a bold synthetic approach that to the authoritative accounts of Greek theory adds Roman theory, especially from Cicero, and the experience of Roman practice, namely his own schoolroom and the relatively recent and intense training in analysis and performance known as declamation. Throughout he keeps the child before his reader’s eye. The training of the child is presented as a welldirected encounter with and gradual approximation to texts. While detailing the children’s progress in increasingly sophisticated interpretive and expressive skills, Quintilian understands their growing capacities as a kind of textualization. The children’s textual activities gradually form their subjectivity. The texts they read, recite, annotate, and compose in a graduated and supervised routine make the children into masters of speech. Quintilian’s greatest theoretical claim is that his process renders the children moral and makes them adult.36 He is then working childhood out of the child but in a sequence of operations that are responsive to the child’s tendencies and abilities. For Quintilian, learning necessarily takes place within the context of a social community – in fact, the same community of children, youths, and friends which he claims impelled him to publish in the first place. Although Quintilian never pauses to consider systematically the nature of the child, his text presents a unified thinking about and with the child. Children are agents, certainly susceptible to bad influences, nevertheless with capacities and dispositions distinct from adults, but imitating and aiming at adult society. For the history of childhood, Quintilian offers two chief innovations. First, he believes, asserts, and argues that children are important for reasons of their innate educability, and thus not simply for their dynastic significance, that is for some version of hope for the family’s future. The two are, of course, related. For children to be useful, they must be educated; but Quintilian does not view education as an instrument. He does believe that only the educated human being can be a contributing member of society. Only the educated can lead Rome. But Quintilian believes that educability is an essential quality of human beings, with only occasional exceptions (see the section on differences among children). To neglect education would have the consequences of not simply failure to attain government office or ensuring Rome’s ongoing hegemony, but also ruin to the child and making virility – that is to say fully functioning adulthood – impossible. Indeed, children are, at their particular stage of the human life cycle, especially suited for and nourished by literary study, grammar in particular. Quintilian’s second innovation seems on the surface a matter of process. It must be stressed that his work has traditionally been mined for individual details – of school practice, of rhetorical theory, of the recommended reading list – to the detriment of understanding his intellectual coherence, ambition, and innovation. For Quintilian describes a program of curriculum to

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transform the as-yet-analphabetic child into the young orator.37 In the history of conceptions of childhood this is of fundamental importance, perhaps even inaugural, for child and childhood are no longer biological terms or even social stages. Childhood and schooling virtually become synonyms. Here, then, childhood emerges as a separate concept, separated from any strict determinism of biology or society. A child is now something to be made, something essentially artificial. Again, this claim reflects Roman social realities about the importance of elite children of the capital in the time of a developing, heterogeneous empire. Such a conception, however, also resists the terms of its society, for if parents are to believe Quintilian, schooling – not apprenticeship or military service or family connections or money – will make the child an adult. Of course, the realists should object: all those other factors were important, even necessary, and Quintilian, like the institution of schooling itself, is claiming ground that does not strictly belong and will not in practice be yielded. But in so doing, he formulates a theory of the child’s capabilities, duties, and activities on a scale unparalleled before, and with great consequences.

Quintilian’s stages of education We can now consider some of the specific methods Quintilian employs in child education, which reveal both his perceptions of children’s capabilities and the stages of their intellectual development. The first two books of The Training of the Orator stipulate what to do with the puer – the boy of free status who has been taught the alphabet at home and is to be delivered to a schoolteacher for his education. The “boy” grows not by nutrition and parental care or through biological stages (all of these Quintilian presumes) but through distinct educational steps which are sequential but not chronological, natural but not inevitable (so book one begins with the birth of a son, and at the beginning of book two he is ready to be promoted to the rhetorician’s school). The stages reflect and nurture innate capacities but must be directed by the teacher or father using Quintilian’s directions. Child development is individually paced but not individually differentiated: all must go through the same stages once they are ready (see 1.3.6). Instead of describing natural stages of development, Quintilian offers a sequence of supervised directions. These are signaled not by a modern system of naming or numbering phases but by a series of directions to the father and teacher. In formal terms Quintilian repeatedly uses a gerundive, that is a verbal adjective signifying obligation or necessity, coupled with the word “boy”: he tells his reader “Now the boy must be [ – ]”. The boy must be trained, nourished, educated, and advised, and his inborn intellect must be sharpened.38 On occasion, Quintilian tells us what must not be done: the child must not be homeschooled, he must not be subjected to corporal punishment, and he must not be rushed through the curriculum.39

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The child is a social animal who must be educated in sociability which in turn consists mainly of a set of verbal behaviors. On the small scale these behaviors are all the exercises and readings and kinds of interpretation detailed in the magnum opus – so the Roman student learns how to make a speech in character (9.2.30) or how to use metaphors (9.1.4). On the larger scale, the child is imitating the men of the republic, even though that political order has been replaced by the emperor, in fostering a republic of discourse. The chief virtues of this discourse do include a readiness to praise the speech of others, but first and foremost the inclination to seek preeminence by verbal display. In the community of speaking which the Roman school represented, children read Greek and Roman literature with the aim to be powerful, convincing speakers capable of mediating conflicts. The crowning exercise was a kind of mock law speech in which the young speaker warded off some egregious injustice to an individual which portended also a collapse of Roman values.

Children’s mental proclivities It is in the context of this verbal, agonistic, nationalist sociability that we should place Quintilian’s greatest contribution to the history of childhood, namely his exposition of the child mind. Quintilian is developing ideas of human anthropology expressed in Rome by intellectuals from at least the midfirst century BCE. He says that voice defines the human being and mental talent characterizes the human child (1.1.1; 2.1). As is customary for ancient anthropology, the theorist is interested in finding a single quality that distinguishes the human being from all the other animals and, in Quintilian’s case, the child from the adult. Others had associated children and animals by their unreasoning. Not so Quintilian. He shares with Cicero and the Roman historian Sallust (86–ca. 35 BCE) the conviction that mental capacities distinguish humankind. The Greek orator Isocrates (433–368 BCE) had argued, in his works Antidosis (chs. 254–246) and Panegyricus (chs. 16–17), that logos was the characteristic of human nature. By this he meant not simply speech but the reasoning and mental faculties (imagination) that lead to discourse. Furthermore, discourse served human beings’ innate political tendency.40 The Latin translation for logos is vox, translated as “voice” or “word”, which adds a certain consistency to Quintilian’s vision. He is writing after all about the process of bringing the child from infantia, “infancy”, but which also means the state of “not speaking”, into the maturity of being an orator perfectus, the speaker who can talk freely and effectively on any subject. The movement into vox is the movement into humanity and ultimately into the public realm. The child has the capacity for this development – in Quintilian’s terms he has ingenium, which means talent but also an inborn quality. Only a few children, it must be noted, do not have ingenium. These Quintilian characterizes as monsters, using the word monstra ; in its proper religious context this word refers to the deformed young of an animal whose exceptionality, as it is understood as a departure from and a warning from nature, must be expiated by due ritual.41

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Differences among children According to Quintilian, some children are particularly gifted, and a very few are decidedly not. The first condition is natural and visible. The second, the monstrous, is unnatural and visible. So it should be clear that he does not advance any theory of the child mind which involves hidden depths or unseen or unrecognized surprises. The terms Quintilian uses to describe the two sets carry with them strong symbolic dimensions which immediately signal that the one set should be fostered, the other neglected or worse. He writes of the talents as shining with hope for the future. In the dedication of his work to the aristocrat Geta, Quintilian wrote of Geta’s son, “whose early childhood already revealed the clear light of his talent” (1.pref. 6). Quintilian writes of youth having shining hope (1.1.2) or being hope (1.3.2; 2.4.7). Parents or teachers take hope from a child (e.g. 1.1.2, 1.3.2, 6.pref. 2). Children are remarkable insofar as they reveal innate talent which promises well for the family and indeed for the community; for Quintilian’s shining boys are similar to the children of the Ara Pacis, as they are clear emblems of legitimacy, their own and their families. The diction of light and hope applied to children seems to have an epic flavor: it is redolent of Ascanius, son of Aeneas, that hope of the Trojans and the Romans, in Virgil’s (70–19 BCE) Aeneid. The son’s quasi-divine sanction and future are foretold by the light (lumen) that licks about his head: From the top of Iulus’ head was seen a flickering Tip pouring out light, and soft and with no harm to the touch The flame licks his hair and feeds about his temples.42 Both the god Mercury and Aeneas himself refer to Ascanius as the hope of the Romans (Aen. 4.274 and 1.556). In book 12.169, he is after his father “the second hope of great Rome”. In the Aeneid, light and hope, lux and spes, characterize youth. All the Trojan boys shine, lucent, in an equestrian display for the funeral of Anchises, Aeneas’s father, at 5.554. When Aeneas imagines that he could address the dead Hector (2.291), he calls him lux and spes. The association of light with life itself in the epic is clear from the formula for the dead, “those bereft of light” (luce carentum), that sonorous close of the hexameter line. The children that survive and promise continuity to the empire have light and embody hope. Quintilian picks up this epic diction and this epic, even Augustan, vision of what elite boys can be. On this understanding the childhood of the elite is a spectacular preview of coming greatness. For Quintilian the evidence that is the light emanating from children comes not from fire dancing about the epic hero’s head but from the extraordinary performance of a few of his students that lifts them above the others. Their visible excellence in fact depends on faithful mimetics. Just as the dead child of the funerary inscription reproduced the name and hopes of his family, or the portrait bust of the young prince reproduced the look of the dynast, the school child is a reproduction, but of text set by the teacher. In keeping with his thinking of the child as a shining hope, Quintilian says that the child’s

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brilliance can be easily seen. There is a signum, which means both a sign and even a statue or monument, which portends this future greatness: The chief sign of talent in the very young is memory, which has two strengths, swift acquisition and accurate retention. The second is imitation: for that too belongs to a teachable nature, though the boy must represent what he has been taught, not the physical characteristics or gait or any remarkable defect [of another person]. For the boy who seeks to raise a laugh in his zeal for imitation gives me no hope for his good character. For the talented boy will first and foremost be the upright boy, in other cases I do not consider a boy of small talent to be worse than a boy of evil character. (1.3.1) Just as with the funerary inscriptions discussed previously, we can see conceptions of childhood at play in Quintilian, and, like the culture of monument making, we can see some limited explorations of what the life stage of childhood could mean and what children could achieve, but we do not see a well-developed, systematic, or thorough-going exploration of the meaning of childhood. Quintilian here, for instance, severely limits his investigation of the imitative tendency of children. He is not interested in connecting various behaviors under the rubric of imitation. That the child imitates for effect, for reaction from peers, Quintilian has seen, and he does see the child as innately rivalrous. Quintilian also sees a love of praise in the child and advocates strongly for educating the child within the miniature community of the school. The students were to be ranked by their ability and to deliver their exercises in this order (1.2.23). He is interested, like his elite culture, in distinguishing, selecting, and endorsing the excellent. “Excellent” here means, in its etymological sense, those who stand out from the pack. He continues to say that the “upright boy will differ altogether from the slack and listless” (1.3.3). He has little to say about the slack, although he advises that the very young students be encouraged to learn through games and rewards, for they lack judgment and self-motivation.43 It is, of course, one vision of childhood to derive its qualities and indeed to define the whole from a singular paragon. Much like the grieving parent or the emperor with his children, Quintilian is commemorating his child as the exemplary Roman. Nonetheless, his attention to effective learning leads him to conclusions about the nature of the elite, talented child which themselves become both prescriptive and generalizing: they come to form a practice of child education and a proto-theory of the nature of the child mind.44

The child’s distinction from the adult Quintilian sees the young child as distinctively different from the adolescent and the adult, and he recognizes that this prejudgmental, naturally imitative stage has advantages for the child’s process of learning. He compares the child’s

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mind to the crawling toddler’s knees: both can endure more labor than the older child (1.12.7–14). The child’s mind (ingenium) is also softer than that of adolescents, and hence more malleable. This more plastic child is perfectly suited for memorization and for early grammatical studies. In another simile, Quintilian compares the child to an empty vase – he is again denying the young child agency – but the purpose of the comparison is to recommend that the teacher not overload this vessel (1.2.27–31).45 His metaphors express an idea of the child as unformed material, awaiting the guiding hand of the older male but with certain innate tendencies. Ancient thinkers had long advanced the idea that there were ages of humankind, usually conceived as multiples of seven, but what is new here is that a stage of childhood is related to cognitive abilities.46 “Cognitive abilities” is of course not the term Quintilian used. In his own terms he says that children have animi (sg. animus), forceful mental feelings and impulses. At times the word verges on meaning “mind” itself. So in the simile just mentioned Quintilian gives as concluding advice: “thus one must consider the capacities of young minds.” He sees childhood as a time of vulnerability and opportunity: the animus of the child is disposed to the labor of imitation. It can also be overwhelmed as in the metaphor of the vase, as well as crushed and damaged for all time by the experience of corporal punishment.

Consequences and conclusions Most significantly for future theorists, Quintilian gave the child a role in anthropology more broadly. Childhood was seen as important not simply for the reasons of status and sentiment that we have encountered in Roman memorial culture. Rather, Quintilian saw the proper training of the child as the single childhood that would ensure the mental health and competence of the individual and the ongoing prosperity of the state. His vision was anthropological in its conviction that childhood is the crucible for developing adult attitudes and competencies and that the child is human to the degree that he or she participates in the community of communication. Roman society’s increased concentration of resources in the elite child drove reflection on the proper management of these resources. The funerary commemorations and the graphic program of Augustus’s Ara Pacis served to express the representation of children as a marker of Roman excellence. The young children of Roman senators, but also of ex-slaves, could be like the famous children of the emperor on monuments, coins, and sculptures if they had their own monuments, or better if they lived to have a proper education, free of manual labor, which would bring them to Roman adulthood. Quintilian intervenes in this ongoing process by demanding and describing a consistent, diligent process of delegated adult supervision of the child. Only with this program would the child be a child worthy of the name. The price of neglect would be to have a slavish or animal child, perhaps even a monster. It is in such a series of differentiations that childhood develops as a concept. One virtue of Quintilian’s work is that it begs to be universalized. Undoubtedly,

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it assumes the resources of prestigious parents ready to support their children in this arduous labor of education and self-cultivation. But because it does so by insisting that liberal education is the only way to make the child develop to virility, it could easily be adapted by later cultures and indeed be spread to the childhood of girls and the subelite. When we today think that children have rights, it is in great measure because Quintilian had seen in the child an apprentice citizen, whose mind and body should be treated with the care fit for the free adult citizen.

Notes 1 Rawson 2003: 17–20; CIL VI.33976. She transcribed and translated the text of his funerary inscription and provided a plate of his altar. 2 Some of the older bibliography expresses a curious mixture of sentimentality and disdain. Nelson 1903, which has as subtitle “A Tragedy of Roman Education”, describes the monument and its milieu, and provides a translation of the boy’s Greek hexameters on the death of Phaethon, with considerable disparagement of the verses. For a thorough reappraisal with text, translation, and brief commentary, see Döpp 1996; also Cooley 2012: 131–3. 3 Later the innocence of children, already present in the philosophical tradition, will become more common as it is used in Christian reflection on original sin. See Laes 2004: 57, with bibliography. 4 See the chapter by Fossheim in this volume. 5 There are numerous translations online and in print of the Nicomachean Ethics, for example Broadie and Rowe 2002. 6 Laes 2015, and more broadly on children traditionally “forgotten” by historians, Laes 2011. 7 Currie 1996: 156 pointed out that the political use of representations of the child was a Roman innovation: “Augustus inaugurated the Roman emperor’s relationship with the child’s body as an expression of dynastic, patriotic and sacred ideas.” 8 Rawson 2003, especially ch. 8; and Huskinson 1996. 9 See Laes 2004: 54–8. 10 Dixon 1992: 103. 11 Rawson 2003: 42–4 with plate; Vatican City, Vatican Museum, MCh 543a; CIL VI.21805. 12 On this figure, see Marrou 1938. 13 Rawson 2003: 107 with plate. Paris, Louvre, MA 659; CIL XIV.4875. 14 On parents’ involvement in arranging and overseeing their children’s education, see Eyben 1968. 15 CIL VI.10096: docta erodita omnes artes. 16 Another ideal student, as Laes 2004: 52 describes, was Antonius Severus Aquila, a twelve-year-old remembered for her studiousness and obedience, again virtues tied to her society: parents, teachers, friends, patrons, and the boni (the citizenry at large). 17 Svenbro 1993: 69. 18 Rawson 2003 discusses all of these and provides plates. 19 All translations are my own. This inscription is CIL VI.21846, on which see Rawson 1999: 88. Hemelrijk 1999: 146–84 treats the Roman ideal of the docta puella. 20 CIL VI.7578. Rawson 2003: 159 reproduces a plate of the inscription (CIL VI.7578); Vatican City, Vatican Museums, Gall. Lap. 9387; see also Rawson 1999: 84–5. 21 Svenbro 1993: 80 describes how the monument becomes a substitute for the “isonymous descendant” in which the written inscription itself functions as “the equivalent of a child”.

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W. Martin Bloomer See Laes 2004. On the representation of the child with toga as an orator, see Laes 2004: 65. See Kleiner 1978: 172–9; and Currie 1996: 157–60. Currie 1996: 168 argues that adult viewers as metaphorical children of the emperor would identify with the children of the relief. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, IN 0787. See the reproductions on the front and back covers of Rawson 2003. See Rawson 2003: 129 with bibliography, and the illustrations and discussion in Huskinson 1996, especially 7–9, 89. See my introductory section. See Currie 1996: 174, responding to Stuveras 1969: 7. Laes 2004: 53 concludes with characteristic concision: “the idea that children are valuable was primarily based on the well-being and future of the community as a whole, not on the human dignity of the child as an individual.” Quintilian is available in many editions and translations. The English reader is best served by Russell 2001. Vössing 2004; see also Caldwell 2015: 17–18; and Hemelrijk 1999: 21–3. On the Roman term for puberty, aetas perfecta (which means “age realized”, i.e. arrival at maturity), see Giuliano 1978: 33. Kennedy 1969: 43; and Bloomer 2011: 81–110. Reinhardt and Winterbottom 2006: xxvi. For a sketch with essential bibliography, see Bloomer 2015. On Quintilian’s characterization of the boy with the gerundive, see Bloomer 2011: 89 and 91. On the advantages of public schooling over homeschooling, 1.2; against corporal punishment, 1.3.14–17; on not being hurried through the curriculum and the necessity of rest, 1.3.8–13. See Muir 2015 and Fantham 1995: 125–6. 1.1.2: “The slow and learning impaired are as contrary to human nature as are hybrid or monstrous bodies, but these are rarities” (hebetes uero et indociles non magis secundum naturam hominis eduntur quam prodigiosa corpora et monstris insignia, sed hi admodum pauci ). Aeneid 2.682–4 (ecce levis summo de vertice visus Iuli / fundere lumen apex, tactuque innoxia mollis / lambere flamma comas et circum tempora pasci). On this imagery in the Aeneid, see Knox 1950. For games and rewards in Quintilian, see Bloomer 2011: 98–103; and, more generally, Shumka 2015 and Horn 2005. On children lacking judgment, see, for example, 1.11.1 and 2.5.22. On the psychology of the child in Quintilian, see G. G. Bianca 1963: 102; and Cova 1990: 173–81. I have discussed this peculiar passage in Bloomer 2011: 95–6. See also the chapter by Baker in this volume.

5

Greco-Roman paediatrics Patricia Baker

Children’s roles in the family and in religious and social events signified that they were active participants in their homes and communities in the GrecoRoman world.1 Inclusion in related activities was essential for their development because such experiences would help children become virtuous male or female citizens able to maintain the values and traditions of their societies.2 Although the definition of what constituted a respectable man or woman varied between Greece and Rome, there was a general understanding that he or she should be well balanced, meaning healthy in body and mind.3 One intention of childrearing in the ancient world was to help children achieve this equilibrium in accordance with their gender and social class. Their minds were cultivated through education, through training to become a good housewife, and through attendance in social and religious festivals, for example.4 To ensure that their bodies matured properly, physicians suggested they follow a healthy regimen.5 This latter aspect, children’s healthcare, although given some scholarly attention, has yet to be considered in relationship to stages of physical and mental development. Scholarship on foetal growth, childbirth, and the care of the newborn overshadows that which considers healthcare for older children.6 Nonetheless, despite these few studies, many ancient medical and nonmedical texts mention treatments and advice for a healthy lifestyle for all stages of life from infancy to old age. In order to advance our understanding of healthcare for children beyond the first days of life, this chapter considers two key issues: first, how were the developmental stages of children designated; and second, when taking into account the phases of growth, what was the recommended care for both the healthy child and the sick child in the ancient world that would help them reach maturity? Relative to both of these concerns, a third question arises: is it possible to determine if there existed doctors who specialized in paediatrics? In the Greco-Roman era health was defined differently from modern Western conceptions. In essence, the ancient concept of health was based on the Hippocratic ideals that the body contained the correct proportions of heat, cold, dryness, and moistness. These properties were linked to the four humours: black

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bile, which was cold and dry; yellow bile, hot and dry; phlegm, cold and moist; and blood, warm and moist. Although medical writers sometimes proposed different theories about the humours, they ultimately argued that health and illness were achieved through a balance or imbalance in the body.7 This concept remained the basis of medical theories into the early modern period and affected how paediatric treatments were performed. The majority of information for this chapter is taken from ancient medical texts that range in date from the Hippocratic writers (fifth–fourth century BCE) to the later Roman period (sixth–seventh century CE). Archaeological materials, particularly skeletal remains, are important for recognizing children’s general health and nutrition along with the maladies and afflictions they suffered in the ancient world.8 Yet they are limited for the particular questions raised in this chapter, which are related to treatment and designations of life stages. The dates covered are wide-ranging, which can be problematic. Attitudes and ideas change over time and across different cultures. Nonetheless, such a range can indicate if ideas changed or were retained over an extended period of time and if they spread geographically. Fundamentally, the literary material indicates that the health and treatment of children were enduring concerns that no doubt helped them develop into well-balanced adults. The well-being and development of children in the ancient world is not a topic that can be dismissed lightly with assumptions that a high childhood mortality meant that no interest was given to them. On the contrary, this chapter demonstrates that the care of youths was intended not only to help them live to adulthood but also, more importantly, to shape them into well-formed adults.

Previous scholarship and primary material Childbirth and infancy are common themes covered in scholarship concerned with ancient paediatrics. Overviews of the literature and theories are found in Janine Bertier’s and Danielle Gourevitch’s studies on the topic for ancient Greece and Bertier’s thorough collection of literary excerpts from the Roman Imperial period.9 Patricia Baker outlines both the Greek and Roman periods, with particular discussion of the health of infants, and Veronique Dasen provides a summary of the first days of an infant’s life.10 Keith Bradley’s contribution to the topic incorporates a review of Roman practices along with their use of amulets and bullae, which widens awareness of the types of healthcare provisions that existed in the past.11 The subjects of fertility and significant dates of birth, discussed in detail in the following sections, are widely researched.12 Finally, comprehensive examinations of childhood and women’s health, such as those of Beryl Rawson and Helen King respectively, also draw our attention to the care of the young and those in pubescence.13 Because the evidence for paediatrics is scattered throughout ancient literature, some scholars concentrate on one author. Valérie Bonnet, for example, examined the diseases and treatment of children described in the Natural

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History of Pliny the Elder, a Roman encyclopaedist (ca. 23–79 CE). Philippe Mudry focused on Celsus’s work, noting that Celsus, a Roman medical writer (ca. 25 BCE–50 CE), addressed three different aspects of children’s care: regimen, pharmacy, and surgery.14 In regards to the primary literature, there were, as far as is known, only two treatises solely concerned with paediatrics. The first was by Rufus of Ephesus, a Roman-period medical writer (ca. 80–150 CE), who composed On the Therapy of Children. Five centuries later, Paul of Aegina, a late antique–early Byzantine surgeon (ca. 625–690 CE), wrote his Therapy of Children. Both works survive in fragmentary form. Excerpts of Rufus’s composition on the early stages of a newborn’s life survive in sections of Oribasius, a late antique physician (ca. 352–403 CE); whereas other aspects, such as dentition and temperament, are found in the Arabic fragments of al-Baladī, a tenth-century Arabic writer. It is through the work of al-Baladī that Paul’s treatise comes down to us.15 Another set of texts containing information about children’s health is the Hippocratic Corpus. This is a collection of roughly sixty works. The treatises included in it were written by different authors and range in date from the fifth to fourth century BCE with some later additions. It contains works on diagnosis, prognosis, the maintenance of health, and treatments of diseases, for example. The collection does not have a book solely concerned with paediatrics, though some texts in it do refer to the topic such as Airs Water Places, Aphorisms, and the Epidemics. Other texts within the Corpus refer to particular aspects of childcare, for example teething (On Dentition), diseases of girls (On Parthenoi), and foetal development (On the Nature of the Child ). Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle (ca. 384–322 BCE), also commented on embryology (On Generation). The ideas first established in these texts were copied and discussed in the Hellenistic and Roman eras mainly in medical literature, but also in other scientific and philosophical works: Soranus (late first–early second century), Caelius Aurelianus (late fourth–early fifth century), Pliny the Elder, Aetius of Amida (ca. 502–575 CE), and Galen (second century CE). Galen, who wrote comprehensively on medical topics, does not appear to have written a separate treatise on paediatrics, possibly because, as Gourevitch suggests, he did not enjoy caring for those who could not speak.16 He did, however, write about foetal development in On Semen and mentioned the care and treatment of children and infants in other works.

Beginning stages of life A brief background to the ancient concepts of embryological development and childbirth may explain past perceptions of growth. Debates about the formation of the foetus persisted throughout antiquity. As early as the preSocratic philosophers (sixth–fifth century BCE), arguments about which parent contributed seed towards the formation of the foetus were made, with some claiming it was both parents, and others, just the male.17 The sex of the

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foetus was established either by the heat that was contained in the uterus or by the specific side of the womb at which it developed. Males formed in a warmer womb than females, and on the right side as opposed to the left. In order for the embryo and foetus to develop properly, the female was expected to be in good health. Soranus detailed how one could identify women who were capable of conception (Soranus, Gynaecology 1.9). With regard to their age, they should be between fifteen and forty years old. They had to be wellbalanced, not too manly, too moist or dry, or too thin or fat. Once conception occurred, the parturient was expected to maintain a regimen to support the development of the foetus. Three stages of pregnancy were described, each with its own suggested regimen (Gynaecology 2.46–56). For conception, there was no clear understanding of when it might have occurred. Dating was not standardized, as calendars differed between areas and were based on lunar phases. Thus, ancient physicians stated that a healthy period of gestation could range from seven to ten months. It was believed that a foetus developed through the same stages, but children born earlier had developed faster than those who had longer periods of gestation. The birth of a child in the seventh, ninth, or tenth month of pregnancy was considered as a good omen for the child’s future development. However, infants born in the eighth month were thought unlikely to survive. If the eighth-month child did live, it was expected to be weak throughout its life.18 Aristotle maintained that if a child who had been born during the eighth month of gestation did survive, then the mother or physician was likely to have miscalculated the time of conception, and the calculation was revised.19 The idea that the eighth-month child was an ill omen seems to have derived from Pythagorean views of harmonious numbers, particularly related to the number seven, be it days, weeks, or months. Parker has shown that the numbers involved in the development of an eighth-month child were mathematically inharmonious.20 Delivery and the early hours of an infant’s life were under the care of the midwife. In his Gynaecology, Soranus discussed the characteristics of a good midwife, her duties, and her tools. He also explained what she should do during a difficult delivery and how she should examine, clean, and care for a newborn infant.21 Throughout this and other works related to the early stages of life, two themes repeat themselves, as will be discussed: conceptions of balance and of significant days.

Definition of life stages Childrearing began in the first hours and days of an infant’s life. Ideally it was intended to encourage a healthy development towards adulthood. The advice for care changed for different stages of growth. There existed no universal criteria for defining these distinctive life stages. As it is today, ancient terms were fluid and dependent upon variable qualities such as numerical age and gender.22 Nonetheless, medical philosophies concerned with developmental phases often associated the humours with physical changes within the body to distinguish periods of growth.

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In ancient texts, the generic terms pais in Greek and puer in Latin signified children. They can also be translated as “slave” and more specifically in Latin, “boy”. The Latin terms infans and infantia, literally meaning an inability to speak, were sometimes used to refer to younger children. However, neither term could be applied to a precise numerical age. By the end of the first century BCE, the terms bimus and bimulus were used to denote two-year-olds on some inscriptions. Yet, these could also mean a continuation of two or anything consisting of two.23 Some ancient writers did define stages of life, but they did not always agree with one another. A few of the Hippocratic writers, the name given to the medical authors, whose work is included in the Hippocratic Corpus, said that there were seven stages or hebdomads in life: from birth to seven, from seven to fourteen, from fourteen to twenty-one, and so on. For example, the work Epidemics, which consists of physicians’ case studies, included examinations of both children and adults. In it, the terms used for children tend to be paidos for those ranging in age from birth to seven and pais from seven to fourteen. Two specific terms are found in the text, a pais ephebos was a boy in military training, probably in his teens (Epidemics 7.124), and a paidiskê, which tended to indicate a maiden around twelve years in age. It also denoted young female slaves (Epidemics 5.28). In comparison, Parkin notes that a text by Philo included the word paidion for a small child up to age seven.24 Although stages demarcated by seven were common, there was no concurrence with this division. Horace, the Roman poet (ca. 65–27 BCE), wrote that there were four phases of the life span (Ars poetica 156–78). Varro, a Roman scholar (ca. 116–27 BCE), believed it was divided into five equal periods of a length of fifteen years. Those in the first stage up to fifteen were pueri because they were sexually immature. In the second stage, they were referred to as adulescens, denoting someone developing maturity (quoted in Censorinus 14.2). The third-century Roman writer Censorinus also described the various points of view about different ages. According to him, Pythagorean number theories related to seven and six influenced medical theories on children’s development. The number seven was attributed to medicine, the body, and Apollo, a deity with healing abilities and the father of the primary healing god, Asclepius.25 Other writers also mentioned that the number seven was thought to possess mystical properties, as seen in the timing of pregnancy and foetal development, as discussed previously.26 What is most interesting is that many writers, both in and beyond the medical sphere, associated the number seven with physical stages of growth. At approximately every seven years a significant physical change occurred. According to Censorinus, the Greek statesman Solon (ca. 640–560 BCE) said that in the first seven years, baby teeth fall out; in the second, pubic hair grows; and in the third, the beard appears.27 Gendered terms also prove to be problematic for defining life stages. King has pointed out that the classification of parthenoi in Hippocratic literature was not based on age or marital status. The word is translated as “girl”, “maiden”, or “virgin” and tends to indicate someone who was unmarried and childless.

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However, married women were also called by this term.28 According to King, the change in nomenclature from parthenos to gyne (woman) did not occur until the parthenos had given birth and the lochia had been expelled from her body.29 Again we see that it was a physical “milestone” that determined someone’s stage in life and the terminology used to identify the phase. According to Galen, there was no agreement among physicians about phases of growth. The dispute was not easily resolved because people did not develop according to precise ages. He differentiated the points in life according to changes in bodily mixture of the humours (The Soul’s Dependence on the Body 810). The mixture of youth was hot and full blooded. In comparison, that of old age was cold and lacking in blood or moisture. As people aged, such as during puberty, their bodies cooled and the moisture dried (The Temperaments 2.2.43.10–56.11), an idea that had a central place in some of the Hippocratic texts (Epidemics 6.3.7; Nature of Man 12; Aphorisms 1.14). The biological sex of youths would also influence any fluctuations that occurred in their humours.30 Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) argued, for example, that boyhood has its own constitution (Letters 121.15). Women were of a cooler and wetter composition than men. Menstruation was a means by which women could shed excess moisture in their bodies. Thus, the bodily mixtures were a key to determining stages in life that corresponded to other aspects of a person’s life, such as biological sex, gender roles, and age.

Regimen and development Infants were associated with the humour blood; any imbalance in their humours would cause illness and problems with growth and maturity. Hence, a number of physicians, including Galen, tended to follow the Hippocratic advice that there were three parallel conditions to address in anyone requiring treatment: disease, age, and custom. Physicians advised that it was best for human beings to preserve their health rather than to become ill. In daily regimen, health was maintained with similars, or foods and activities that were equivalent to someone’s humoral mixtures and age. A person’s constitution or mixture informed a regimen that included her or his diet, exercise, bathing, sleeping, and toilet habits. Hygiene practices would alter when the elemental qualities changed as someone matured. Thus, infants, as Galen explained, being moist in constitution, required foods that maintained their level of moisture, such as milk (Hygiene 7). This idea developed earlier with the Hippocratic writers and is found in a number of medical texts that were concerned with the maintenance of health. Climate, geographical location, water quality, and prevailing winds were also believed to affect health. The Hippocratic work Airs Waters Places, for instance, described how these aspects affected the body and health at different life stages and with respect to gender. In some instances, critical days and months were thought to influence a child’s development. As the writer of Epidemics indicates (2.6.4), infants born

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in the seventh, ninth, or tenth month would establish speech first. Then their strength and dexterity would improve. Outside of the strict medical sphere, it is apparent that concerns existed about preserving wellness. Suggestions about care were obviously given, but what this advice was cannot be stated with certainty because there is little record of it. Nevertheless, Cato’s suggestion that youths be washed in the urine of cabbage drinkers to ensure that they would never be weak or puny indicates that some ideas existed, likely of varying effect (Pliny Nat. 20.33). Cato’s premise was based on the fact that he believed cabbage was a panacea. So there was some logic to his argument. The regimen of nutrition, as seen previously, was vital to a child’s development. The nutrition drawn from food and drink was believed to be concocted (cooked) in the stomach and would move through the body either by vaporous heat or pores originating in the belly.31 Because it was believed that newborn infants had narrow pores, it was not safe for them to proceed to other liquids until at least the fortieth day of life. At this point, they could be exposed to fluids such as water that was medium in temperature (Soranus, Gynaecology 2.48). The milk of their mothers or wet nurses was the first nourishment given to babies. It had to be of good quality for the infant to receive a proper diet. Therefore, nursing women were expected to maintain a healthy regimen themselves because their activities would directly affect the quality of milk they produced. Moist foods, good sleep, gentle exercise, and the avoidance of sexual activity would ensure that a woman’s milk had balanced qualities that would be passed to the infant.32 At around six months of age, the process of weaning began with the introduction of solid foods to the infant’s diet. Although the age of the infant was important, certain seasons of the year were deemed to be more beneficial than other times for this process. Spring was best for weaning, whereas autumn was the worst season for it because the climate was uneven, exposing the child’s body to diseases. Soft and sweet foods were the first solid foods introduced to the infant’s diet. Soft foods contained more liquid. They would not be too drying to a baby’s constitution, making the transition easier for them. Sweet flavours, according to Aristotle, were nutritious, were filling, and spread warmth when concocted in the stomach. Thus they would help to maintain the warm bodily temperament (On the Senses 441a 3–4, 29; 442a 5). The first foods in the diet included soft cereals, breadcrumbs softened with hydromel (a mixture of water and honey), sweet milk, and sweet wine with honey (Soranus, Gynaecology 2.47). Warm wine diluted in water was also given to children to drink. Mild wines were advised because harsher varieties could cause flatulence and bloated stomachs. Gentle foods would prevent convulsions, help children grow, and encourage good complexions (Hippocrates, A Regimen for Health 6). There were slight differences of opinion about how a child should be fed, nonetheless. Galen suggested that solid foods should only be given to infants when they cut their first teeth (Hygiene 1.10). Once children could chew, various foods were added to their diets. Yet, he advised, unlike the Hippocratics, that wine

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should be avoided as long as possible. As a liquid, it added heat to the body, which would fill the child’s head with warm and moist fumes (Hygiene 11). Plato thought it best that a nurse care for a child until it was three and fully weaned (Laws 7.789e). It seems likely that this was a normal practice because it was at this point in the toddler’s life when they were included in religious activities outside of the home.33 On a practical level, because the child no longer had to be fed by its nurse or mother, time may have been freed for both to participate fully in these events. Due to heat, infants’ bodies were supple and soft. Thus their guardians had to ensure that this was maintained in other ways besides diet. Bathing was a part of the regimen that was practiced at all stages of development. Warm baths helped maintain infants’ humoral balance. Extremes in temperature could cause an imbalance in mixtures and convulsions (Hippocrates, A Regimen for Health 6). Swaddling and massage were two methods used to manipulate the babies’ bodies to encourage a healthy physical shape. Swaddling clothes, according to Soranus, were made of wool because this was a breathable fabric. Ideally, the wool was clean, warm, and soft so that it did not injure the infant. Boys and girls were swaddled differently. Females had their breasts more tightly bound than males and the loins were loose because this form, at the time, was more becoming in older females (Gynaecology 2.14–15). Massages with sweet oil were also recommended (Galen, Hygiene 10). Again, sweetness had warming properties, which would keep the body flexible and malleable. Cold properties on the other hand would cause it to become hard and stiff.34 In regards to exercise, Galen recommended that certain motions were better for children at different phases of their development. Newborns should have gentle movement that did not jar or excite them. Nurses found that moderate rocking and a certain modulation of the voice would help soothe children and could even put infants to sleep. This indicated to Galen that infants were naturally inclined to music and exercise. Therefore, even at the very early stages of an infant’s regimen her or his exposure to the arts, exercise, good nutrition, and bathing would begin to contribute to her or his overall balance of body and mind.35 Around the ages of three or four, children could be exposed to movements that were harsher than gentle rocking, such as riding in boats and vehicles. This could be increased at seven years of age with horseback riding (Hygiene 7–8). Dentition was one of the earliest significant turning points in life, as indicated by the existence of a Hippocratic text that was devoted solely to the care of the child at this stage. Pliny the Elder argued that there was no matter of doubt that the front teeth were produced in the seventh month and nearly always in the upper jaw; whereas in the seventh year, these teeth are replaced. According to him, it was the custom of most nations to bury, rather than cremate, the bodies of children who died before they cut their first teeth (Nat. 7.16). Pliny’s account appears to have some veracity. Both Greek and Roman burial remains indicate that infants, older children, and adults were interred in separate places and in manners that differed for each of these groups.36

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Teeth were thought to consist of mixtures that were associated with the humoral balance of the child. Primary teeth were created from the regimen of the uterus and the milk that was fed to the infant; hence, they grew from a moist diet. When the first set of teeth was lost, they were replaced with the permanent ones that matured from solid foods and harsher liquids. Permanent teeth were described as being harder than bone because they contained no moisture. Regimen after the onset of the first dentition influenced the health of the permanent set. If the second set of teeth had formed earlier than seven years of age, it indicated a sickly diet (Hippocrates, Fleshes 12). The trauma of teething might also have signified its function as a changing point in life. Several symptoms manifested themselves during this time. Along with painful gums, the child might suffer fevers, convulsions, and diarrhoea, particularly during the eruption of the canines. Plump children or those with hard bellies suffered more than those with balanced temperaments.37 Hard bellies suggested that a child had an imbalance of moisture, making the condition worse. The physicians recommend a number of remedies to ease the discomfort. They advocated that the gums be kept moist so that the teeth could break through them with ease and less pain. Besides rubbing oil on the gums, hare’s brain was recommended by a number of ancient writers, suggesting that it was either a common remedy or one that was simply repeated in the texts.38 The ashes of dogs’ teeth mixed with honey were, according to Pliny the Elder, a good cure to ease discomfort (Nat. 30.8). Following the distress of teething, the next phase of development was crawling, walking, and speaking. Speech was a sign of intelligence and mental development. It was noticed that infants never uttered a cry until they had entirely left the uterus. The child spoke at the end of the first year, and the human voice acquired additional strength in the fourteenth year (Pliny, Nat. 11.112). When infants began to move, Soranus instructed their mothers to assist them to sit up and walk (Gynaecology 2.43–44). However, he insisted that this should not be encouraged early because it could cause bodily malformation. For instance, a child who sat up too soon could develop a hunched back because its body did not have the proper strength to support it. The shoulders and back would then slouch permanently under the strain. Galen too advised that it was best not to allow children to move prematurely; otherwise their thighs would be distorted (Hygiene 8). This was apparently a problem in Rome. Physicians claimed that the short legs of Romans were caused by an environmental factor, the cold waters that flow beneath the city, which caused the body to chill, shrink, and harden. Galen also blamed Roman women, arguing that they were not acquainted with childrearing skills and that they were having too much sex, often after excessive drinking (Soranus, Gynaecology 2.43–44). From the second or third year to about age seven, young children continued to develop their strength and ability to speak. Around seven years of age, children entered their second hebdomad, marked by the loss of their milk teeth. The Hippocratic writer of Fleshes (13) said that at this point the largest teeth form and the child continued to grow. Children still had a warm constitution

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but began to lose some moisture. The best bodies maintained constant warmth until the children had fully developed; but in most children’s bodies, the heat or coldness was changeable (Galen, Hygiene 12). In the second hebdomad, the regimen changed to accommodate the drying body. At this point, sports were introduced and moderate exercise was taken before meals. However, too much exercise was considered harmful by leading to premature hardening and stunted growth. Warm baths were still encouraged because the temperature would help maintain that of the body. Bathing did not have to be as frequent as in the first hebdomad, given that the body was becoming firmer. Socially, children could begin school at this time, which allowed for the development of their minds. It was also a means of introducing them to other aspects of public life that extended beyond religious festivals (Galen, Hygiene 10, 12). As children approached puberty and their third hebdomad, a new regimen was given with an emphasis on their sexual development and the division between genders. Although the youths were developing into full adults, sexual activity was, according to Diocles, inappropriate for those in the transition from childhood to adolescence (Oribasius, Medical Collections [Books of Uncertain Order] ca. 40).39 Once girls began to menstruate and boys’ voices changed, they essentially became adults at the start of their third stage of development, which lasted from roughly fourteen to twenty-one years of age. The regimens for both males and females were more distinct from this stage onwards. Younger females were advised hygienic practices that differed from those of males because they needed to receive assistance in being prepared for menstruation and childbirth.40 For males, there was the growth of the beard and the appearance of the testicles. The male could begin political or military life, having more of a public role, which was also defined by his physical development. Nonetheless, people in this phase were not considered complete adults. This step occurred for women when they gave birth and for men, possibly, when they entered political life. Men’s initiation into public life usually happened in their late teens or early twenties, which also was the time when the wisdom teeth developed, signifying the turn into the fourth hebdomad (Hippocrates, Fleshes 13). Significant physical milestones indicated a change in bodily temperament that marked children’s development. These different physical changes of development were concurrent with children’s inclusion in specific social activities, demonstrating that ideal childrearing was holistic, accounting for the advancement of body and mind.

Diseases and treatments Regardless of the physician’s advice pertaining to the maintenance of a healthy body, children fell ill and sometimes died of their ailments. The maladies they suffered were common afflictions in childhood. In other instances, children and adults suffered from the same diseases, but because they were in different

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phases of their physical development, the treatments and dosages of medicines prescribed varied to account for the disparities in humoral balance. Once the category of disease was ascertained, a physician might have also considered the time of year during which they suffered. Children and adolescents were expected to be healthiest in spring and summer (Hippocrates, Aphorisms 3.18; Celsus, On Medicine 2.1.17) and, according to Celsus, were safest in summer (On Medicine 2.1.17). As in the case of the stages of development, the number seven was significant in demarcating the progress of a disease. For example, the writer of Aphorisms warned that “in the case of children’s diseases they can reach their crises in forty days, seven lunar months, or seven years. Others will resolve in puberty. If this should not be the case, the disease is likely to be chronic” (Aphorisms 3.28). When it comes to descriptions of diseases, Celsus repeated much of what was described in the Hippocratic Aphorisms, showing the influence of Hippocratic concepts on later-period medical treatments. Beginning with newborn infants, both authors stated that they were particularly prone to suffering from ulcers, vomiting, insomnia, nightmares, ear discharge, and inflammation of the umbilicus. In addition, Hippocrates said coughs were problematic (Hippocrates, Aphorisms 3.24; Celsus, On Medicine 2.1.18). At the onset of dentition, infants, as discussed previously, entered a new phase of growth and suffered from a number of afflictions. Following on from this, both writers said that the common ailments for children, likely up to seven years of age, were tonsillitis, warts, and deflexions of the vertebrae of the neck. Hippocrates is more specific, asserting that they could also be affected by asthma, stones (probably in the bladder), round worms, priapism, scrofulous swellings in the cervical glands, and other tumours (Aphorisms 3.26; Celsus, On Medicine 2.1.19). Older children and those approaching puberty suffered from most of the preceding maladies, but they also had problems with nosebleeds and fevers that lasted for an extended time. In the stage after the onset of puberty, young men could suffer from haemoptysis (coughing up blood), consumption, acute fevers, and epilepsy (Hippocrates, Aphorisms 3.27, 29). In some cases, the physicians indicated that children of specific ages reacted differently to certain diseases when compared to those in other age categories. Dysentery, for example, commonly resulted in death for children from five to ten years of age. Those in other age categories were prone to recover from the ailment (Hippocrates, Prorrhetic 2.22). The symptoms of hardness and pain in the bladder with continuous fever attacked children who were seven to fifteen years old, usually with fatal results (Hippocrates, Prognostics 19. 11–23). Explanations for how childhood ailments occurred were not always offered, but when they were, they related to the temperaments. Paul of Aegina wrote that apoplexy occurred in children because a thick, cold, and phlegmatic humour filled their brains. It manifested itself on account of their moist constitutions, brains, and diets. Yet, it only affected those who had an excess of fat, were breastfed for a long time, or suffered from constipation, all of which held

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in moisture.41 The Hippocratic writer of On the Nature of Man (12) said that children suffered from stones because of the warmth of their entire body and, in particular, the regions around their bladder. One could surmise that the heat in a child’s body would dry the liquid, causing stones to form. There is evidence that posology – a branch of medicine concerned with dosages – also accounted for ages and stages of growth. According to Pliny the Elder, scrofulous swellings and parotid abscesses were treated with boiled lupines. The lupines could also be used to draw out intestinal worms for those who were under thirty years of age, whereas in the case of children ( pueris) they could also be applied to the bowels. For epilepsy, purple violets taken in water were especially good for children. Wine was better suited to treat cardiac disease in males than in females and for the elderly rather than youths (Pliny, Nat. 22.154–5; 20.76; 23.25). As mentioned, wine was drying and could harm people with moist constitutions. There also seems to have been some recognition that children were unable to handle certain foods and flavours of medicine. Previously, it was shown that sweet foods were beneficial to children. Bitter and sour foods had drying properties, and might have been considered dangerous.42 In cases where bitter medicines were given to children, attempts were made to hide their bitter tastes and possibly balance them with sweeter foods. For instance, when the leaves of wormwood were given to children, it was advised that the leaves should be placed in dried figs to disguise their bitterness (Pliny, Nat. 27.28). No matter what someone’s age was, surgical procedures were always the last resort for treatment in the ancient world. In a time when there was no anaesthesia or an awareness of sterilization, shock and infection were constant threats to anyone undergoing surgical treatment. Some procedures were more threatening than others, particularly the removal of bladder stones. It was a delicate, painful, and dangerous treatment that could send anyone into shock and was not recommended for children. As a last resort for boys between nine and fourteen, spring was the best season for the removal of stones (Celsus, On Medicine 7.26 1 B–2). To protect infants and youths from disease, amulets were given to and worn by them, some for more general purposes and others for specific medical problems.43 For example, Pliny the Elder recommended an amulet for scrofula. The wild fig was useful for a boy to keep the sores away. If a boy who was not yet an adolescent broke off a branch, tore it with his teeth, and tied it on before sunrise, it was expected to protect him from the problem (Nat. 23.74.130). Given that diseases were common, and many people suffered or died from them, it is likely that the use of amulets was encouraged. It offered another means to help children through difficult stages of development and the recuperation from illnesses so that they could reach adulthood.

The carer and place of care From the information discussed previously, it is clear that children’s healthcare was a concern in the past. The number of references to a child’s treatment along with evidence for at least two treatises dedicated to the subject of paediatrics

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raises the question as to whether this was a specialist area in ancient medicine, as it is today. Some physicians in the Greco-Roman period did focus on certain branches of care: for example dietetics, surgery, eye care, and midwifery. Yet, as far as I am aware, there are no documents that refer to a paediatrician. The midwife, who cared for an infant in the first hours and days of its life, seems to be the closest parallel to the modern role. Rather than having a specialist in the area, physicians trained in the Hippocratic and Galenic medical traditions grounded in humoral theory seem to have been expected to care for people of all ages. Although posology, treatment, and regimen are demonstrated to vary between life stages, the theories were based on an understanding of bodily constitutions. It was likely that physicians trained in this method would have known how a person changed as they aged. Given that the child’s mind was supposed to develop more than his or her body, Galen (Hygiene 8) hints in his work on regimen that the hygienist should be skilled in many areas: The infant is perfect in all respects, there is no need to correct the habits of the mind. The habit of the mind is impaired by faulty customs in food, drink, and exercise, and sights, sound, and music. Therefore the hygienist must be skilled in all of these areas and must not consider that it concerns the philosopher alone to mold the habit of the mind. This statement indicates that healthcare extended beyond the treatment of the body. It also supports the point that care was essential for development. The places where children were treated seem to have been the same as those for adults. Treatment could take place in a number of places: homes, baths, and public shops. Milk teeth showing signs of removal by dental forceps were found in the Roman military baths at Caerleon in Wales.44 It is also documented that children visited healing sanctuaries, as attested by inscriptions (iamata). For example, Euphanes, a boy from Epidaurus, suffered from stones. In his dream the god Asclepius asked what the boy would give him for a cure, and the boy answered that he would present him with ten dice. In the morning, he walked out, having been cured.45 Some sanctuaries have votive offerings representing swaddled infants, which suggests that the parents visited the sanctuary to ask for assistance in conception, the healthy development of the infant, or assistance for an ill child.46

Reception The broad concept of the Hippocratic humoral tradition was the basis for the care and treatment of children into the Middle Ages and early modern period. The concepts concerning stages of childhood development, their temperaments, and common disease were recorded and commented upon in late antique, Byzantine, and medieval Christian and Islamic literature, as already seen in the works of Paul of Aegina and al-Baladī. Given that the reception

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of paediatrics is a subject rich in materials, only a brief discussion of how the tradition was passed on can be presented here. In the late antique and early Byzantine period, Paul of Aegina, as shown, continued to write about health in accordance with the Hippocratic tradition and composed a treatise on paediatrics. Fragments of this work and his Pragmateia survive in the Arabic treatise of al-Baladī, who wrote his own text about the Therapy of Pregnant Women and Children in the tenth century.47 The topics recorded from Paul tend to cover specific diseases of children, such as dentition, fear, worms, and cradle cap. Also included in this work is a discussion about the different months of gestation, which ranges in date from the seventh to tenth month, indicating that almost a thousand years after the Hippocratic writers, the same arguments persisted. When there are parallels to the earlier Hippocratic tradition, such as with dentition and the treatment and illnesses associated with it, the later physicians describe them, if not in the same manner as the Hippocratics. For example, Paul said that children who were teething, suffered from inflamed gums, fever, diarrhoea, and cramps. They could be treated by rubbing the gums with animal fat and the brains of a hare.48 In the Pragmateia, as recorded by al-Baladī, there was a reference to the regimen of a child in the second hebdomad that was similar to the statements of earlier writers: 1. Paul said: When they reach the age of six or seven, young people should be handed over to a calm teacher in order to inculcate manners into them. 2. For teachers who have this disposition teach them with leisure and joy; tranquility belongs to the things which are extremely useful and appropriate for improving the disposition of the body. 3. When the young person reaches the age of 12, they should be handed over at the time to the teachers of grammar, geometry, and arithmetic in order to train both his body and soul in the necessary fashion.49 In the commentary on this fragment, Peter Pormann notes that the surviving Greek version of Paul of Aegina’s work specifically mentions that boys and girls in the second stage should be handed over to their teachers. The Arabic, however, uses a generic term for youths that could include girls, but generally means boys. The argument is that because society had changed at the time when the Arabic was written, girls were likely to have been excluded. Nonetheless, this fragment shows that the idea of inculcating the body and mind as part of a child’s stages of development carried on throughout the centuries. Evidence for an early Christian influence on medicine requires further research. Yet there exist hagiographic tales of miraculous cures for paediatric diseases.50 These cures are sometimes similar to those found on pagan inscriptions (iamata) that described healing events in Aesclepia (healing sanctuaries), showing that even in religious contexts, similar concepts were upheld. It is apparent that children were still given amulets for protection. Christian parents, according to John Chrysostom, for example applied the sign of the cross,

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rather than pagan symbols, on the objects.51 Nevertheless, there is evidence that many other symbols were used to protect children at the time. In the later medieval period specialist texts concentrating on paediatrics were written. They were influenced by the Greek and Arabic texts, such as a nosological work written by al-Rhazes. From this point onwards, the field began to become somewhat more specialized in comparison to the earlier periods where children were included in more general medical texts.52

Conclusions Greco-Roman medical theories indicate that the health of children was of primary importance. Medical advice was provided to assist infants and children develop into well-balanced adults. Moreover, physicians described certain physical milestones, denoted by different phases of dentition and changes in the voice and body, to mark various life stages. The phases that were designated were concurrent with a child’s introduction into specific social activities, demonstrating that medical concepts extended into other aspects of life and were concerned with more than physical growth. Yet, this examination of ancient medical texts has also provided insights into aspects of gender development and attitudes towards children as human beings. Gender differentiations, as defined for children in the ancient world, were complex. On one hand, philosophical arguments on embryology sought to determine the reason for sexual differentiation, but, on the other, children were prescribed a similar regimen to aid their development regardless of sex. Because the suggested regimens did not differ greatly between males and females prior to puberty, it could be argued that both were expected to go through similar developmental phases, indicating that gender differences were not fully classifiable at earlier stages of life. Ancient paediatric advice was intended to help children develop into wellbalanced adults. Thus, because of their emergent stage of life, it is difficult to state whether infants and children were thought of as full human beings. They were, however, deemed worthy of medical attention because of their potential for growth. The medical advice appears to be intended for all infants and children regardless of social status. However, how well medical literature was received or passed down from the educated to lower echelons of society is difficult to assess. Nonetheless, archaeological evidence for variances in burial practices between different age groups in both Greek and Roman societies corresponds to the stages of growth described in medical texts. This indicates a widely held perception of developmental life stages. Moreover, evidence for bullae, protective amulets, worn by Roman children indicates that good health was a concern for parents. Overall, this review of the medical literature shows that there was a genuine concern for children’s development in the past. Adults reacted against children’s high mortality rates and sought to offer a means of assisting children to reach adulthood as healthy individuals.

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Notes 1 For example Dasen 2010; Golden 1990; Harlow and Laurence 2002; Parkin 2010: 103–4. 2 Larson Lovén and Strömberg 2010: 47. 3 For example Galen, Hygiene 8; Pliny the Younger, Epistles 5. 6, 45–6; Seneca, Natural Questions on Tranquility of the Mind 1. 16–17. 4 For education, see Cribiore 2005; 2007. For festivals, see Dasen 2010: 303–4, 312; and Houby-Neilson 2000. 5 For example Galen, Hygiene ; Hippocrates, Regimen in Health 6. 6 On health of infants, see Baker 2010; Bradley 2005; Dasen 2010; Demand 1994; Gourevitch 1989, 1996, 2004; Hanson 1994a, 1994b, 1995. For older children, see Gourevitch 2010 and Pormann 1999. 7 See King 2001 and Nutton 2004 for basic details of the humoral system. 8 Redfern and Gowland 2012. 9 Bertier 1990, 1996; Gourevitch 1996. 10 Baker 2010; Dasen 2010. 11 Bradley 2005. 12 For conception and embryology, see Caspar 1991 and King 1990. For embryology and date of birth, see King 1990; Gourevitch 1990; Hanson 1987; and Parker 1999. For childbirth, see Demand 1994; Gourevitch 1989, 1996, 2004; and Hanson 1994b, 1995. 13 Rawson 2003; and King 1998. 14 Bonnet 1998; Mudry 2004. 15 Pormann 1999: 11–12. 16 Gourevitch 2010: 276. 17 Caspar 1991; King 1990; for an overview of these debates, see Longrigg 2013: 47–81. 18 Hanson 1987; Parker 1999; Hippocrates, On Fleshes 19, 20. 25–9; Pseudo-Galen 19. 454. 6–10K. 19 Aristotle, History of Animals 7.4. 584b 12–14; Hanson 1987: 599. 20 Parker 1999: 518–34. 21 Most of book two of Soranus’s Gynaecology covers this aspect. 22 Parkin 2010: 97–103; Gourevitch 2010: 276. 23 CIL 6.5862; 6.6031; 6.16739; Dasen 2010; Parkin 2010: 97–103. 24 Parkin 2010: 98, note 3. 25 Censorinus 11.6; Censorinus 14.2. 26 Aristotle, Metaphysics 14.6, 1093; Hanson 1987: 590. 27 Censorinus 14.3; see also Rawson 2003: 136–7; Aristotle, History of Animals 581a17; Generation of Animals 788a1. 28 King 1998: 73. 29 Ibid., 85. 30 Bertier 1996: 2166. 31 Aristotle, On Respiration 8; Soranus, Gynaecology 2.48. 32 Galen, Hygiene 9; Soranus, Gynaecology 2. 24–7. 33 Dasen 2010: 312. 34 For food flavours and their effects on health, see Baker 2017. 35 See the chapter by Wilder in this volume. 36 Houby Neilsen 2000; Redfern and Gowland 2012. 37 Hippocrates, Aphorisms 3.25; Celsus repeats this in On Medicine 2.1. 18. 38 Aetius 4. 9 CMG VIII 1, p. 364; Galen 12. 874K; Soranus, Gynaecology 2. 49; and Oribasius, Syn. as Eust. 5. 9. 39 Oribasius, cited in van der Eijk 2001–2002: vol. 1, fragment number 182.11. 40 Diseases of Women (2.115–21, L. 248–64) and Nature of Women (L 7. 312), mentioned in King 1998: 78–9. 41 Al-Baladī, Fragment, F21, in Pormann 1999: 53.

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42 The sense of taste is a developing area of study; see Baker 2017 on food tastes and regimen, and Totelin 2017 on botanical remedies and taste. 43 Bradley 2005: 89. 44 Zienkiewicz 1986: 223. 45 Inscriptiones Graecae, IV2, no. 121.8. 46 Detys 2004. 47 Pormann 1999: 12–13. 48 Al-Baladī, F3, in Pormann 1999: 23–8. 49 Pormann 2004: 104. 50 MacLehose 2010: 161. 51 Bradley 2005: 89. 52 MacLehose 2010: 163.

6

Ancient Jewish traditions Moses’s infancy and the remaking of biblical Miriam in antiquity Hagith Sivan

Biblical beginnings and methodological considerations If you browse the Hebrew Bible and its unmatched narratives of the story of the “children of Israel” you cannot but be struck by the near ubiquitous presence of children. Rarely, however, is the age of the youth in question disclosed. We do not know how old the half brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, were when confronted with the imminent prospect of death (Gen. 21–22).1 Ishmael may have been a little over thirteen whereas Isaac could have been a toddler. How old was Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, when she was raped by her father’s host (Gen. 34)? She is described as both naara (adolescent) and yalda (child), two vague terms designed to emphasize the enormity of the violation of both body and hospitality.2 Jacob’s youngest son, Joseph, was probably a young boy (Gen. 37:30 calls him a yeled, child) when his older brothers conspired to get rid of him by selling him to slave traders. In one instance the Hebrew Bible is astonishingly specific: Moses was three months old when his mother constructed a chest designed to float the baby in the river Nile (Exod. 2:2). Yet even here biblical terminology hovers between referring to the infant as a child (yeled ) and as an adolescent (naar), as though the experience of uncertain floating entailed an uncertain future – would the baby ever reach boyhood, let alone adolescence? The females who save Moses, his mother, sister, and the Egyptian princess, are granted neither name nor age. One of these, Miriam, who was Moses’s older sister, is the subject of this chapter. In what follows I retrace the transformation of Miriam through history from a sisterly figure operating outside the domicile to a daughter defying not only the Pharaoh but also her own father in his own home. I begin the investigation of Miriam and Moses’s infancy with the Hebrew Bible (Exod. 2). I then turn to a visual Miriam found at Dura Europos, a garrison town on the Euphrates, where a large painted panel of Moses’s infancy is featured on the wall of the town’s synagogue (third century CE).3 I end with two rabbinic renderings of Miriam, one based on the Babylonian Talmud, the other on a folkloristic version (midrash) of the book of Exodus (Exodus Rabbah). Chronologically these testimonies are far apart, ranging from circa the sixth century

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BCE to circa the eighth century CE.4 Taken together they trace an unbroken tradition of biblical interpretation. Miriam presents her interpreters, ancient, medieval, and modern, with a singular challenge. Although the Hebrew Bible provides insights into her life, these hardly amount to a biography.5 Consequently, her presence in the story of Moses’s infancy had to be carefully reconstructed because Exodus 2 does not even name her.6 The sister’s reemergence in the pages of biblical interpreters, from Hellenistic authors like Ezekiel the Tragedian, through Josephus’s biblical retelling ( Jewish Antiquities), to visuals and to rabbinic law and lore, involved a series of re-creations, each representing distinct conceptual projects. The most interesting aspect of the process of the remaking of Miriam in antiquity and the early Middle Ages is her metamorphosis from a sister of a baby in danger into a defiant daughter of a father who colludes with Israel’s enemies. In the end Miriam becomes a mediator of prophecy and paternity, a girl who assumes a pivotal role in the family’s struggle for survival.7

Scholarship on biblical and postbiblical sources Before turning to the story of Miriam, I wish to point to a scholarly imbalance between the ever-expanding scholarly research into children within biblical contexts and the study of postbiblical Jewish childhood, the former relatively well served by recent studies and new methodologies, the latter still in its infancy.8 The analysis of biblical episodes involving children has been usefully placed within the larger context of Near Eastern social, ritual, and funerary cultures. This comparative approach to the text highlights differences and commonalities of customs between the Israelites and their non-Yahwist neighbors.9 Investigations of the place of children in the visual arts and material culture have offered new insights into the experiences of childhood, a subject that is rarely if ever described in our written sources. A reexamination, for example, of Assyrian and Egyptian war reliefs which depict children being dangled over city walls led Rona Avissar-Lewis to question the conventional interpretation that regarded these children as a symbol of vengeance and victory.10 According to Avissar-Lewis these children were not hurled to a certain death. Rather they were war orphans lowered into the arms of the victors in a gesture symbolizing their availability for adoption. The bodies of children on war monuments embodied the horrors of defeat but also the hope of survival through transfer from the parental home to a stranger’s home. Findings of miniature vessels in Iron Age locations, such as Tell Nagila near ancient Lachish, a site in Israel between present-day Hebron and Ashkelon, have provided glimpses into children’s daily life.11 A survey and analysis of these miniatures allowed the excavators to define the areas where children were actively present, as well as to illuminate the ways in which children were socialized. Bowls, loom weights, grinding stones, knives, baking trays, lamps, and storage jars, all miniatures, many bearing fingerprints of children

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younger than ten, suggest the involvement of children in their making. These miniatures further point to the introduction of children to food preparations and consumption, two important activities within the domestic realm that are rarely, if ever, presented or discussed in our texts. If childhood in a biblical context has been probed and presented by historians and archaeologists, the postbiblical millennium (ca. 400 BCE–600 CE) has remained all but a closed door. This is a striking omission particularly in light of the efflorescence of the study of childhood in Greek and Roman antiquity. The scholar wishing to explore the Jewish child throughout this long period has to confront multiple types of texts and languages. By far the most important primary sources relating to Jewish childhood are rabbinic compilations, in Hebrew and Aramaic, beginning with the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE) and the Tosefta of the early third century and extending to the Palestinian Talmud of the early fifth and the Babylonian Talmud of the sixth century. To these one should add midrashic compilations which expand and embellish the biblical text. None includes a treatise on childhood, but they contain countless references to childhood. Underlying rabbinic law (halakha) and lore (aggadah) are basic issues of identity and affiliation. These texts, intimately connected with the Hebrew Bible, address two fundamental questions. What does it mean to be born a Jew? And what does it mean to live like one?12 These were the matters also at the heart of the repetitive recasting of biblical figures like Miriam. Yet all postbiblical texts are intimately connected with the Hebrew Bible.

The hand that rocks the “cradle”: Miriam, Moses, and the Nile (Exod. 2) In biblical annals the story of Moses’s infancy is replete with children. They are the subject of Pharaoh’s command to kill all male neonates while sparing female neonates (Exod. 1:16). And they become a bone of contention between the Egyptian monarch and the Hebrew midwives who defy his will (Exod. 1:17–22). When the narration shifts from a faceless mass of babies to the story of a single child (Exod. 2), we meet a girl without a name or age but with the important qualification of affinity. She is first and foremost a sister (Exod. 2:4). Exodus 2 never quite clarifies whether she is also a daughter of the same parents nor whether she herself had been one of the spared female babies.13 We may also wonder what happened to other male babies, besides Moses, who were born under the same threatening shade of annihilation. Surely the Nile did not suddenly surge with baskets carrying infants. Nor does Exodus 2 disclose what role, if any, fathers assumed in these potentially deadly encounters between the Egyptian potentate and his Hebrew subjects. From start to end the story commemorated in Exodus 2 incorporates subversions of familial and familiar biblical themes.14 There is no announcement of the approaching birth, no word of God or of an angel that alerts parents and audience to the birth of a son destined to fulfill a special role in the history of

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Israel. Rather, Moses’s birth itself is inscribed in the context of general oppression marked by an underlying contest between the whim and will of an earthly monarch and Yahweh. To rechannel and control Hebrew reproductive energy, the Pharaoh recruits Egypt’s natural geography. Disrespectful of parenthood, the monarch orders the Hebrews to throw their newly born male infants into the river that, ironically, constitutes Egypt’s most vital giver of livelihood. Saving Moses involves not only parental disobedience but also a challenge to parental authority. Moses’s first savior, his mother, builds a basket and deposits both basket and baby in the water of the Nile, thus challenging the river to live up to its traditional role of sustenance. Moses’s second savior, a daughter of the king of the land, defies the wish of her own father by rescuing a baby whom she instantly recognizes as a scion of the enslaved Hebrews. Although the baby’s sister is stationed merely as an observer, she too challenges passivity and appointed role when proposing to the princess to seek a suitable wet nurse for the newly found baby.15 The sister’s words are duly recorded as are those of the princess. In fact, throughout the scenes that crowd Exodus 2 (marriage, pregnancy, ark building, and deposition of baby) only two protagonists are accredited with the power of speech, namely Miriam and the Egyptian princess. What makes the female biblical collusion of Exodus 2 remarkable is the temporary partnership of persons of different ages, stages, and status. They take crucial initiatives in a deadly competition between the feminine and the masculine, made all the more striking by the disappearance of Moses’s father from the scene right after the recording of his marriage.16 Nor is there a reference to Moses’s older brother, Aaron, who later surfaces to occupy a critical role in the Exodus. The language of generation, familiar from Genesis genealogies that focus nearly exclusively on the transmission of identity through males, reappears in Exodus 2 but with all roles played by women. Because Moses is both born and made, the parental link forged at birth is permanently set asunder. The exposure of the son implies a denial of paternity. Yet the story also suggests that the mother could decide independently of males – husbands, fathers, brothers, or older sons – whether to raise or expose the child, and that the sister had a say in the nurturing of the child. Moses never discovers his father. Nothing, in fact, is regular or straightforward in the matter of Moses’s birth or upbringing, and by implication in the matter of Miriam. The tension in the drama which Exodus 2 unfolds further lies in the distinction between birth from human beings and (re)birth from water. The fecundity of the Nile and sexual reproduction have been confused with each other because to restore Moses to his original familial alliance, the parental couple becomes irrelevant. Instead, the daughter-sister steps in, a watchful child who acts not only by watching the vagaries of the water but also by confronting a daughter of a declared enemy of her people. In the absence of a Hebrew paternal figure, mother and daughter cooperate to preserve the lineage. Ironically, they are aided by a daughter of a father whose presence and precepts set in motion the entire episode. Pharaoh’s commands are designed to put an end to Hebrew

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males; his daughter’s agency upsets the balance. Rather than acting on behalf of her father, the actions of Pharaoh’s daughter duplicate the saving strategy of the Hebrew midwives and of Moses’s female relatives.

Miriam in postbiblical and Hellenistic context: the experiences of childhood? In spite of the long and exceptionally rich tradition of retelling the Hebrew Bible, dating at least as far back as the third century BCE, we know little about “contexts of interpretation”, namely the circumstances of the composition, compilation, dissemination, and preservation of these texts. Our knowledge of their performativity, intended audiences, and public or private reading is equally scanty.17 These gaps mean that any analysis of the mutations of biblical characters throughout Jewish interpretative tradition requires close reading of relevant texts, each within its carefully reconstructed contemporary context. Take the only drama composed by a Jew of antiquity. Based on the Exodus and aptly named the Exagoge (“exodus” in Greek), this dramatic rendering of a story of enslavement and liberation was composed by an Egyptian Jew named Ezekiel the Tragedian between the third and the first centuries BCE.18 We do not know whether this play would have been performed in a municipal theater which Jews frequented, or in a synagogue’s courtyard, or only in an ephemeral communal space. Was it conceived as a liturgical reenactment of the Passover saga to be staged during this festivity? Was it designed to serve as a visual complement to synagogue readings of the Exodus? The most significant alteration of the biblical text which Ezekiel introduced into his drama was his stationing of Miriam not “far” (Exod. 2:4) from the scene of exposure but close to the action. Perhaps this subtle shift in location was an attempt to make Miriam an integral actor in the drama rather than a passive observer. The move would have invoked in Ezekiel’s Jewish-Egyptian audience a sense of immediacy as though every sister present would have been ready to stand next to the watchful Miriam then and there on the bank of the nearby Nile. The very attempt to dramatize the biblical Exodus demonstrates the vibrancy of a tale that continued to echo throughout the centuries, especially resonating in the context of a prosperous Egyptian-Jewish Diaspora. In the first century CE Josephus’s recasting of Exodus 2 (Antiquities 2.9) introduced far-reaching changes into the biblical story. The most significant entailed the reintroduction of Moses’s father (Amram), a step which involved the marginalization of Miriam. Josephus’s Pharaoh issues his order to submerge all male neonates in the Nile because it had been foretold that the birth of a single Israelite boy would hasten an end to his own rule. When the scene shifts from the palace to Amram’s home we hear the anxious father praying fervently, beseeching God for compassion and delivery. In return for this display of piety God reassures Amram in a dream of the greatness in store for his future child, adding a reference to a brother and his future priesthood. Amram and his wife Yochebed deposit their baby in an ark and order his sister to watch over it.

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We are now on the banks of the Nile. The princess discovers the baby and immediately summons an Egyptian wet nurse to feed him. The child refuses to imbibe her milk. Thereupon Miriam emerges from the reeds to boldly inform the princess that the baby will only concede to be fed by a female of his own kin and nation. Through Miriam’s agency baby and mother are reunited. Josephus was clearly bothered by the biblical recording of the exchange between the sister and the princess because it failed to account for the latter’s readiness to accede to the girl’s proposal to provide a Hebrew wet nurse. Nor did it account for Josephus’s insistence on according Amram a central role in the proceedings. This is why Josephus asserts that already as an infant Moses was able to discern the right feeding breast from the wrong one. He included Miriam but only to lend concreteness to the child’s own will and choice. Josephus’s tendency to minimize Miriam’s role reflects a vision of the Jewish family as a patriarchal unit consisting of the dominant figure of the father, his cooperative wife, and an obedient daughter. In a near contemporary version of the biblical story of Moses’s infancy included in the retelling of the Bible by an author known as Pseudo-Philo (Biblical Antiquities), Amram also becomes the central and indeed a public figure.19 Upon the issuance of the royal commands to drown all Hebrew male babies we find Amram delivering a long speech on the virtue of procreation. The oration is publicly proclaimed in front of an assembly of the Hebrew elders. Amram advocates defiance of the royal orders (Biblical Antiquities 9).20 The elders object that they would rather live and die childless than witness the death of their infant sons. At this seemingly irreconcilable juncture Miriam has a vision in a dream. She reassures her parents that their future son, her brother, will be saved through the eternal Torah in order to become Israel’s leader.21 When Moses is born he is already circumcised. When his ark is lowered into the Nile he is discovered and saved by the Egyptian princess who, like Miriam, has been guided to the finding spot by a heaven-sent vision. Unlike Exodus 2, Ezekiel, and Josephus, Pseudo-Philo dispenses with Miriam’s agency in procuring the services of a Hebrew wet nurse. Here Miriam assumes the role of a visionary and finds her voice in the intimate circle of her family. In his retelling of Exodus 1–2 Pseudo-Philo produces a new balance of characters and episodes. His Amram, by now the dominant male figure, espouses the matrimonial institution and the duty of procreation. His daughter represents a model of orthodoxy that focuses on God’s irreversible design for only one child, her brother. Miriam’s relocation from the river to the parental home paves the way to her reincarnation as, primarily, a daughter of the domicile. Her words are no longer addressed to a gentile female standing on the banks of the Nile away from home and family. She speaks only to her own parents in the confines of their home, reflecting a familial model which preferred to confine daughters, even visionary ones, to the private realm. Ezekiel the Tragedian, Josephus, and Pseudo-Philo, all writing in Greek, paved the way to new perceptions of the biblical text and of its protagonists. Already Ezekiel emphasized the immense relevance of Miriam to Moses’s

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salvation by changing her location on the banks of the Nile. Whereas Josephus adhered closely to the biblical text, Pseudo-Philo recast Miriam as a domestic prophetess. By the late first century, then, two images of Miriam emerged in the context of Moses’s infancy: one of a sister who operates primarily as a guardian of her brother and solely in the company of women, the other as a domestic visionary who transmits to her family heavenly messages. We shall see that at Dura the sister model was adopted to paint Miriam into the story of Moses’s infancy whereas in the rabbinic literature of late antiquity (the Babylonian Talmud and midrash Exodus Rabbah) the model of the domesticated visionary daughter became dominant.

Visual midrash: Miriam in the Dura Europos synagogue On the walls of a synagogue in the Roman outpost of Dura Europos (province of Syria Coele, now on the border between Syria and Iraq), the hand of an anonymous painter drew a panoply of colorful pictures based on selected biblical stories. Executed in flagrant violation of the Second Commandment against idolatry, this visual Bible guided its viewers through the universe of Scripture.22 Along the lowest register, well within the purview of children, the drama inspired by the extraordinary events related in Exodus 1–2 came to life.23 The infancy of Moses, or rather the story of the united female front against the Pharaoh, occupies a substantial space on the western wall of the synagogue.24 It stood out amid many other vividly painted panels of biblical imageries which embellished the synagogue in its final phase in the 240s.25 It is through the eyes of children that we need to understand the meaning and message of the panel. The synagogue is the sole undisputed Jewish monument in Dura. It clearly constituted a crucial dimension of identity. For the synagogue’s young worshippers, the episodes commemorated around the Torah niche facing Jerusalem would have been especially meaningful. These were stories involving the young, arranged on the synagogue walls along the lowest register, forming a veritable “children register”. It includes two children who were saved from death (Moses of Exod. 2 and the child of the widow of Zerephath of 1 Kgs 17) and two adolescents, David and Esther, destined to fulfil a crucial role in Jewish history, the former seen at the moment of his anointment by the prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 16), the latter at the Persian court.26 There were also many inscriptions in the synagogue and wonderful ceiling tiles.27 To envisage, therefore, Jewish childhood in the Durene Diaspora entails a visual and textual analysis of social values and identity inculcation. Eight standing female figures occupy most of the panel ( Figure 6.1) which should be read from right to left in accordance with the direction for the reading of Hebrew texts. On the right, the Pharaoh, the only seated figure, is flanked by two clerks charged with writing down and disseminating his commands (Figure 6.2). Two women stand next to this male cluster, both gesturing acknowledgment of the royal orders. The two are clearly the Hebrew midwives, identified

Figure 6.1 Replica of a wall in the Dura Europos synagogue (third century CE). The Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. Source: By Sodabottle – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? curid=16242218

Figure 6.2 Moses found in the river. Fresco from the Dura Europos synagogue (third century CE). Source: By Becklectic – www.f lickr.com/photos/becklectic/85325008/, Public Domain, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1352339

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in Exodus 1 by their names (Shifra and Puah, Exod. 1:15–22). In front of them a woman is seen bending over as though placing an object in the water, perhaps representing the Hebrew women who obeyed the order to throw their newly born sons into the Nile, or more specifically Moses’s mother. A group of three elegantly and similarly clad females portray the Egyptian companions of the princess who went to wash in the Nile (Exod. 2:5). Exodus 2 does not specify their number. In the foreground of the Durene panel stands a naked woman, possibly the Egyptian princess herself, triumphantly holding a baby next to a stationary chest.28 Her appearance constitutes a twist on the biblical narrative which sends a maid to fetch the baby. Nor does the Bible refer to the shedding of clothes. The diving princess is complemented by two additional standing figures, both females. One is holding a baby in an act of transition from one pair of arms (Egyptian) to another (Hebrew). These two females are no doubt Moses’s mother and sister. They closely resemble the two female figures of the midwives who are stationed next to Pharaoh’s throne. Clearly an effort was made to distinguish between the Hebrew and the gentile females of Exodus 2. Do the different attires also reflect contemporary dressing codes, Jewish and gentile, at Dura, at least for females? The resemblance of the four heavily clad females to each other, regardless of age, size, and profession, suggests a conscientious effort of amalgamation. Instead of the four distinct female protagonists of Exodus 1 and 2 (two midwives, mother, and sister), the picture on the synagogue wall presents a pair shown twice, once facing the Pharaoh and once receiving baby Moses. In fact, so solicitous was the artist to eliminate biblical distinctions that Miriam and her mother acquire the exact same stature and both boast the size accorded to the two midwives next to the throne. This was a narrative strategy which had been adopted already by Ezekiel the Tragedian and other Hellenistic narrators of biblical stories who also compressed the four females into two.29 It was then a short and logical step to the remaking of Miriam herself as a midwife. In another twist on the biblical story the role of the young sister as a watcher was excised from the synagogue panel at Dura Europos. Rather, both sister and mother are cast together as agents in tandem of salvation. At Dura, Miriam becomes a generic figure whose age is impossible to gauge. It is probably immaterial because all the adults, female and male alike, possess roughly the same bodily size. Whether the voluminous drapes of the Hebrew females conceal the body of a girl, of an adolescent, or of a young or old woman is impossible to determine. By suppressing individuality, the panel focuses the viewer’s attention on the story’s unequal stakes with a powerful king on one side and ostensibly powerless females on the other. Yet in the battle for survival, regardless of age and stage, each female fills a specific role in defying the monarch and saving the baby. What was childhood like in Roman Dura? How did children fare in a town far from the great centers of the Roman Mediterranean? Living in the border zone between two great empires, Rome and Persia (the latter under Parthian and then Sasanid control), meant growing up in a town where

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multiple languages were used – Greek, Latin, Middle Persian, Palmyrene, and Aramaic – and where a child would have been surrounded by an impressive number of sanctuaries, each dedicated to a different deity, all standing in close proximity.30 Children were likely present everywhere but they left only a few traces in the town’s material culture. Archaeology has uncovered feeding bottles used to feed babies, little figurines used perhaps as children’s toys, and no less than fifteen carved bone “dolls” perhaps used by girls as means of learning about their future roles as mothers.31 Other finds include children’s ornaments, such as bells and bracelets, which accompanied dead children to their grave.32 We do not know what proportion of the population children occupied. We do know that some were free and others were slaves.33 Jewish children at Dura, as elsewhere in Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire, perhaps also in Babylonian Persia, would have been familiar with the outline of the biblical story of the Exodus, annually celebrated during the week of Passover.34 They could have instituted visual comparisons between the youthful protagonists depicted in the children’s register, perhaps even between themselves and their young biblical ancestors. Such visual links are important. They indicate that the immediate associations of the beholders were both with the biblical text and with the painted panels around them on the walls of their synagogue. The visualization of the Bible, a powerful pedagogical tool, affirmed the coherence of the sacred text and the close links that connect the text, the images, and the community. This was an environment of egalitarian character where children and adults formed a close bond. Together, audience, text, and imagery facilitated the dissemination of foundational narratives and their timeless message.35 Regardless of age, spectators in the synagogue would share the pleasure of their own history in the immediacy of direct visual communications. For children-viewers the pictures meant looking back to biblical lessons, whether heard at home or taught at school, and looking forward to living as Jews.36 A tale about the abandonment of a baby whose sister engineers his return home would have engendered immediacy precisely because the exposure of children was a neighborhood affair, often accompanied by the reunification of the child with the family of origin.37 The absence of the father from these critical moments in the early life of a child was a subtle reminder of the importance of mothers, sisters, and daughters even in a garrison town dominated by the presence of the Roman military.

Rabbinic Miriam: from the Babylonian Talmud to medieval midrash In the biblical story, Miriam is called alma (Exod. 2:8), a term denoting an unmarried female, probably a prepubescent youth.38 In acting responsibly and swiftly Miriam gains maturity. At Dura this mental state was expressed in artistic terms by painting her equal in size to all other female protagonists. The message seems clear: when a child acts beyond her years she is counted as

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an adult. At Dura she is also indistinguishable from the adults in the picture describing Moses’s infancy. Rabbinic commentators of the Exodus narrative developed a model of Miriam which revived Pseudo-Philo’s portrait of Miriam as a homely visionary. Instead of planting her on the banks of the Nile as Exodus 2 and the Dura painter had done, the rabbinic Miriam was placed at the heart of domestic disputes.39 She is still verbal but her words are not aimed at engaging an Egyptian princess. Rather she confronts her own father. Paradoxically, it is through Miriam the daughter that paternity is fully restored to Amram’s household.40 In what follows I offer a few highlights from the expanded rabbinic interpretation of Exodus 1 and 2 which is included in the Babylonian Talmud’s tractate on “The Wayward Wife” (Sotah).41 Launched within the wider framework of rabbinic pondering of the merit of biblical protagonists like Miriam, Moses, and Joseph, the interpretation is offered as a series of discursive vignettes, each inspired by a specific biblical verse or word: A man of the house of Levi went (Exod. 2:1). Where did he go? R. Judah b. Zevina said: He followed the advice of his daughter. It was taught earlier that Amram was the greatest man of his generation. When the wicked Pharaoh ordered that You will cast to the river every son born to you (Exod. 1:22) Amram said: In vain do we labor. He divorced his wife and in his wake all the men did the same. His daughter said to him: Father, your decree is more severe than the Pharaoh’s. The Pharaoh decreed solely against the males whereas you decreed against both males and females. The Pharaoh only decreed concerning this world but you decreed concerning this world and the world to come. Because the Pharaoh is wicked his decree may or may not be carried out. But you are a righteous man and hence your words are bound to be fulfilled. Amram then arose and took his wife back and everybody followed suit. And his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter: Shall I go and summon for you a wet nurse from among the Hebrew women who will nurse this child (Exod. 2:7)? . . . And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her: Go (Exod. 2:8). And the girl (alma) went and summoned the child’s own mother (Exod. 2:8). Rabbi Eleazar said: It [the sister’s appellation alma] teaches us that she went quickly like a girl. Rabbi Shmuel son of Nachman said: “The girl” (alma) since she hid (heelima) her intent. . . . She [the sister] used to prophesy . . . saying: In the future my mother will give birth to a son who will redeem Israel. And when Moses was born the entire house was filled with light. Her father stood and kissed her on the head. He said: My daughter, your prophecy has been fulfilled. But when they threw him into the river, her father stood and slapped her on the head saying: My daughter, where is your prophecy? Therefore it is written: and his sister stood from afar in order to ascertain what would be done to him (Exod. 2:4). To ascertain what would come of her prophecy. (BT Sotah 11b–13a)42

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Throughout this exegetical-Talmudic passage the centrality of Miriam the sister reflects a rabbinic reorganization of the biblical narrative. Instead of the biblical order of marriage, birth, exposure, and reunification, the story focuses on the actions of Moses’s father. His advocacy of divorce and sexual renunciation as a reaction to the royal command of killing male neonates shows that he cannot be entrusted with the responsibility for saving his people. Instead, it is Miriam who ensures the execution of the divine design. She is there at the start as a young midwife and at the end as a domestic prophetess. Her character is carefully crafted. Once her credentials are established as a midwife she confronts her father and brings about a change of heart. Her words break the brotherhood between her father and other Hebrew males who responded to the ruler’s command as he had. She, a female, possibly a child, becomes an instrument of familial and general healing. Miriam’s negotiations with the Egyptian princess are highlighted not to emphasize her role as a mediator of maternal milk, as the Bible does, but rather to undergird Moses’s solid Jewish identity, a child who, already as a neonate, refused to imbibe the wrong, non-Jewish milk. She displays not only the agility of youth but also a precocious mental ability. Her swift emergence from the reeds to offer the services of a Hebrew wet nurse, as well as her quick thinking, become measures of her physical and intellectual maturity. In addition to her agency, Miriam also practices prophecy not in public but in private. Her credentials as a prophetess are called into question. It is a gift that requires proof. To verify the outcome of her own words, Miriam must watch (from afar) over the fate of her abandoned baby brother. Although the biblical drama opens with an irreconcilable conflict between the Egyptian ruler and the Hebrew midwives, its rabbinic retelling emphasizes coexistence, even a kind of interaction, rather than conflict. As soon as Miriam appears, both conflict and conciliation hinge on the agenda of marriage and procreation. She knows how to respond to marital constraints, and she speaks of struggle and victory when the Hebrews start to feel defeated. She, and the daughter of the Pharaoh, are remarkable precisely because their apparent independence of mind and action stands in startling contrast with the objectification of all daughters, as reflected in a well-entrenched tradition going back at least to Ben Sira (second century BCE): A daughter is a useless treasure for her father, and worry over her drives away his sleep. As a child (ketana) [he worries] lest she be seduced; as a young girl (naara) lest she goes whoring; when she matures (bogeret) lest she does not marry; when she marries lest she does not bear sons and when she grows old lest she dabbles in witchcraft. (BT San 100b)43 The presence of Miriam in rabbinic interpretative discourse contributes to a selective thinking about identity, not only of parents, but also of children. She becomes emblematic of Jewish female childhood in a rabbinic compilation,

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Exodus Rabbah, which aspires to retell the story of the Exodus for late ancient audiences. Its presentation of Exodus 1–2 has a great deal in common with that of the Babylonian Talmud with one striking exception. In the Babylonian Talmud, Miriam has no age, perhaps because her behavior seemed ageless. In Exodus Rabbah, Miriam is cast as an exceptionally precocious child of five: Rabbi Shmuel son of Nachman says [with regards to the identity of the two midwives of Exod. 1]: [they are] a woman and her daughter, Yochebed and Miriam. And Miriam was but five years old [my italics]. Aaron was three years older than Moses. . . . [so why are they named Shifrah and Puah in Exod. 1?] Puah because she lifted her faces against the Pharaoh and raised her nose at him, saying: Woe to that man [who attempted to harm Israel] when the Lord demands an account of his deeds and settles scores with him. He instantly was enraged and tried to kill her. Shifrah, who smoothed over her daughter’s words in a reconciliatory fashion, told him: Do you mind her words? She is but a child (tinoket) who knows nothing. Rabbi Yose son of Isaac, however, explains: . . . Puah because she set her face against her father Amram who was the head of the Sanhedrin then. Since the Pharaoh ordered that every male neonate will be thrown into the Nile (Exod. 1), Amram said: Do the Israelites have conjugal sex with their wife for no good reason? He then divorced his wife when she was three months pregnant and the rest of the Israelites followed suit. His daughter then said to him: Father, your judgment is harsher than that of the Pharaoh. He only condemned the males while you condemn both males and females. Pharaoh is evil and his order may not be carried out; you are righteous and your command will be fulfilled. Consequently he took his wife back and all of Israel did the same. Hence the name Puah since she dared to remonstrate with her father. (Exod. Rab. 1.1.3)44 Given the way in which the Bible insists on divorcing the father from the rest of the family and on dividing the tasks of looking after the baby between mother and daughter, this midrashic nugget set out to correct the troubled story of origins.45 In telling the story through the lens of a defiant female child, this expansion of Exodus 2 posits a powerless father, one so conscious of his limitation, in spite of his eminent position in the community, that he requires a lesson from a young girl. In these scenes Miriam appropriates all of the representational space, taking over the tragic stage of imminent family disaster. The generational exchange, made even more remarkable by the gender and age gaps, offers a new meditation on the biblical narration. Exodus Rabbah restores the father to a central position, thereby picking up one narrative strand from earlier Hellenistic literature (Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, described previously). Yet, Amram is also a paternal figure who, like the Egyptian monarch, is compromised by his own daughter. To make things even more complicated, Exodus Rabbah depicts Pharaoh’s daughter as a leper who dips into the Nile in

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the hope of healing (1.1.23), possibly as an allusion to Miriam’s brief affliction with leprosy (Num. 12). In Exodus Rabbah the princess’s reward is saving Moses, an action that encapsulates a denial of both paternity and royal orders. Miriam’s eventual reward is her association with the House of David (1.17). She becomes the mythical ancestress of Israel’s iconic ruler. Why does Exodus Rabbah take the trouble to specify Miriam’s age? Why does it depict her as a very young girl of five? Nowhere in either the Hebrew Bible or in its later retelling is Miriam’s age given. Rabbinic references to precise ages of children are usually associated not with stories but with legal matters. The fifth chapter of Mishnah Niddah (menstruation), for example, states that a vow undertaken by a girl of eleven and a day must be examined in order to ascertain that she understands the import of such an undertaking (M Nid 5.4). Discussions of paternal obligations vis-à-vis children also required age clarification in order to establish for how long a father is morally obliged to maintain his children. Rabbinic reflections on minor daughters, as compiled in the Mishnah, deal primarily with paternal rights over their bodies and their income.46 Fathers had the exclusive right to arrange their daughters’ betrothal and marriage, with or without their consent. If a girl was raped or seduced, the compensation went to the father because of the devaluation of the daughter as a potential bride.47 Yet in Exodus Rabbah the five-year-old Miriam is already a midwife and an outspoken individual, ready to challenge both king and father. She is a member of a household in which children act as apprentices and as the innocent conveyor of God’s will. The depiction of Amram as a national leader obscures his familial obligations. It is Miriam who prepares the stage for her brother’s birth and miraculous saving. She is also a domestic prophetess (Exod. Rab. 1.22 and BT Sotah 12b). Through her agency Jewish society regains its cohesiveness. By reminding her father of the ancient biblical precept to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28), the child Miriam restores the discourse to its elemental mythical level. Through her the traditional biblical tale is reinscribed in the political and domestic spheres of the Jewish family in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Underlying the adjustments, modifications, and imagination applied to the crafting of Miriam is the renewal of family values. Because biblical origins were understood as being alive in the heart of the present, their understanding meant addressing the most remote past within the context of contemporary life. Miriam constitutes a striking exception of rabbinic legal rules regarding girls. The daring young child presents an ambiguity of legal thought: does she stand in the storied exegesis as a symbol of a dutiful yet defiant daughter, or as an implausible, if not risible, alternative of a familial construct? In assigning to Miriam so young an age the interpreter of Exodus 2 runs the risk of undermining the child’s valiant words and actions while simultaneously exposing the helplessness of the surrounding adults. Perhaps, then, the value of this midrashic pastiche lies precisely in its ambiguity.

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Conclusion and looking forward Exodus 2, an extraordinary narrative, unfolds the history of a family faced with a deadly dilemma. A baby must die or be abandoned. To avoid death his mother decides to expose him. Exits the mother. Enters the sister. She watched the floating casket with her brother inside. When baby and basket are picked up, the sister constitutes herself as an agent of maternal Hebrew milk. Baby and real mother are temporarily united. The sister emerges as a resourceful daughter, a young female who becomes indispensable in the narrative of national salvation. In the endless series of the retellings of Exodus 2, from Hellenistic narrations and visual interpretation on synagogue walls to rabbinic law and lore, Miriam is used to reflect on the meaning of family structure and values. In these amplifications of the biblical story, childhood is represented by two agents, namely a silent passive baby and a vocal active sister. He is implicitly complicit; she is explicitly defiant. This defiance, so rarely associated with children in any context yet clearly also an important aspect of childhood, endows Miriam with a double role: she is exceptional yet also conventional. The biblical Miriam operates in several spheres as she bridges between home and river, and between her mother and her brother. Postbiblical Miriam is cast primarily as her father’s daughter. In this role she is employed to reestablish the ideal Jewish family, one in which children are duly controlled and guided by a paternal figure. The last Miriam of antiquity, the child of Exodus Rabbah, is a domestic prophetess who ignites domestic dissension while simultaneously standing for the orthodoxy of the Jewish family. Detached from her own story in the Bible, this late exegetical Miriam dramatizes the ambiguity inherent in a female child: the otherness of daughters and sisters yet their key role in sustaining lineage and legitimacy. In this chapter I ventured to combine the textual history of a single biblical episode with its visual narrative. Such an approach is constructive because biblical protagonists operate differently in different contexts. It is exceptionally rewarding to follow the interpretative reception history of each biblical child. Studies of this sort offer new insights into the mood, mentality, purpose, and audience of the interpreters and their environment. Through them we have unique opportunities of learning about the social, religious, economic, and political contexts that shaped the views and concepts of Jewish childhood in antiquity.

Notes 1 Although Genesis Rabbah 55.4 makes Isaac thirty-seven years old, a simple deduction from the given biblical arithmetic of age. 2 Zlotnick-Sivan 2002: 33–55. 3 Sivan 2013. Levine 2000: the origins of the synagogue are shrouded in mystery and controversy. It seems safe to assume that in a diaspora context, synagogues functioned for centuries before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

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4 The dates of the redaction of Exodus 2 and of the rabbinic compilations are approximate. For the former, see Sivan 2004a; all the latter contain earlier layers of uncertain date. 5 Lefkovitz 2010: 99–110, esp. 102, presenting Miriam as a “child”; Trible 2000: 127–9. For a useful overview, see Meir online at http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/miriammidrash-and-aggadah. 6 Nor are other participants. The parents are identified solely by their tribal affiliation, Miriam as “his sister”, and the princess as “the Pharaoh’s daughter”. Aaron, Moses’s older brother, is altogether absent. Even Moses gains a name only when he is separated from the maternal breast and brought to the palace. For a useful overview of the story and its history, see Cohen 1993. 7 The metamorphosis of Miriam may be compared with the exegetical history of the Egyptian princess who in the course of the retelling acquires a name, distinct characteristics, and even a husband, Miralles Maciá 2014: 145–75. 8 Bunge 2008; Koepf-Taylor 2013; Sivan (forthcoming). 9 Bauks 2007; Smith 2014; Yoder 2015. 10 Avissar-Lewis 2013; see also ibid., 2010. 11 Uziel and Avissar-Lewis 2013. 12 On teasing history out of rabbinic writings, see Goodman and Alexander 2011. 13 The Bible does not provide an exact temporal framework. It is impossible to estimate the pace of a narrative launched with patriarchal genealogy (Exod. 1:1–7), turning abruptly to describe a new reign and new decrees, and ending with the biography of a single Hebrew Egyptian. 14 For this and what follows, see Sivan 2004b: 119–21. 15 On wet nursing as a woman’s profession in antiquity, see Cohick 2009: 229–31. 16 To be precise, he is a prop in a number of biblical genealogies, namely Exodus 6:18–20 and Numbers 26: 58–9. 17 Young 1997: 218. 18 Lanfranchi 2006, with a useful overview of scholarly opinions. On the possibly paganGreek audience for Ezekiel’s drama, see Jacobson 1983: 138; against this hypothesis, see Brant 1998: 132–3. 19 Biblical Antiquities refers to Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB ). The date, perhaps in the early part of the second century CE, was analyzed in Jacobson 1996: 199–210. Others assign it to a pre-70 date. 20 The reference to the elders may explain the emergence of Amram in the Babylonian Talmud (see the section on the rabbinic Miriam) as leader of the Sanhedrin. On this episode in Pseudo-Philo, with a précis of his Antiquities, see Murphy 1993: 52–61. 21 Cf. Miriam’s similar prediction in the Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael (on Exod. 15:20), with Steinmetz 1988: 46. On Miriam in the LAB, see Tervanotko 2013, who highlights her roles as visionary, compares her with Miriam of the Qumranic vision of Amram (4Q 544), and connects both with Miriam of Numbers 12 as a source of inspiration for the role of Miriam as a prophetess. 22 It may be further recalled that the synagogue was in close proximity to the Christian baptistery which apparently contained a scene representing David and Goliath. The theme seems absent from the extant Durene synagogue panels that are featured on the floors of two late ancient Galilean synagogues, at Meroth and Hamam. 23 Sivan 2013. 24 For Egyptian influences, see Ulmer 2009: 297–322. On the visualization of biblical narratives on mosaic floors in antiquity, see Hachlili 2009: 57–96, themes including the Akedah, Noah’s ark, David’s cycle, Daniel, the Tabernacle, the annunciation to Abraham and Sarah, and the end of days. 25 Among recent studies, see Chi and Heath 2011 and Brody and Hoffman 2011. 26 Sivan 2013.

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27 Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. Syria and Cyprus, 139–212; Altheim and Stiehl 1958; Stern 2012. 28 The identification contrasts with the biblical narrative which entrusted an attendant with getting the basket out of the river and depositing it in the hands of the princess who then opens it to reveal its contents. On possible roots in a popular tradition later incorporated in targum and rabbinic exegesis, see Vermes 1975: 90. 29 Jacobson 1996: 75. 30 Baird 2014. 31 Ibid., 230–40. 32 Ibid., 201, 220. 33 Ibid., 240. 34 Although the Passover haggadah skips over Miriam and Moses altogether. 35 The message and meaning of the Dura panels have been endlessly debated. Among recent contributions, see Rajak 2011: 141–54. For a recent bibliographical overview of publications relating to Dura and to synagogues in general, see Gwynn 2010. 36 Koepf-Taylor 2013, esp. 1–32, who offers an introductory survey titled “Biblical Children, Biblical Childhoods” about new approaches to positioning children at the heart of inquiries into biblical scenes. 37 Evans Grubbs 2010 has shown that the reclaiming of an exposure child was often a neighborhood phenomenon because the rescued expositi were often returned to their original home because their identity was known to the locals. Precisely because of the possibility of recovery, parents were willing to expose their children in the belief that they would reclaim them later if their circumstances improved. Were Dura’s Jewish citizens familiar with such practices? 38 According to one recent analysis, alma and naar denote “youth” whereas yeled refers to “children”; see Parker 2013: 55–67. Cf. the range of ages born by each designation with 1 Kings 14: 13 in which Jeroboam’s sole son is characterized as a naar and as a yeled. 39 See Steinmetz 1988 for a collection of primary midrashic texts. On Miriam in different contexts, see Sherman 2006. 40 Already Jubilees 47 attempted to address and redress paternal marginality by asserting that even after Moses was brought to the palace, his father taught him writing, as though the educational role entrusted to the father restored paternity to Amram. 41 62 BT Sotah 11b–12b. 42 Soncino trans., modified. 43 Cf. Ben Sira 42: 9–10. On these passages, see Labendz 2006: 383–5. See also Sivan (forthcoming). 44 Exodus Rabbah is usually dated to the tenth century, but the collection deserves a closer scrutiny. See Bergman 2004: 196–208; and Strack and Stemberger 1992: 308–9. 45 See Raveh 2014: 56–73 for a different interpretation. 46 Wegner 1988: 20–39. 47 Ibid., 38.

7

Slave children in the first-century Jesus movement Marianne Bjelland Kartzow

The primary concern of this chapter is to examine slave children of both genders in early Christian texts. The study of children and childhood shares challenges with other research areas: feminists looking for women in ancient texts have taught interpreters how difficult it is to hear women’s voices when texts are written by men living in a male society with male ideals. In recent years, scholars interested in slave history have made similar points; sources from the lives and worlds of slaves are hard to find. When we focus our attention on children and childhood, we are confronted with the same challenges of sources and methodology. My task is to discuss children in the Jesus traditions of the first century, primarily focusing on a few New Testament (NT) texts. If we add the perspectives of gender and social status to the age factor – as I shall do – it becomes clear that our research raises more questions than provides answers. Slave children in the Jesus movement, that is boys and girls who were slaves, did not write letters or leave behind specific archeological evidence for us to interpret. However, if we accept the calculation that perhaps one-third of the population of the Mediterranean world in the first century were slaves, one of every three children would have been a slave.1 In what follows, I shall rethink aspects of the history of children in the Jesus tradition by including slave children of both genders. I will start my chapter by presenting some of the work that has already been done on children and childhood in the NT. In particular, I will investigate what themes and issues are highlighted, and search for information on slavery and gender. The second part proposes the usefulness of intersectionality as a methodological approach to how we can study children and take seriously the aspects of gender and social status. In the third part, I discuss three different sets of texts in the NT: a parable in a gospel; two letters by the apostle Paul; and a household code in a letter that is in Paul’s name but is possibly inauthentic, in which slave children are mentioned, explicitly or implicitly. NT texts have had a special position in comparison to many other texts from antiquity because they have canonical status, as religious and cultural texts.

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Conceptualizing children and childhood in the NT We begin our inquiry by asking how we have reconstructed the child and childhood in the first century, when groups of followers of Jesus started to send letters around the empire and when the gospels were written as biographies of Jesus. A new charismatic movement, which held as its starting point that a baby was born to an unmarried woman under extraordinary circumstances, might be expected to give children a special place within its fold.2 Stories of the healing of several children (Mark 7:24–30; 9:14–20 parr.), Jesus’s way of placing children in the center (Mark 9:36 parr.), and his famous words “Let the little children come to me; do not hinder them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14 parr.) have led to several attempts to construct the Christian movement as unique and exceptional in its attitudes toward children.3 Within the field of NT studies, children and childhood as a research area on its own terms is rather new but is quickly growing. For example, in 2010 a program unit in the international Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), called “Children in the Biblical World”, was established.4 Much progress has been made over the past twenty years with regard to studies in this field, a development which is indicated by the advance from a three-page commentary on “Child, children” in the main reference work in biblical studies, the Anchor Bible Dictionary from the early 1990s, to a thirty-five-page-long coauthored article on the same topic in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, published in 2012.5 Instead of merely listing relevant text passages from the Hebrew Bible and the gospels, the recent encyclopedia article, in line with current trends in the field, not only includes a large variety of biblically related texts and reflects on methodological challenges but also discusses how these texts have been used and reused in history, other religions, literature, art, music, and film.6 The activities and publications on children and childhood are indeed increasingly voluminous and varied, including articles, anthologies, and books, as well as the organization of seminars and research conferences. On the basis of a selection of the research presented in three books, this chapter will illustrate some of the trends and developments in recent scholarship, with a particular focus on slave children. In his 1992 publication In der Mitte der Gemeinde: Kinder im Neuen Testament, Peter Müller outlines the word field “child” in the NT.7 He divides this semantic field into four areas, paying attention to kinship, social position, formation, and belonging. He also includes the terms often translated as “slave” ( pais, doulos) under the categories of social position and servant-relations (Dienstverhältnis), but he does not discuss the role of slave children as such. The book takes seriously the variety and difference in vocabulary, genre, and locations where children can be found. It aims to contribute to practical theological discussions about the roles of children in church and society today. In many ways, his thorough discussion of the terms that are used for a child and children in the NT has paved the way and served as a map and guideline for later studies.8

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The book The Child in the Bible (2008), edited by Marcia J. Bunge and coedited by Beverly R. Gaventa and Terence E. Fretheim, represents in many ways the starting point of a new interest in children and childhood in the field, especially in combination with the growing interest in interdisciplinary approaches over the last few years.9 In addition to several thematic essays, this anthology discusses texts from the Hebrew Bible and the NT that focus on or deal with children. The NT texts that are studied in detail include the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John, as well as Acts, Paul’s letters, and the household codes from Colossians and Ephesians. The introduction presents several guiding questions and points to methodological challenges. It also gives a presentation of the overall perspective of this publication by introducing “the lens of ‘the child’ ” and explains the goal of the book in the following words: [J]ust as in the case of using the lens of “gender”, “race”, or “class” as categories of analysis, the lens of “the child” reveals unexplored or neglected aspects of a text or a tradition, exposes new and important methodological questions and concerns, and helps contemporary readers to reflect on their own attitudes and behavior.10 If I understand this introduction correctly, the book aims to emphasize a category, “age”, that has long been neglected, in the same way as gender, race, and class have been neglected. As I will suggest in the second part of my chapter, these analytical categories do not have to be parallel lenses to “the child”, because they always work together and intersect. This becomes obvious when we pay attention to slave children. The third publication is also a collection of essays, titled Children in Late Ancient Christianity, edited by Cornelia B. Horn and Robert R. Phenix in 2009.11 Biblical and NT texts are here treated alongside other sources such as Apocryphal Acts, writings by Church Fathers, monastic literature, and martyrdom texts. The sources, methodologies, and research questions represent a vast spectrum. Among the subjects that are discussed in this volume we find questions pertaining to the situation of sick and deformed children, motherchild bonding, possible traces of children’s culture, infant baptism, and rituals outside the Christian tradition. Their sensitivity to the child as being vulnerable and weak leads several of the articles to pay attention to aspects that make some children more marginal than others, such as gender and health, although only a few of the discussions pay attention to slave children in particular. The books I present here categorize the texts and period I am interested in in three different ways. The first book sees the early church as the context of the NT, with correlations to our time, and practical issues that arise in the life of the church and society, whereas the second volume discusses the NT as part of the Bible, looking at our texts as components of a religious-cultural canon, together with the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. The last book reads the NT as one text among others from the period they call “late ancient Christianity”. We may also note a difference in genre and authorship in these publications:

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the first book, which appeared in print before the field “the child in the Bible” was starting to grow quickly, and which was written in German as part of a theological and exegetical tradition, was written by a single author. Thus it functions as a contrast to the more common recent trend in the field that is manifested in the form of edited books, covering several different perspectives and primary texts. Nevertheless, all these publications have in common the fact that they argue in favor of further research. The two edited volumes in particular suggest a broad interdisciplinary approach that employs a variety of methods. In all three books, we also find expressions, articulated with varying directness, of an interest in children living today, in the church, or in society in general, in order to give children a history, put them at the center of attention, and facilitate a better future based on greater knowledge of the past. Recently, new publications have provided us with a variety of perspectives, methods, and new material.12

Methodology: intersectionality In what ways can the lives and representations of children be studied when the focus of attention is on the roles of class and social position? Theories of intersectionality may offer useful analytical tools for addressing this question. Intersectionality as a theoretical concept has only very recently been applied to biblical scholarship, although its basic ideas and concerns have for some years now been articulated by scholars of African American studies, African feminists, and womanist biblical interpreters in particular.13 Intersectionality has become an essential approach in recent developments in race and gender theory.14 Two of the leading journals in gender studies have published separate theme issues on intersectionality.15 Some scholars even talk about “the intersectional turn”.16 The core idea is the following: instead of examining gender, race, class, age, and sexuality as separate categories of oppression, intersectionality explores how these categories overlap and mutually modify and reinforce each other.17 The characters described in texts from the ancient world are presented as experiencing complex social relationships. A child is never only a child: he or she belongs to a social group or class, with complex ethnic, religious, and cultural implications. We need a new language to talk about cultural complexity, as the Norwegian social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues.18 In my view, intersectionality offers such a new language, and is also relevant when we are interested in children from all walks of life in ancient texts. The concept of intersectionality has gained increasing currency in recent interdisciplinary research.19 When white Western feminists in the 1960s and 1970s started to criticize male-centrism, their insights into the oppression that an individual experienced “as a woman” tended to conflate the experiences of one particular group of women with those of all women.20 In the early 1980s, scholar-activists in particular started to question the hegemony of white women in the feminist movement. They argued that the experiences of African American women are not only shaped by race but also by gender, social

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class, and sexuality.21 The awareness that different social divisions cannot be understood in isolation, but are mutually modifying and reinforcing, is central to intersectional studies.22 Although intersectionality has obvious weak points and pitfalls, it may help interpreters who listen to “tiny voices” in ancient texts to solve essential challenges of complexity.23 It originates from discourses in which it functions as a tool to understand discrimination and subordination, but it may also be employed in order to understand difference in general and how identities are negotiated.24 To move beyond uniformity and simplification is useful, if we are to understand identities, regardless of where a person is located in the hierarchies.25 The American feminist legal scholar Mari Matsuda argues that intersectionality enables interpreters to ask “the other question” and thereby make visible categories that otherwise are overseen.26 Her insights are compelling. Her concern is with oppression and marginalization, but her method can also be used to discuss identity and social relations in general.27 Although she does not mention the age factor explicitly, and she is not concerned with ancient texts, her list of questions may be adjusted to my purposes here. Consequently, when I read about children, I ask, what role does gender or class play here? When I read about slaves, I ask, were there any children among them? And when I read about women, I ask, could slave women or girls be counted among them?

Textual material When various ancient sources mention children, we have to ask whether they have all children in mind, including slave children of both genders, exposed children, adopted children, stepchildren, and other children in the community, or only legitimate children born by free or freed mothers and acknowledged by their fathers. I will not only ask about slaves when children are mentioned but also look at texts that do not obviously belong to discourses about children, and ask about slave children. Accordingly, the three text examples I present here are normally not among those that are frequently discussed when children are the focus of attention. Most texts that regularly appear in books on children are taken from narrative texts, where children are presented as “real characters”, and therefore are construed as being a part of early Christian history. Here, I look at some other genres, taken from a metaphorical text (a parable), from Pauline rhetoric (allegorical figure), and from ethical prescriptions (household codes), and ask about the potential role of children in general, and slave children in particular. Allegorical or metaphorical slavery language depends on real slavery to make sense, as several scholars have pointed out.28 The complex relation between thinking or mentalities and social conditions that is so central to the present volume on children and childhood is indeed activated when one works with these texts. Several scholars have recently dealt with the presence of slaves among early Christian groups, focusing on the violent and gendered slave system of the first centuries.29 They are all sensitive to the ways in which several social categories interact, although they do not primarily pay attention to slave children.

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The parable of the faithful and the unfaithful servant (Luke 12:41–48) The NT synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) include several parables that portray Jesus as the narrator who uses experiences from the listeners’ or readers’ everyday lives to illustrate theological or ethical points. Slaves appear in several of these parables, as well as in the story to be discussed here. Slaves experienced a particularly harsh treatment: they were at the margins of the ancient household, playing an ambiguous role in the family, and could be beaten and mistreated. In the parable of Luke 12:41–48, we hear of a master who leaves his house. He entrusts the control of his property to a character called both “manager” (12:42) and “slave” (12:45). During the absence, the slave-manager misuses his privileged position and starts to beat his fellow slaves, only to be cut into pieces when the owner returns. In Luke’s wording, Jesus tells the disciples this parable in order to teach them to be prepared.30 In the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 24:42–51), the same story is told, but with a different wording. Matthew recounts much the same parable, but refers unambiguously to “fellow slaves” (24:49), whereas Luke’s terminology invites a more flexible interpretation, given that he uses the Greek term pais, which can mean both “child” and “slave”.31 Thus, the phrase in Luke 12:45 can be translated as “male slaves and female slaves”, as “boys and girls”, or as “slave boys” and “slave girls” whom the slave-manager starts to beat.32 For the purpose of this chapter, the most relevant differences are that Matthew calls them coslaves, whereas Luke calls them slaves or children, and that Luke also operates with a gender distinction (male and female), whereas Matthew does not. The Lukan terminology opens up a variety of scenarios: either the trusted slave-manager strikes his fellow slaves, as the parallel story in Matthew says, or the trusted slave strikes the (slave) boys and girls. Such physical punishment was probably common in ancient households, where the bodies of slaves were their owner’s property and children had to obey their parents. In this Lukan parable, ideology and meaning are constructed through the use of violence and abuse according to power structures in which class, gender, and age intersect. Several biblical commentators overlook the characters who actually populate the narrative universe of the story. It is striking that some commentaries on Luke have nothing to say about these beaten slaves or children who are mentioned in verse 45, as if these slaves (or servants, as they are often called in modern translations) had no relevance.33 Before discussing what kind of household this parable may refer to, I want to comment briefly on the challenge of using parables as texts that reflect real-life social arrangements. Traditionally, the parables of Jesus have been interpreted as theological or moral stories. Such interpretations can, however, be challenged: the parables also have political and economic agendas. Parables are not merely stories about how God works but also stories about how exploitation worked in ancient Palestine.34 When the parable tells how slaves or children

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are beaten in accordance with the seriousness of their perceived transgressions, some real-life slaves probably had such experiences in everyday life, if the parable is to be meaningful to its audience. The characters and events of this parable most certainly resonated with the experiences of slave owners, slaves, and children in early Christian groups. In the parable, beaten slave bodies function as a metaphor which illustrates the relationship between God and humans, but for real-life slaves with real bodies, violence did affect the integrity of their personhood. What kind of household is mirrored in Luke 12:35–48? In this parable, the master of the house departs, leaving it up to the slaves to run the house. In the narrative universe, the master was probably thought to have brought along on his journey his wife and (some of) their children and other free members of the household, and perhaps some of the other slaves. The social framework of a traditional household with husband, wife, children, and slaves is recognizable, a social structure that is similar to what we have in the Pauline and postPauline household codes that I shall discuss later.35 The fact that the same terminology (variations of the Greek term pais) is used for slaves and children reflects their common status and function in antiquity, but the various social relations between slaves and children in the household were rather complex.36 Slaves were like children in many ways: they were not considered as being on a par with adult, free women and men. Instead, they were often thought to be immature, impulsive, or irresponsible. Because both slaves and children moved rather freely between households, both groups were thought of as spreading news and gossip.37 Regardless of their age, slaves were thought of as children and treated accordingly, although there was a significant difference with regard to their future roles: free children would themselves be part of the slave-holding class. The male slave would endure being permanently in the status of a boy and never enter manhood. Slaves were seen as underdeveloped in their ability to think rationally and act morally. According to the Roman mentality, the slave remained forever under the potestas (power or authority) of the owner, although some slaves could acquire an education and obtain higher social positions.38 In upper-class families, parents usually put slaves in charge of nursing and educating their children.39 Slaves were their pedagogues, caretakers, and protectors.40 For freeborn children, some of the most important people in their childhood seem to have been slaves. Beating children was most probably an integral part of this relationship, although some ancient thinkers found that it was “against nature” that slaves sometimes struck the freeborn children they had under their protection.41 In Luke’s parable, then, it may well have been boys and girls who were mistreated by the wicked slave, because slaves often took care of children. What impact does it make on us as readers, interpreters, or users of this text today, if pais is translated as “children”, and if we read this parable as talking about the physical abuse of children, of boys and girls, rather than of adult slaves?42 Would it make the parable even more problematic? After all,

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slaves belong to the past (at least legally), whereas children remain ever present. Beating children is unacceptable in many cultures today; this is a positive development in the last generations. Although most interpreters are likely to think that those beaten in this parable are slaves and not children, we need to reflect on other possible scenarios too. What about slave children of both genders?43 Did free and slave children have anything in common? As two North American NT scholars, Carolyn Osiek and Margaret MacDonald, have shown, free and slave children shared social space: both slave babies and free babies could be nursed by the same woman, slaves grew up playing with their owners’ children and the friends of these children, and sometimes even went to school together, and slave and free children may even have been half brothers or sisters, if the master of the house had impregnated one of his female slaves.44 Why Luke used pais in this context must remain an open question. But asking this question helps us see how slaves and children, two important groups in the ancient household, at times shared functions and roles, but also had very different opportunities. Intersectionality helps us look for slave children of both genders in this parable. This parable in the Gospel of Luke is one of the few texts of the NT that mention female slaves.45 In contrast to Matthew, Luke has introduced elements of gender differentiation and added an ambiguous age factor for the slaves he mentioned: are they young; are they adult? Male and female slaves or slave children of both genders, or free boys and girls, are beaten, not by their master, but by another male slave who stands in for him. We may also ask what role gender and age played when slaves were beaten. Were slaves and children beaten differently, and did age and social class matter? When a male person beat female slaves or girls, was this act in any ways sexualized?46 Could beating also lead to sexual violence, given that beating may have been perceived as leading up to or as being a form of penetration, such as sexual penetration, when the body’s integrity was attacked through striking?47 Although the NT mentions a few female slaves, feminist commentaries have been little concerned with them.48 The female characters mentioned in Luke 12:45 have not been central characters when women’s history is written. Because of political or theological challenges, feminist exegesis has been mostly interested in women with leadership roles. Some of these elite women were probably slave owners themselves, or belonged to slave-holding families.49 Similarly, overviews of children in the Bible do not pay attention to the figures who could have been slave boys and slave girls. If interpreters concerned with women or children of the past are primarily interested in privileged persons, we ignore the intersecting power systems at work, which make slave children of both genders invisible. The crucial point here, as I see it, is to map how various social categories work together and construct each other. The parable in Luke 12:35–48 operates within a complex web of social relations. Awareness of the fact that different social classification systems cannot be understood in isolation, but mutually

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modify and reinforce one another, is central to intersectional studies. Instead of examining gender, race, class, age, and sexuality as separate categories of potential oppression, intersectionality explores how these categories overlap. This Lukan parable is not only about the fact that male and female slaves or children are being beaten. It is also a parable about an ambiguous and vulnerable group that becomes visible only by use of an intersectional approach, and that remains open to several potential interpretations.

The son of Hagar in the letters of Paul (Gal. 4:21–31; Rom. 9:6–10) In many of Paul’s letters to the various early Christian groups of the Roman Empire, familiar characters from the Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible function as explanatory models for community building and theological reasoning. I will look at the letters to the Galatians and the Romans in this chapter. In two of Paul’s most central letters, the forefather Abraham and the mothers of his two sons work as rhetorical tools to argue that not all those who claim they belong to God are real children of Abraham. The story from Genesis 16 and 21, in which Abraham and Sarah were childless, and Sarah sent her husband to Hagar, her Egyptian slave girl in order to conceive a son with her, was familiar to early Christians.50 According to Genesis, Hagar and Abraham become the parents of Ishmael, but later on Sarah too becomes pregnant through the help of God, and Isaac is born. Ishmael is never really accepted as Sarah’s son, and the relationship becomes challenging and problematic: Hagar flees into the wilderness twice, and disappears from the story together with her son, whereas Sarah, Abraham, and their son Isaac are counted as the founding family of the Jewish covenant.51 When the story of Hagar and Sarah and their children appears in allegories of the NT, something happens to the two sets of parents. Paul operates with two different kinds of motherhood to Ishmael and Isaac: Abraham had two sons, but one of them, that is the son whom he had by the slave woman Hagar, is “born according to the flesh”, whereas Isaac, whom he had by Sarah, is “born through the promise” (Gal. 4:23). What has happened to Sarah, who intended to let Hagar give her a son? Hagar is reduced to flesh only, and her son is reduced to being a slave: “[I]t is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the descendants” (Rom. 9:8).52 Already in Genesis, when Hagar becomes pregnant, the relationship between the two women becomes problematic. Once Sarah has her own son, it deteriorates even more. How does this transformation reflect ancient practices? Does it echo a reality of competition and hostility? Did a child born of a slave woman for her female owner lose its privileges if and when the mistress had her own child or son? With Paul, the tension intensifies. For Paul, the status of the slave child and his mother legitimates their expulsion and exclusion. He quotes Scripture: “Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman” (Gal. 4:30).

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The reproductive relations involving Hagar, Sarah, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, and their presentation in Genesis and in Paul’s letter are complex and defy easy conceptualization. The most stable factor is that Abraham is the father of the two boys. He is also said to name the boys (Gen. 16:15 and 21:3), indicating that he acknowledged both of them as sons to some extent. Ishmael was circumcised with his father and all the males of the household, slave and free, but only Isaac is said to be circumcised after the Covenant (Gen. 21:4). Only Isaac received the sign of being a real and proper son and heir. In Paul’s words, only Isaac was born according to the promise. The status of a child such as Ishmael, who was intended to be Sarah’s and Abraham’s son although born to a slave, was ambiguous. Born to a slave mother, he was not born according to the promise. In contrast to his brother, he never became a legal son of his father Abraham. The slave woman’s son was only born according to the flesh, not an heir, not a real son, and not a real child of his father. This slave boy is nevertheless mentioned in the NT. His mother’s slave status and foreign Egyptian origin gave him a marginal position, with regard to class and ethnicity and religion. If we play with Paul’s text on Hagar’s son and other passages from the same letter, the role given to Ishmael may seem surprising. One point Paul obviously could have made, but did not, could have been to use this boy and his mother as examples of real insiders of the community. If he had followed his own vision, which he articulated a few verses earlier in Galatians 3:28 – “Here are neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male and female, you are all one in Christ Jesus” – the slave boy Ishmael, born to a foreign slave woman, could have represented an ideal character.53 If the statement “you are all one in Christ Jesus” negotiated categories of religion and ethnicity, social position, and gender, Ishmael could indeed be the most prominent heir and a child of God. Paul, however, reduced Ishmael to being a foreign slave child born according to nature, to be driven out and excluded.

Slave children and the household codes (Col. 3–4) “Household codes”, that is lists with regulations on how to organize the ideal family in the ancient world, where husbands and wives, children and parents, and slaves and owners were given requirements for how to live and relate to each other, can also be found in the NT letters. In her book on children in the household codes, Margaret MacDonald, who has published extensively on early Christian families and gender, writes, “The most often forgotten members of early church groups are the slave children. Placing children at the center of interpretation . . . offers an opportunity to remember them.”54 I agree with her arguments and support her perspective with regard to the task of remembering them. The methodology of “asking the other question” can be a particularly helpful tool in doing precisely that.

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The household codes in the NT are a Christianized version of the ancient ideal of how the relationships in a household should be organized. The various persons had certain duties in relation to each other. Power was assigned according to age, gender, and social position. In the NT letters, the common moral code was given a specific religious framework, and it is not only those letters authored by or ascribed to the apostle Paul which present such codes (see also 1 Pet. and the Pastoral Epistles). The household codes aim to regulate three relationships in the ancient household: husband and wife, parents and children, and master and slave.55 These pairs are organized in a particular hierarchical structure, in which each group is instructed to obey their superiors: wives their husbands, children their parents, and slaves their “earthly” masters. In addition to these three sets of instructions, husbands are asked to “love their wives and never treat them harshly”, masters shall treat their slaves “justly and fairly”, whereas the moderating signs given for the relationship between children and parents command fathers not to provoke their children. These three relationship pairs have often been interpreted as separate and complex power relations, and their intersections have been neglected. Yet how did the various pairs intersect? What if we use intersectionality and “ask the other question”? Within early Christian groups, could slaves be counted as husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and children? I will now list a whole set of challenging questions. If a slave conceived with her master, as Hagar with Abraham, how should the child be categorized? The household code in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Col. 3:18–4:1; see also Eph. 5:21–6:9) talks about obedience and honor between children and parents.56 For a child such as Ishmael, how would these requirements be understood? To whom was he supposed to show obedience and honor? Who was considered to be his mother, Hagar or his intended mother Sarah, who also owned his mother? Did slave children, whose parents were unknown, dead, or lived somewhere else, count as children in the parents-children relationship pair in Colossians 3:20, or were they considered only as slaves? Although the household codes are not concerned with ethnicity, nationality, or religion, we may still wonder, in light of the reflections about Ishmael, the son of the slave mother, whether it would make any difference if any of the characters included in the three relationship pairs of the household codes were Jewish, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, or something else. How are we to understand the gender pair? In contrast to how the visionary Galatians 3:28c talks about gender as male and female, the terms used to describe dual-gender positions in Colossians, that is wives and husbands, signify a certain status, because only free persons had legal access to marriage.57 Besides this, legal parenthood depended in general on class. Children of enslaved mothers became the owner’s property.58 The plural terms used for parents and children ( goneus) could, grammatically speaking, involve both

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male and female persons. Goneus in the plural, can, according to Liddell-Scott, stand for “begetter”, “father”, or “parents”, indicating that mothers may be included in this term, in contrast to the male category patêr.59 By being the reproductive mothers and fathers (when known) to slave children, slaves were at least biologically parents, although not legally recognized as such. But were slaves also considered as children? Were they recognized as boys and girls, with all the potentials and privileges coming with the early age, such as time to play and education, which were normally available to freeborn children? Although slaves did not have legal access to either marriage or parenthood, they may nevertheless have formed couples and relationships.60 Although they were denied family roles according to the law, slaves probably had access to various degrees of “family life”. They probably formed long-term relationships, whether male and female or same sex. The historian Suzanne Dixon mentions various “irregular unions” as an alternative to marriage, such as slave partnerships and concubinage.61 If we focus on slave children of both genders, how shall we interpret these words: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord” (Col. 4:20)? MacDonald argues that there are several unresolved questions related to these codes, mentioning in particular that we have to “[r]ecogniz[e] . . . the household codes as familial ideology that has a complex relationship to the life of real people”.62 The Colossian household code demands that children show obedience toward their parents. But who functioned as parents to a slave child: the owner(s), the biological mothers, various possible fathers, or others? Or is this requirement directed only at free children with legal parents, whereas slave children counted only as slaves, so that they should primarily obey their owners? Colossians 3–4 may echo the ancient idea that slaves were not human beings, with the consequence that their gender – like their ethnicity and age or generation – was irrelevant.63 We must ask whether household management among the various Jesus followers observed legal standards within the Roman Empire, or whether slaves could be considered as husbands, wives, mothers, and fathers. Here, the most important question to ask is whether young early Christian slaves counted as children, so that their status was regulated by the household codes, or whether slave boys and slave girls were first and foremost slaves. Did they have “the privilege” of being children? That is, did anyone bother to provide them with an education, training, care, and attention, and invest in their future according to their gender? Or were they primarily considered useful property, side by side with adult slaves, within the first-century Jesus movement?

Conclusion The NT has a special position in comparison to many other texts from antiquity, because it has had such a great impact on later generations. Thanks to their centrality to the religious, as well as the cultural, canon of the Judeo-Christian

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realm, these texts have been read, used, and interpreted throughout history, and continue to be used thus even today on a global scale. Slavery texts have had a special influence on peoples’ lives. Biblical texts have been used both to support and to fight against slavery. How have these biblical texts affected children in general, and slave children in particular? It is said that women are useful to think with and that slaves are only footnotes in great men’s biographies, but what about slave boys and slave girls? I think an intersectional approach, although traditionally more concerned with categories such as gender, class, and race than with the age factor, may help us rethink and reimagine children in the ancient world. When applied to childhood studies, intersectionality also takes into account other aspects that have often been ignored in scholarship, such as social position, gender, and ethnicity. Children are free or slaves, and they belong to different social, cultural, and religious communities and groups. If these aspects are silenced, we risk taking for granted that people in elite and privileged positions define reality and the norm, as if free male children were the only children in the ancient world. We cannot talk about children in the Jesus movement without including slave children of both genders. Here, I would argue, NT scholarship can learn from childhood studies to emphasize the complexity of the age factor. In addition, I believe that future childhood studies would benefit from using an intersectional approach, asking the other question(s) rather than applying one lens only, because children too were of various genders, races, and classes. By reading texts that belong to different writings and genres within the NT, my study has identified some concrete cases in which the role of slave children must be taken into consideration. There is a need to conduct further research that includes slavery and gender in the discussion of children and childhood in the early Christian world and beyond. When slave children are the focus of attention, the scarcity of sources will mean that our conclusions must remain somewhat speculative.64 Few among the literate of the elites bothered to write about children in a substantial way: slave children are only mentioned in passing, or are hidden between the lines. An important task for scholarship is to theorize what is lacking in the sources by asking “other questions” of texts that are silent about these matters. Another important step in future research on slave children in the NT will be to include a closer scrutiny of inscriptions, personal letters, and archeological remains. It is also time to rethink the expression “children of Abraham” as a way to talk about shared ancestry and common religious traditions for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In Islam, unlike in the Jewish and Christian traditions, Ibrahim, Hagar, and Ishmael have become the founding family of the divine revelation. This gives a very different role to the mother and the son. In the context of interreligious dialogue, the question arises as to how one is to deal with the story of Hagar and her child in the Jewish-Christian tradition. In the imagination of texts produced by first-century Jesus followers, one of the children of Abraham was driven out and reduced to being a foreign slave. Is this a

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useful image of children in religious traditions and a good model for peaceful coexistence? One challenge to research into historical childhood may be to address the problematic features of this family model and help pave the way for further dialogue. An intersectional approach to the complexity of children’s lives will be an essential tool in future studies.

Notes 1 Note, however, that such a percentage is always hard to calculate. For more on ancient slavery in general, see Bradley and Cartledge 2011. 2 When children or childhood are discussed in relation to Jesus we often find texts organized in two sections: “The child Jesus” and “Jesus and children”, as in Strange 2004: 38–65. 3 Bakke 2005. 4 See the description at http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/Congresses_ProgramUnits. aspx?MeetingId=25. 5 “Child, Children”, in Grassi 1992; “Child, Children”, in Parker 2012. 6 “Child, Children”, 85–7, which concentrates on Greco-Roman antiquity and the NT, lists a number of questions that are relevant to this chapter, such as, “Where are the voices of children themselves in this material?” and “How were children in diverse social classes or cultural contexts actually treated?” 7 Müller 1992: 197 (table). 8 Aasgaard 2006: 29, and Strange 2004. 9 Bunge et al. 2008: xv. See also Horn and Martens 2009. 10 Bunge et al. 2008: xviii. 11 Horn and Phenix 2009. 12 See, for example, Murphy 2013; Betsworth 2015; Aasgaard 2015b. 13 See various articles in Blount et al. 2007. See also numerous works by Schüssler Fiorenza and, for example, Kwok Pui-lan 2004. On intersectionality as a method applied to biblical scholarship, see Schüssler Fiorenza 2009; Kartzow 2010 and 2014a. 14 See, for example, Davis 2008; Knapp 2005. 15 Phoenix and Pattynama 2006; Cho et al. 2013. 16 Mattsson 2010. 17 Collins 1998: 63. 18 “Cross-cutting ties and multiple loyalties are typical characteristics of any complex society. An ethnic or religious label does not provide a satisfactory description of the relevant characteristics of a person or group. Although there are implicit rules and norms regulating group membership, diverse combinations of identities are empirically possible.” See http://www.culcom.uio.no/forskning/programbeskrivelse. See also Eriksen 2009. 19 See Knapp 2005; Nash 2008: 1; Davis 2008; McCall 2005: 1777. Note, however, that “intersectionality” is not mentioned as a keyword in Gamble 2001. 20 In particular, black women in the United States started to question academic feminists’ focus on the oppression of women, arguing that gender could not be studied in isolation. The critique of white feminism’s hegemony and exclusive practice was strongly articulated in Crenshaw 1989. 21 For a critical presentation of how intersectionality relates to feminist theory, see De los Reyes and Mulinari 2005, esp. 78–88. 22 MacKinnon 2013. 23 Note that the methodology of intersectionality, although it has been embraced, has also generated criticism. See the discussion in Gressgård 2008; Yuval-Davis 2006: 206; Verloo 2006: 211. 24 See Sengupta 2006.

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25 Burman 2003: 294. 26 She argues, “The way I try to understand the interconnection of all forms of subordination is through a method I call ‘ask the other question.’ When I see something that looks racist, I ask, ‘Where is the patriarchy in this?’ When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, ‘Where is the heterosexism in this?’ When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, ‘Where are the class interests in this?’ ” See Matsuda 1990: 1183–92, especially 1187. See also Nash 2008: 12. 27 Davis 2008. 28 On the metaphorical use of slavery in Christian discourse, see Glancy 2002: 92–101. In relation to the use of slavery in the Pauline letters, Castelli 1994: 294 argues that “the use of social relations to make a theological point is successful to the degree that the metaphor reinscribes the social relation, rather than calling it into question.” 29 Glancy 2002; Harrill 2006; Brooten with Hazelton 2010; Brooten 2015. 30 For a longer analysis of this text passage, see Kartzow 2012: 31–45. 31 Note the similar open interpretation of either slave or boy in Matthew 8:5–13, through the use of the same Greek term pais (translated “servant” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible). See Kartzow 2010b: 97–8. 32 The Greek term used is translated in Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon as “to beat, strike, smite.” 33 See, for example, Fitzmyer 1981: 990. Note also that this parable is not commented in the chapter on Luke in Blount et al. 2007. 34 Herzog 1994: 7. See also Schottroff 2006: 171, who argues that “[t]his tradition of interpretation has justified slavery and identified the slave owners with God.” 35 Spelman 1988: 38; MacDonald 2008. 36 Solevåg 2013: 54. 37 See Kartzow 2009: 191; Harrill 1995: 153–7. 38 Glancy 2002: 24; but see Harrill 2006: 51–3. 39 Joshel and Murnaghan 1998: 13. See also MacDonald 2008: 303. 40 Lohse 1976: 214. 41 For example Quintilian, discussed in Gilhus et al. 2009: 161. 42 See also the discussion in Corley 2002: 66. 43 See the discussion under the subtitle “Children of Varying Statuses”, in Dixon 1992: 123–30. 44 Osiek and MacDonald 2006, esp. ch. 4, 68–94. See also MacDonald 2008: 299. 45 See, for example, the stories in Acts of the slave girl whom Paul heals from her possession, that is talent in fortune-telling (Acts 16:16–18) and of Rhoda, the slave girl who meets Peter and is accused by the others of being mad (Acts 12:13–15). For an overview of NT texts dealing with slavery, see Harrill 1995; Glancy 2002. 46 Note that Johnson translates tuptein as “abuse”; see Johnson 1991: 204. 47 See how female slaves are described as extremely powerless and vulnerable (also sexually), functioning as a vehicle for addressing others’ concerns, in Joshel and Murnaghan 1998: 7. 48 See Osiek’s telling comment: “Female slaves as a group have been very little studied,” Osiek 2003: 260. A recent contribution that pays attention to female slaves as one such group is Osiek and MacDonald 2006. Note in particular the chapter titled “Female Slaves: Twice Vulnerable”. 49 See Osiek 2003: 258. 50 For more on Hagar, see Kartzow 2013. 51 Cohen 1993. 52 Note that Paul uses “flesh” (sarx) in a broad range of contexts, and not necessarily in a negative sense, as here. 53 See Neutel 2015. 54 MacDonald 2014: 64. 55 See also other household codes in Ephesians, 1 Peter, and the Pastorals, discussed in MacDonald 2008: 278–304. See also Meeks 1996: 335–40.

126 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Marianne Bjelland Kartzow Kartzow 2010a: 378–81. See also Harrill 1995: 55. Glancy 2002, in particular 26 and 73–4. See the parallel text in Ephesians 6:1, which speaks of fathers and mothers, based on Genesis 1. See Martin 2003: 207–30. Dixon 1992: 90–4. MacDonald 2010: 84, and MacDonald 2008. Hezser 2005: 21–2. I agree here with MacDonald 2014: 64.

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Aspects of childhood in second- and third-century Christianity The case of Clement of Alexandria Henny Fiskå Hägg

The writings of the early church concerning childhood and the nature of children are not extensive. Given the general attitudes toward children and their place in society in the Greco-Roman world, this is not remarkable. John Chrysostom’s fourth-century treatise On Vainglory (De inani gloria) is an important exception. Here, the author gives advice on child-rearing, discussing how Christian parents ought to raise and educate their children.1 In the sources earlier than Chrysostom, we have first of all to make use of incidental comments on children and childhood in writings that were intended for other purposes. Indeed, knowledge about children and childhood in the early church is often achieved in more indirect ways, as many of the sources from early Christianity make use of metaphors from the domain of the family, as well as childhood, or present children and childhood as ideals or models. Two things may be discerned in the Christian writings that seem to have worked together in their concern for children: one was the respect for infant life inherited from Judaism; the other was the continuing presence of the words of Jesus concerning children.2 We do not, of course, know much about how children saw themselves or how they experienced childhood. Their voices reach us mostly as selected and transmitted by adults.3 In my chapter I shall focus on the second- and third-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215 CE). His works, written near the end of the second century, provide us with our first reliable witness to orthodox belief and the social practices of Christianity in Egypt. As is well known, Clement’s writings have a generally positive attitude toward children and childhood, as well as toward women.4 Clement was probably born in Athens to pagan parents. He received a classical education, and came to Alexandria after a period of traveling around the eastern Mediterranean; he had already become a Christian by that time. He stayed in Alexandria until about 202–203, when he left for Cappadocia (in today’s eastern Turkey) during a Roman persecution, and probably never returned. He had died by the year 215. It was during his time in Alexandria, a period of about twenty years, that he wrote most of his books. His surviving works are concerned with explaining and defending Christianity to Christians and non-Christians in Alexandria.

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Clement’s attitudes toward children and childhood may be discerned in all his main works, the Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus), Christ the Educator (Paedagogus), and Miscellanies (Stromateis). The Protrepticus is an exhortation to conversion, addressed to educated pagan Greeks. The Paedagogus, a work primarily addressed to Christians who want to learn more about Christianity, shows that he put much energy into teaching those who were newly baptized or into preparing candidates for baptism. The Stromateis, also a work intended for Christians, is a witness to his involvement in a more advanced kind of teaching, to the benefit of those who were interested in obtaining a deeper understanding of Christianity. It includes a lengthy section on marriage and family life.5 Clement’s use of children and childhood as metaphors and ideals, and his views on marriage and family life, will be the main focus here. In addition, because there is ample evidence in his writings that he knew of the darker sides of childhood as well, such as the exposure and sexual abuse of infants and children, I shall devote the last part of my chapter to these topics.

Children as metaphors and ideals Metaphorical language forms an important part of any culture. In antiquity, as today, metaphors constituted an efficient way of communicating religious beliefs and social values. The first Christians made use of metaphorical language stemming from different areas of society, such as pilgrimage, slavery, and warfare, as well as the family.6 Indeed, metaphors of the family played a central role: “God the Father”, “Jesus the Son”, “children of God”, and “brothers and sisters in Christ” became ways of communicating a Christian theology and a Christian set of values. Portrayals of children and childhood in antiquity are often idealized, which complicates the study that is to be undertaken here.7 This holds true also for the writings of early Christianity, including those of Clement. Among patristic writers, it is probably Clement who offers the most extensive discussion of the meaning of the metaphor of childhood.8 One of the most important ways in which he understood his own, as well as other Christians’, relationship to God was through the metaphor of “the child of God”.9 He generally advocates a positive evaluation of infants and children. Although his concepts of children and childhood often are expressed in the form of metaphors and symbols, they demonstrate indirectly attitudes toward “real” children and the “real” nature of childhood as well. In a section of the second book of the Paedagogus (Paed. 112–24) he frequently urges his readers to imagine themselves as children in relation to God. He quotes a series of passages from both the Old and the New Testaments in which the people of God are depicted as “children”. He starts by identifying those whom Scripture calls “children”: We are the children. Scripture mentions us very often and in many different ways, and refers to us under different titles . . . For example, in the

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Gospel it says: “And the Lord, standing on the shore, said to his disciples (they were fishing): ‘Children, do you have no fish?’ ” Those who already had the position of disciples He now calls “children” ( paides).10 It is clear that the views of children and childhood that Clement demonstrates here differ in many respects from the views of Greco-Roman society where children were seen as adults in the making, in need of coercion and instruction.11 One important reason for this is, of course, the sayings of Jesus in the gospels, where he made children an example for his followers, as in the Gospel of Matthew 18:1–5 and 19:14. On several occasions, not only in the Paedagogus, but also in the Stromateis and the Protrepticus, Clement quotes these sayings of Jesus, where adults are exhorted to become like children: Again, we read: “And they brought the children to him, that he might lay hands on them and bless them, and when the disciples tried to prevent it, Jesus said: ‘Let the little children be and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven’ ” (Matt. 19:14). What such a remark means the Lord himself explains clearly later on: “Unless you turn and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Those words are not a figure of speech (allegorôn) for some kind of rebirth, but recommend the simplicity of childhood for our imitation (en paisin haplotêta eis eksomoiôsin).12 Likewise, in the Paedagogus, Clement constantly reminds his readers that they must imagine themselves as children ( paides) in relation to God. Scripture, he writes, speaks, as in a riddle, of “children”: “We are those children.”13 He even uses the term “infant” (nêpios): “We are children and infants.”14 Another passage contains one of the earliest references to the church as our mother: “A mother draws her children near to her; we seek our mother, the Church.”15 The importance that Clement gives to children and childhood is, obviously, linked to the fact that Jesus himself came to us as a child: “What is this child ( paidion), this little one (nêpion), after whose image we also are little ones? . . . Is not the childhood ( paideia) of this child perfect, embracing as it does all of us children?”16 It is clear, however, that children are not expected to imitate the perfect child Jesus. The stories of Jesus’s own childhood that are found in the apocryphal “infancy gospels” were concerned with the power of this child, and were not intended as models for other children.17 Children are an example to adults, because passions do not take root in them, and they are not corrupted by worldly values. Adult Christians were admonished to imitate children in various ways; they were to believe in God and recognize him as their only Father: “Really, then, children are those who look upon God alone as their father, who are simple, little ones, uncontaminated (akeraioi).”18 It also meant being unconcerned about the affairs of this life, having no anxieties about the morrow, and to giving one’s whole mind and heart to the Father alone. Clement recognizes that this type of Christian will

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be looked upon as a fool by society at large, but will be greatly loved by God: “Whoever fills this command is a little one, indeed, and a child, both before God and the world: to the world, in the sense of one who has lost his wits; to God, in the sense of one dearly loved.”19 Childlikeness represents for Clement the ideal of simplicity (apheleia, haplotês) and innocence (akakia) as well: Whenever he says: “Let my lambs stand on my right”, he means the simple (apheleis): children, not men, for they are in the category of sheep. He considers the lambs as deserving to be mentioned first, thereby praising, before all other qualities men can possess, gentleness (haplotêta) and simplicity of mind (haplotêta tês dianoias) and innocence (akakia).20 As we have seen, the simplicity and innocence that children possess do not imply that they lack intelligence, but rather that they are in the process of learning. Clement strongly disagrees with the Gnostics who suggest that if Christians are children, they receive only primary education, not real knowledge. He writes polemically that we, “the children and little ones”, have received perfect, revealed knowledge of the perfect being (to teleion), and enlightenment (to phôtisma): “For we were enlightened (ephôtisthêmen), that is, we came to the knowledge of God.”21 In his attitude to the metaphors of childhood and infancy, Clement seems, however, to differ from the Apostle Paul, who regards childhood as inferior and worldly.22 In his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 3:1–2 (“Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”), Clement interprets this passage to mean that children are those who live under the Law, just as Paul himself did before he met Christ.23 When Paul writes, “I thought as a child” (1 Cor. 13:11), Clement understands him to say that he followed the Law. Likewise, milk is not an inferior type of food, because Christ himself is the milk. Therefore, Clement suggests that Paul’s words should be understood to mean “Just as nurses nourish new-born children with milk, so also I (Paul) have nourished you with Christ the Logos who is milk.”24 In Clement’s view, then, Christian infancy is both natural and perfect.

Education In contrast to the Jews, who, especially after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, organized schools in which their own religious education was based on the sacred texts, the Christians continued to send their children to pagan schools where the traditional subjects were taught.25 Christian parents were content with their children sharing a common education with their pagan neighbors and took no initiative to organize teaching of the children in groups outside their homes and churches. Even in the large city of Alexandria, there seems to have been no organized Christian school system outside of the church.

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The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–ca. 340 CE) relates that, at the beginning of the third century, the young Origen received instruction in the Scriptures from his father. With the permission of his father, the future martyr Leonides, this important early Christian theologian in the making acquired secular learning by following the normal curriculum of instruction in the pagan classics. It was not until the fourth century that monasteries founded Christian schools.26 Although several Christian texts encouraged parents to protect their children against negative input from their pagan environment, Clement held the same positive view of secular learning as Origen’s father. Clement believed that all wisdom, both philosophical and divine, had its origins in God. In this way, he bridged, or produced a synthesis between, Christian instruction (katêkhêsis) and Greek education: God is responsible for all good things: of some, like the blessings of the Old and the New Testaments, directly; of others, like the riches of philosophy, indirectly . . . For philosophy was to the Greek world what the Law was to the Hebrews, a tutor escorting them to Christ. So philosophy is a preparatory process. (Strom. 1.28.2–3)27 Before the coming of Christ, philosophy was necessary, in order that the Greeks might obtain righteousness. Now it is still useful, because it prepares the way to faith. Therefore, Christians ought to study philosophy, and thus also the encyclical studies: Clement, like the pagan philosophers, argued that encyclical studies served as a preparation for the study of philosophy. Greek learning works as a tutor ( paidagôgos) leading to Christ, as the Law did for the Jews. He also claimed that encyclical knowledge was necessary in order to defend the faith from attacks: “He [the educated Christian] culls whatever is useful from mathematics, the fine arts, literary studies, and, of course, philosophy, and protects the faith from all attacks” (Strom. 1.43.3). Despite Clement’s positive evaluation of Greek learning, it is unlikely that many Christian children attended pagan “schools” in the second century. Literacy at this time was restricted to a privileged minority, the intellectual elite, and Christians hardly differed from the rest of the population with regard to literacy rates, which normally did not exceed about ten percent.28 In accordance with Jewish practice, therefore Christian education was first of all a matter for the family, and religious training and moral instruction took place in private homes, as well as in house churches.29 The rule-like statements in some New Testament letters about family relations that have come to be known as the “household codes” illustrate the importance of family matters in the early church. These rules refer reciprocally to three pairs of hierarchical relationships, namely wives and husbands, slaves and masters, and children and parents, and these texts reveal that the presence of children was greatly valued in early church communities.30

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The special responsibility of the father as the pater familias for the education of children is also made clear in these texts. Ephesians 6:4 calls on fathers to raise their children “in the discipline ( paideia) and instruction (nouthesia) of the Lord”. The combination of the two nouns, paideia and nouthesia with the genitive kyriou, may also signal that there is a specific Christian way of raising children, and perhaps even a body of instruction with Christian content that is to be imparted to them.31 Moreover, the key locus for practicing a specifically Christian way of living is the family. Although mothers and grandmothers also played an important role in the education and upbringing of young children, there was a special emphasis on the fathers, whose responsibility was justified by an appeal to Scripture: “Listen, children, to a father’s instruction and be attentive, that you may gain insight” (Prov. 4:1).

A Christian school in Alexandria? Clement’s use of the word “instruction” (katêkhêsis) was influenced by the Greek conviction that intellectual culture ( paideia) is the supreme human activity. This introduced an intellectual emphasis into the faith. True religion means true knowledge, and the church (ekklêsia) is called a “school” (didaskaleion).32 We have very little information about the foundation of the church in Alexandria before 180 CE, a fact that continues to puzzle historians of early Christianity. When the Alexandrian church emerges around 180, which is the approximate time of Clement’s arrival in the city, it seems to be already a fully fledged institution with both a bishop and a “school of sacred learning” (didaskaleion tôn hierôn logôn), which later generations commonly called “the catechetical school”.33 The question of a catechetical school has been much debated in modern research; the traditional picture, based on Eusebius, of an official school under the control of the bishop and with a succession of teachers going far back in time has long been challenged.34 Recently, however, a more positive assessment of his account of “the school of Alexandria” has emerged; in combination with the evidence we find in Clement, scholars believe that both Clement and later Origen were involved in a form of Christian education that consisted of interpreting Scripture and general teaching.35 Whether this took place in an actual school building is doubtful. Perhaps we may imagine that the “catechetical school of Alexandria” referred to one of several Christian communities in the city where Clement was involved in teaching the “divine Scriptures”.36 This teaching may also have included instruction for children. There is little in his writings to indicate directly that he himself was involved in such teaching; but he may have done what Eusebius tells us that Origen did: when he realized that there were so many coming to him from morning to night for instruction, “he made a division of number” and delegated preliminary teaching to a skilled student: So he divided them up, selecting Heracles from among his students, a man of theological fervour skilled also in secular philosophy, and shared

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the teaching task with him. He was assigned the introductory lessons for beginners, while the advanced students were reserved for himself.37 Clement’s teaching activities may have even taken place in some kind of institution. Evidence from the literary sources he employed in his writings suggests that he had access to a Christian library, perhaps also a scriptorium.38 If there was a library, it is only a small step to the presence of some kind of center for instruction. Evidence from Clement’s writings also suggests that he was involved in a type of higher education. As I have mentioned, one of his books, the Paedagogus, is apparently addressed to catechumens or newly baptized members of the communities of Christians in Alexandria. The treatise may well be the literary version of the teaching given in the school that existed in some form in connection with the communities. Clement writes, “Instruction (katêkhêsis) is given to engender faith, but faith comes by the Holy Spirit and by baptism” (Paed. 1.30.2). Not only in Alexandria, but also all over the Christian world, it was common practice to let Christians go through a period of instruction before they were allowed to receive baptism, the catechumenate.39 Although Clement, as we have seen, makes frequent use of the language of childhood in reference to Christians, he says nothing about the baptism of actual children. In fact, when he writes about baptism, it is the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan that are used as a paradigm.40 His focus is on the instruction of adults, which he sees as a prerequisite for being baptized.

Infant baptism The question whether children in the earliest period of Christianity were baptized has been debated since the sixteenth century, and is still unresolved.41 The account of Jesus blessing the little children has often been cited as a warrant for infant baptism. However, none of the New Testament accounts gives a baptismal setting to the episode, and in the patristic period only two texts employ the pericope in connection with infant baptism.42 I shall now present some examples from the writings of the early Church Fathers on the question. Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 220 CE) in Carthage, North Africa, is the first known witness to the custom of infant baptism, but it is a practice he clearly opposes: “Why should innocent infancy come with haste to the remission of sins?”43 Because the meaning of baptism was generally considered to be forgiveness of sins, it was inconsistent with the view of children’s innocence, which most of the early writers held.44 Tertullian’s opposition toward infant baptism indicates that this practice existed, but also that it was not generally accepted. Fifty years later (about 250), however, a synod in Carthage, attended by sixty-eight bishops, declared that baptism was to be conferred when children were two or three days old.45

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Hippolytus’s The Apostolic Tradition, written in Rome about 215, is another early witness to the practice of infant baptism: And first baptize the small children ( parvulos). And each one who is able to speak for themselves, let them speak. But, those not able to speak for themselves, let their parents or another belonging to their family speak for them.”46 It is clear that infant baptism is here taken for granted, and that infants were among “those not able to speak for themselves”. Hippolytus may well have intended to codify in his “church order” what he perceives to be the ecclesiastical tradition. Origen is another witness to the existence of infant baptism in the third century, in Caesarea in Palestine. He refers to it in three writings from between about 230 and 250. In his Commentary on Romans, he claims that the practice was “received from the apostles” themselves.47 The fact that he sees infant baptism as an “apostolic custom” may mean that this was a long-standing tradition in his church in Caesarea, or a standard practice in the mid-third century.48 He does not, however, argue in favor of infant baptism on the basis of original sin. Children have not sinned, but they are defiled, and have received a stain through being born. Therefore, they need to be purified of the defilement of birth. Even Jesus himself, who had no personal sin, needed this sort of purification.49 The increasing influence of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin created, however, a demand that infants be baptized “as soon as possible” after birth.50 We may conclude from our literary sources that infant baptism was practiced in North Africa, Rome, and Palestine in the first half of the second century. I leave open the question whether this means that Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen are witnesses to a long-established practice in their churches, or to a practice that had just started.

Marriage, procreation, and children In Clement’s Alexandria, several philosophical currents, such as Middle Platonism, Pythagoreanism, and Stoicism, but also various types of Gnosticism, exerted considerable influence. Gnosticism stood for an important set of ideas that contributed to Clement’s own views about the realm of sexuality, such as marriage, celibacy, and procreation. Although they differed in other respects, most Gnostic groups shared the view that the material world and everything related to it, including sexual activity and procreation, were evil. One of these groups, the so-called Encratites (from Gr. enkrateia, continence, self-control), applied their beliefs with complete consistency and took their ascetic practices to extremes. In addition to prohibiting the use of wine and meat, they also rejected marriage and procreation. For them, enkrateia denoted virginity, marital continence, and sexual renunciation.

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In Clement’s writings, however, the term enkrateia not only relates to sexual matters but also has a much wider application: Enkrateia applies, not just to sexual matters (ta aphrodisia), but to everything else for which the soul lusts improperly, because it is not satisfied with the bare necessities. Enkrateia applies to speech, possessions and their use, to desire (epithumia) in general. (Strom. 3.4.1–2) Alexandria in the second century offered its inhabitants, including Christians, ample opportunities to live extravagant and luxurious lives. Nevertheless, Clement did not exhort the Christians to lead a life of austerity; the believer is merely expected to use the good things of the world with moderation and to prefer what is simple and natural rather than what is excessive and unnecessary. In Clement’s ethics, moderation is central: “We must aim for moderation in all things . . . We should not be idle, yet we should not be exhausted by our labour, either” (Paed. 3.51.2). He believed in the goodness of God and in the goodness of all of creation. Thus, in sharp contrast to ascetic Gnostics who denigrated creation and considered marriage a sin, Clement insisted on a positive attitude toward the world of the senses. Nothing was bad in itself; as long as it was governed and controlled by the higher human faculties, it was acceptable. What mattered to Clement first of all was that one should live a well-balanced life that was controlled by reason, not by one’s passions or desires, no matter what direction they took. Clement’s arguments with regard to marriage and children are grounded first of all in this view of the goodness of God’s creation. Throughout his extant works, he argues that marriage, procreation, and birth are an intrinsic and positive part of God’s plan for the human race. He frequently cites Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” He regards human procreation as an act of cooperation with God (Paed. 2.83.2). In Paedagogus 2.83–115, he discusses marriage and sexuality and emphasizes that the goal of marriage is the procreation of children. Procreation is compared to a farmer who sows his seed, but it is far more valuable to sow “in a living soil” than to “till the land” as the farmer does (Paed. 2.83). For when human beings obey the command to be fruitful, to preserve the whole human race, their likeness of God is actualized.51 Accordingly, Clement finds the Encratites’ renunciation of marriage and childbirth reprehensible. For birth, genesis, is something divine: “In this role man (anthrôpos) becomes God’s image (eikôn tou theou), because he cooperates, in his human way, in the birth ( genêsin) of another man” (Paed. 2.83.2).52 Clement, indeed, saw children as the fruit of marriage. Bringing children into the world was a fundamental good, whereas childlessness was a tragedy (Strom. 3.67.1). In the Paedagogus, he writes, The husband must be considered to be the crown of the woman, and the crown of the husband is his marriage; for both, the flower of the union

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is the child who is indeed the flower that the divine cultivator culls from the meadow of the flesh.53 At the same time, however, children are also the only goal of sexual intercourse: “The Law wished males to have responsible sexual relations with their marriage partners, solely for the production of children.”54 Thus he forbids sex during pregnancy and the period of breastfeeding: “Only later, after the birth and weaning of the child, would you again find [in Scripture] the wives in physical relations with their husbands.”55 People who have sex for enjoyment live like pigs and goats. Clement was a procreationist, in the sense that he regarded the begetting of children as the only purpose of the intercourse between husband and wife. Consequently, he agrees with the Encratites when they claim that continence is the highest ideal in everything, including sex. To practice sex for its own sake is irrational, against nature. A man ought therefore to practice continence (enkrateia) even in the marriage bed, and not have an irrational sexual desire (epithumia) even for his wife.56 Despite Clement’s focus on the importance of continence in all things, there is no doubt that his emphasis on the goodness of creation, in opposition to the Encratites’ rejection of it, helped him to express positive attitudes toward children and childhood. He writes that the love that parents show their children is an image of God’s love for us: “In fact the Lord acts toward us as we do toward our children . . . Yet we have a great love for our children, sons and daughters, more than we have for anything else.”57

Exposure and sexual abuse The exposure of newborn children was common among both Greeks and Romans.58 Although the mortality of infants based on natural causes was high, as cemeteries bear witness, exposure was practiced to some extent. More female infants were exposed than males.59 It is important, however, to distinguish between exposure and infanticide: those who abandoned their children did not see themselves as murderers. If adults really wanted a child to die, for example because of obvious physical disabilities, it was drowned or smothered, but not exposed. Infant exposure was not illegal under Roman law. Restrictions against this practice were not introduced before the fourth century CE. Exposure was considered to be an alternative to the outright killing of the child.60 Many children who were exposed survived and were raised, mostly by strangers, but sometimes also by neighbors.61 Their social status varied. Usually they would be reared as slaves to serve in families or in agriculture. They could, however, also face a harsher destiny, such as serving in brothels as sex slaves.62 Clement touches upon this topic in a few places. In the Paedagogus, he criticizes rich and affluent women for their lack of care for orphans; he also accuses them of abandoning their own babies. These are women, he writes, who love this world, who live in luxury, and who associate with adulterers. He warns new

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Christians against associating with them. They raise “Indian birds and Medean peacocks”, and care less for real children than for animals: They will not even come near an orphaned child, though they feed their parrots and bustards with their own hands. Even worse, they abandon to exposure the children born to them, yet lavish care on their brood of birds. They set a higher value on unreasoning animals than they do on rational men. (Paed. 3.30.2–3) Clement seems to have believed that many of the children who had been exposed would survive, because there was apparently a real possibility of unintentionally committing incest with one’s own child, whom one had exposed previously. Like several other Christian authors, Clement argues that child exposure could lead to incest – by visiting brothels or having recourse to prostitutes, they might unwittingly commit incest with a child whom they had abandoned:63 Alas, such disregard for law! These wretched men do not realize that furtive indulgence in intercourse often creates tragedy; a father, not recognizing the child he had exiled by exposure, may have frequent relations with a son turned prostitute, or with a daughter become a harlot, and the freedom with which license is indulged may lead fathers into becoming husbands [of their own children]. (Paed. 3.21.5) Although infant exposure was not illegal under Roman law, Clement clearly criticized the practice and called those who engaged in it “child killers” ( paidoktonoi) with no right to marry at all: But what justification is there for the exposure of a baby? A man who did not want to bring children into the world ought not to have married in the first place rather than become a child killer through his inability to control his lust. (Strom. 2.93.1) On the other hand, Clement also believed that all abandoned children had a special guardian angel who nursed and took care of them: Scripture says that infants who are exposed are delivered to a guardian angel, and that by him they are trained and reared. “And they shall be,” it says, “as the faithful in this world of a hundred years of age”. Wherefore also Peter, in the Apocalypse [of Peter], says: “And a flash of fire, leaping from those infants, and striking the eyes of the women.” For the just shines forth as a spark in a reed, and will judge the nations. (Eclogae propheticae 41)64

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When Clement criticizes the exposure of infants he argues on the basis of the Law of Moses, which forbids taking the offspring away from an animal before it has suckled for seven days (Strom. 2.92.2; Exod. 22:30; Lev. 22:2). He thus invokes a concrete ruling of the Pentateuch, the Torah, in a Christian setting.65 Clement argues that if there is a law that protects animals’ offspring from being taken away after birth, it is far worse to expose human beings, and he strongly reproaches non-Christians for being inconsistent: “Let the Greeks, then, feel ashamed, and whoever else inveighs against the law; since it shows mildness in the case of the irrational creatures, while they expose the offspring of men” (Strom. 2.92.3). Clement issued strong prohibitions against the sexual abuse of children, especially boys, which he frequently condemns.66 Boys should be considered as sons, not as sexual objects. It was the responsibility of the adults to control their desires: We should consider boys as our sons, and the wives of other men as our daughters. We must keep a firm control over the pleasures of the stomach, and an absolutely uncompromising control over the organs beneath the stomach.67 He also warns against having too many servants, especially “herds of beautiful boys, like cattle, from whom they milk away their beauty”. He saw that these children were not engaging in sexual acts of their own free will: I pity the young boys belonging to the slave-dealers, dressed up as best to excite lust. But these unfortunate boys are put to shame not at their own doings; they are beautified under duress for the sake of some miserable gain. If they were men, they would draw down on themselves the death penalty for doing these things, even under duress.68 When dealing with the subject of child abuse, Clement employs, on several occasions, the verb paidophthoreô and the corresponding noun paidophthoria.69 These terms are constructed from “child” ( pais) and phthoreô, meaning to “cause injury”, “destroy”, or “corrupt”. In the period before Clement, they are used in the Didache and the Epistle to Barnabas (both late first to early second century), as well as in other early Christian texts.70 It is also found in the Testament of Levi, a Jewish text from the second century BCE, but not in the New Testament nor in pagan sources. It seems that rejections and denunciations of such practices were part of a larger early Christian polemic against GrecoRoman religion.71 John Martens argues that its use in the Testament of Levi is a Christian interpolation, and that paidophthoria is a word created by Christians to denounce the sexual abuse of children.72 Clement connects the prohibition against child abuse directly to God’s law as found in the Decalogue, implying that paidophthoria was as serious a crime as theft, adultery, and murder and that avoiding it was a law for everybody: We have the Decalogue of Moses, proposed in a simple and unified elementary form, outlining a healing denunciation of sins: “Thou shalt not

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commit adultery; thou shalt not worship idols; thou shalt not corrupt boys (ou paidophthorêseis); thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; honor thy father and mother” and so on. We must be careful in these matters, and in whatever impiety the other commandments proscribe in the Bible. (Paed. 3.89.1) Although the prohibition against sexual abuse of children may have been a standard topic, a topos, and part of a stereotypical list of criticisms of GrecoRoman religion, one may assume that denunciations of such abuses were directed also at Christians who were accustomed to such sexual practices or tolerated them.73

Concluding remarks In many ways, Clement of Alexandria’s conceptions about children and childhood represent a novelty. Given the context of the ancient world, where attitudes toward children and childhood often were negative, this is interesting indeed.74 There may be several reasons for this. One is certainly the words of Jesus in the gospels about children; another may be Clement’s emphasis on the goodness of all creation, including procreation and childbirth, and the child who is created in the image of God. He even disagrees with Paul, who regarded childhood as inferior to adulthood: Clement values infants and children as examples and objects to be imitated. Although his views of children and childhood are often expressed through metaphors and symbols, his language even here indirectly demonstrates attitudes toward children and childhood that reflect an upgrading of children as human beings and of childhood as a stage of life.

Notes 1 The whole title is De inani gloria et de educandis liberis (On Vainglory and the Education of Children). On Chrysostom’s perceptions of children, see the chapter by Aasgaard in this volume. 2 Strange 2004: 112. 3 But see Laes and Vuolanto 2017a. 4 Bakke 2005: 63; see also Vuolanto 2015: 177, 179, 192, 208. 5 The standard work on the topic is still Broudehoux 1970. 6 See Lassen 1997: 103. There are numerous studies of religious metaphorical language; one example is Soskice 1985. 7 See the chapter by Bloomer in this volume. 8 Bakke 2005: 58. A major study of Clement’s use of kinship and procreation metaphors is Buell 1999. 9 Horn and Martens 2009: 41. 10 Paed. 1.12.1–2. All translations from the Paedagogus are taken from Wood 1953. 11 Clark 1994: 20. 12 Paed. 1.12.3–4. 13 Ibid., 1.12.1. 14 Ibid., 1.25.1.

140 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Henny Fiskå Hägg Ibid., 1.21.1. Ibid., 1.24.2–3. See Clark 1994: 20. Paed. 1.17.1. Ibid., 1.17.3. Ibid., 1.14.2. Ibid., 1.25.1. Phôtizô is taken from the pagan mysteries and applied by Clement to baptism. He may also have in mind Plato’s comparison of the “Idea of the Good,” which generates spiritual insight, with the sun, which generates physical sight. See Hägg 2011. See Aasgaard 2008. Scriptural quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. Paed. 1.35.3. Marrou 1956: 317; Sandnes 2009: 7; MacDonald 2014: 136. Marrou 1956: 330. Translations from Stromateis, books 1–3, are taken from Ferguson 1991. Gamble 1995: 4–5; Sandnes 2009: 6. Barclay 1997: 68–72; Bakke 2005: 152–201. MacDonald 2014: 3; see also the chapter by Kartzow in this volume. Barclay 1997: 96–7. Paed. 3.98.1. Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 5.10. See a short presentation of the debate, with bibliography, in Hägg 2006: 55–9. See, for example, Hoek 1990; Hoek 1997: 76–7. Church History 5.11.1. Ibid., 6.15 (trans. in Maier 1999). Hoek 1990: 190–1. An example of moral instruction given to candidates for baptism is Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition 16.2–13, in Bradshaw et al. 2002. Paed. 1.26.1. For a recent bibliography of the debate, see Ferguson 2009: 362. Ferguson 2009: 138. Tertullian, On Baptism 18.5, in Ferguson 2009: 364–5. See also Johnson 2007: 89; Bakke 2005: 231. See Ferguson 2009: 365. See also the whole chapter “Origin and Early Development of Infant Baptism”. Cyprian, Epistle 64, in Johnson 2007: 91–2. Apostolic Tradition 21.4–5, in Bakke 2005: 235. Commentary on Romans 5.9.11, in Ferguson 2009: 368. Bakke 2005: 238; Ferguson 2009: 369. Homily on Luke 14. See, for example, Laporte 1995: 115–16. Johnson 2007: 257. Cf. Børresen 1995: 187–209. Cf. Eijk 1972: 220. Paed. 2.70. Strom. 3.71.4. Ibid., 3.72.1. Ibid., 3.58.2. Paed. 1.75. Boswell 1988; Koskenniemi 2009; Harris 1994: 1. For an overview of previous research into infant exposure or abandonment, including the Middle Ages, see Vuolanto 2011. It is difficult to know how common and wide-ranging it was. For motivations behind it, see Evans Grubbs 2011 and 2013. Evans Grubbs 2011: 22.

Childhood and Clement of Alexandria 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

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Ibid. See also Evans Grubbs 2013. Evans Grubbs 2013: 94–5. Justin Martyr, 1. Apol. 27. Clement’s Extracts from the Prophets (Eclogae propheticae) consists of comments on portions of Scripture. The Apocalypse of Peter, from the early second century, is mentioned in the Muratorian fragment, the earliest list of canonical writings of the New Testament (ca. 200). Clement seems to have considered it to be holy scripture, but ultimately it was not accepted into the Christian canon. Koskenniemi 2009: 100. Clement is probably arguing against the long-standing tradition of so-called Greek love, where boys had sexual relationships with men. Although this was not universally accepted, it seems to have been tolerated, perhaps also by Christians. Paed. 2.90. Ibid., 3.21. It is found in all his main works, four times the verb, once the noun: Protrepticus 108.4–5; Paedagogus 2.89.1; Stromateis 3.36.1, 5; Stromateis 2.88.3, in addition to the passage cited previously. Cf. Martens 2009; Horn and Martens 2009: 226–30. Martens 2009: 246. Ibid., 242–3. Ibid., 245. For a brief overview of expressions of negative attitudes toward children in GrecoRoman world, see Bakke 2005: 15–22, 54.

9

Children and childhood in Neoplatonism Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson

The most noteworthy observation about children in Neoplatonism is presumably their absence. Neoplatonism was the dominant philosophy in the Roman world from the third to the sixth century CE. Although thousands of pages of Neoplatonic writings on philosophy and a variety of other subjects have come down to modern times, what we find in these pages about children or childhood may seem to be negligible. In fact, one might be tempted to title this chapter “The Absence of Children in Neoplatonism”. But although there are some hints concerning children in Neoplatonic writers, the fact that they are mostly absent from the texts is in any case noteworthy and in need of an explanation. Would we not presume that childhood is such a universal human and intrinsically interesting phenomenon that it could not have left thinking minds untouched? The first part of this chapter offers a brief account of Neoplatonism and the Neoplatonic writings.1 This introduction explains at least in part the absence of children from the texts. In section two, I shall present the essentials of Neoplatonic anthropology, focusing on aspects that are relevant to the topic of childhood. Plotinus’s Enneads, which constitute the richest source on human nature, is the primary object of study in part three. In the fourth and last section, I shall consider two Neoplatonic biographies, that of Plotinus by Porphyry and that of Proclus by Marinus. The concluding remarks evaluate what we can glean from our texts about actual attitudes toward children. Thus far, the topic of Neoplatonism and childhood has not received any scholarly attention and no publications have appeared about it. This means that I have not been able to build on, or pick up threads from, any earlier studies. Although a simple search reveals that there is very little to be found directly on the topic, given the vastness of the corpus of Neoplatonic writings, my study is bound to be incomplete and elementary: it is quite conceivable that another attempt at carefully combing through more texts than I have been able to scrutinize might reveal interesting additional information or yield other results.

Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic writings There is something artificial in talking about Neoplatonism as a distinct movement in ancient philosophy, because it is certain that the Neoplatonists

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did not think of themselves as “Neo” anything. This is a term invented by scholars in the early nineteenth century for the philosophy of Plotinus (204/5–270 CE) and subsequent late ancient pagan philosophers such as Iamblichus (242–327 CE), Proclus (412–485 CE), and Damascius (ca. 458–after 538 CE), who adopted basic features of Plotinus’s Platonism.2 “Neoplatonism” is sometimes used in a wider sense and also includes Christian thinkers who were significantly influenced, directly or indirectly, by Plotinus’s philosophy. In this wider sense, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), the Cappadocian fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen, fourth century CE), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (fifth–sixth centuries CE), and even several medieval Islamic thinkers may all be called Neoplatonists. In the case of these Christian and Islamic intellectuals, however, it is more common to speak of Neoplatonic influences or aspects of their thought than to call them straightforwardly “Neoplatonists”. The following discussion concentrates on the pagan Neoplatonists. In essence, Neoplatonism is an attempt to systematize Plato’s philosophy. When the Neoplatonists set out to achieve this goal, they did so on the basis of recent developments in philosophy and the culture at large. For this reason, the resulting system of Platonic philosophy contains a number of features that bear resemblance to Aristotelianism and Stoicism. This led some scholars in the past to see the Neoplatonists as eclectics rather than true Platonists. This interpretation, however, has by now been mostly abandoned. The fundamental tenets of this philosophy are Platonic, and such was also the self-understanding of its practitioners. Nevertheless, these Platonic views are often clad in a mixed vocabulary, and the Neoplatonists after Plotinus generally saw Aristotle as being completely in harmony with Plato. In fact, they regarded him as a fellow Platonist.3 Before Plotinus, there were systematizing Platonists in the first two centuries of our era, who are collectively referred to as middle Platonists. Plotinus’s philosophy developed some of the trends that are already to be found in these predecessors. It is primarily the following features that distinguish his thought and that of subsequent Neoplatonists from that of the middle Platonists: there is an absolutely simple principle beyond thought and language and beyond the Platonic ideas. This first principle is called the One or the Good. Second, the Neoplatonists were monists in the sense that they believed that absolutely everything was derived from this first principle. Their middle Platonist predecessors tended to posit at least two independent principles, a formal one and a material one (i.e. something that can receive form). Third, Neoplatonism is characterized by simultaneous “downward” and “upward” movements that permeate all levels of reality: the “downward” motion is the generation of ever-less-unified levels of reality, whereas the “upward” movement signifies the dependence of the lower items on their own sources, as well as their aspiration toward them. Following Plotinus, numerous Neoplatonists developed their philosophy at major centers of learning and philosophical activity in Athens and Alexandria,

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as well as at more short-lived centers in Rome and Apamea in Syria. Porphyry (ca. 234–ca. 305 CE), Plotinus’s student, friend, and posthumous editor, was a significant thinker in his own right. More than anyone, Porphyry was responsible for integrating Aristotle’s logical works into the Platonic curricula and, in general, for reconciling Plato and Aristotle. Moreover, he played an important role in turning Platonism into a set of views and attitudes that had a bearing on most aspects of life – that is by interpreting traditional religion and literature in its light. After Porphyry, the most celebrated thinkers are Iamblichus of Chalcis, Proclus of Athens, and Damascius, the last head of the Platonic school in Athens, when the emperor Justinian ordered the closure of the pagan schools in 526.4 Although these thinkers unmistakably continued a similar kind of philosophy, they departed from Plotinus in various ways. The last phase of the Platonic schools is especially noted for the commentaries they wrote, especially on Aristotle. Simplicius (ca. 490–560 CE) and Philoponus (490–570 CE) are the best-known commentators; the latter was a significant author of original philosophical works in his own right. Their commentaries and those of other ancient Neoplatonist philosophers have received little scholarly attention until very recently.5

Neoplatonic ethics and pedagogy There is a grain of truth in the dictum that Neoplatonism is Plato without Socrates. In other words, the very significant ethical and political aspects of Plato’s philosophy are largely absent from Neoplatonism. Although the Neoplatonists wrote voluminously, not just on Platonic metaphysics, but on a variety of subjects including natural philosophy, mathematics, and interpretations of classical myths, there is no treatise on government or society.6 Moreover, the Socratic obsession with the virtues and their application to everyday life is almost absent. Although we do find treatises on ethical topics, these tend to be quite abstract: on the nature of evil or on the nature of the virtues from a metaphysical perspective. We do not see discussions of the kind Socrates was engaged in, for instance about whether or not it could be pious to prosecute one’s own father. There are some exceptions, however. Porphyry wrote a treatise advocating vegetarianism on ethical grounds, On Abstinence from Animal Food.7 He also wrote a biography of his teacher and friend Plotinus, On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books (Vit. Plot.).8 This Life contains an episode that is relevant to our inquiry, about a certain rhetorician, Diophanes, who wrote “a defense of Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium in which he asserted that a pupil for the sake of advancing in the study of virtue should submit himself to carnal intercourse with his master if the master desired this” (Vit. Plot. 15). According to Porphyry, this shocked Plotinus so much that he “started up to leave the meeting, but restrained himself, and after the end of the lecture gave me, Porphyry, the

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task of writing a refutation”. Porphyry complied and wrote a refutation of this pedagogical doctrine, much to Plotinus’s liking (Vit. Plot. 15). This story shows that there were some writings that took up concrete ethical issues arising from daily life. It is unlikely that this essay of Porphyry and his treatise on abstinence were the only works of this kind, but this genre of writing was not considered central to philosophical inquiry, and it is has not survived. This short overview of Neoplatonists and their writings may help to explain why the topic of children is a nontopic in the Neoplatonist writings that have come down to us. The later Neoplatonists were educational reformers. They established standard curricula in their schools according to which certain topics were considered introductory and fit for beginners, others intermediary, and others again suitable only for the advanced.9 One would expect that this would be followed up with some writings on education and on human development, but this appears not to have happened. The lack of writings on the topic may be explained to some extent by the fact that the Neoplatonist educational institutions were intended to serve adult populations. Our sources suggest that students did not enter them until they had finished a great deal of primary education, which typically had brought them at least into their twenties.

Neoplatonic anthropology: the embryo Neoplatonist thinking on anthropology offers us some clues about what sort of being the human child is. One important principle, as one might expect from Platonists, is the presence of the soul-body dualism. The Neoplatonic version of this dualism is, however, rather complicated. The Neoplatonists posited several kinds of soul. First, we find the idea of the world-soul which animates the sensible cosmos. This soul is responsible for bringing about the regular patterns in nature such as the movements of the heavenly bodies, the seasons, plants, and most of animal life. Next there are individual rational human souls. These come, as it were, in two stages: first, each of us is a rational soul that never leaves the intelligible realm. The soul that descends into a body is an image of this transcendent soul (IV.8.3–4; I.1.7–13).10 The embodied soul, the image, has rational capacities, but its rationality is impaired in comparison with the transcendent archetype. It may be identified with the seat of our conscious life. As such, it is the locus of reasoning, opinions, and memories; it apprehends states of affairs in the external world through the senses, and it receives higher thoughts from the intellect above, which it has to “translate” into terms that are suited to its downgraded state (I.4.10; IV.3.29). Furthermore, there is a type of soul, that of nature ( physis), which is responsible for purely biological functions such as growth, digestion, and in part sensation. Sometimes, Plotinus speaks as if this soul is only an extension of the embodied rational soul. At other times, he seems to hold that we get our lower soul from the world-soul – a suggestion which makes good sense because our purely biological functions

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seem to be of the same kind as those we observe in nature, for example plants (cf. IV.9.3, 23–26). In any case, however, in a human being the embodied rational soul and nature form a union, which, together with the body, forms the so-called compound of body and soul (to synamphoteron, to koinon). All souls are immortal and in fact eternal; in other words, they have always existed and always will. The natural habitat of rational souls is the intelligible world, which is not a remote place up in the ether, but a reality of a kind that is different from the world of space and time. The rational souls, however, do become embodied, at least temporarily. They do so on their own accord, but according to a grand scheme for the whole cosmos. In order for them to become embodied, they need, of course, a body – not any old heap of stones or the body of a mosquito, but a body that is suitable for rational souls. When they descend, there will be such a body awaiting them in a woman’s womb. That body, the embryo, is of course in a sense alive, but it is not yet an organism in its own right. The Neoplatonists seem to have agreed that it becomes an independent organism only with the descent of the rational soul, which happens at birth or some time before that. But what then is the embryo? Is it alive but not an organism in its own right? Porphyry offers the most detailed account of the Neoplatonic view of the embryo in his treatise How Embryos Are Ensouled.11 According to the Neoplatonists, there is something called nature ( physis), which is the principle of growth in organisms. The embryo obtains its nature exclusively from the seed of the father. Having taken residence in the womb of the mother, this nature is ruled by the mother’s soul and shaped by it. This process explains inheritance and similarity from the maternal side: even if the mother contributes nothing to the seed, her psychic rule over the developing embryo during pregnancy places lasting marks on the embryo. The fact is that nature, even if it is of the order of the soul rather than of that of the body, is a kind of soul that cannot exist independently and is bound to rely on a higher form of soul. During its stay in the womb, therefore, the nature of the embryo is indeed attached to a higher soul, but it is not its own soul: it is the rational soul of the mother. Shortly before the birth of the child, the individual rational soul enters and takes over the rule of the nature of the child – a true shift or exchange of souls.

Infancy and childhood A newborn baby is endowed with its own rational soul, which has just arrived from a much better region. We might think that this puts the baby in an excellent position, even in a position that is superior to that of adults who have become worn out and used to the troubles of life by a longer sojourn among distracting, earthly things. But this does not seem to be the case. The human condition is characterized by ambivalence in the individual rational soul. It is true that this soul retains unbreakable ties to its transcendent origins – ties that could, at least theoretically, illuminate the life of the soul. But embodiment is not an easy and trivial affair: the normal rational capacity of the soul is

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downgraded from intellectual intuition into the nature of true being, which it enjoys in the intelligible world, to a discursive piecemeal reasoning best fitted to the contingencies of this world. Some evidence suggests that embodiment involves a sort of shock: the soul is thrown into an alien world for which it is not particularly well prepared. Plotinus says that “while we are children the powers of the composite of soul and body is what is primarily active and only a few glimpses come to it from the higher realities.” He adds that “we do not always use all what we have but only when we direct our middle part towards the higher realities” (I.1.11, 7–9). The functions of the composite of soul and body spoken of here are sense perception and affections such as hunger and thirst. They also include opinions, thoughts, and emotions that arise on account of the embodiment and relate to it, for example fear of pain and dreams of sweet food. This and other similar passages suggest that in childhood, the rational soul is preoccupied with coping with the relentless needs and desires of the body in the ever-changeable, sensible world. This is no small task for an untrained soul set over a body that is equally poorly adjusted. As these words indicate, during childhood we gain only a few glimpses of the intelligible realities. These will normally increase in number and duration with age, but the looming danger for the human soul is that it remains preoccupied with the body and the sensible world. That means living the life of a child, which in most respects is comparable to the life of animals. We see such an attitude shining through in other remarks about children in the Enneads. In the treatise On Happiness (Ennead I.4), Plotinus says about the wise and morally impeccable person (ho spoudaios), If he is afraid at all he is not perfect in virtue, but a kind of half man. If sometimes when he is concerned with other things an involuntary fear comes upon him before he has time to reflect, the wise man [in him] will come and drive it away by threatening and reasoning and quiet the child in him which is stirred to a sort of distress; the threatening will be unemotional, as if the child was shocked into quietness just by a severe look. (On Happiness, I.4.15, 17–22) We see here that the emotional part of the wise man is likened to a child. There is an analogy here, of course, which has been familiar at least since Plato and Aristotle: reason stands in a ruler’s position to the emotions like a parent to a child. Yet, if I understand Plotinus correctly, there is more to this than the mere analogy of a ruler and a subordinate: when the part that is subject to fear is called the child in him, this suggests that fearfulness and other emotions are phenomena typical of children, and that adults who have them are like children. Porphyry echoes Plotinus’s phrase, “the child in him”, in an interesting passage in On Abstinence. This treatise is written as an exhortation to a fellow follower of Plotinus’s philosophy, Firmus Castricius, who previously had

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abstained from the meat of animals but had fallen back into his old habits. One of Porphyry’s arguments runs as follows: If you can be concerned with the immaterial while eating gourmet food and drinking vintage wine, why not when having intercourse with a mistress, doing things it is not decent even to name? In all circumstances these passions belong to the child in us, and you will claim that, in so far as they are shameful, you are not dragged down to them. But what allocation decides that some passions cannot be experienced without one’s attending to them, but allows others to be fulfilled while one is attending to the intelligibles? It is not that some are thought shameful by ordinary people and others not, for everything is shameful in comparison with life according to intellect, and we should abstain from everything just as from sex; though nature must be conceded some nourishment, because of the necessity of generation. (On Abstinence, 1.41, 6–18)12 Porphyry blames the bad habits listed here, “eating gourmet food”, “drinking vintage wine”, and “having intercourse with a mistress”, on “the child in us”. If understood literally, this sounds strange and implausible not only from a contemporary perspective but also, I believe, from the perspective of the third-century Roman Empire, because these are the vices of grown-ups, not of children. Accordingly, the phrase “the child in us” is used by Porphyry, as indeed also by Plotinus in the passage quoted previously, in a transferred sense: it does not mean literally “as children do”, but rather something like “in an unrestrained and irrational way like a child”. This is nevertheless significant, in so far as it conveys a certain view of the nature of the child. There does not seem to be any room in Plotinus’s thought for a positive role of the emotions such as fear, anger, and pleasure. In fact, he takes over most of the more austere tenets of Stoic ethics, including their dismissal of such emotions. Given that he associates the life of children so strongly with the functions of the compound of body and soul, and that emotions and opinions associated with these are a crucial aspect of the life of the compound, he naturally sees the life of the child primarily as something to be left behind, transcended. These psychological functions are either negative phenomena, such as fear and anger, or regrettable necessities, such as the feelings of hunger and thirst, or at best something that is of a limited value but must be superseded, such as the admiration of the beauty of the sensible region. In the treatise On Providence I (Ennead III.2), one passage mentions some naughty boys. The context seeks to explain the fact of unjust suffering at the hands of others in a world that is, in general, ordered for the best. Plotinus notes that human beings are divided into three groups: some are godly, some are like animals, and the majority is somewhere in between. The fact is that those in the large middle group suffer at the hands of worse people, the ones close to animals, but because those who are in the majority are not really good

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themselves, they are poorly prepared and suffer accordingly. The point of the passage is that there is nothing wrong with this; they have only themselves to blame for their vulnerability. To illustrate the case, he introduces an explanation that is supposed to provide a parallel: If some boys ( paides), who have kept their bodies in good training, but are inferior in soul to their bodily condition because of lack of education, win a wrestling match with others who are trained neither in body nor soul and grab their food and their dainty clothes, would the affair be anything but a joke? Or would it not be right for the lawgiver to allow them to suffer this as a penalty for their laziness and luxury, these boys, who, though they were assigned training grounds, because of laziness and soft and slack living allowed themselves to become fattened lambs, the prey of wolves? (On Providence I, III.2.8, 16–26) Although the main message conveyed by this story is not about the nature of children, but about people’s general responsibility for their own suffering, some points about children may be gleaned from it. No indications are offered concerning the age of these boys, but given that they seem to be on their own on the training grounds, one might think of them as adolescents. Plotinus says that the boys who lose are inferior in soul because of a lack of education. As a result, they are lazy, soft, and slack. He holds the boys themselves, rather than their parents or guardians, to be responsible for their weak condition. The presumption may well be that they are offered a good education, but choose not to make use of it, for which they have only themselves to blame. This short story reveals that Plotinus assigns moral responsibility to children and adolescents, despite the fact that their higher mental faculties are still mostly inactive. This passage is one of only two in the Enneads where the verb paideuein, “to educate” or “to train”, occurs.13 The corresponding substantive, paideia, “education”, does not occur at all. One might have expected that even if children are, in Plotinus’s view, incapable of those activities which he sees as the fulfillment of the human telos, the right preparation for this in childhood is a matter of great importance. Plato, by contrast, who – like Plotinus – considered children unable to philosophize, is deeply concerned with education, which aims at enabling children to receive reason in the best possible way when the time comes.14 Training in the right kind of music and poetry will affect the soul and install in it the right likes and dislikes, even without understanding. “[H]aving been educated in this way, he will welcome reason when it comes and recognize it easily because of its kinship with himself” (Plato, Republic 402 A). Plotinus may have agreed, but he scarcely mentions such issues. There is one interesting passage, however, which at least implicitly addresses the relevance of education and proper upbringing, although the text does not specify to which age this applies. One may presume that such education and upbringing was supposed to begin in early childhood. In the treatise On Dialectic (Enneads I.3), Plotinus affirms the importance of dialectic, understood

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as the science of Platonic Ideas, for other disciplines, including ethics. In this context, he distinguishes between higher and lower virtues. The higher ones are intellectual virtues, whereas the lower ones are virtues of character such as honesty ( justice), courage, and temperance. Plotinus raises the question whether the lower virtues can exist without the higher, and vice versa: Can the lower kinds of virtue exist without dialectic and theoretical wisdom? Yes, but only incompletely and defectively. And can one be wise and a dialectician without the lower virtues? It would not happen. [The lower virtues] must either precede or grow along with wisdom. One might perhaps have natural virtues, from which the perfect ones develop with the coming of wisdom. So wisdom comes after natural virtue, and then perfects the character; or rather when the natural virtues exist both increase and come to perfection together. (I.3.6, 14–20) The “natural virtues” that are referred to presumably derive from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (VI.1144b3–14).15 These virtues are simply ethically relevant character traits that are innate or at least exhibited without any special training: some people, including children, are naturally honest or helpful without any special prompting, whereas others are not. These are the “incomplete and defective” lower virtues that are perfected with the development of wisdom, which I take to be necessarily an educational process. Natural virtues thus seem to be the innate seed out of which perfect virtue can grow. The passage is not clear with regard to the question as to whether those who are defective in natural virtue have a chance to become fully virtuous. Plotinus refers elsewhere to “habit and training” in connection with the acquisition of the lower virtues, which suggests that humans’ natural constitution must often be bent and molded (I.1.10, 13–14; cf. Plato, Rep. 518e). Accordingly, I do not understand the passage as stating that one needs to be maximally endowed with natural virtues in order to become good. As we shall see, Marinus (fifth–sixth century CE) states very explicitly in his biography of Proclus that, as a child, Proclus was almost superhumanly endowed with natural virtue.

Childhood and youth in the Neoplatonic biographies Several Neoplatonic biographies have come down to us. Both Porphyry and Iamblichus wrote a Life of Pythagoras, no doubt based on older sources and legends. We also have a near-contemporary biography of Plotinus by Porphyry. Marinus’s biography of Proclus is also nearly contemporary. All these biographies have a hagiographic streak – those by Iamblichus and Marinus notoriously so. There are no detailed accounts of these eminent philosophers’ childhood or youth. Nevertheless, they contain some relevant remarks. Let us first briefly consider Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras and Marinus’s Life of Proclus.

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Then we shall turn to Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, which for many reasons is the most remarkable of these documents. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras was called “the son of Apollo”, and although Iamblichus does not quite accept this as literally true, he nevertheless holds that there can be no doubt that “the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo’s domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth, and his versatile wisdom.”16 Still speaking of Pythagoras as a youth until the age of eighteen when he left home, Iamblichus says that so dignified and temperate was he that elderly men honored and reverenced him . . . In all his words and actions he displayed an inimitable quiet and serenity, not being subdued at any time by anger, laughter, emulation or contention, or any other perturbation of conduct. (Life of Pythagoras 2.10.10) Marinus offers a somewhat fuller account of Proclus’s youth than Iamblichus of Pythagoras’s, which is not so surprising given that some eight hundred years at least separate the latter two, whereas Marinus was a student and contemporary of Proclus. Nevertheless, the hagiographic tone is identical. From his birth, Proclus was endowed with physical strength, health, and endurance. Moreover: The primary elements of the soul were innate in him, and he had no need of learning them, and even so they were highly developed in him. . . . His was a great memory, an intelligence suited to all kinds of studies; he was liberal, affable, loving, and fraternal to truth, justice, courage, and temperance. Never had he voluntarily told a lie; lies he abhorred, and he cherished sincerity and veracity. What else could be expected from a man who was to achieve the presence of true being? Since youth, he was impassioned for truth, for truth is the source of all goods, among gods as among men. . . . This illustrates his youthful love of justice: honourable and gentle, never moody, or difficult in daily intercourse, never unjust; gracious, un-covetous, never taking advantage, as foreign to arrogance as to timidity.17 Such is Marinus’s account of the young Proclus. What is striking about both biographies is that their authors painstakingly describe their respective heroes as having no “child in them” in the sense which Plotinus and Porphyry give to that phrase. That sense may well be the sense we too would give to this phrase, even if we are likely to have a more positive attitude toward “the child in us”. That is to say Pythagoras and Proclus were from the start masters of their emotions. They never exhibited any childish silliness. They yearned for true knowledge from a very early age. In other words, they were born adults, and philosophers at that. The two biographies thus confirm that according to the Neoplatonic ideal,

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childhood with its characteristic “childish” feelings, dispositions, and behavior was seen merely negatively as a stage to be overcome and left behind. Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus is quite a different kind of document, when compared to the two we have been considering. Porphyry’s reverence toward his subject has often been noted, but there is a wide distance between his Life and the biographies by Iamblichus and Marinus. First of all, Porphyry clearly seeks to give an account which he hopes will be believed by his readers, whereas the others seem rather to be following fixed formulas for accounts of great philosophers, with the result that any reader, even contemporaries in antiquity, would take the bulk of the praise with a large grain of salt and understand it as, above all, a demonstration of the author’s great respect for his subject. Porphyry, on the other hand, does not hide Plotinus’s shortcomings, but instead seeks to turn them to his advantage. Examples of this are Plotinus’s spelling mistakes (Vit. Plot. 13) – do they indicate that Greek was not Plotinus’s mother tongue? – and an accusation to which Porphyry objects strongly, namely that Plotinus plagiarizes Numenius of Apamea, a well-known Platonist and Pythagorean of the latter half of the second century CE (Vit. Plot. 17). Unlike Marinus on Proclus, Porphyry has little information on Plotinus’s origin and early years, because Plotinus was not wont to talk about this (Vit. Plot. 1, 2–4). Nevertheless, he would relate the following story spontaneously, in the course of conversation: “Up to the age of eight, although [Plotinus] was already going to school, he used to keep going to his nurse and baring her breasts and wanting to suck; but when someone told him he was a little pest he was ashamed and stopped” (Vit. Plot. 3, 3–7). This is all we have about Plotinus’s childhood and youth. The story has puzzled commentators. For instance, the eminent classical scholar Eric Robertson Dodds connects this account to the Freudian idea that “mystical experience, with its sense of infinite extension and oneness with the Real, may represent a persistence of infantile feeling in which no distinction is yet drawn between ‘self’ and ‘other.’ ”18 Perhaps there is indeed a connection here, but this is hardly subject to confirmation or refutation. Any attempt to connect the story with Plotinus’s philosophy is bound to be highly speculative. What is certain, however, is that the contrast between the child Plotinus as portrayed here and the prodigy Proclus as described by Marinus is very striking. One conclusion that may be drawn from this story is that Plotinus came from a well-to-do family, which could afford a wet nurse for him for years on end. Moreover, he was presumably schooled at home – it is hard to imagine that he would run long distances from school to have his suck of milk. We may also gather from the story that even if upper-class children were customarily nursed for some years, the age of eight years and the start of schooling posed an absolute limit: Plotinus was ashamed when he was reproached for his habit and desisted. This story will likely remain a puzzle. It is very direct, intimate, even a cute story about Plotinus’s childhood, but it is so strange and isolated that I refrain from inferring anything from it about childhood at the time or about Plotinus’s character.

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The other significant reference to children in the Life of Plotinus comes in the account of Plotinus’s household. It is evident that, like the leading Neoplatonists in general, Plotinus too came from the upper echelons of Roman society. Members of the Roman aristocracy attended his school (Vit. Plot. 7), and he was on very favorable terms with the emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina (Vit. Plot. 12). In Rome, he lived in the house of a woman named Gemina, who was an aspiring philosopher, along with her daughter of the same name (Vit. Plot. 9). We must see the following account of Plotinus’s activities against the background of this social status: Many men and women of the highest rank, on the approach of death, brought him their children, both boys and girls, and entrusted them to him along with all their property, considering that he would be a holy and a god-like guardian. So his house was full of young lads and maidens, including Potamon, to whose education he gave serious thought, and would even listen to him revising the same lesson again and again.19 He patiently attended to the accounts of their property when their guardians submitted them, and took care that they should be accurate. “As long as they do not take up philosophy,” he said, “their properties must be kept safe and untouched for them.” (Vit. Plot. 9, 5–16) The only further mention of Plotinus’s dealings with these children comes in a list of incidents Porphyry presents to show Plotinus’s great insight into character: “He was, too, in the habit of foretelling how each of the children who were with him would turn out; that Potamon, for instance, would be amorous and short-lived” (Vit. Plot. 11, 9–11) Nothing is known about this Potamon except what is said in the passages just quoted: Plotinus gave special thought to his education but predicted, no doubt rightly, that he would be amorous and short-lived. Potamon is clearly singled out from a number of children, but we do not know why. Was it because he was somehow promising or especially likeable? Or was it perhaps because Potamon’s parents had been particularly close to Plotinus? The account of Plotinus as a guardian of orphans can easily be misunderstood. For example, it is presumably not the case that the children lived with him in the house of Gemina. Plotinus was their guardian, their tutor, by testament.20 Other guardians, normally kinsmen of the children, would have looked after them on a daily basis. By Roman law, this testamentary guardianship would confer on him the duty of preserving their property. Thus, he would have carried out his legal duty by attending carefully to the accounts of the children’s property. On the other hand, this guardianship did not include the duty to care for the children or provide for their education.21 Porphyry’s account here fits with his general strategy of portraying Plotinus as an exemplary human being – which, for all we know, he may well have been, even if some of the things Porphyry says to support this must defy credence. Thus, his

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inviting the children to the house and giving thought to Potamon’s education is evidence of care far beyond duty. It is, of course, interesting that Porphyry chooses to mention these facts about Plotinus’s worldly engagement. In the Vita Plotini he attempts to portray Plotinus as someone who lived the perfectly intellectual life but was nevertheless expert in the worldly affairs he encountered. Although he does not say so directly, Porphyry clearly indicates that this worldly cleverness and concern was not despite Plotinus’s purely intellectual life, but because of it: he was better than others in worldly affairs too, because of his intellectual and perhaps even mystical involvements. To put this into the context of Plotinus’s philosophy generally, we should note that the Platonic phrase that “soul cares for all that is soulless” (Phaedrus 246 B) is Plotinus’s maxim concerning the relation of soul, including the individual human soul, toward everything “below” it on the scale of nature. Accordingly, the good, mature, and wise human being cares. It is of course interesting that Porphyry makes a point of noting that this care extends to children. I shall return to the relevance of this in my concluding remarks.

Conclusions As I noted in the previous section on Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic writings, the bulk of Neoplatonic writings are of such a kind that information on children or childhood was unlikely to find its way into them. This has no doubt to do with the fact that most of these writings were, to translate the point into a contemporary setting, aimed at the university level rather than the elementary school or the high school. We may of course wonder why this is so. Would it not be interesting, we may ask, to theorize from a philosophical point of view about the nature of the child and his or her ideal education? My only answer is that the Neoplatonic thinkers generally were upper-class men and women who took for granted a set, traditional education and upbringing. Hence, they did not see these issues as matters of particular concern. I am fully aware of the shortcomings of this explanation: surely the Neoplatonists also thought that the majority, even the majority of the so-called upper classes, were unfit for initiation into philosophy and true wisdom. It is strange that they did not wonder why this was the case, and that this did not at least generate more remarks about upbringing and education. Several of Plotinus’s treatises on human psychology might have provided an occasion to discuss the nature of the child, but they disappoint in this regard. Nevertheless, in spite of the meagerness of the material, we have been able to note some recurring traits in Neoplatonists’ attitudes toward children: both remarks in the Enneads that we have cited and the biographies that we have considered emphasize the lack of reason in the child. Reason is there, but it is minimally activated and it is not the ruler of the child. Proclus, as described by Marinus, is clearly exceptional – that is Marinus’s main point concerning his childhood. It follows that the child is ruled by the powers of the compound of soul and body, which in turn means that he or she is prone to act from

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emotions and feelings. In terms of general Neoplatonic psychological theory, this makes the child comparable to irrational animals. Porphyry’s accounts of Plotinus’s prolonged suckling stage and of his guardianship concern childhood, and are indeed remarkable. The former account at least shows that Porphyry did not attempt to describe Plotinus as an adult child (as Marinus does with Proclus): Plotinus’s behavior here would count as typical childish folly, lacking in rational supervision and control. Porphyry may relate this story in order to show that, despite having a weak start, Plotinus matured splendidly; or he may simply tell it because this is the only noteworthy fact he knows about Plotinus’s childhood. The account of Plotinus’s guardianship shows that Plotinus was at least not uninterested in children: he was under no obligation to have them around, and Porphyry notes that he speculated about how they would fare in life and, at least in the case of Potamon, took an active part in his education. What is of interest here is not merely, or even primarily, the fact that this says something about Plotinus’s agreeable character; of greater interest is perhaps the fact that Porphyry chooses to mention this aspect of Plotinus’s life at all. Especially in the light of the lack of interest in childhood that we have observed, it is noteworthy that Porphyry evidently believed that showing responsibility and caring about children would impress his readers, most of whom would have been other Platonist philosophers and well-educated Roman citizens.

Notes 1 There are several good surveys of Neoplatonism: Remes and Slaveva-Griffin 2014 is a large and detailed handbook dealing with diverse aspects of Neoplatonism, but it is in general highly accessible to the nonspecialist. Shorter and more elementary studies include Smith 2014, and Remes 2008. 2 The Neoplatonic reception of Plato was almost universally accepted until the sixteenth century, and it was influential for a much longer time. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was one of the first to insist on a sharp distinction between Plato and his late ancient and Renaissance followers. 3 The harmonization of Plato and Aristotle is the subject of two recent books, Gerson 2005, and Karamanolis 2007. 4 It is frequently asserted that this school was a direct continuation of Plato’s Academy, which was founded in the 380s BCE, but this is not correct. The academy founded by Plato came to an end in the first century BCE. The Neoplatonists of Athens saw themselves as successors of Plato and revivers of his school, but obviously there is a large gap. The claim that the revived institution is the same as Plato’s is tenuous, to say the least. 5 There is an ongoing project the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project at King’s College in London, led by Richard Sorabji, of translating the ancient commentaries into English,. Sorabji and his associates have also written extensively on the commenters. See http://www.ancientcommentators.org.uk. 6 Recently, however, Dominic J. O’Meara has sought, with some success, to distill a political philosophy out of Neoplatonism. See especially O’Meara 2005. 7 On Abstinence is available in Thomas Taylor’s beautiful but somewhat outdated English translation at https://archive.org/details/selectworksporp00taylgoog. There is a recent scholarly translation by Gillian Clarke, Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals (Duckworth: London, 2000).

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8 The Life of Plotinus is available, along with Plotinus’s Enneads, in Armstrong’s excellent translation in the Loeb Classical Library. The translations from the Life quoted here are Armstrong’s, with minor modifications. 9 See Tarrant 2014. 10 The reference IV.8.3–4 means fourth Ennead, treatise 8, ch. 3 to 4. A reference such as IV.8.3, 1–4 means fourth Ennead, treatise 8, ch. 3, lines 1 to 4. Plotinus’s works are divided into six so-called enneads (sets of nine), which contain nine treatises each. 11 For an English translation, see Wilberding 2011; for an extensive commentary, see Brisson et al. 2008. The latter volume contains a long general introduction, Greek text with a French translation, a commentary, and an English translation of the text. For an illuminating discussion, see Wilberding 2008. 12 The translation is from Clark 1994. 13 The other passage, II.9.13, 10, is irrelevant in the present context, because Plotinus uses the term ironically here about Gnostic teachings. 14 See the chapter on Plato by Grahn-Wilder in this volume. 15 See the chapter on Aristotle by Fossheim in this volume. 16 Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 2.8.1, Thomas Taylor’s translation. There are several more recent English translations. 17 Marinus of Neapolis, Life of Proclus, or On Happiness 4–6. 18 Dodds 1965: 91, footnote 2. 19 The expression translated here as “the same lesson” is in Greek pollakis hen, which literally means “many times one”. Armstrong suggests an interesting alternative translation in a footnote ad loc., namely “repeating the multiplication table”. This would make sense, but it seems to lack a parallel. 20 On guardianship, see Kaser 1980: 316–28; Miller 2003: 78–107. 21 See further Brisson et al. 1992: 243–4; and Kalligas 2014: 48–9.

10 Childhood in 400 CE Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine on children and their formation Reidar Aasgaard

Around 400 CE, three men – all of them church celebrities and future saints – spent much energy writing about children and their formation. Drawing on their own childhood experiences and on a certain measure of familiarity with children’s lives, they reflected on the problems and potentials of this stage of life and offered advice on how children ought to be brought up. Although these men knew of each other, they wrote independently of one another. In Palestine, Jerome (347–420 CE), an influential independent scholar and ascetic, presented his ideas on the Christian formation of children in a number of letters, especially the long Letter 107 (Epistula 107 ).1 In Asia Minor, the bishop John Chrysostom (347–407 CE) wrote his pedagogical treatise Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children (De inani gloria), as well as several homilies that dealt with issues related to the upbringing of children.2 And in North Africa, the bishop Augustine (354–430 CE) told the story of his own childhood years in his autobiographical Confessions (Confessionum libri XIII ).3 About the same time, he also wrote his small catechetical pamphlet Instructing Beginners in Faith (De catechizandis rudibus), in which he offered advice and examples of how to teach the basics of the Christian faith and life.4 The fact that these texts were written at about the same point in time is more than a mere coincidence. Rather, it reflects the fact that Christianity at this stage, in the era after Constantine the Great (272–337 CE), was in the process of becoming a mass movement.5 Many wanted to join the Christian churches, and measures had to be taken to meet the demands for instruction in the basic beliefs. This was dealt with in a number of ways, for example through advice to parents for the upbringing of children at home or through the development of the institution that came to be known as “the catechumenate”, courses and procedures preparing for baptism.6 The high number of those who sought church membership, whether rich or poor, female or male, children or adults, made theoretical reflection and practical advice on pedagogical matters more necessary and urgent than ever before: how were people, and particularly the young generation, to be brought up in the new faith? This issue had to be addressed. And it was addressed in a variety of ways, in manuals, essays, letters, and sermons, by the three authors I discuss here and by others.7

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My focus will be on Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine because they not only were influential figures in their time but also represented the attitudes and ways of thinking of many, both in the ancient world in general and in the early Christian movement in particular. As I shall argue, they are of interest here because they differ perceptibly and significantly in their views of childhood as a stage of life, in their approaches to the formation of children, and in their conceptions of children as human beings. After a brief introduction to the authors and their context, I will focus on three main aspects: first, how do the three writers justify their views about children and their formation, both ideologically and, above all, theologically? Here I shall pay special attention to their use of the Bible. What biblical material do they draw on? What elements do they focus on in the biblical texts? And how do they apply the biblical counsel in their own contexts? Second, how do these three authors describe the relationships between adults and children? In what position do they place a child vis-à-vis an adult, whether parents, teachers, themselves, or other authority figures? What kind of authority do they give adults towards children? And, conversely, what degree of autonomy do they ascribe to children, if any? Furthermore, what kind of positive, or negative, role models do they refer to? And what kind of role do the three allot to themselves in this? This aspect has to do with power relations between adults and children. Finally, I shall ask a more overarching question: what kind of perceptions or ideas do Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine have of children as human beings? Here, I shall spell this out in a specific direction: what key metaphors or models do they make use of to describe children, and especially their formation?8 This aspect in particular will convey their understanding of the general, ontological status of children: to what degree, or in what ways, can a child be called a human being? In asking such a question – which may seem strange, but is in fact not so – my focus will be on the anthropology of our three main protagonists.9

The three authors and their texts in context As we turn to the sources, it is important to be aware of the different contexts in which the works were written and to take into account the variety in genre. In spite of this variety, however, the points of view that emerge are likely to be quite typical of each writer. In what follows, I shall deal with both what is similar and with what differs, but with the emphasis on the latter. Let us start in the East and move towards the West. In Jerusalem, Jerome was requested by Laeta, one of his wealthy supporters, to advise her on how she should bring up her daughter Paula in the Christian faith. In his response, Letter 107, the celibate Jerome deals with a broad spectrum of issues: what Paula should eat, how she should dress, what kind of teachers and company she should have, her relations to the other sex, how to organise her days, what and how she was to be taught, and how she was to practise her Christianity.

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Already prior to Paula’s birth, Laeta had vowed that her daughter should be consecrated to Christ and serve him in the ascetic life. Jerome states that Paula’s calling is special: she will be leading a life as a member of a kind of elite Christian group of ascetics. But although the case of Paula is to some extent exceptional, it is evident that what Jerome conveys in his advice in this letter, both in what he recommends and in what he disapproves, is fairly representative of his more general ideas about children and their formation. Far to the northwest, in Constantinople, John Chrysostom, who was a much admired rhetorician, penned his work on vainglory and the education of children.10 Like Jerome, Chrysostom was much influenced by ascetic ideals, but his work as a bishop in Antioch and later in Constantinople had generated in him strong concerns about family life in the church communities, and about how Christian parents were to bring up their children, especially boys.11 He was particularly occupied with how they could grow up to become good Greco-Roman citizens without having to compromise their faith, and – even more ambitiously – how they could become respected ambassadors for the Christian faith.12 In his treatise, Chrysostom first emphasises the futility of worldly ambition. Then he devotes the main part to a description of how a father should proceed in educating his son: the boy, for example, is to be treated like a statue made of costly material that needs to be moulded into shape. The bishop develops in detail one particular metaphor: he likens the child’s soul to a fortified city with gates in the wall, gates that represent the human senses; we shall return to his use of this metaphor later. Much farther to the west, in Hippo in North Africa, Augustine wrote his still famous autobiography. The first two books, and especially book one, are devoted to his childhood and youth.13 In it, he describes his life with its delusions and wrongdoings, but also the many personalities and circumstances that eventually led him to the Christian faith. Unlike Jerome’s and Chrysostom’s works, the purpose of the Confessions is not primarily pedagogical. Rather, it is a work meant to inspire and edify others to lead a Christian life.14 Yet from what Augustine says about children we nonetheless get a good impression of his ideas about childhood and Christian formation. When we read it together with his Instructing Beginners in Faith, which presents a basic survey of salvation history, with Christ and the church being prefigured in the Old Testament, we are supplied with some of the same kind of material that we have in Jerome and Chrysostom.

Common features among the three writers Despite differences in the settings, genres, and aims of their writings, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine nonetheless have important features in common, most of which they share with their contemporaries. A few examples must suffice. First, all of them reflect general and traditional views about children’s position in the social hierarchy of the family and about their obligations therein. Here, their ideas to a large extent correspond to current non-Christian

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attitudes. In addition, they draw on material from the Bible to support their views, often from the New Testament letters. Of course, these texts too generally reflect the antique cultural context, although their ways of justifying relationships between parents and children often differ: frequently, the New Testament letters state that these relationships are to be grounded “in the Lord” (Eph. 6:1; Col. 3:20).15 Jerome and Chrysostom, in particular, are clearly in agreement with current stereotypes with regard to gender and gender relations: girls are busy with their looks, whereas boys are strongly affected by sexual desire (Epist. 107.4–5; Inan. glor. 17, 90).16 Chrysostom, for instance, urges that a mother should learn to “guide her [daughter] away from extravagance and personal adornment and all other such vanities that are the mark of harlots . . . Young men are troubled by desire, women by love of finery and excitement. Let us therefore repress all these tendencies” (90). Consequently, both Jerome and Chrysostom recommend that boys and girls be kept apart, so as not to arouse improper feelings (Epist. 107.9–11; Inan. glor. 53, 56–60, 62). All three see emulation and mutual competition as typical aspects of children’s formation, with Augustine, however, being quite critical about them (Epist. 107.4; Inan. glor. 13–16, 29; Conf. 1.14, 27). Our three authors are well aware that children are different and have different needs; that early experiences are of vital importance for children’s later life; that the period of childhood has certain stages; that children profit from being encouraged, but also need to be corrected; and that children undergo a development both psychologically and socially (e.g. Epist. 107.8, 10; Inan. glor. 29–34, 46, 78; Conf. 1.13). In several respects, therefore, the three writers appear more nuanced in their views than has sometimes been acknowledged by scholars.17 For example, Jerome is very attentive to the strong impact of early childhood experiences, and to how one should go about when introducing new material of varying degrees of difficulty (Epist. 107.4, 12). He advises Laeta to offer Paula “prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards with little gifts such as children of her age delight in. . . . You must not scold her if she is slow to learn but must employ praise to excite her mind” (4). An important point in our context is how our authors value secular education. Can it go together with a Christian formation of children? They are largely positive in their judgement. They assess several aspects favourably, for example that children learn to read; get to know language, history, and society; and become familiar with some of the pagan literature.18 They are, however, also clearly critical of elements that they see as in tension, or even in conflict, with a Christian upbringing. In particular, they warn against what they regard as the immorality in stories about Greco-Roman gods and heroes (Epist. 107.2; Inan. glor. 38; Conf. 1.21–23). But even Jerome, who seems in theory to be the most critical, in practise often values pagan elements positively (Epist. 107.4). In particular, he refers to the rhetorician Quintilian (ca. 37–ca. 100), who in his Institutes of Oratory (Institutio oratoria) argues in favour of gentleness in the treatment and teaching of children.19

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Generally speaking, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Jerome reflect a period in which both pagan and Christian elements are seen as contributing positively to the formation of children who belong to the church. It is worth noting here that all of them, except for Augustine in some instances (Conf. 1.15), have little to say about children and their activities, such as play and leisure and their need for such kinds of amusements. This is different from Quintilian, who underscores the value of diversion and relaxation for children and their ability to learn (Inst. 1.3.8–13).

The use of the Bible and children’s formation Let us now look at how Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine use the Bible to justify their views regarding children and their formation. Obviously, various general, pre-Christian elements will also be at work in their thinking, as I have indicated in the previous section, and such elements may even affect them in conventional and less conscious ways. Yet what distinguishes these three authors from Greco-Roman traditions, as already exemplified with Quintilian, is the impact of the Bible. I shall not focus here narrowly on the justifications they employ, but more broadly on the kind of scriptural material, models, and main ideas they draw on. I shall first offer some observations on elements that I consider generally important in their use of the Bible, and then turn to how they visualise what a biblical “curriculum” for children might look like. Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine all refer extensively to the Bible, whether through explicit quotations or otherwise. They all make rich use of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.20 Both Jerome and Chrysostom expand on stories about families who dedicate their children to religious service, such as Hannah and her son Samuel in 1 Samuel 1–3, and Samson in the Book of Judges 13–16 (Epist. 107.3, 13; Inan. glor. 80). Augustine, however, only rarely refers to this material. His focus is more prominently on Genesis 1–3, namely the creation of the world and the life of the first human beings, and on the Psalms and their descriptions of God in his greatness and of humans in their dependence on him (Conf. 1.1–2, 5–6, etc.). Thus, whereas Jerome and Chrysostom present us with passages that display model figures for Christians, and for Christian children, Augustine in his Confessions appears to highlight texts of a more general theological and existential kind. This difference can, of course, be due to the fact that Jerome and Chrysostom are particularly concerned with giving advice on how to raise children, whereas Augustine’s aim is to describe his own childhood, not to offer guidance for educators. But Augustine’s lack of references to stock examples of biblical children and his emphasis on the general human lot in Genesis may also, as I will argue, indicate a difference from the others in his approach towards children and childhood. Furthermore, all three writers use the New Testament, but less than the Old Testament. Somewhat surprisingly, they very rarely turn to material in the gospels for illustration or support, although stories about Jesus and the apostles serve as a general backdrop (e.g. Epist. 107.7; Inan. glor. 49, 88; Conf.

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1.17, 28). Instead, they frequently take their examples from the letters of the apostle Paul (e.g. Epist. 107.13; Inan. glor. 16, 19; Conf. 8.29). Jerome makes use of hortatory material in the Pastoral Epistles, particularly 1 Timothy (Epist. 107.6, 8).21 More surprisingly, our authors generally do not utilise gospel passages that belong firmly within the core material of a modern Christian “childhood curriculum”, namely the stories about Jesus blessing children and making them model receivers of the kingdom of God (cf. Mark 9:33–37 parr.; 10:13–16 parr.). Moreover, our authors concur in their claim that children, like adults, are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), and thus are in an equal position with other human beings vis-à-vis God.22 Chrysostom and Augustine are the most explicit on this point. Chrysostom compares children, for example, to “wondrous statues” and sees the formation of children as being similar to the shaping of pearls (Inan. glor. 21–22).23 Augustine develops this point especially in his reflections on, and support of, infant baptism (Conf. 17–18; also Jerome, Epist. 107.6).24 Thus, all three value highly the humanity of children. But they appear to differ somewhat in the emphasis they put on this in their writings. In his descriptions of himself and of other children, Augustine repeatedly comes back to the state of being created in the image of God (Conf. 1.1; 1.18; etc.), whereas Jerome, at least in Epistula 107, is not explicit on this matter. As we shall see, this may reflect nuances in their thinking about whether and to what extent they see childhood as a fully human state or as a life stage aiming at this. Chrysostom, for example, states at the end of On Vainglory, in a climactic formulation, that the “summit of wisdom is refusal to be excited at childish things ( paidika)” (Inan. glor. 87). Here, childhood is seen not only as a state to be left behind, as something of the past, but also something that is to be overcome and nullified by adulthood – the sole stage of life in which true wisdom can be attained. When they turn to questions of moral conduct, Jerome and Chrysostom strongly exhort parents to teach children to speak well of others and to treat them well. They warn parents against letting children hear slander or swearing, advice that clearly reflects biblical, and especially New Testament, positions (Epist. 107.9; Inan. glor. 53). The obligation to teach children love of God and neighbour (cf. the Double Commandment, e.g. Matt. 22:36–40) is central for all three authors, although they do not state this explicitly in these particular texts.25 Jerome and Chrysostom in particular use specific New Testament metaphors in their pedagogical advice. For instance, Chrysostom emphasises that children are to be trained to become “athletes of Christ” and even “soldiers of Christ” (Inan. glor. 18, 64–69, 90; cf. 1 Cor. 9:26; Eph. 6:10–20; 2 Tim. 2:4–5).26 He also strongly encourages his addressees to adopt a specific praxis: he exhorts them to use biblical and similar names for their children (Inan. glor. 47–51). By doing this, and thus breaking with familial and social custom, Christians can distance themselves from, and signal a critique of, current pagan cultural traditions.

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Finally, we should note the considerable skill which Augustine and Chrysostom display in adapting biblical stories to the varying educational levels of their audiences. Augustine demonstrates this in his Instructing Beginners in Faith. A large part of this pedagogical manual is a selective retelling in two versions of the biblical history from creation on, via the times of Jesus and the apostles, to the present, and finally to the resurrection and final judgement. The former is long and fairly detailed (Catech. 24–44), whereas the latter is very short and simple (52–55). Unlike Augustine, Chrysostom expands on the scriptural narratives with explicit reference to children. He describes how fathers – step by step, and depending on the children’s age – should present the stories about Cain and Abel and about Esau and Jacob (Inan. glor. 39–46). The stories should be told in an appealing manner; they are to be repeated, to help the child remember them; the morals of the stories are to be presented; the child is to be taken to church, and to meet the stories again there; and finally, the children are themselves urged to retell the stories to others. Chrysostom also recommends that children not be introduced to New Testament stories about hell before they have become youngsters, namely older than fifteen. At this stage, however, such stories are needed, because they are the only means which can curb the power of youthful desires and emotions (Inan. glor. 52).

A basic biblical curriculum for children? Although all three authors see positive qualities in pagan literature, their general view is clearly that the Bible must take precedence in the teaching of children. Material from the Holy Scriptures should form the core and the principal element of the educational program, preferably supplanting classics such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid.27 This clearly reflects an important cultural shift in the history of education in the Western world.28 Jerome and Chrysostom in particular are very ambitious in this respect. For example, Jerome recommends that names of prophets and apostles be used in the basic teaching of reading and writing, as spelling exercises (Epist. 107.4). Both expect that children will learn Bible verses by heart, and that they will read or hear biblical passages on a regular, daily basis, with an emphasis on the Psalms (Epist. 107.12; Inan. glor. 34). They also suggest a priority in the material that children are to be taught, starting with the Old Testament (Epist. 107.12; Inan. glor. 39–44). For instance, Jerome recommends that Paula should begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon. From the Preacher let her gain the habit of despising the world and its vanities. Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and of patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels never to be laid aside when once they have been taken in hand. Thus, Jerome – like Chrysostom and Augustine – gives preference to the Psalms; but he also emphasizes Old Testament material that offers models

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of pious attitudes towards life and to personal suffering, such as Ecclesiastes and Job. Only then should the gospels receive broad – but also lasting – attention. After this, the Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament letters should come, before Paula can return to other Old Testament writings. Finally, Jerome warns against apocryphal works and instead recommends early Christian thinkers such as Cyprian and Athanasios. Chrysostom does not present an equally detailed curriculum, but he seems to follow the sequence of stories particularly in Genesis, with emphasis on stories involving familial tension and conflict, such as the passages on Cain and Abel and on Esau and Jacob, and the story of Joseph (Inan. glor. 61). From the Old Testament, he mentions famous men such as Daniel, Jeremiah, and Solomon (80). From the New Testament, he focusses particularly on the apostle Paul (69, 73). Like the two others, Augustine regards central biblical figures as important role models, and he makes use of hortatory material in the Bible; but his approach appears somewhat different from the others. This is not as obvious in the Confessions as in Instructing Beginners in Faith with its two presentations of salvation history – the latter, very short version may very well have been shaped not only with adults but also with young people, or even children, in mind (cf. Catech. 51). In the biblical curricula which the three writers present, we can discern some characteristic differences in approach, with implications for our main topic: what do these varying emphases tell us about their views of children and childhood? We can answer somewhat simplistic but still to the point: Jerome’s concern is primarily with how a child is to relate to its own body and mind, with the aim of leading an ascetic life. Unlike Jerome, Chrysostom is more interested in making children able to relate to society, to make them Christians well fitted for life in the world. His detailed presentations of stories about sibling conflicts are indicative of this. Augustine strongly focuses on how the young person is to relate to history, to leading a Christian life in a temporal world. He dwells less than the others on ethical aspects; instead, he aims at a systematic-theological programme of Christian formation, in which the person is introduced to a salvation-historical way of thinking. Thus, whereas Jerome and Chrysostom respectively write in detail about love of oneself and of one’s neighbour, Augustine deals with the question of faith, which he finds expressed in the Double Commandment: to love the Creator and his creation, God and one’s neighbour. We can formulate their views on children’s education on the basis of the curricula they sketch and in terms of more general, and modern, approaches, as follows. Jerome’s pedagogical program aims to shape the child into an independent, autonomous human being. Chrysostom’s intention is to ensure that the child develops into a socially well-functioning person and citizen. And Augustine’s aim is to introduce the young ones to, and make them part of, a historical narrative that integrates them into the history of the church, the community of believers through the ages. Admittedly, this is to simplify and to tone down similarities between the three; nevertheless, it captures distinctive features in their respective ideas about the goal of children’s formation.

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The relationships between adults and children In the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testaments, one major theme of interest, at least for a modern audience, is the reversal of roles and of hierarchies, whether of family relations such as between the young and the old, or of relations within society such as between the rich and the poor: “the youngest shall be first,” “the first will be the last” (e.g. Gen. 50; Mark 10:31). In other texts, however, such as the household codes of the New Testament letters (e.g. Eph. 5:22–6:9; Col. 3:18–4:1), traditional family structures are not challenged, or at least not fundamentally.29 What strategies do we find in our material from 400 CE on adult-child relations? Is it mainly a matter of staying with the status quo? Or are there indications of a challenge to current power structures? In particular, is it possible to detect any conscious, or even critical, reflection on adult-child relations in this material? Can, for example, some particularly child-friendly or adult-critical attitudes be observed in the material? This is in fact possible, but here, the three authors part company in varying degrees. There is little in Jerome that displays any kind of softening of power structures: parent-child relations are depicted as strictly hierarchical and are considered only from the perspective of the adult. Although Jerome has some understanding of children’s vulnerability, he takes this into consideration only to the extent that it serves his aim of forming young Paula into an ascetic. He makes hardly any use of biblical passages that deal with the reversal of hierarchy, and almost exclusively elaborates upon material such as the household codes. He also takes care to state that the girl Paula should be under male control: her teacher will have to be a man (Epist. 107.4, 13). Chrysostom differs somewhat from Jerome. He too is in favour of strong adult control: a child is seen as a shapeless being who, like a statue, can and must be moulded at the hands of adults. What a child experiences through each and all of his or her physical senses is to be regulated with the greatest care (Inan. glor. 21–22). At the same time, Chrysostom seems considerably more sensitive than Jerome. This is especially visible in the way in which he adapts the biblical material to the level of children and attempts to make it relevant in their lives. Through his frequent use of stories about sibling conflict, which display instances of status reversal, Chrysostom appears, at least to some degree, to be open to the possibility of a kind of turning of the tables, but he challenges only sibling relations, not adult-child relations. Like Jerome, he makes use of 1 Timothy 3:2–5 to criticise community leaders who do not live up to the standards that are expected of a pater familias: such a person “must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way” (3:4). But neither writer elaborates this point. With Augustine, things are different. On several occasions in the Confessions, he presents adult-child relations as a relationship of tension and conflict. For example, he blames adults, and even his own parents, for mocking children when they fall short, fail, or are punished. He also depicts the activities

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of adults as no more important than the play of children. In a description of his school days, he reflects on how he and his fellow pupils were treated (1.15): It was not that we lacked intelligence or ability, Lord, for you had endowed us with these in a measure appropriate to our age; it was simply that we loved to play, and we were punished by adults who nonetheless did the same themselves. But whereas the frivolous pursuits of grown-up people are called “business,” children are punished for behaving in the same fashion. In Augustine’s eyes, what adults consider important business is often nothing other than children’s games. Their motives can even be less noble, because adults are driven by ambition and envy. In this turning of the tables, Augustine employs childhood as a means for criticizing adults and their ways. It is worth noting that he uses the Bible to support his view. Because adults’ longing for power and material riches is similar to children’s dreams of candy and playthings, and indeed also worse, Jesus has made “only the small stature of a child . . . a symbol of humility, O Lord our king, when you declared that ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven’ ” (Conf. 1.30). This seems to be the only reference in the works studied here to a gospel passage dealing with Jesus and children.30 Augustine depicts adult-child relations from the perspective of himself as a child, or of children more generally, for example in the description of his early infancy: “After this I began to smile, at first only in my sleep and then when I was awake. So I have been told . . . Little by little I began to notice where I was, and I would try to make my wishes known to those who might satisfy them” (Conf. 1.8). There is nothing comparable to this in Jerome and Chrysostom. All three writers describe nonbiblical role models, such as early Church Fathers (Epist. 107.12), saints (Inan. glor. 47), or common Christians (Conf. 1.14). Chrysostom considers a father to be a very important role model (Inan. glor. 70). Jerome sees the mother is an equally important model for Paula (Epist. 107.9). And both warn against harmful models, such as bad tutors and nurses (Epist. 107.4, 9, also 13; Inan. glor. 37–38). Unlike the others, Augustine does not present biblical figures as role models; instead, he portrays people from his own childhood milieu as the most important in shaping his ideas about God. The role his mother Monica played in his life is well known, but several others are also mentioned: We did, however, meet at school some people who prayed to you, Lord, and we learned from them, imagining you as best we could in the guise of some great personage who, while not evident to our senses, was yet able to hear and help us. So it came about that even then in boyhood I began to pray to you. (Conf. 1.14) Although both Jerome and Chrysostom can use the Bible to criticise parents’ shortcomings, they never appeal in the way Augustine does to texts that

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refer to the special role or qualities of children. Admittedly, Augustine can on other occasions be quite conventional in his views of adult-child relations. Yet even in such passages, he is, in a striking way, both more adult-critical, as on p. 165 and child-friendly, as on p. 165 than the other two. The differences in the three authors’ views of adult-child relations can also been seen in how they present themselves as power figures. Jerome displays a strong wish for control. He does this in a way that today would probably be described as intrusive: he states that he personally is prepared to take over the full responsibility for Paula’s formation if her mother so wishes, implicitly indicating that this probably would be for the better (Epist. 107.13).31 Chrysostom takes a middle position: when offering his advice about other people’s children, he does not explicitly articulate his own role, although he speaks throughout with much authority. Augustine appears to be at the other end of the spectrum. Confessions is very much an exercise in self-criticism: he repeatedly makes a point of confessing his shortcomings and his feelings of helplessness both as a child and as a human being (e.g. Conf. 1.5–6; 2.9–18).

Key metaphors and models for children and childhood We now turn to our third and final aspect: the question about what basic models, or key metaphors, our three authors employ in the description of their conceptions of children and childhood. The models and metaphors they use offer distinctive signals of their ideas about children as human beings. In my view, these are far from random; rather, they are indicative of their views of children and children’s formation. Here, too, the three differ considerably, and in ways that again reflect the general profile of their thinking. The idea of the child as a temple of God emerges as Jerome’s main metaphor. He introduces it early in his letter (107.4, also 5): Thus must a soul be educated, which is to be a temple of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words and no knowledge of the world’s songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender in the sweetness of the psalms. When he employs the image of the temple of God, Jerome is clearly developing upon biblical metaphors, such as the apostle Paul’s statement about the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit and of God (1 Cor. 6:19). In this connection, Jerome refers repeatedly to Samuel, who was presented by his mother Hannah in the temple (107.3, 13). For Jerome, being a temple is associated primarily with purity: as far as possible, Paula is to be kept away from what is polluting and worldly, whether socially or otherwise. Jerome exemplifies this with the threats posed by gender differences. Paula is to be kept away from boys: “Boys with their wanton thoughts must be kept from Paula: even her maids and female attendants must be separated from

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worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they may teach more” (107.4). In pedagogical terms, this means that all the segments of Paula’s life are to be strictly regulated, so that she can reach the aim Jerome has for her, namely that the child shall be and become holy, be sanctified, and ideally reach perfection, both as a Christian believer and as a human being. Underlying Jerome’s use of this metaphor is the belief that a child who is led properly possesses a great potential for growth and development, but that much work is needed to enable the child to attain this goal. Chrysostom’s key metaphor, on which he elaborates in great detail, is – as with Jerome – taken from the domain of architecture, but his idea is not based to the same degree on the Bible. As I have indicated previously, he sees the child as a city. He presents the metaphor in this way (25–27): The child’s soul then is a city, a city but lately founded and built, a city containing citizens who are strangers with no experience as yet, such as it is very easy to direct. . . . Suppose that the outer walls and four gates, the senses, are built. The whole body shall be the wall, as it were; the gates are the eyes, the tongue, the hearing, the sense of smell, and if you will, the sense of touch. It is through these gates that the citizens of the city go in and out; that is to say, it is through these gates that thoughts are corrupted or rightly guided. After introducing the metaphor, he describes in great detail how each of the gate-senses is affected by external impulses, and how they are to be guided and corrected – special emphasis is put on hearing, which for him also includes speech (28–54). In his presentation of the city metaphor, Chrysostom also places the parent or the educator in the position of a king, whose role is to draw up the laws for this recently founded city. He then goes on to offer advice on how each of the gates should be dealt with (28): Well now, let us first of all approach the gate of the tongue, seeing that this is the busiest of all; and let us, to begin with and before all the other gates, provide this one with doors and bolts, not of wood or iron but of gold. Verily the city that is thus equipped is golden; for it is not any mortal but the King of the universe who intends to dwell in this city, if it has been well built. In contrast to Jerome, Chrysostom focuses more on social aspects and on preparing the child for a life in the world: his choice of the city metaphor has implications that are quite different from Jerome’s temple, with its focus on purity. Yet in ways that are similar to Jerome’s approach, Chrysostom puts great emphasis on the need to consciously shape the child’s personality – to “build” it, just as a city is built from its foundations up. As with Jerome, control is central. The child is to be shielded from all types of negative influences and must avoid behaving in ways that are disgraceful: “We must train the

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child to utter grave and reverent words” (Inan. glor. 28). The metaphor of a city envisages not just any city, but one that needs to be well fortified and eagerly defended. Like Jerome, but perhaps to a lesser degree, Chrysostom has high hopes for the formation of children. He is equally confident that such a profound shaping is possible: if rightly guided morally and in the Christian faith, children will develop into socially well-adapted but autonomous adult citizens. There are no comparable metaphors in Augustine, whose perceptions of children and childhood are built on what we may call a basic model, or pattern, namely the story in Genesis 3 about the first human beings’ breach with God. Like adults, who are the rest of humankind, children too are fundamentally affected by the result of this first fault, the original sin, the peccatum originale – “no one is free from sin . . . not even an infant” – human nature is a mass of sinning.32 Augustine describes it as follows in Confessions (1.11): O God, hear me. Alas for the sins of humankind! A human it is who here bewails them, and you treat him mercifully because you made him, though the sin that is in him is not of your making. Who is there to remind me of the sin of my infancy (for sin there was: no one is free from sin in your sight, not even an infant whose span of earthly life is but a single day). Augustine then develops this thought in a psychological observation he has made of children, which he believes also reflects a more basic metaphysical or ontological truth: The only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent. I have watched and experienced for myself the jealousy of a small child: he could not even speak, yet he flared with livid fury at his fellow-nursling. . . . Is this to be regarded as innocence, this refusal to tolerate a rival for a richly abundant fountain of milk at a time when the other child stands in greatest need of it and depends for its very life on this food alone? Behavior of this kind is cheerfully condoned, however, not because it is trivial or of small account, but because everyone knows that it will fade away as the baby grows up. This is clear from the fact that those same actions are by no means calmly tolerated if detected in anyone of more mature years. Consequently, children stand on the same level as adults. All human beings possess the same will at every stage of life, whether an infant not wanting a sibling to share its mother’s breasts, children quarrelling at play, youngsters stealing pears just for fun, or adults competing and envying each other in their race for prizes. For Augustine, the main difference between children and adults is simply that adults are accountable for their sins in ways that children are not. In other ways, however, “in your [God’s] sight” children are on an equal level with adults, both as being created in the image of God and in their breach with him.

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Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine on the nature and potential of children If we now raise our eyes from the texts we have studied here and look at Augustine alongside the other two, it appears that Jerome and Chrysostom have a considerably more positive view of children’s potential for human development. And to an extent, this is true: compared to the others, Augustine seems less optimistic about this aspect of childhood; this is reflected in the fact that Augustine, at least in Confessions, focuses much less than the others on the systematic formation of children into adults. Yet one can also interpret Jerome and Chrysostom less favourably: in their emphasis on the need for children to be shaped, and particularly in their extensive programme for children’s formation, they hold some implicit assumptions that reflect characteristic, but also problematic, features of their perceptions of childhood. First, they see children as beings that have not reached their full potential: they have, as it were, not yet realized their optimal humanity. Consequently, childhood is a life stage that is aimed, perhaps not exclusively, but still strongly, at preparing for adulthood, for becoming a holy human being (Jerome) or a respectable Christian citizen (Chrysostom). Moreover, the two focus strongly on the formless nature of children: they are beings who are like blank slates or unworked stones, and thus lack knowledge and experience. Finally, both consider it the right of adults to perform a thoroughgoing, all-embracing shaping of children.33 These features are, however, more pronounced and radical in Jerome than in Chrysostom, who clearly has an understanding of the relative weakness and dependency of children vis-à-vis adults and parents.34 Things look different in Augustine: in his thought, more than in that of the other two, children are beings that enter the world equipped with some basic structure, a kind of innate drive (Conf. 1.8: “desire”, voluntates) and ability to teach themselves by using their God-given mind (1.13) – that is with a nature that will by itself unfold and be shaped and challenged in a painful but also often fruitful encounter with this world. In addition, we do not see in Augustine the control regime that is characteristic of the others. He does not infer from his idea about children sharing the same fallen state as the rest of humankind that they need some specific programme of disciplining. On the contrary, he is open to childhood being a period of play and – for good or ill – of testing one’s boundaries (1.10.16; 1.4.9). In Augustine, the fallen state, the idea of original sin affecting all humankind, places children in the same position as adults vis-à-vis God. Yet this state is not used against children and childhood as a stage of life, so as to downgrade them. Instead, it is used against adults, to blame them for their misdoings, for which they, unlike or even more than children, are to be held accountable.35 Unlike Jerome and Chrysostom, Augustine does not depict children as adults-to-be. Instead, he describes grown-ups as children in adult disguise.36 This approach seems to be very rare, maybe even extraordinary, in the primary sources from this period – and may reflect an Augustinian version of the biblical turning-of-the-tables motif that I have dealt with previously.37 None of this, of course, is meant to suggest that Augustine had a romantic

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view of children as pure, innocent, or exceptional in some way. On the contrary, because children are full human beings from their very first moment of existence, they are thoroughly affected by original sin. But they are also, and equally, created good, in the image of God.

Final reflections Let me conclude with some brief reflections: in this chapter, I have examined three central early Christian thinkers’ perceptions of children and childhood. These texts give us a sense of this late fourth–early fifth century period as a time of considerable movement and variation in views of children and their lives. In general, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine demonstrate a fair amount of insight into the characteristics and needs of children; but in each of the pedagogical strategies they sketch, they clearly differ in what from a modern perspective may be called “child-friendly” attitudes, with Jerome and Augustine on the opposite ends of the scale and Chrysostom somewhere in between. An important part of my chapter is my investigation of how these three authors employ the Bible to justify and make plausible their ideas about childhood and children’s formation. I have demonstrated the strong and varied impact of Scripture as a conversation partner in their thinking about children. Sometimes this is manifest in their selection of material, sometimes in what they focus on, and sometimes in what they do not make use of in the Bible. We can observe how they carefully develop upon central biblical motifs in their thinking, but also – and quite frequently – employ the Bible to support their own particular needs and agendas, whether on theology, on childhood, or on the human lot in general. At the same time, however, their thinking is clearly shaped by conventional attitudes and values of the Greco-Roman world in their time. The biblical writings would often endorse these attitudes, but sometimes there is a tension in their regard. We should pay particular attention to the surprising fact that the three writers, with one exception in Augustine’s Confessions, make no active use of the gospel passages in which Jesus interacts with children. Their almost total lack of attention to these passages clearly deserves closer scrutiny and research. Is this also typical of the other works of these three or not, and why is this so? And what about other early Christian writers – how do they deal with this material? Considering the central position these passages have attained within the modern “canon” of child-friendly biblical stories, the near absence of reference to this material is striking indeed.38 Furthermore, my presentation has also made clear that Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine’s ideas about children match and reflect other special agendas of theirs – whether of a strongly ascetic kind: Jerome and the temple; of a predominantly social kind: Chrysostom and the city; or of a primarily biblicalhistorical and existential type: Augustine and fallen humankind. Thus, inquiring into their differing attitudes towards children and childhood also opens windows onto other central and characteristic features in their thinking. But

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merely linking their respective views to some particular theological or individual agenda fails to do full justice to the matter; there is more to be said. Although I cannot argue this here, I believe that we can discern, in these three writers’ ideas about children and childhood, the contours of fairly divergent anthropologies. In a paradigmatic manner, the differences are signalled in the metaphors and models they use to describe children as human beings and childhood as a stage of life. When they are interpreted in this way, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine represent not only differing perceptions of children and childhood but also distinctive variants in thinking about the human being and about human nature and its potential in general. In my opinion, the thinking of these late-antique Christian authors reflects anthropological prototypes which recur in ever new shapes throughout history and which also remain central in later developments of pedagogy – both religious and secular – until our own days.

Notes 1 Jerome in Wright 1933 (Latin and English text), written in 401 or 402. See also Letters 30, 54, 108, 117, 128, 138, and 153; cf. Katz 2007: 116. 2 Laistner 1951: 85–122 (Greek text in Malingrey 1972). The treatise was composed in Constantinople about 400 CE, or possibly in Antioch in the 390s (Laistner 1951: 78–84). See Leyerle 1997 and Guroian 2001 for references to other works. 3 Rotelle 1997, written ca. 397–400; see Boulding 1997: 10 (Latin text in O’Donnell 1992). 4 See Ramsey 2006. 5 See, for example, Stark 2012; also Aasgaard 2011. 6 Harmless 2014; also Aasgaard 2011; Maxwell 2006. 7 Other examples are Clement of Alexandria (see the chapter by Hägg in this volume) and Basil of Caesarea. See Harrison 2000 for a brief presentation; also Katz 2007. 8 On the importance of such (conceptual) metaphors, see Lakoff and Johnson 1980, and the great impact of this work on later research, with theories of “metaphor blending” being a significant development within this area. 9 Other important matters must be omitted or only mentioned in passing, such as their views on the punishment of children, children’s disabilities, and infant baptism (on baptism, see also the chapter by Hägg in this volume). 10 Or possibly in Antioch; see note 2. 11 Chrysostom primarily deals with boys, but at the end of the treatise also refers to girls (90). However, much of his presentation is applicable to both genders. 12 See, for example, Bakke 2005: 162–72. 13 Hippo is now part of the city of Annaba on the coast of eastern Algeria. 14 See Augustine 1997: 10–12 (trans. Boulding); Aasgaard 2014. 15 See, for example, MacDonald 2014, especially ch. 1. 16 On children and gender in early Christianity, see, for example, Bakke 2005, MacDonald 2014, and Betsworth 2015. 17 See Guroian 2001: 74–6 (Chrysostom); Stortz 2001: 86–7, 101–2 (Augustine). See Katz 2007: 116 for a (too) critical approach to Jerome. 18 Bakke 2005: 209–10, 212–13; see also Sandnes 2009, chs. 14–15. 19 See the chapter by Bloomer in this volume. 20 References to the Bible pervade their texts, and are too many to mention. In what follows, I use “Old Testament”, because this is a common expression used in the traditions

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to which the three belong. In modern research, the more neutral term “Hebrew Bible” is commonly used. Biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). See the chapter by Kartzow in this volume. Bakke 2005: 78–109, esp. 109. Guroian 2001: 66–9, also 69–70. Also Stortz 2001: 94–9; Bakke 2005: 223–46; Aasgaard 2011: 1268–78. Bakke 2005: 167. See ibid., 172–82, 188–200 on this. The way Chrysostom plays on the city and athlete motifs is an interesting example of metaphor blending, cf. note 8. Sandnes 2009: 196–205, 211–13, 222–30. This did not necessarily mean, however, that the system of schooling itself changed, but rather represented a shift in thinking about what children should learn. They may, however, be somewhat “prodded” or adjusted; see, for example, MacDonald 2014: 3–22, with references. Jerome, however, refers in Epist. 107.7 briefly to Luke 2:41–52 (Jesus in the temple). See also Katz 2007: 127. Stortz 2001: 90–2. However, both also emphasise that parents have obligations, even to the extent – as with Chrysostom – that parents risk being condemned by God if their children do not grow up to become Christians; see Bakke 2005: 169–71; also Guroian 2001: 70–2. Guroian 2001: 72–4. There are – admittedly – some problematic aspects in Augustine’s idea about original sin (e.g. the fate of unbaptised children, the issue of predestination, etc.), but it is not possible to go into this here. See also Stortz 2001: 82–6, and the chapter by Horn in this volume. See also Stortz 2001: 99–102. But see the chapter by Bloomer in this volume. See Stichele and Pyper 2012 (with bibliographical references) for examples of this modern “canon”.

11 Children in Oriental Christian and Greek hagiography from the early Byzantine world (ca. 400–800 CE) Cornelia Horn The early Byzantine world was full of children. Nevertheless, a deliberate effort is required, if they are to be uncovered in the written record. Hagiographical texts provide an excellent means to recover many aspects of children’s lives in the first millennium, but because it was adults who authored these texts, they provide a rather indirect access to children’s own voices.1 The lens on childhood is mediated and prioritized through adult culture and consciousness, even when a hagiographer wrote about the childhood memories of a saintly figure with whom she or he may have had personal contact as an adult. Because hagiography is addressed to an adult audience, it presumes that adult expectations will be satisfied through topoi which in turn are shaped through a transmission by adults who have their own assumptions about children and childhood.2 These topoi situate the story within an epistemological framework for recounting an interaction between a person in space and time and a supraphysical reality. These topoi also orient the reader’s expectations and attempt to convince her or him that extraordinary persons can and do exist within the ordinary order of the world. Moreover, this interaction is well ordered through a system of religious belief, and by the general criteria defining “a holy life”.3 Early Byzantine hagiographies are rich sources for studying both the realities and the stereotypes of holy childhood.4 The core problem is sifting through the less obviously supramundane aspects of a narrative to arrive at those aspects which the audience would have recognized as being “ordinary”, or at least “normative”, childhood conditions. A hagiographical text may indeed provide access to reliable information about the real life of a given saint. Yet that information is not necessarily coextensive with the level at which the images and motifs which the text uses for its descriptions of a specific saintly child speak to the realities of the life of historical children at or around the time of composition. There thus remains a gap between any literary conventions and the historical reality of children’s experiences that are depicted. With this caveat in place, the present chapter examines the problems in identifying the historical conditions and realities of children’s experiences – what they were exposed to and how they experienced it – in the vast hagiographical corpus in Greek, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Arabic, and Coptic

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from the late antique or early Byzantine periods.5 A further caveat is that much of the Oriental Christian literature has not been thoroughly studied and is accessible only in manuscripts or untranslated editions. It is thus to be expected that the view I present will be corrected by future research. Scholars have already examined various important aspects of the lives of children in the Byzantine world. They have studied the reception of the Byzantine child into the family, the death of infants before baptism, orphans, the theology of childhood, the sociological conditions of children’s lives, visual representations of children, childhood and adolescence, and children’s education, including considerations of children’s and adolescents’ developing identities as religious beings.6 This list of topics indicates some of the positive progress of research over the past decades into Byzantine children in Greek sources. However, the Byzantine Empire was not a monolingual entity. Studies of Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, and Ethiopic sources have broadened the view of childhood and children in this cultural complex.7 The roles played by children who were present in the monastic world, issues of conceiving and healing children, and children’s confrontation with death, often in martyrdom contexts, are important topics in my investigations. This chapter aims to advance the study of childhood and children’s experiences in the Byzantine world by considering a broader range of language sources. I shall integrate data from Oriental Christian and Greek hagiographies here, in order to reconstruct aspects of the lives of children and attitudes toward childhood in the Eastern Mediterranean world. The case study methodology, which respects the still-preliminary stage of research on children and childhood in Oriental Christian sources and which allows one to combine multiple methodologies in order to illuminate a case from different angles, is most appropriate here. The case studies I have selected address children’s experiences primarily from within the perspective of the parent-child relationship and with an interest in children’s ability to develop and exercise their own choices, particularly in religious settings. My chronological focus will be roughly between the fourth and the ninth centuries CE.

Young girls and their mothers: Macrina and Euphemia Just as the case is today, mothers had a powerful influence on personal development in Byzantium too. Although the few treatises on children’s education from the period do not speak about mothers at length, mothers played a significant role in their children’s education, especially that of their daughters. Mothers played roles in accounts of conversion or of return to belief. The best known is Monica (322–387), the mother of Augustine of Hippo (354–430).8 She did not encourage Augustine to abandon his Greco-Roman education. Macrina (ca. 330–379), the sister of Basil of Caesarea (330–379) and Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), had a very different experience, because her mother saw the Bible as the primary source of education of a young girl.9 Macrina is portrayed

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as a bright girl: “[w]hen [Macrina] had passed the age of infancy, she easily learned the things which children are usually taught and shone at whatever subject her parents decided she should study.”10 This included inter alia the memorization of biblical poetry. After her early engagement, which was the result of her father’s negotiations, and her fiancé’s untimely death, Macrina returned to her mother to help her raise her siblings. The close mother-daughter relationship that is depicted in the Life of Macrina highlighted the mother’s educational support for her daughter and the daughter’s developing skills in growing up to become a Christian woman, wife, and mother, at least in a spiritual sense. That the bonds between mothers and daughters could and did run deep, but at times also were fraught with difficulties for the children, can be seen in hagiographical narratives preserved in other languages that were prominent in the Byzantine world.11 One outstanding example here is the account of the relationship between Sophia and her daughter Euphemia. Euphemia’s story, which is set in Edessa and the country of the Goths, is preserved in Greek and Syriac; it was probably composed in Syriac.12 The author remains anonymous, though he suggests he had learned the details of the events from the custodian ( paramonarios) of the Shrine of the three martyrs in Edessa, who in turn had heard it from Euphemia and her mother Sophia directly.13 Thus, this narrative is a regional, Syriac witness to the life of a young girl. Traditions about Euphemia’s story are a witness not only to a close, life-long mother-daughter relationship but also to the protection and care a mother needed to supply for her young daughter, as well as the risks and dangers to which girls were exposed in their lives and from which their mothers could not properly shield them.14 In addition, the hagiographical account of Euphemia’s life is a witness to the violent threats to the lives of infants and young children, even when they found themselves seemingly protected in the families and households in which they ought to have grown up without fear.15 When the Hunnic army arrived in Edessa in 396 CE, one of the Gothic soldiers was billeted in Sophia’s house.16 In order to protect her “virgin orphaned daughter, the only child she had” from the uninvited guest, the mother kept her daughter in hiding. She had tried to bring up her daughter, who “was very beautiful”, “in all modesty”.17 The drama began to unfold, when the Goth caught sight of the girl, could no longer restrain his desires, and requested her for marriage. Following an intensive pursuit, during which the Goth used “fury”, “words of gentleness and flattery”, “mighty oaths”, and also displayed some gold, Sophia gave in, being “overcome like a weak woman” who “gave up opposition in her mind”. Once she had implored the “God of the orphans and widows” and received assurance from the Goth that the newlyweds would stay in Edessa, given that Sophia could not bear being separated from her daughter “all this distance”, the “deed of dowry” was made and the girl was given in marriage.18 No one ever asked the young Euphemia for her opinion in the process. She was not empowered to act independently. The text does

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not specify her age, but one assumes that she was either of small stature or still rather young. When her mother had taken her to the tomb of the Edessan martyrs to pray together with her with tears for protection before the couple’s departure, “the mother of the girl drew near and took hold of her by her right hand and set her upon the tomb of the confessors themselves.”19 Despite her pregnancy, Euphemia appears to have been of rather light weight, given that her mother could lift her onto the martyrs’ coffin. The close mother-daughter relationship was visible in Sophia’s “bitter sorrow” and “constant weeping by night and by day” because “she was deprived of the care and the sight of her daughter.”20 The mother’s concerns about the Goth’s background and evil intentions proved to be not unfounded. When the newlywed young girl was about to reach the Goth’s hometown, her husband’s behavior toward his new bride changed radically. He stripped her of her beautiful garments, took away the gold jewelry he had given her, and put on her the outfit of a slave girl. He already had another wife. Accordingly, he instructed Euphemia not to say anything to anyone about their relationship, because his first wife’s “family and tribesmen” would otherwise kill her. Euphemia was in a precarious and endangered situation. The child of a poor widow, she was of a low social status. Her mother was powerless to protect her from a forced marriage to a foreign soldier. The story makes it clear that a girl could not expect to receive sufficient protection of her best interests if those interests depended on the power of another woman, such as her mother, who had to act on her own. Unless male kinsmen came to her aid, a girl would necessarily be subjugated to male forces. That the coinage of male domination could sometimes have two sides, a negative and a positive one, proved true in Euphemia’s case, because in the end the three Edessan martyrs, all men, came to her rescue. The story told in Euphemia and the Goth helps to show us girlhood in the fifth-century Byzantine East as a state of ultimate deprivation of personal freedom, independence, and well-being. At the same time, it also reveals that close and rather strong emotional relationships between mothers and daughters were possible. The story of Euphemia and her mother, Sophia, is a moving and challenging witness to a mother-daughter relationship that was close for reasons of personal affection and necessity. The mother tried, but failed, to provide her daughter with the care and protection against the threats of an external, male world that endangered seemingly any young girl in the midst of the turbulences of wartorn Syria in the fourth and fifth centuries. The story of Euphemia and the Goth also preserves some evidence of a Christian curriculum. Euphemia’s two speeches, in which she rebukes her Gothic husband, reflect the trope of the female confessor witnessing against her nonChristian husband. In one of these speeches, the young wife-slave alludes to the story of the patriarch Joseph, evoking the parallels to Joseph’s slavery in a foreign country.21 Early Christian authors, such as John Chrysostom in his

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treatise On Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Raise Their Children, had recommended that fathers repeatedly tell their sons stories of the patriarch Joseph.22 This suggests that such stories were part of the Christian education of children in the home. It may be that the hagiographer reveals societal bias in relying on a model of education for boys when he portrays the strength of a young girl, rather than stories such as those of Esther or of Judith in the Bible. Yet even in a single-parent, all-female household, a young girl could have grown up with exposure to biblical narratives that presented male-gendered models for identification.

Bad boys, good boys, fruit trees, and the Garden of Eden Late ancient and early Byzantine hagiography offers glimpses of the formative influences on boys, as well as of the expectations with which society and the customs of religious life confronted them. Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, written in Latin in 397–398 CE in North Africa, and Cyril of Scythopolis’s Lives of the Monks of Palestine, composed in Greek in the East about a century and a half later, are instructive in this regard. The rich data of Augustine’s reflection on his childhood reveals some of the expectations concerning the upbringing of better-off male children, told through his evaluation of the morals of boys. One such episode is the theft of pears near his father’s vineyard.23 It was a crime of opportunity, “because it was forbidden”. Without setting out to do so, they ended up “carr[ying] off a huge load of pears, . . . to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them”. As in the case of Isaac Newton, another man under a fruit tree many centuries later, this event sparked a great revelation for Augustine, albeit only long afterward. Augustine concluded that when boys acted badly, they did so because their own hearts were already corrupted. On their own, the boys could not do anything to overcome such temptations to evil. Although this line of thinking was not characteristic of Augustine’s contemporaries, his evaluation of human inclinations toward evil that already began during childhood came to be accepted as normative quite widely in the West. In the East, hagiography emphasized asceticism and the strengthening of moral character that came along with it. This permitted Byzantine writers to think differently about the problem of evil and, consequently, about how to raise children to resist evil successfully.24 In his writings about the lives of the monks in the desert regions of Palestine, the sixth-century ascetic author Cyril of Scythopolis included in his narrative of Saba, an important founder of monastic establishments, an episode that connects well with Augustine’s theft of the pears.25 Sabas came from the village of Mutalasca, near the metropolis of Caesarea in Cappadocia. At about the age of five, he found himself without his parents. His father was serving in the military in Alexandria, and his mother had gone off to join him. They left their son in the care of his maternal uncle Hermias. When Hermias’s wife mistreated Sabas, he fled to his paternal uncle, Gregory. A dispute between both uncles

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over the boy’s property prompted the child to take off once again, and he joined the monastery of Flavianae, at some distance from his home village. Cyril emphasizes Sabas’s love of piety from his childhood onward. At the monastery, the boy “received a strict education in the monastic life”, learning by heart the psalter. He was trained in the “observance of the cenobitic rule”. At that time, Sabas, working in the monastery’s garden, “was seized with desire to eat an apple that looked, before the appointed season, ripe and utterly delicious. Inflamed with desire, he plucked the apple from the tree; but upon reflection he valiantly mastered himself.”26 No reader familiar with the Genesis narrative and the story of Adam and Eve in the garden will be surprised when Cyril goes on to say that Sabas administered a pious rebuke to himself in these words: “Beautiful to look at and ripe to eat was the fruit that caused my death through Adam, when he preferred to the intelligible beauty that which looked delectable to the eyes of the flesh and supposed the satiety of the belly preferable to spiritual enjoyment, as a result of which death entered the world. But I must not be weighed down by spiritual torpor and turn away from the beauty of selfcontrol. For just as blossom precedes every fruit-bearing, so self-control precedes every good work.”27 Cyril emphasized that Sabas had “conquered his desire through the power of reflection” and as a consequence “he cast the apple to the ground and trampled on it with his own feet, trampling on his desire at the same time as on the apple.” The boy resolutely decided that he would not “eat apples till the day of his death”.28 This episode depicts a young ascetic male child striving successfully to overcome a temptation like that in Scripture which resulted in the downfall of humankind. The reader’s encounter with the young Sabas has a sense of immediacy, given that the reflections about how to deal with the temptation presented by the apple and its possible consequences, as well as the strategy one might employ when confronting the temptation, are offered as if they were the child’s own words. One might say that the child’s words were articulated ultimately through a literary and ascetic-spiritual lens. The audience encounters a child engaged in a decision-making process that, contrary to nature, reflects the unnatural character of the great ascetic even as a child. It is also a testimony to the efficacy of ascetic discipline, which leads to discernment between what is attractive to the body and what is desirable for the disciplined mind. Although Sabas’s character was preternaturally strong in absorbing this training, the story suggests that even young boys, and perhaps also implicitly girls, can advance spiritually, under the right conditions. The child whom many may see as subject to the forces of natural desires and inclinations could be seen here as perfectly capable of mastering her- or himself and controlling the mind or intellect that directed the actions of the body. From Augustine’s perspective, as he reflected on his

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own childhood, such mastery may have seemed impossible, at least for a child who had not been exposed to the training and discipline that Christianity, and especially asceticism, had to offer. A young child’s engagement with ascetic discipline is a characteristic feature of young holy men and women in Byzantine and Oriental Christian hagiography, but as a model to be emulated, rather than as an unattainable gift for a select few. Young Sabas “devoted himself to self-control”, “suppressing impure thoughts and repelling the heaviness of sleep”.29 He also “practiced physical labor”, including assisting his fellow ascetics in baking bread for the community.30 Through such practices, the young Sabas was able to “abas[e] the soul through fasting and taming the body by strenuous toil” and “surpassed . . . all [fellow combatants] in humility, obedience and labors in pursuit of piety”.31 Practices of fasting and control of the body through acts of obedience, humility, and piety were deemed fully appropriate and achievable for a young child. In order to characterize Sabas as a “young old man”, that is as an ascetic who as a boy had already achieved exceptional standing as a monk, Cyril recounted a miracle that typified these “ascetic combats of his boyhood”. The community’s baker had placed his wet clothes inside the oven to dry, but then had forgotten to take them out before the oven was reheated on the following day. Noticing the baker’s distress, “[t]he young old man”, having made “the sign of the cross”, “leapt into the oven and, bringing [out] the clothes, came out unharmed”.32 Sabas’s fellow ascetics wondered “what . . . this youth [will] be like, if he has received such grace in early youth”.33 Such portraits of a preternatural desire for the ascetic life and ascetic selfcontrol are a marked feature of Syriac and Arabic-Christian sources. They speak to children’s experiences of being deprived of family ties and of the accelerated maturity that is required to meet the demands of the ascetic life.

The young Barṣauma and other ascetic children The depiction of the fifth-century monk Barṣauma as an ascetic who embarked upon his path already during childhood is one such portrait, preserved in the Syrian-Orthodox Life of Barṣauma, one of the most famous ascetic accounts in the Western Syrian tradition. The monk Barṣauma, whose mother was named Sākīyā, was a native of Beth ‘Autān in the district of Samosata. Although the year of his birth remains unknown, tradition ascribes his death to February 1, 456.34 Barṣauma was received as a formative role model for Christian spirituality through his “maintaining for fifty-four years the strict asceticism to which he had committed himself in his youth”. This early commitment to extreme forms of asceticism during his childhood is the subject of a large portion of Barṣauma’s Life. The Life features prominently the interconnected ideas of the young ascetic who gains early on a powerful sense of calling, an understanding of his election by God, and an awareness of his ascetic destiny. From the first, the hagiographer asserts that Barṣauma is “chosen”, Syriac gaβyā. This word refers to that which is chosen, elected, or approved, but also

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to that which is, or has become, pure and eminent.35 The word occurs most frequently in the narrative of Barṣauma’s early life and his rise to importance. Early in the story, the hermit Joseph foretells of Barṣauma’s “chosen status” ( gaβyūθā ), declaring he would surpass John the Baptist (Life of Barṣauma 2.1, hereafter abbreviated LB ); shortly thereafter, this is expanded to “the chọ ā)” (LB 2.1). sen status of the victorious Barṣauma ( gaβyūθε̄h d’naṣṣī ḥā βarsawm This state of election went hand in hand with the idea that young Barṣauma was destined to overcome all hardships and be victorious against all difficulties. Witnesses to the young Barṣauma surviving an attack by ferocious dogs declare this to be a sign “of the chosen and victorious status of the child ( gaβyūθε̄h wǝzāxūθε̄h dǝyalōðā ), who was destined to win all contests (n εzk ε βxolhon ʔagōn ε̄) and to be delivered from all harm” (LB 3.3). They recognize that “[t]his child is the chosen instrument of God (hānā yalōðā mānā ʔn hū gaβyā ),” one having “ha[d] something great about him”, as a result of which “he would be in the presence of God (n εhwε qðām allāhā )” (LB 3.4). The Syriac noun gaβyā captures in a nutshell the Life’s remarkably long discussion of how Barṣauma had embarked upon asceticism and was guided along this path from his earliest childhood onward. The space which the Life devotes to profiling him as a child-ascetic is considerable, especially when one compares this material to the much shorter childhood narratives of Greek ascetic hagiographies. Much can be learned from a comparison with the ascetic childhood endeavors in other works such as the Life of Anthony (after 356), the life of Simeon the Stylite in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s fifth-century Religious History, and of Simeon’s early achievements in the fifth-century Syriac Life of Simeon the Stylite. Such a comparison shows that Syriac accounts of ascetics, particularly in the Life of Simeon the Stylite and the Life of Barṣauma, offer longer and more detailed narratives of their heroes’ childhoods as an appropriate foreshadowing of the children’s later ascetic careers. In a noteworthy contrast with the texts just mentioned, the Life of Barṣauma is unique for the significantly greater independence with which the child is shown to have determined his own ascetic destiny. The Life of Anthony ascribed noteworthy ascetic inclinations to its protagonist during the period of Anthony’s childhood.36 In the course of a short paragraph, the young Anthony is depicted as a child who was sheltered from the outside world, living at home with his parents, obedient to them, and attending church.37 Beyond these seemingly regular features that could constitute the basic social and behavioral traits of the young Christian child, Anthony is said to have suppressed any appetite for luxurious foods, being satisfied instead with what was set before him. Although he may not have fasted, the Life showed that he displayed an attitude of renunciation. Even young Christian children were expected to practice moderation or abstinence from food, as the sources from the Eastern Mediterranean world, such as Greek hagiography and Jerome’s correspondence, make clear.38 Thus, ancient readers of the Life of Anthony may well have expected the young ascetic to fast. Two further significant characteristics of the Life’s profile of Anthony as a young ascetic-in-the-making were his resistance to learning and his presumed

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inability to learn to read, as well as his strong desire “to stand apart from friendship with other children”.39 The latter clearly foreshadowed a life of renouncing contact with his peers, and even with the rest of humankind. Anthony’s ascribed aversion to learning letters, which is a behavior one may expect from a child, also serves as a topos illustrating the childhood roots of the ascetic’s lack of secular learning and her or his being supplied with all wisdom from above. Despite its brevity, the short segment from the Life of Anthony, which endeavored to characterize the beginnings of Anthony’s ascetic life, influenced all subsequent ancient Christian biographers of ascetics and, through them, the minds of their hearers, who came to understand the biographical template of Anthony’s career as the blueprint of the ascetic model par excellence, a model which had to begin already during childhood. In the Syriac tradition, the extensive literary development of the topos of the child ascetic far outstripped the originally modest requirements of ancient biography adapted to Christian propaganda. The Life’s attention to Anthony’s early ascetic endeavors seems unimpressive beside the supernatural prowess of youths in Syriac ascetic biography. Among these, the Life of Barṣauma seems to hold the supreme rank. One reads dramatic details concerning the child Barṣauma’s fasting, about his having been abandoned by his parents but having been taken up under the wings of the Lord. This child was said to have been “innocent in his nature, simple in his speech and unschooled in the lore of human letters” (LB 10.4). The encomiast went further than the simple rejection of worldly learning that we find in earlier portraits of young ascetics, in order to display the triumphant superiority of the ascetic discipline, declaring in the case of Barṣauma that “[f]asting was his tutor (ṣawmā hwā lε̄h mǝrabbǝyānā )” (LB 10.4). This made him “wise in the Lord” (LB 10.4). In the harsh landscape of Syria, children’s experiences of the ascetic life included their early exposure to desert dwellers as role models. Visits to ascetics in the company of his grandmother introduced the young child Theodoret to the wonders of the ascetic life as practiced in the regions of the Holy Mountain near Antioch.40 Such encounters did not have to lead to strict imitation, but they did contribute to shaping for life the mind-set of the later bishop of Cyrrhus. They also contributed to an acquaintance with ascetic ideas, which Theodoret subsequently promoted above all in his Religious History. It is here, in the Syrian realm, with its opportunities for encountering the more extreme forms of ascetic life, in particular that of the stylites, that Syriac and Syro-Greek hagiography developed fuller accounts of the extraordinary achievements of ascetics already during their childhood. Even a cursory reading of the different versions of the Life of Simeon the Stylite, composed by different authors, or the Life of Simeon the Stylite the Younger, readily suggests that the Life of Barṣauma developed its own depiction of Barṣauma’s childhood in conversation with that line of biographical writing. Barṣauma is said to have fled to the life of the desert; he ended up being separated from his family of origin at a very young age, and practiced fasting already “from his early youth (men ṭalyūθε̄h)” (LB 10.4). More detailed comparisons are the task of a separate study. Yet it is clear that

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motifs such as extreme fasting by rejecting even bread and legumes and limiting one’s food intake to green plant matter, as well as mourning and weeping in recognition of one’s presumed sinfulness, are only two of the distinct areas in which one could understand the various elements of the characterization of Simeon the Stylite and Barṣauma as child ascetics. These components play a role in a kind of competition among hagiographers to make one’s favorite figure the more prominent ascetic saint. The theme of being chosen, however, which characterizes the early portion of the Life of Barṣauma, is one of the significant motifs that marks off this text from other writings. For the child-ascetic Barṣauma, the decisive moment that determined the course of his future career came when he was walking along the bank of the Euphrates and was weeping (bāxε̄ hwā ) (LB 3.6). He met an older male ascetic, Abraham. The Life describes Abraham as a man who was an ascetic (aβ īlā, “mourner”) and who “renounced food” (mǝsarrǝqā ð ɸuršānā, “renouncer of the loaf [of bread]”).41 If one allows the Syriac expression to articulate more broadly the fact that Abraham “had renounced possessions”, this ascetic emerges already at the initial encounter with the child Barṣauma as the model of one who rejected possessions and gifts. This is the attitude and ideal that this child is said, later on in the Life, to have lived out, for instance in response to gift-giving intentions on the part of Empress Eudocia (LB 96.12–13). As the Life presents it, the encounter with Abraham introduced the child Barṣauma to a branch of asceticism which he was to imitate in the course of his own life, to a remarkable degree of perfection. When the ascetic Abraham encountered Barṣauma and asked why he was crying, the child answered that he was an orphan, that his father had died, and that he sought to be a slave of Christ (LB 3.6). In this context, “slave” includes the obedience of a child to his father, replacing a biological parent with a supreme authority in the household of Christ through ascetic renunciation. Against Barṣauma’s desire to practice asceticism alone in the desert (LB 3.7), the experienced Abraham tells Barṣauma that, because he is too young to dwell in the desert on his own (LB 3.7–8), he should first train in a monastery. This topos, in which an experienced master tempers the aspirant’s zeal for solitary combat with tutelage in a monastic setting, has many variations.42 It is also found in the Life of Anthony, where Anthony had to go out to visit individual ascetics because “there were no monasteries at that time.”43 These words imply that an ascetic career should begin in a monastery. Here the Life of Barṣauma stands in parallel to the tradition of other ancient ascetic literature. For example, Cyril’s Life of Sabas enjoins upon the monks-to-be during their formation process that they spend their first years in a monastery in the company of others. They were allowed to go off on their own and embark upon the eremitic life only when they had proven their steadfastness in the practices and against the temptations of the ascetic life.44 Yet Barṣauma’s unique character does not fit with the workaday ascetic’s career. Rejecting communal life, Barṣauma insists that Abraham take him under his wing. He tells the master that God has led him to his feet. A life

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with him best fulfilled the child’s hopes of finding a replacement for the father figure he had lost. The ascetic life, which Abraham pursued, also was a path that seemed to fit with the child’s interest in engaging more immediately in working for Christ (LB 3.6–7). Barṣauma sought to avoid the monastery, which could have offered a replacement for a family through its communal character. Barṣauma’s encomiast considered the life of the hermit, lived in complete isolation from the world and with no possessions, to be superior to that of a monk. Thus, at Barṣauma’s tender age, apprenticeship to a hermit appeared to be the recommended path for acquiring skills and training in asceticism. In due course, this master-disciple duo attracted new disciples (LB 3.11). The Life describes their achievements with expressions that echo the characterization of Barṣauma: the new adepts “pledged themselves before God (ʕǝrεβw qǝð ām allāhā )”, and some of them “struggled in advanced ascetic practices (bǝðū βārε̄ rawrǝβān ε̄)” (LB 3.11), working signs and miracles both during his life and after his death. The implication is that the troops of marauding ascetics, who, according to the Life and to the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), accompanied Barṣauma on his journeys and who committed acts of violence that are related in the Life of Barṣauma and in the testimonies of their victims, had been radicalized through this form of ascetic training based on their dedication to an ascetic father figure.45 A remark in the scene of Abraham’s death states, “[Abraham] left his disciples while they were still young (šǝβaq ε̄non lǝθalmīðawhy kað hε̄non ṭalyε̄)” (LB 3.12). This comment supports at least two conclusions. The disciples must have been even younger when they joined Abraham. Like Barṣauma, they may have been younger boys. The Life does not hint at their family background, but it is plausible that the disciples’ relationship to Abraham approximated that of children relating to a spiritual father in place of a biological one. A second conclusion is that at the time of Abraham’s death, while his disciples were “still young”, his passing away may have led the members of the group to feel abandoned and orphaned. Although the Life is not explicit about the fate of individual group members after Abraham’s decease, the reference to “brethren” who began the practice of neither lying nor sitting down (LB 8.1), and the fact that the subsequent paragraph speaks of Barṣauma’s “disciples” (LB 9.1), make it clear that Barṣauma, as the oldest of Abraham’s disciples, became the leader for those who were not strong enough to live as solitaries. These were Barṣauma’s companions on his first pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or they may have rejoined him upon his return to Syria. Following Abraham’s death, Barṣauma seems to have become a father figure to the younger brethren. The change in group dynamics among his followers as they made the transition from being under the leadership of a “great one” of older age to being under Barṣauma, who (because he too was a disciple) was one of their peers, may have played a role in the group’s willingness to use violence in interactions with others. Barṣauma was recognized as the group’s leader and spiritual father, given that he became the “chief of the ascetics” or

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more precisely the “master” or “head of the ascetics (rabbā ðaβ īl ε̄; r ε̄š aβ īl ε̄)”, just as Abraham had been their master. To ground historical facticity in data derived from one single source is a difficult enterprise, and the problem is no different when we are faced with the ascetical dimensions of the Life of Barṣauma. With regard to the relevance of his young age for the profiling of the ascetic hero and the development of the ascetic’s self-identity, however, the sources allow one to draw attention to an additional piece of evidence. Insofar as the relationship between Barṣauma and Abraham, in the portrait of the Life, was that of a child to an ascetic elder as his tutor or substitute father, the Life illustrates one basic component in the pedagogical concept that undergirds ancient notions of the ascetic’s development. The records of the Second Council of Ephesus (449 CE) preserve Barṣauma’s words in support of reinstating the Constantinopolitan ascetic Eutyches to the rank of presbyter and to the leadership of his monastery. These comments suggest that Barṣauma had internalized an understanding of himself, in his role as a monk, as a child who was acting in deference to the will of others as spiritual fathers. After nearly all the bishops had raised their voices in support of the highly controversial monk Eutyches at the council, Barṣauma was introduced as “presbyter and archimandrite”. The records quote him saying that “even as a child” he was “following after the same fathers” when he bore witness to Eutyches’s orthodoxy and supported his reinstatement.46 Barṣauma’s words were promptly translated from Syriac into Greek by Eusebius. In their plea in support of Eutyches, on the other hand, the monks of Eutyches’s monastery did not use the language of the disciple–spiritual father relationship. It is at least conceivable that Barṣauma’s identity as an ascetic had been formed and shaped by the experience of being an orphan and of early asceticism under the guidance of a spiritual father who replaced his missing, biological father in such a way that Barṣauma continued to interpret the world around him, perhaps more strongly than others, through the lens of the child-parent relationship.

Developing models from sacred Scriptures for children: John the Baptist as ascetic In 1927, Alphonse Mingana edited and published an Arabic recension of the Life of John the Baptist preserved in two Karshuni manuscripts from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.47 The older may have been written for an Egyptian Christian readership, whereas the newer may be of Syriac provenance. The Arabic is a translation, for which Mingana assumed a Greek Vorlage.48 The text of the Life of John the Baptist is not a uniform composition; it shows traces of the influence of several written traditions.49 It begins as a biography of John the Baptist, whereas the later portion has the character of a panegyric for a feast commemorating the Baptist.50 Internal evidence suggests that the panegyric was delivered toward the end of the fourth century, while Theophilus held the see of Alexandria (385–412 CE); but individual traditions that are recounted may be earlier or later than this date.51

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The Karshuni Life of John the Baptist is a homily that addresses both adults and children. Given that an extensive first part of the text deals with John the Baptist’s childhood, it is of particular interest here to examine how this text developed the interpretative consequences of Luke 1:80: “and the little child ( paidion) grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness until the day of his proclamation to Israel,” which may be construed to mean that John the Baptist had lived in the desert as a child. The story relates that when “John [had] gr[own] up in a beautiful childhood and [had] suckled at his mother for two years”, Herod “began to kill all the children of Bethlehem”. Elizabeth, fearing for her son’s life, received advice from Zechariah to go with John “to the wilderness of ‘Ain Kārim”. Before their departure, when Zechariah took his son “into the Temple and blessed him”, the angel Gabriel brought down from heaven Elijah’s raiment of camel’s hair and Elisha’s leather girdle. Zechariah prayed over these and then gave them to his son. Shortly afterward, the text explains that Zechariah’s blessing had “made [two-year old John] a priest”.52 In an address to Elizabeth, the narrator compared her to Hagar: she “did not care to provide food or even a little water for the child”.53 At a time when “there was neither a monastery in the desert nor a congregation of monks,” with whom they could have stayed, little John emerges as a two-year-old ascetic in rough desert garb, for which he would become famous during the later years of his life (Matt. 3:4).54 John, who is often presented as the first ascetic in the desert, is portrayed as having practiced the hardships of fasting at a very early age. Although merely a child, John became the founder and initiator of desert asceticism. The text ascribes to John’s parents’ important roles in supporting their son’s ascetic development. The father established his son as a priest through prayer in the temple, but his mother dressed him in the garments which the angel had given him. She “put on [her] son a raiment of camel’s hair and a leathern girdle in order that the mountain of the holy wilderness may . . . be inhabited, and in order that monasteries and congregations of monks may increase in it and that sacrifice may be offered in it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”.55 Zechariah, about to be martyred in the Temple, testified that John’s “mother had taken him into the desert”.56 The Karshuni Life of John the Baptist adds a further fascinating dimension to the illustration of the strongly supportive role of the mother in children’s experiences of the ascetic life. Whereas the foods eaten by the desert ascetic John are known from Mark 1:6 and Matthew 3:4, and subsequently inspired a wealth of discussion among early Christian teachers and ascetics, the Life relates that for about five years “the blessed John . . . wandered in the desert with his mother,” while “God prepared for him locusts and wild honey as food.”57 Elizabeth told her son “not to let any unclean food enter his mouth”.58 Thus, she is shown as having guided John in establishing his distinctive desert diet.59 Inspired by concern for John’s young age, the text returns to the connection between the mother as provider of food and the young John’s life in the desert.

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In the Life of John the Baptist, the Christ child is understood to have been two years younger than his kinsman John. Little Jesus had to console his own mother at the death of Elizabeth because Mary “wept immediately over the loneliness of John who was very young”.60 Instead of allowing her to adopt the orphaned John, Jesus promised to “render the water of this spring of water [which was available in the wilderness of ‘Ain Kārim] as sweet and delicious to him as the milk he sucked from his mother”.61 Later interpreters of the Baptist’s diet at times thought they were following the Diatessaron, a unifying gospel text, when they turned the locusts into milk, and Dionysius Bar Ṣalibi (1166– 1171 CE) even went so far as to explain that “milk was proper to his youth.”62 But the reference to Jesus changing water into the equivalent of breastmilk seems to be a unique invention of the Karshuni Life of John the Baptist; it may have been inspired by the changing of water into wine in the New Testament Gospel of John. It appears that other writers assumed that John drank water, given that they seem not to have commented on his young age in the desert. The influential role of a mother in leading her child into the ascetic life is remarkable, but our discussion has indicated that for other traditions about the lives of children, a strong involvement of mothers in their educational development was common, and is attested in Greek and non-Greek Byzantine sources. This may echo children’s experiences of receiving training and support from their mothers, and the intention may have been to offer examples to encourage the continued and dedicated devotion of mothers to their children’s development.

Conclusions The texts we have at our disposal illustrate well the prominent role of the parent-child relationship in the perception of ancient societies. Although ancient writers, such as John Chrysostom, highlight the necessity that fathers be involved and direct their children’s – especially their sons’ – lives, early Christian hagiography may give us reason to doubt to what extent such rather prescriptive treatments correspond to ancient culture. Where children emerge in Oriental Christian texts, fathers are often absent, or one encounters them as decision makers but not necessarily or not often as parents who invest much personal attention in the details of their children’s lives. Mothers, on the other hand, appear in more fully involved roles as educators, protectors, and as those who are concerned about their children’s spiritual well-being. The case studies discussed here show that the experience of children in Oriental Christian and Greek sources was conditioned by social ideas concerning gender. A female child depended on male protection. A girl was twice vulnerable because of her sex and her age. Although the bond between a mother and her daughter played an important part in a girl’s early life, providing educational, emotional, and spiritual support, the fact that this bond was between two females left the daughter in a permanent position of weakness, because male-dominated society did not respect her self-determination. For a female

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child to be safe, the support and protection of adult males was necessary. A girl could hope to free herself from such constraints only when she managed to step outside of the context of her own family, while at the same time avoiding entering into a new relationship of subjection through marriage. The degree of children’s self-determination varied with regard to choices regarding their adherence to a given religion or the forms of spirituality or religious commitment they desired to practice. In some instances, any such choices were completely subject to parental control. With regard to taking up the path of asceticism, however, our hagiographical sources suggest that children were at times fully self-directing. This may reflect a literary “otherness” of the ascetic, but asceticism, due to the strong personal impulse grounded in a culture of faith, rests on a strong sense of “otherness”, in which through faith the individual identifies with the not-society, defining its culture in part over and against what is expected, including presumptions about children, childhood, and family. The interest of Oriental Christian and Greek hagiographical sources in the life of perfection, especially through asceticism, is overwhelming. One theme that emerges from my selection in this chapter, and that is relevant for our understanding of ideas concerning childhood, is the gendered concern with seeing boyhood as an important stage in life that shapes a person’s moral development. The rather pessimistic Western outlook stands in marked contrast to the idea we have encountered in our sources from the East, according to which the execution of reasoned agency empowered the young child, and prominently or perhaps more urgently, the young boy, to make decisions concerning what is morally good and how to embrace it. In ascetic contexts, children clearly emerge in the role of agents who are capable of making and standing up for their own decisions. Through such depictions of children in control of their actions, but also through images that are found more strongly in Egyptian and Syriac traditions and that feature the child as a person who is already able to take the ascetic discipline to its extremes, hagiographical literature promoted views of the child ascetic as the new hero. Here, age did play a prominent role. Whereas the adult person who was capable of mastering the requirements of the ascetic life was readily recognized as an exceptionally capable person, childhood added to the practice of asceticism the aura of the superior holiness of the practitioner. By virtue of being able to achieve such outstanding feats already at a very early age, the child ascetic was the embodiment of this paradigm, divinely chosen as proof of the “other” reality which ascetics wished to realize. Our sources offer us insights into the relevance of the topos of ascetical practice during childhood as one of the possible ways to reach out to and instruct children. Childhood asceticism in the lives of Anthony and Barṣauma may have been perceived by ancient readers as still strongly grounded in historical reality – perhaps an exceptional reality, but nevertheless one grounded historically. In some apocryphal narratives, childhood profiles were crafted for biblical figures, such as John the Baptist. Here, the fact of an underlying

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biblical text as the ultimate source of inspiration could provide authority to the impulse of directing children toward an imitation of ascetic practices. This authority was strengthened through the intersection of worldly and heavenly history, also for children’s experiences. Children who lived in monasteries would have joined adult monks when stories of the lives of famous ascetics or biblical heroes were read in the communities. They would have readily known of their presumed or real childhood experiences as well. To the extent that such texts circulated outside the monasteries, these narratives could inspire children in parishes and Christian households as well. However, our sources suggest that some children’s ascetic inclinations or choices may have arisen from their experiences of social or familial problems. A fellow ascetic of a more advanced age could become not only a spiritual guide for a child but also a replacement for deceased or otherwise lost parents. Indeed, the monastery could function occasionally as a substitute family for those who entered. Barṣauma’s hagiography provides us with precious insights into even more personal levels on which relationships to other ascetics might replace for a child not so much the family, but the individual parent, and thus the personal guide, mentor, and caring and attentive other. Moreover, one observes that the experience of asceticism at a young age and in a context of others who were not only like-minded but also belonged roughly to the same age group, could contribute much to the development of peer groups for life. In the end, many other hagiographical sources from across the language spectrum that makes up the world of early Byzantium remain to be explored. Uncovering their insights regarding the history and the development of ideas concerning children and their lives promises to be a highly rewarding undertaking.

Notes 1 The research and writing of this chapter for publication was supported through a Heisenberg Fellowship (GZ HO 5221/1–1), for which the author wishes to express her gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). 2 For a study of typical themes in Greek hagiography, see Pratsch 2005. 3 See also Rydén 2004: 49 and 58; and Chevallier-Caseau 2009: 128. 4 Pratsch 2005: 56–108, focuses on topoi related to birth, childhood, and youth. 5 The articles collected in Efthymiadis 2011 offer an overview of hagiographical writings in these languages and the related regions. 6 Patlagean 1973, reprinted 1981; Abrahamse 1979; Baun 1994; Miller 2003; Gould 1994; Moffat 1986; Kalogeras 2000, 2001, 2005, and 2010; Hennessy 2008: Papaconstantinou and Talbot 2009: Chevallier-Caseau 2009; and Hatlie 2006. 7 See Horn 2006, 2007a, 2007b, and 2015; Phenix 2009; Kotsifou 2009; Schroeder 2009a, 2009b, and 2012; and Doerfler 2011. 8 Augustine of Hippo, Conf. 1.17 (ed. Verheijen 1981: 9–10; trans. Chadwick 1991: 13). For an insightful discussion, see also Burnett 2009. 9 On the role of mothers as teachers of their children, especially their daughters, also in later Byzantine times, see Herrin 2013: 91–7. 10 See Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina 3 (ed. and trans. Maraval 1971: 150–1; trans. Petersen 1996: 51–86, here 53–4).

190 11 12 13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Cornelia Horn See, for instance, Harvey 1996. For a discussion of the original language of the text, see Burkitt 1913: 48–56. Euphemia and the Goth 2 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ܡܗ‬-‫ ܡܕ‬and 129–30). For the Syriac text and the English translation of the novel Euphemia and the Goth, see Burkitt 1913: ‫ܥܕ‬-‫( ܡܕ‬Syriac) and 129–53 (English). Euphemia and the Goth 20–22 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ܢܙ‬-‫ ܢܗ‬and 138–9) recounts how after Euphemia gave birth to a baby boy, the mere presence of that boy made the Goth’s first wife very envious. When her husband gave her permission to do whatever she wanted with Euphemia, who had become a slave in the Goth’s household, the wife poisoned the little infant, who was not even yet a toddler, and he died. Euphemia’s marriage to the Gothic soldier may have recalled to the minds of ancient readers some elements of the fate of Galla Placidia. This last Western Roman empress had been captured by Alaric and spent several years as the wife of the Gothic general Athaulf. They had a son, named Theodosius, who died during infancy. For a lively study of Galla Placidia, with a focus less on biography and more on the life cycle of late antique women, involving their upbringing, marriage, and motherhood, see Sivan 2011. Euphemia and the Goth 4 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ ܡܘ‬and 130–1). Jerome, Letters 60.16 [To Heliodorus] (ed. Hilberg 1910–1918, reprinted 1996, vol. 54, p. 570, ll. 13–16), written in 396 CE, supports the dating of a possible presence of Goths in the regions that are in question in Euphemia and the Goth, when he writes, “Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Dardania, Dacia, Epiros, Dalmatia, and the Pannonias – all of these have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quades and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marchmen.” Pollard 2000: 158, holds that the designation “Goth” may also have been used as a more general designation for “soldiers” or “foreign soldiers” in ancient texts, particular Syriac ones. It should be pointed out here that the term “Goth” can refer to an ethnic Goth as a member of the Hunnic army, or to a soldier of any other ethnicity. The common language of the Hunnic Empire was Gothic. Euphemia and the Goth 5 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ܡܙ‬-‫ ܡܘ‬and 131). Euphemia and the Goth 7–11 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ܢܢ‬-‫ ܡܙ‬and 132–3). Euphemia and the Goth 13 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ ܢܢ‬and 134, modified). Euphemia and the Goth 14 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ ܢܐ‬and 135). Euphemia and the Goth 17 (ed. and trans. Burkitt 1913: ‫ ܢܓ‬and 136–7). John Chrysostom, On Vainglory 61 (ed. and trans. Malingrey 1972: 158–9; trans. Laistner c.1951, 1967: 85–122, here 111). See also the discussion in Horn and Martens 2009: 155. See also the chapter by Aasgaard in this volume. Augustine, Conf. 2.iv (text and trans. Watts 1912, reprinted 1968: 76–9; trans. Chadwick 1991: 28–29). See the chapter by Aasgaard in this volume. For Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life of Sabas, see the Greek text in Schwartz 1939: 85–200, and an English translation in Price 1991: 93–219. Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 3 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 88; trans. Price 1991: 96). Ibid. Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 3 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89; trans. Price 1991: 96–7). Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 4 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89; trans. Price 1991: 97). Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 4 and 5 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89; trans. Price 1991: 97–8). For some of this, the biblical David served as a role model. Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 4 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89; trans. Price 1991: 97). Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 5 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89; trans. Price 1991: 97–8). Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 5 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 89–90; trans. Price 1991: 98). For the monastic landscape in which Barṣauma moved, see Honigmann 1954. Andrew Palmer will publish in due course an edition and English translation of the complete Life of Barṣauma. In the meantime, see Nau 1913 and 1914; and Nau 1927. Horn (forthcoming) studies the distinct characteristics of Barṣauma’s ascetic career.

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35 Payne Smith (Mrs. Margoliouth) 1903: 58. 36 Horn and Martens 2009: 323–7. 37 Life of Anthony 1 (ed. and trans. Bartelink 1990: 130–1). Bartelink presents a critical edition of the Greek text, collated with Coptic, Latin, and Syriac manuscripts. For an English translation of a Greek version, see Gregg 1980: 30–1. For the Coptic and Syriac texts, see Garitte 1949: 3 (Coptic) and 2 (Latin); and Draguet 1980: 6–7 (Syriac) and 4–5 (French). 38 Jerome, Letters 107.4–10 and 128.1 (ed. Hilberg 1910–1918: CSEL 55, pp. 296–301 and CSEL 56, pp. 156–7). See the discussion in Horn and Martens 2009: 333–4. As a little baby, Symeon the Younger sucked only at his mother’s right breast, refusing to take any milk from the left breast. See Life of Symeon the Stylite 4 (ed. and trans. van den Ven 1962–1970: vol. 1, p. 6–7 [Greek] and vol. 2, p. 9 [French]). 39 Life of Anthony 1.2 (ed. and trans. Bartelink 1990: 130–1). 40 For references and discussion, see Horn 2007a: 446. 41 See also Life of Rabbula 10, 54, and 56 (ed. Overbeck 1865: 166 and 200–5; eds. and trans. Phenix and Horn 2016: 18–21, 76–9, and 80–3). 42 In the Life of Peter the Iberian, for instance, the unskilled ascetics Peter and John are working themselves to death taking care of pilgrims before others convince them to follow a more standard monastic path. See Life of Peter the Iberian 66–67 (eds. and trans. Horn and Phenix 2008: 96–7). The Life of Rabbula has its protagonist settle in a cell next to another master named Abraham, to be trained in discipline before taking up a life in a cave, isolated but still following a canonical rule of prayer. See Life of Rabbula 12 (ed. Overbeck 1865: 167; eds. and trans. Phenix and Horn 2016: 20–3). 43 Life of Anthony 2.2 (ed. and trans. Bartelink 1990: 136–7). 44 Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 7 (ed. Schwartz 1939: 90–1; trans. Price 1991: 99–100). 45 See the discussion in Gaddis 2005: 188–9. 46 See Schwartz 1933: 186, text 884, l. 113. For an English translation, see Price and Gaddis 2005: 292 (vol. 1). See also Honigmann 1954: 7, footnote 5. 47 The discussion of the Life of John the Baptist draws on and expands upon Horn and Martens 2009: 327–30. MS Mingana 22 is dated to 1527 CE, and MS Mingana 183 to ca. 1750 CE. See Mingana 1927. 48 See Mingana 1927: 235–6; 249, footnote 2; but see also p. 243, footnotes 1 and 4. Both manuscripts contain later interpolations. See Mingana 1927: 234–5. 49 The narrator identified himself as Father Serapion, an Egyptian bishop. See Mingana 1927: 255. The different texts appear to have focused on the Baptist’s nativity and youth on the one hand, and on his beheading and the subsequent cult of his relics on the other. Mingana 1927: 247, seems to mark the dividing line between the two halves on the basis of inconsistencies regarding Herodias, who is portrayed as already living together with Herod and also as intriguing to be taken into Herod’s household (and bed) for the first time. The fact that her daughter is called by two different names in this second half of the text may indicate that there were even more traditions on which the author or redactor drew for his composition. The extremely negative portrayal of Herodias and her daughter, which exempts Herod from almost any responsibility for the death of John the Baptist, may make a male author more likely than a female one. 50 Mingana 1927: 235, 253, and 256–7. 51 Ibid., 255. On the basis of the reference to Emperor Theodosius the Great in the text here, Mingana dated the composition to the period between 385 and 395 CE. To some extent, the text reflects fifth-century popular Egyptian Christianity. For a recent discussion of the Life of John the Baptist in relation to biblical writings, see Burke 2014. 52 Mingana 1927: 238–40, modified. 53 Ibid., 241, modified. See also Genesis 21. 54 Mingana 1927: 241. 55 Ibid. See also Kelhoffer 2005: 175, who notes “an explicit connection between how Elizabeth clothed John and monks who would later dress like John”.

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Mingana 1927: 242. See Kelhoffer 2005. See also Mingana 1927: 242. Mingana 1927: 242. Among some of the oldest cultures, such as in Australia or non-Bantu groups in southern Africa, it is typically the women who have the widest knowledge of the flora; in parts of Australia, women are able through experience to determine where wild bees have built nests hidden inside tree trunks, in order to obtain honey. 60 Mingana 1927: 244. 61 Ibid. 62 See Kelhoffer 2005: 141–8. The reason for altering the New Testament account was that locusts, being animals, would have been prohibited in the traditional Christian ascetic diet. The fragment from Bar Ṣalibi’s work is cited in Rendel Harris 1895: 17.

12 “Pour out the blood and remove the evil from him” The creation of a ritual of birth (‘aqīqa) in Islam in the eighth century1 Mohammed Hocine Benkheira There is a ritual of birth that is specific to Islam, the ‘aqīqa. This ritual is a sacrifice made by parents on the seventh day after a child’s birth, and it was observed scrupulously down to the beginning of the twentieth century. It is described in a number of important ancient Arabic sources, which I shall examine here. All of these are compilations of hadiths, which are sayings, but also narratives, that were put in writing at a late point in time. The oldest compilations can be dated to the beginning of the ninth century, but the materials that are gathered there were already circulating in the eighth century. Most of these materials take the form of traditions from the Prophet Muhammad, but some are by Shia groups attributed to the imams, the Prophet’s successors according to Imami Shiite doctrine. Another part is attributed to the Companions of the Prophet and their successors. The authenticity of these traditions has been the object of numerous discussions both among scholars in Islam and among contemporary scholars in the Western world.2 But even if not all of this corpus should be authentic, this does not invalidate my research here, because its descriptions of the ‘aqīqa ritual are, in general, undeniably credible. The principal collections on which I base my study here are compilations of prophetic and nonprophetic utterances, which were put in circulation during the eighth century: the Muwaṭṭa’ of Mālik b. Anas (d. 795), the Muṣannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzāq (d. 826), the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 849), the Ṣaḥī ḥ of Bukhārī (d. 869), the Sunan of Tirmiḏ ī (d. 892), and the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd (d. 888).3 For Imamite Shia, I use a compilation which is late, but has the advantage of merging several ancient collections, namely the Wasā’il al-shī‘a (“The Means of the Shīʿa”) of al-Ḥurr al-‘Āmilī (d. 1692).4 I will also make use of other sources such as the legal doxography (teachings of the jurists), especially the great summa of Abū Bakr al-Munḏir (d. 930), the al-Ishrāf ‘alā maḏāhib al-‘ulamā’, “The Collection of Legal Opinions of the Jurists”.5 This last work contains above all the legal opinions of the authorities of the first two centuries of the Muslim era and of some individuals from the third century. It is important to note, however, that my descriptions do not deal with the practices that observers, such as travelers and ethnographers, have witnessed in social contexts; instead, my analyses are based on the normative prescriptions made by early authorities in Islam. Accordingly, they do not deal with

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practices, but with attitudes and perceptions. Moreover, these authorities did not succeed fully in winning acceptance for their views; their projects were revised by their Followers. My aim here is to outline the ideas and conceptions behind these projects.

Rituals of birth and infancy in Islam When surveying the research literature on rituals of childhood in Islam, we notice that not much has been written on circumcision, although this was a widespread practice. This subject does not seem to have been of much concern to the scholars. More space, however, has been accorded to three principal rituals that were to be observed on the birth of a child.6 The first ritual consists of making the call to prayer into the ear of the newborn. This is what Muhammad is said to have done with his grandson Ḥasan.7 According to an Imamite tradition, one must utter the aḏān, the first call to prayer, into the right ear, and the call known as iqama, the second call to prayer, also into the right ear, before cutting the umbilical cord.8 According to a remark of the Prophet, the intention is to protect the newborn from Satan.9 The second rite is the taḥnīk, which consists of putting into the mouth of the newborn something sweet to eat (preferably a date) that has been chewed by a pious man or woman.10 The last ritual, known as ‘aqīqa, is certainly the most complex, because according to some descriptions, it consists of a blending of three distinct rites: a blood sacrifice, a ceremony of name giving, and the shaving of the intrauterine hair.11 Sometimes, alms were also given: the equivalent in silver (or in gold) of the weight of the hair that had been shaved off. My hypothesis here is that it was most probably religious men at the close of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth – those who are known in scholarship on Islam as “the Followers” (tābi’ūn in Arabic) – who constructed this as a unified ritual by blending together several different rituals. I shall inquire later in this chapter into the meaning of this new ritual. For reasons that also later will become clear, I shall distinguish among three major categories in these traditions, and in the following survey the evidence for the ‘aqīqa in each of them: in the material related to the Prophet Muhammad; to the Companions, the Prophet’s pupils; and finally, to the Followers, the Companions’ pupils.

The Prophet Muhammad The general formula There is a preserved description of the ensemble of the ritual that is thought to go back to the Prophet Muhammad: “One must cut the throat [of a victim] for [the child] on the seventh day, shaving his head and giving him a name (yusammā ).”12 In another version we read, “The Prophet has commanded to proceed to [the sacrifice] ‘aqīqa on the seventh day, to rid him of evil (wadh

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‘al-aḏā ), and to give him a name.”13 The institution of the ritual is thus ascribed to the Prophet. The second text speaks, however, not of shaving, but of “ridding [the child] of evil (aḏā )”. Asymmetry between boys and girls There are also traditions that deal with gender issues. When a woman consulted him, the Prophet replied, “One must slaughter two sheep identical in size for the boy ( ghulām), and one sheep for the girl ( jāriya). . . . In my opinion, the sheep is preferable to the goat, and the males to the females.”14 The Prophet concludes his remarks by declaring, “It is not very important whether the sacrificial animals are male or female.”15 This tradition insists on the difference of the sexes, by drawing a contrast between the birth of a male child and that of a female one, and also by drawing a contrast between the genders of the sacrificial animals.16 The asymmetry between girls and boys was to gain ground among jurists of the end of the eighth century, especially in Iraq, but the asymmetry between male and female victims persisted only in Imamite doctrine. The choice of ovines (sheep) is a sign of an influence from the adhḥa model of sacrifice (with reference to Abraham, cf. Qur’an 37:99–109; Gen. 22:1–19).17 The purpose of the sacrifice The intention of the sacrifice was to remove evil from the newborn. The following words are put on the Prophet’s lips: “For the male newborn, a sacrifice (‘aqīqa) is necessary. Pour out the blood for him (ahriqū ‘anhu daman) and [in this way] remove the evil from him (amī ṭū ‘anhu al-aḏā ).”18 This text is important for two reasons. First, it does not mention female births, because in those cases no sacrifice was required – this view of things is quite natural in a patrilineal system that attaches particular importance to male births. The fact that this text was put into circulation – doubtless in the course of the first half of the eighth century – demonstrates that this mind-set still had its adherents in that epoch, especially with regard to the anointing of the child’s head with the blood of the victim. This means that this gesture cannot be ascribed to “paganism” ( jāhiliyya), as medieval Muslim writers frequently do. Because no classical legal doctrine has adopted this point of view, the obvious conclusion is that the lack of any scholarly discussion led to its being abandoned:19 if the aim of the ritual was to remove the evil from the newborn, why was it then acceptable to observe it for boys but not for girls? At any rate, there were adherents of symmetry between girls and boys from an early date. But as we have noted previously, the asymmetry is manifested in a different way: two victims were sacrificed for a boy, but only one for a girl. Second, this tradition is important because it makes explicit the purpose of the sacrificial ritual: evil must be removed. But what “evil” is this? The word used here is aḏa, which means “evil”, “wrongdoing”, or “harm”. It is not a question of “evil” in the metaphysical, or even religious, sense. In Arabic, the

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fourth verbal form (ā ḏā ), which is a causative and a factitive, means “causing harm to someone, injuring someone in his rights, doing wrong to someone, making someone suffer”.20 This means that something or someone lies behind what is affecting the child. In his dictionary of the vocabulary of the hadith, Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1208) notes that the word aḏa designates the hairs, the impurities (najāsa), and that which covers the head of the newborn at birth. We find the same expression (imā ṭat al-aḏā ) in another context, where it means removing from the paths everything that could disturb the passersby, such as thorns, pebbles, or garbage.21 The word is found above all in the Qur’an.22 One occurrence deserves special attention. In 2:222, the word is applied to menstrual blood: “They will ask you about the menses. Say: ‘It is an evil (aḏā ).’ And avoid women [at this time]!” We cannot exclude the possibility that when this word was employed in several traditions about the ‘aqīqa sacrifice, it was done with the deliberate intention of hinting at this Qur’anic verse about menstruation and menstrual blood. When another tradition speaks of “removing the evil from him”, this denotes the blood that is mingled with the intrauterine hair. From Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 728) onward, we find the metonymic interpretation: “removing evil means shaving his head.”23 His compatriot Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) held the same opinion: “If [removing] evil [from the child] does not mean shaving his head, then I do not see what the term means.”24 Muḥammad b. Yazīd, mostly known as Ibn Māja (d. 886), confesses to his confusion: “I have not found anyone who could explain to me what ‘the evil’ means.”25 We can understand his helplessness when we consider a variant reported by al-Ṭabarānī (d. 970): “One must remove the evil from him and shave his head.”26 This amounts to dissociating the “evil” from the intrauterine hair. For al-Khaṭṭ ābī (d. 996), it is absolutely clear that the evil in question clings to the hairs that are impregnated by the mother’s blood (dam al-raḥim, “the uterine blood”). He relates this idea to the practice of pawning: the newborn is marhūn bi-‘aqīqatihi, that is to say the child must be redeemed through the blood sacrifice.27 The first hairs should therefore be removed, in order that every trace of the intrauterine life – and doubtless the mark of the feminine – may no longer be attached to the child. Then we can consider that there are two forms of blood: there is beneficial blood, that of the victim that is slaughtered, and there is harmful blood, the intrauterine blood, which is menstrual blood that has not been expelled from the female body. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the child’s head was shaved, not because of the traces of blood from the birth (one interpretation of the rite), but because of the idea that his first hairs had to be removed (a second interpretation of it). This would mean that we have two interpretations, rather than only one: the one has been superimposed on the other, or better, they have been conflated. In one tradition – which is not directly relevant to our topic, but still merits mention for sake of a full presentation of the evidence – Muhammad says, “The head of the newborn will be shaved, and he will be sprinkled with

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the blood [of the victim] (yudammā ).” When he was asked about this detail, Qatāda (d. 735) added the following explanation: “After the immolation of the victim, one takes a small amount of its wool, which one holds to its throat. This wool [impregnated with blood] is then placed on the child’s fontanel, in order that a small quantity of blood may flow out of it. After this, the child’s head must be washed, before he is shaved.”28 Abū Dāwūd, who reports this suggestion, is offended by it. He notes that the reading yudammā is an error (wahm) on the part of Hammām b. Yaḥyā (d. ca. 781). He recalls that other scholars have read yusammā, “he is given a name.”29 Thus he quotes another variant, in which the ductus is yusammā, rather than yudammā.30 He holds this to be the correct reading, because it is in agreement with the dogma during his period and in his milieu.31 We should note that the confusion he criticizes is possible only in writing. If we accept Abū Dāwūd’s explanation, the only reason why Hammām was able to make this mistake was that he was familiar with the praxis of anointing with the blood of the victim. The child is “pawned” The Prophet Muhammad is said to have explained the meaning of this sacrificial ritual as follows: “The newborn is pawned [in exchange for] the victim that is killed for him (al-mawlūd murtahan bi-‘aqīqatihi).”32 In other traditions, we find these statements: “The little boy is pawned in exchange for the victim [who is to be] killed in his place (rahīna bi-‘aqīqatihi tuḏbaḥ ‘anhu).”33 Furthermore, “The boy is bound by the obligation (murtahan) to offer a victim. On the seventh day, one must offer a sacrifice for him, give him a name, and shave his head.”34 And, “Every boy is pawned against his ‘aqīqa. The victim must be slaughtered on the seventh day [from the boy’s birth]. His head will be shaved and then smeared with blood.”35 According to these sayings, the victim that was offered in the place of a newborn makes it possible to redeem the child’s life. When entering the world, every newborn is obligated to redeem his life by offering a sacrifice. Because the newborn is not able to do this, the parents must fulfill the obligation on the child’s behalf. The Prophet offers sacrifice for his grandsons ‘Ikrima (d. 723) relates that the Prophet himself offered two rams (kabsh) for al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, his two grandsons.36 It is worth noting that the victim is a ram, that is to say not only a male animal but also an adult one in its full vigor, as in the story of Abraham (cf. Gen. 22:11–13).37 What we encounter here is a correction of a ritual in an endeavor to make it consistent with another sacrificial ritual, the adhḥā. It is probable that the sacrificial rituals of the ‘aqīqa and the adhḥā, which will be discussed in the following sections, were elaborated and defined independently of each other, both in their constituent parts and in their sequence. When Muhammad offered the sacrifice for his two grandsons, he recommended, “Kill in His name. Say: In the name of God!

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Lord, to You and for You! This is the ‘aqīqa of So and So.”38 This tradition was later seen as evidence of the universally binding character of this sacrifice. The sacrifice of the infant’s hair At the birth of al-Ḥasan, the first child of his daughter Fāṭima (d. ca. 632), the Prophet sacrificed an ovine (shāt). He said to her, “Shave his head and give as alms the weight of his hair in silver.” This was the equivalent of a silver coin (dirham).39 This tradition, which is also evidence of the ritual of ʿaqīqa, emphasizes the act of shaving the baby’s head and what the parents must do with the hair that has been cut. One must not break the bones of the victim When his daughter Fāṭima broke the bones of the victim, the Prophet is said to have commanded that a foot should be offered to the midwife. He commented, “One must not break its bones.”40 This prohibition is based on the belief that the victim in the ‘aqīqa sacrifice represented the child or the one whose name was mentioned in the course of the ritual. This is why one should dismember it without breaking its bones, because that would bring misfortune to the one whom the animal represents. One must not offer a blood sacrifice In one final tradition, the Prophet seems in fact to be opposed to a blood sacrifice. When one of her sons was born, Fāṭima asked her father, “Apostle of God! Must I not pour out blood for my son?” The Prophet replied, “No! But shave his head and give as alms on behalf of the poor the weight of his hair in gold or in silver.”41 Thus, this tradition speaks against the bloody sacrifice and supports a ceremony limited to shaving the baby’s hair.

The Companions Only very limited evidence of the ʿaqīqa is preserved from the Companions. Fāṭima, the Prophet’s daughter, was accustomed to put to death a victim for a newborn on the seventh day, to give him a name, to circumcise him (taktinuhu), to shave his head, and to give as alms the weight of his hair in silver.42 According to some traditions, all she did was to give in alms the equivalent of the weight of the newborn’s hair in silver or in gold.43 Although ‘Ā’isha (d. 678), the youngest spouse of the Prophet, defended an asymmetrical rule – two ovines for a boy, and only one for a girl ( jāriya)44 – she indicated that it was of little importance whether the animal that was sacrificed was male or female.45 She also recommended that the bones of the victim should not be broken.46 Ibn ‘Abbās (d. 687) likewise defended the asymmetrical rule.47

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Ibn ‘Umar (d. 692) is presented as one of the warmest partisans of this sacrifice. He supported symmetry: one sheep is killed for the boy, and one for the girl.48 A description of the ritual ‘aqīqa is attributed to him: “On the seventh day, one must slaughter a victim for him. One must also shave his head and make the offering of the weight of his hair in silver. One must also anoint his head with the blood [of the victim].”49 Finally, Abū Burayda (seventh century) testifies, “At the epoch of the jāhiliyya, (i.e. “the pagan times”), when a boy was born to one of us, he sacrificed an ovine and smeared the child’s head with the blood of the victim. After Islam came, we sacrificed an ovine, we shaved the head of the newborn, and we smeared it with the help of saffron.”50 This text, however, with a provenance among milieus that were hostile to the praxis of anointing, is obviously a forgery, probably from the beginning of the eighth century, as we shall see in the next section – see especially what is attributed to Ibn Sirin and Hasan al-Basri.

The Followers We find much more material on the ʿaqīqa ritual among the Followers. I shall survey this in chronological sequence. Among the Followers, Abū Wā’il (d. ca. 701) was hostile to the sacrifice for the birth of a girl.51 But this was not the position of ‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. ca. 720) or of al-Qāsim b. Mu ḥammad (d. 725), both of whom were in favor of symmetry.52 Mujāhid (d. 722) favored asymmetry.53 Al-Ḥasan b. Muhammad (d. ca. 720) mentions only the shaving of the hair.54 The Followers in the city of Basra, who contributed to the construction of Islamic Law, seem to play a central role in the discussion. Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) defends the idea that an adult can offer sacrifice for himself.55 But he held that it was not necessary to sacrifice a victim for a daughter.56 It was not necessary that the sacrifice should take place on the seventh day, and one could do what one wanted with the victim.57 One could eat it and offer it to others to eat.58 He disapproved of the practice of anointing the child’s head with the blood of the victim.59 Like his compatriot, Ḥasan al-Baṣri (d. 728) held that the ‘aqīqa sacrifice was obligatory only when a boy was born.60 If the child died before the seventh day, there was no obligation at all to offer sacrifice for him.61 He agreed with Ibn Sīrīn that an adult could offer the sacrifice for himself.62 One could also eat the victim and offer it to others to eat.63 In addition, he condemned the practice of anointing the newborn’s head with the blood of the victim, because “blood is a blemish (rijs).”64 We are also told that he believed that the child is pawned in exchange for the victim that must be put to death in his place.65 Ḥasan al-Baṣri is certainly the first Follower to link the blood sacrifice and the ceremony of the imposition of a name.66 According to another tradition, he also added to these two rites the shaving of the hair.67 It is therefore probable that he is at the origin of the fusion of three distinct rites or, at the least, that he played some part in this fusion.

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According to ‘Aṭ ā’ b. Abī Rabā ḥ (d. 732), who was from the holy city of Mecca, one must offer the ‘aqīqa sacrifice on the seventh day after the child is born. One can eat of it and offer it to others. He did not allow it to be given as alms.68 He also recommended that the bones of the victim should not be broken.69 Qatāda, ‘Aṭ ā, and the latter’s disciple Ibn Jurayj (d. 767) followed Ḥasan al-Baṣri with regard to integrating the rite of shaving into the ritual as a whole. Ibn Jurayj even gives indications about the order that was to be followed in performing the ritual. One must begin with the sacrifice, before the child’s hair is shaved off. He notes that, according to a text of ‘Aṭ ā, these actions should be reversed: one begins with the shaving, and then comes the sacrifice.70 Qatāda wrote that one should first give the child a name (yusammā ), and then offer the sacrifice on the seventh day; the ritual is completed by shaving the child. He added, “One should anoint his head with blood.”71 Qatāda held that the sacrifice for a girl was not indispensable.72 He described what was to be done: “One must turn towards Mecca, and then place the knife at the victim’s throat and speak these words: ‘Lord! Of You and for You! [This] is the victim of So and So! In the name of God! God is the greatest!’ And then one must slit its throat.”73 He regarded the anointing of the child with the blood as an obligatory element of the ritual.74 Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 737), the fifth imam of the Shīʿa, defended the rule of symmetry between the sexes.75 The same was true of Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 742).76 He also recommended breaking the victim’s bones and that one should not anoint the child’s head with the blood.77 Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm (d. 738) insisted on the necessity of pouring out the blood of the victim: “I have heard my father recommending the ‘aqīqa, even [if this entailed putting to death] only a sparrow.”78 According to Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), the sixth imam of the Shīʿa, the ‘aqīqa sacrifice was obligatory.79 He added, “Every individual is pawned (murtahan) against his victim on the Day of Resurrection. [Accordingly,] the obligation of the ‘aqīqa sacrifice is higher than that of the adhḥā sacrifice.”80 One cannot substitute alms in silver for the sacrifice.81 Moreover, he favored symmetry between girls and boys.82 In his view, an adult could offer sacrifice for himself.83 And he condemned the rite of anointing the child with the blood of the victim.84 Ibn Jurayj describes what one should do with the victim. Its various portions are boiled (without breaking the bones) with some salt, so that it can then be offered to one’s neighbors and friends, but one must not give it by way of alms.85 He testifies, “Before Islam came, people impregnated a piece of cotton with the blood of the victim. After shaving the child’s skull, they placed this cotton on its head. This is why the Prophet commanded that the blood of the victim should be replaced by the perfume of saffron or by red clay.”86 The last witness to be mentioned here, the Egyptian Lay ṭ b. Sa‘d (d. 792), held that if twins were born, one should offer a double sacrifice.87

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The ‘aqīqa: a protective rite or a rite whereby one enters a group? As we now turn to an interpretation of the background and development of the ritual, my first task is to form a judgment about the authenticity of the material presented previously. I shall then discuss the chronological order of the ideas and the descriptions of the ritual. In my presentation of these sources, I have followed the scheme begun by Muslim scholars as early as the time of the Prophet; they distinguished between the corpus concerning the Prophet, the corpus concerning his Companions, and that concerning the Followers. We cannot, however, accept this way of looking at things, because it was primarily intended to establish the authority of the Prophet as this was transmitted in the compilations of traditions. My starting point will instead be the observation that, whereas the doctrine later regarded as orthodox is put on the lips of the Prophet, the Followers and even the Companions defend doctrines that were different, or even contradictory.88 How are we to explain the fact that the Prophet is not followed, and that he is even sometimes contradicted by his disciples and by those who are judged to have transmitted his teaching? I find it difficult to admit that the Followers, who are an indispensable link in the transmission of this teaching, deliberately chose to oppose him on numerous questions. This is why I formulate the hypothesis that the sayings attributed to the Followers must be regarded as authentic every time that they contradict the sayings of the Companions and of the Prophet. The divergences among the Followers are a further argument in favor of this authenticity. If we grant this, it means that the Prophet and his contemporaries did not know the ‘aqīqa ritual. This also explains why no account of the Prophet’s life mentions the observance of this ritual at his own birth.89 With regard to the ‘aqīqa, three persons appear to play a central role in the corpus of the Followers: Ibn Sīrīn, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and Qatāda, all of whom came from the city of Basra. We also note some names of men from Mecca, above all ‘Aṭ ā b. Abī Rabā ḥ, but they are less important. We should also note that there is no great representative of Kūfa (in central modern Iraq), although this city often plays a prominent role in the definition of the content of the Law.90 The case of Ja‘far al-Ṣadīq, who is usually linked to Medina, is different: the Shiites attributed to him a posteriori the definition of the great majority of their ritual prescriptions, and this means that the authenticity of the sayings attributed to him is more than doubtful. Besides this, Ja‘far, who lived at a later date than the group of the Followers, borrowed much from them. For all these reasons, I believe that it was the Followers in Basra who invented the ritual of the ‘aqīqa. I do not, however, imply that the ritual was already observed at Basra, and that they proposed to generalize it by Islamizing it. Clearly, the Followers were not passive individuals. They formed a group with many projects, including laying the foundations of the juridical-ritual construction of Islam.91 They doubtless sought to put in place an Islamic ritual for the welcome of newborn children and were certainly inspired by various

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rituals that currently existed. This can explain the controversy about the role of the victim’s blood. They fused three distinct rites: a blood sacrifice, the shaving of the intrauterine hair, and the giving of a name. This ritual, which the Muslim jurists presented as a prescription by the Prophet, was in fact invented by men who lived at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth centuries, a transitional epoch if ever there was one in the history of an Islam that was in formation. It is also significant that Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767) regarded it “as a blameworthy (bid’a) innovation”.92 All this happened, therefore, toward the close of the Umayyad epoch (ended 750). It is probable that others at the same period sought to highlight the adhḥā sacrifice, which had a mythological background (Abraham’s sacrifice), and that this meant that the two sacrificial rituals were in competition. This explains the endeavor to bring them closer and even to conflate them.

The intention and meaning of the ‘aqīqa ritual What intentions lay behind the invention of the ‘aqīqa ritual? Unlike Christianity, which practiced baptism, Islam lacked any rite whereby the newborn became a member of the group.93 But the ceremony fabricated by the Followers took time to acquire a definitive form, and did not succeed in becoming an obligatory prescription. It was only at the end of the eighth or even the beginning of the ninth century that it was definitely established and was unanimously accepted as Islamic. Because its elaboration preceded the great division between Sunnis and Shiites, which became deep-rooted especially in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, even the Shiites adopted it; but it never acquired the status of an obligatory prescription. What meaning should be given to this ritual? Let us recapitulate the ceremony as a whole, with its various phases. Two distinct sacrifices take place, with no precise chronological order: one is bloody (the immolation of the victim), the other not (the shaving of the head). The second action consists in taking a tuft of the victim’s wool, impregnating it with the victim’s blood, and then putting it on the skull of the newborn so that the blood can flow; or, according to the “reformed” version, one must anoint the infant’s skull with saffron diluted in water. The infant’s head is then washed, in order to rid him of the blood or the saffron. The third action consists in giving the child a name (ism).94 At the same time, or later, the hair must be weighed, and its weight in silver (or gold) must be given by way of alms. The last stage consists of cutting up the victim and eating it as a family or with one’s neighbors, and perhaps offering it to others; this could take the form of alms. Although only three rites are usually cited, there are in fact four: the blood sacrifice, the shaving of the child’s head, the giving of a name, and the collective meal. In ancient Arabic culture, to which the lexicography bears witness, the bloody sacrifice, sometimes followed by a collective meal, is a frequent ritual that had to be observed in numerous situations, for example at a return from a

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voyage, the construction of a dwelling, or the arrival of a guest. Although no sacrifice of this type has been recognized by Islamic law, such sacrifices nonetheless continue to be observed in many regions of the Islamic world, especially among the Bedouins and in rural populations.95 It is probable that these sacrifices have their origin in the desire to win over “spirits” such as the djinns (the evil spirits). This is the common explanation of the sacrifice offered when the foundations of a new dwelling are laid. The idea is that every space has an “invisible” occupant, and that one must therefore offer it a blood sacrifice, in order to take possession of the place. In the present case, it is conceivable that the aim of the ritual is to pacify hostile spirits. But if we are in an Islamic context, can such an interpretation be legitimate? This sacrifice provoked opposition – as in the question of the role of blood – because of what it presupposes, namely the existence of invisible forces that can operate independently of the one sole God who is regarded as the Master of the universe. This is why I refuse to consider the ‘aqīqa as a “magic” ritual that was intended to protect the child against malevolent spirits (although it may have its origin in rites that had this meaning). My hypothesis is that the ‘aqīqa is a ritual whereby one becomes a member of the human community – in this instance, the group of relatives and the umma (the community of believers). By offering sacrifice in the name of the one sole God and dedicating the victim to him (hence the ritual words minka wa ilayka, “from you and to you”), one established a link between the child and God. It is possible that, initially, some envisaged this sacrifice on the model of the talion (a life for a life). But if the aim of the rite was to protect the child’s life, it must long have been recognized that many children died despite the performance of the rite. Nevertheless, by binding the newborn children to the one sole God, one assured them his protection. The anointing of the child’s skull with the blood of the animal that had been sacrificed looks like a ritual of a “magic” type, because this contact seems to be efficacious on its own. This, however, offended the sensibility of the Muslims who were most concerned to respect a strict monotheism, which would be contradicted by a practice of this kind: it is God who protects, not any kind of substance. For theological reasons, therefore, it became necessary to fight against this belief. The effort to define a monotheism stripped of every trace of paganism led, for example, to the rejection by some Muslims of the idea of miracles (which are admitted only in the case of the prophets), whereas others attacked the idea of human freedom, where this could lessen the divine omnipotence. It is within this context that we must understand the traditions (cf. Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq, mentioned previously) that see a connection between the anointing with the blood and polytheism (shirk). This is why some traditions also insist on the importance of invoking the name of God. One peculiarity is that the beneficiary, too, is named; this may be why attributing a name to the children had to take place on the same day, because it is obvious that the only way to designate them as beneficiaries was to designate them by their own name. Besides this, the proper name made it possible to give the newcomer a place in the group.96

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This is certainly a “rite de passage”, to use Arnold Van Gennep’s vocabulary, but a passage from what to what?97 The newborns are not crossing the frontier between nonexistence and existence, but between intrauterine life and life outside the womb as individual beings. In the maternal womb, they cannot be dissociated from their mother and live in a fusion with her. Their birth makes them physically autonomous. The ritual of the ‘aqīqa is meant to give life to the children a second time, in the world of social and cultural institutions, especially by giving them a name which confers on them an identity within their family group. But why should the ritual not be observed only for boys, as was originally the case? In the patrilineal society of that period, the specific aim was to give a place to the little boys as the future representatives and defenders of the house to which they belonged. As for the girls, they would later leave their father’s house to join the house of another man. A woman could not represent either her father’s house or that of her husband. This asymmetry still found its defenders in Ḥasan al-Baṣri, Muhammad b. Sīrīn, and Qatāda – evidence of the extent to which these men depended on an ancient culture that was not yet fully Islamized. Most of those who came after them, including of course the jurists of the “classic” schools, turned their backs on this asymmetry, because the political meaning of the ritual had become stronger. This evolution is one facet of the relative reassessment of the social and ritual exclusion of women, and implicitly also of female children.98 This asymmetry may have a pre-Islamic origin, but it survived long after the arrival and the triumph of Islam. According to some schools, however, the difference between the sexes was still retained, by doubling the number of victims that were sacrificed for a boy. Although the Imamites maintained the symmetry between the two sexes, they held that one should put to death a male animal for a boy (or two female animals, if no male was available), and a female animal for a girl.99 Initially, there was therefore an asymmetry between male and female. The Followers played a major role in promoting the idea of symmetry between the sexes. Such a way of doing things derived from a strong respect for the identification of the child with the victim, according to the notion of “pawning”. This formed part of an endeavor, among the Followers in Basra in the early eighth century, to bring the ‘aqīqa sacrifice closer to the tadhḥiyya sacrifice, which closes the pilgrimage: the victim had to be unblemished (thus excluding all the animals with physical defects), and it also had to belong to the ovine species, although the idea that the victim ought by preference to be male (as with the tadhḥiyya) was rejected. This effort clearly reflected a desire to fuse the two rituals; however, this did not succeed. Some also wished to change the name of the ceremony and abandon the term ‘aqīqa, because it had the same root as ‘uqūq, which denotes a grave sin (‘uqūq al-wālidayn, “the rupture of the filial bond”). This attempt was not long lasting, despite the appeal to the authority of the Prophet that attributed to him utterances hostile to the use of this term. There were also often lively discussions of what one should do with the victim. As with every sacrifice, it was forbidden that any part of the victim

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should be the object of a commercial transaction. If there was any exchange, it must not have an economic character. One was required to offer a share in the victim; for some authors, this concerned only one’s relatives and neighbors, but for others, one could also offer it by way of alms (ṣadaqa). The difference relates to the fact that alms constituted a work that can be credited to its author at the last Judgment. Much more important, however, is the offering in alms of the weight of the hair in silver or in gold. The payment of the tax (zakat for the Muslims and jizya for the Peoples of the Book) was in Islam elevated to the status of a religious prescription. These first alms of the newborn children are like a tax that underlines their entry into the umma. Despite all efforts, the ‘aqīqa ritual never attained the importance of the pilgrimage to Mecca or the fasting in the month of Ramadan, which fairly quickly became “pillars of Islam”. Why was this attempt made to establish the ‘aqīqa as an Islamic ritual for infants of both sexes? One important factor here is circumcision, which constitutes an important festive ritual even today, and is observed rigorously by Muslims (although it occupies only a very marginal place in the compilations of traditions). But it is essentially asymmetrical, because it concerns only boys. This ritual is based on a number of beliefs. First of all, there is the fear of demons that threaten the newborn child, who must be protected by its parents against evil. Second, the newborn does not belong at birth to the family group; it is through the ritual that he or she becomes a member of it. Third, it is through the bestowal of a name that the child receives its place in the umma.

Notes 1 The chapter has been translated to English from French by Brian McNeil. 2 On this, see the magnum opus of Schacht 1953: 38–189. For a more recent clarification, see Juynboll 2007: xvii–xxiii. 3 See Motzki 1991: 1–21, and Melchert 2008: 9–44. 4 These are the collections of Kulaynī (d. 941), Ibn Bābūyah (d. 901), and Abū Ja‘far al-Ṭūsī (d. 1068). One important part of the traditions is attributed to Ja‘far b. Muḥammad, known as al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), who was the sixth Shiite imam. 5 In volume 3 of the 2004 edition, Ibn al-Munḏir devotes book 34, consisting of four parts, to the ritual of the ‘aqīqa. 6 In addition to the entry on ṣaghīr in the E.I., 2nd ed., see also the contribution by Aubaile-Sallenave 1999: 125–60. See, in the same volume, Hayat 1999: 161–76, who describes and analyses the Moroccan case, Zirari. There is also the earlier work by Zerdoumi 1970, esp. 74–99, which is less precise but contains useful information. 7 Tirmiḏ ī, Sunan, 1997, VI, 249, nr. 1514. 8 Al-‘Āmilī, Wasā’il al-šī‘a, 1993, XXI, 405, §35. The aḏān is the call to prayer. The iqāma is the second and last call to prayer. 9 Ibid., 405–6, nr. 27426. 10 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥī ḥ, IX, 726–7, nr. 5467, 5468, 5469, and 5470. 11 The secondary literature on sacrifice in the Islamic world is abundant today; in addition to Bonte et al. 1999; see Chelhod 1955. 12 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24244. 13 Ibid., nr. 24245.

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14 The conclusion of the text confirms that it does not come from the Prophet. Instead, it presents the opinion of ‘Aṭ ā’ b. Abī Rabaḥ of Mecca (d. 732). 15 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 327–8, nr. 7953 and 7954; Tirmiḏ ī, Sunan, VI, 248, nr. 1513, and 250, nr. 1516; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 25, nr. 2831, and 26.27, nr. 2832, 2833. See also Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 112, nr. 24233. 16 According to Ibn al-Munḏir (al-Ishrāf, III, 414.415), the partisans of the asymmetry between boys and girls are al-Shāfi‘ī, Ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥ āq b. Rāhūya, and Abū Ṯawr, all of whom were legal scholars from the beginning of the ninth century. 17 The a ḍḥa model is the sacrifice which Muslims performed during pilgrimage in Mecca, in memory of Abraham, who was called by a voice to sacrifice his son. 18 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 329, nr. 7958 and 7959; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24229; Bukhārī, Ṣaḥī ḥ, with Ibn Ḥajar al-‘Asqalānī, Fatḥ al-bārī, IX, 730–1, nr. 5472; Tirmiḏ ī, Sunan, VI, 249, nr. 1515; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 30, nr. 2836. 19 “Classical legal doctrines” are doctrines that were fixed from the ninth century onward and that are associated with the “schools” that were set up within Sunnism from that century onward, or with the various religious “families” (Ibadhism, Imamism, Zaydism, and Isma’ilism). 20 Kazimirski 1860, I, 22a-b. 21 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Nihāya fī gharīb al-ḥadīth wa-l-athar, I, 34 (s.v.). 22 The Qur’an 2:196, 222, 262, 263, 264; 3:111, 186; 4:102; 33:18. 23 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 30, nr. 2837. 24 Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, IX, 734. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 al-Khaṭṭ ābī, Ma‘ālim, IV, 265. 28 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 27, nr. 2834. The rites of sprinkling and the shaving do not have the same sequence: according to Muhammad, the shaving comes first, but according to Qatāda, it comes last. 29 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 27–8. 30 Ibid., 28, nr. 2835. 31 Ibid., 29. 32 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 331, nr. 7965. 33 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24228. The term rahīna denotes a hostage, who was often “pawned” in the context of an agreement or the settling of a dispute. 34 Tirmiḏ ī, Sunan, VI, 252, nr. 1522. 35 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, VIII, 27, nr. 2834. 36 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 330, nr. 7962 (the number 7862 is given erroneously); Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24223 and nr. 24221 and 24222. 37 Gen. 22:11–13. 38 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 330–1, nr. 7963. 39 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24224. 40 Ibid., 113–14, nr. 24252. 41 Ibid., 111, nr. 24225. 42 Ibid., 113, nr. 24248. 43 Mālik, al-Muwaṭṭa’, III, 128, nr. 1104, and 128–9, nr. 1105; ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 333, nr. 7973. 44 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24236, 24237; ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 328–9, nr. 7956; Tirmiḏ ī, Sunan, VI, 248, nr. 1513. 45 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 328, nr. 7955. 46 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24251, and 114, nr. 24253. 47 ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 329, nr. 7957. 48 Ibid., 331, nr. 7964; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 112, nr. 24238. 49 Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24249.

Creation of a ritual of birth in Islam 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

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al-Ābādī, ‘Awn al-ma ‘būd., 33, nr. 2840, in Abū Dāwūd, Sunan. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 115, nr. 24264. Ibid., 112, nr. 24239 and 24240. Ibid., 112, nr. 24235. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 334, nr. 7975. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24226. Ibid., 115, nr. 24263. Ibid., 113, nr. 24246. Ibid., 113, nr. 24250. Ibid., 114, nr. 24256. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 332, nr .7968; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 115, nr. 24263; Ibn al-Munḏir, al-Ishrāf, III, 415. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 335, nr. 7978. This idea is also found in the writings of the Malikite Ibn Juzayy in Cordoba (d. 1340), who states that the obligation to offer the ‘aqīqa sacrifice does not exist for a stillborn child or for one who dies before the seventh day (al-Qawānīn al-fiqhiyya, Algiers, Maison des Livres, 1987, p. 153). Ibn al-Munḏir, al-Ishrāf, III, 416, nr. 1689. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24250. Ibid., 114, nr. 24256. The word rijs is found in the Qur’an, where it is applied, for example, to wine (5:90) and to pork meat (6:145). ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 331, nr. 7966. Ibid., 333, nr. 7972. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24247. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 332, nr. 7969. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 114, nr. 24255. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 333, nr. 7970. Ibid., 333, nr. 7971. Ibn al-Munḏir, al-Ishrāf, III, 415. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 114, nr. 24261. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 333, nr. 7971. Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 113, nr. 24241 and 24242. Ibid., 113, nr. 24243. Ibid., 114, nr. 24254. Mālīk, al-Muwaṭṭa‘, III, 129, nr. 1107; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Mu ṣannaf, V, 111, nr. 24227. ‘Āmilī, Wasā’il al-shī‘a, XXI, 413, nr. 27443. Ibid., 412, nr. 27441. Ibid., 415, nr. 27451. Ibid., 417, nr. 27457. Ibid., 414, nr. 27448. Ibid., 429, nr. 27500, 27501. ‘Abd al-Razzāq, al-Mu ṣannaf, IV, 331–2, nr. 7967. Ibid., 330–1, nr. 7963. Ibn al Munḏir, al-Ishrāf, III, 415. I do not take account here of the contradictions that are ascribed to him. The situation with regard to circumcision is different, because according to several traditions, he was born circumcised. The exception is Abū Wā’il, an obscure person of the second rank. They played a crucial role in many aspects of the contents of the Law. Although their ideas were not taken over literally, they were the basis of the “classic” doctrine (with its different variants) that was to be fixed in the course of the ninth century. Ibn al-‘Arabī, ‘Aridhat al-aḥwaḏi, VI, 252, gloss. Circumcision, which was limited to boys, could never assume such a role, because it was (and still is) carried out at a much later age, between three and seven years.

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94 This is the equivalent of the “first name” in English. 95 Apart from the sacrifice that takes place at the close of the pilgrimage and the ‘aqīqa, Islamic law has recognized only the expiatory sacrifices (kaffāra), especially for the pilgrims who transgress the Law, or the sacrifices that are the consequence of a vow. 96 An element worth noting here is that, where using blood is prohibited, it is replaced by a red substance, either saffron or red clay. This practice would, however, indicate that the old beliefs about the victim’s blood were still in view. 97 Van Gennep 1909. 98 For example the Islamic tradition fights against the idea that one should be content only with male births. 99 Al-‘Āmilī, Wasā’il al-shī‘a, XXI, 417, §2.

13 Conceptions of children and youth in Carolingian capitularies Valerie L. Garver

Among the most quintessentially Carolingian sources are capitularies, texts containing legal materials divided into chapters and usually issued by rulers and bishops.1 A manuscript copy of a collection of the capitularies of the Frankish king Charlemagne (d. 814) produced during the last quarter of the ninth century includes a passage inserted to accompany the Capitulary on Additions to the Laws of the Ripuarian Franks: Concerning the man who found his servant and ordered him to kill his lords (dominos suos) who were two children, one nine and the other eleven. In the end, after the servant killed those boys who were his lords, the man threw that servant into a certain pit. And he was fined, so that for the one who was nine years old he had to pay triple the wergeld, double for the other who was eleven years old, and triple for the murdered servant, and our ban issued for all.2 This short text provides a window into the types of situations involving children that caught the attention of Carolingian authorities. Frankish laws and other existing normative documents appear to have been insufficient to resolve fully the situation described here. The passage comprises a response to a particular case that was a serious transgression against the peace that Carolingian rulers wished to maintain. Because the man had a servant do his dirty work and then killed him, it did not fit the typical prescriptions found in Frankish law collections, which generally addressed situations in which the individual who struck or killed another person acted of his or her own accord. For such cases, Germanic laws were generally straightforward. Perpetrators had to pay fines (wergeld) based on the monetary value assigned to certain social groups, typically according to gender, status, and age. Yet here was a more complex instance in which a man ordered a servant to murder his child lords. Further, the instigator proceeded to kill the servant by tossing him into a pit. The tripling of the wergeld for the younger child and servant and the doubling of the fine for the older boy underline the serious nature of this transgression. In other manuscripts, this passage is inserted in different capitulary collections but always next to the capitulary adding to the Ribuarian laws,

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demonstrating that others believed it worthy of preservation perhaps because of its utility and applicability or because of the striking nature of the situation it describes and the probable rarity of such an event. From the point of view of a historian of childhood, this text demonstrates an already well-known characteristic of Germanic law: that the age of the victim affected the punishment for the perpetrator. In addition to serving as proof of the efforts of Carolingian authorities to protect children, it suggests the kinds of danger that children faced in the Carolingian world. Further evidence from Carolingian capitularies concerning children demonstrates that royal and episcopal authorities wished to guard children against tangible harm both because they believed children needed special protection and because children could serve as a means to demonstrate the legitimacy, power, and authority of royal and ecclesiastical leaders.

Sources and methodology The Carolingian Empire, which encompassed much of Europe from approximately 750 to 950 CE and shaped Western European culture for centuries to come, experienced a renaissance resulting in the production of many texts, including perhaps most famously capitularies. During the reign of Charlemagne’s father Pippin the Short (d. 768) and continuing through the ninth century, Frankish kings and bishops worked to institute a broad Christian reform in contemporary society and to shape the behavior of those under their rule, often by producing or commissioning texts to spread and implement their proposed reforms. Endeavoring to create and sustain a Christian empire allowed the Frankish kings to bring unity to their diverse peoples and lands. Ecclesiastical leaders became partners in these efforts because they benefitted from Carolingian patronage and because they saw in such an undertaking a means to carry out their pastoral duties. Capitularies were among the most prominent and far-reaching means leaders had to propagate their ideas. Children and youth appear relatively frequently in the corpus of Carolingian capitularies, but few scholars have studied these instances and no one has examined this information on childhood in a comprehensive manner. A thorough analysis of all instances of children and youth in royal and episcopal capitularies would require a far longer work than this short piece. Thus this chapter will provide some representative examples. Such an investigation offers opportunities to understand more clearly the development of conceptions of children and youth, particularly their status, gender, and legal conditions, and to consider anew how historians should approach the capitularies as a group of texts. Capitularies are notoriously difficult to define in a precise manner because they vary in format, dissemination, length, and origin. Put most simply, they are normative documents promulgated by lay and ecclesiastical authorities, most commonly emperors, kings, and bishops. They appear in intent to comprise efforts to shape and change society. Often consisting of lists of chapters dealing with nearly every topic imaginable, lay and ecclesiastical authorities

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addressed capitularies to targeted groups or sometimes, in the cases of emperors and kings, to the entirety of the Carolingian Empire. All recipients need not have been able to read, for some capitularies make clear that representatives of the king, aristocrats, or bishops were to disseminate or explain the statements of these texts to those under their authority, thereby acting as conduits of communication between ruler and ruled. Certain chapters or statements crop up in different capitularies, sometimes drawing from older church councils and sometimes borrowing language from one another. Historians have long accepted capitularies as evidence of the workings of the Carolingian government even if they have disagreed about the authorship and actual influence of these documents. Debate continues concerning the ways historians can use these texts.3 Because I am concerned here with conceptions of childhood rather than with the mechanisms of governance, I will not engage much with these debates. Given the limited types of sources that survive from the Carolingian era, determining a means to measure the implementation of the capitularies’ normative ideas remains a fraught issue among specialists. In terms of my focus on tracing ideas, however, it is clear that Carolingian capitularies recorded conceptions of children and youth that authorities hoped to convey to certain regions and groups, as well as to the empire as a whole. As documents of communication, capitularies can reveal the ways the powerful thought about some of the weakest individuals in Carolingian lands.

The historiography of Carolingian childhood By focusing on capitularies, it should be possible to trace ideas concerning children that reflect practices and concepts that central authorities in the Carolingian world believed to be important enough to propagate. One of the very few to have examined children in the capitularies is Jean Yver, who discussed the legal protections afforded to minors. Although he recognized that minors constituted a protected group alongside widows, wards, and the church in the statutes of church councils and in capitularies, he focused mainly on the legal mechanisms that protected those under the age of twelve from losing their inheritances and from being answerable for their actions under the law.4 But capitularies offer information on more than the legal capacity of minors. The conceptions of children in capitularies provide a useful comparison to other evidence of the ways ecclesiastical and royal authorities thought of children. The relatively few studies centered on Carolingian children or childhood have mainly focused on the religious sphere, with oblation (the giving of a child to a religious house so that he or she could eventually enter the religious life) receiving perhaps the most extensive attention.5 Studies of baptism in the Carolingian world have raised a number of issues concerning infants and children.6 Children have often been central to examinations of education in the Carolingian era, and quite a few of these studies employed capitulary evidence.7 Articles have focused on the views of penitentials concerning children

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and the influence of monastic ideals on ideas of childhood.8 Broader considerations include articles by Pierre Riché, who provided a mainly monastic view of Carolingian childhood, and Janet L. Nelson, who examined children and their families in relation to the church.9 These studies have at times drawn upon capitularies and the church councils whose canons capitularies sometimes repeated.

Children in capitularies A survey of the instances of children and youth in royal and imperial capitularies indicates that certain issues were of great concern to those disseminating Carolingian capitularies: protection of orphans and children more generally; insistence that children and youth reach an appropriate age before taking oaths and vows; concern for the education of boys in monasteries and church schools; correct treatment of children in judicial cases; ways to help children become faithful Christians, including baptism; clarifications of the social status of children; and safeguarding of children from physical harm. This evidence demonstrates that Carolingian authorities included children in their efforts to bring about widescale Christian reform (correctio) from the late eighth to the early tenth century. They therefore believed children could benefit as much from correctio as adults. The political elite were concerned with the salvation of the whole Frankish people.10 Capitularies offer a chance to see the ways in which they thought they could enlist children both as actors and passive recipients of acts of Christian virtue in order to bring an ideal Christian society into being. Because the capitularies often discuss individuals whom we today might term youth or teenagers in a manner similar to that applied to children, I will also discuss the actions youths could not take due to their young age while recognizing that, in other situations, many prescriptions that demanded actions were meant to apply as much to this social group as to adults. In other words, just because capitularies excluded the young from certain duties, punishments, or situations did not mean that they were exempt from other broader stipulations in capitularies. Carolingian episcopal capitularies offer a means to weigh the degree to which bishops thought about children and youth in similar ways to royal authorities. For the most part they did, a fact that will surprise no one familiar with the capitularies produced under the direction of these lay and ecclesiastical leaders. Bishops began issuing capitularies after Frankish kings did, and often their capitularies drew from royal ones. Both sometimes repeated earlier canons of church councils. The main difference between the two may be their dissemination. Generally episcopal capitularies were meant for the priests of a bishop’s diocese whereas royal capitularies could be targeted to specific audiences or to the empire as a whole. Episcopal capitularies sometimes circulated beyond their dioceses of origin, but their audience was typically limited to priests and other clerics.11 Due to space constraints, this discussion must omit three subjects. In order to focus on statements concerning children and youth, I have excluded references

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to children that appear to refer to adult children. Because a rich historiography already exists concerning capitulary evidence for education and because recent studies of baptism have covered capitulary statements concerning that sacrament, I will not discuss education and offer only some brief thoughts on baptism.12 These areas of concern nevertheless underline the ways that Carolingian authorities employed capitularies as a means to protect children from harm, whether physical, material, or spiritual. By defending children from perceived dangers, those issuing the capitularies appeared to keep order and promote Christian reform in Carolingian lands. By contextualizing the capitulary evidence with other types of evidence concerning children, it will be possible to see that these normative stipulations reflected a broad social concern for children.

Orphans Concern over the protection of orphans crops up in a variety of capitularies over time and space. A capitulary of Pippin the Short dated to 755, citing a canon of the council of Chalcedon (canon 3), notes that clerics are not to conduct secular business except on behalf of orphans, widows, and churches.13 Another chapter in the same capitulary insists that secular officials, that is counts and iudices, must hear the pleas of orphans, widows, and churches and provide them justice.14 Similarly in the so-called General Capitulary for the Missi of 802 issued at Aachen, Pippin’s son Charlemagne guaranteed through royal ban the protection of the weak – orphans, widows, and churches – from the laity who might seek to take advantage of them.15 Missi were royal officials charged with helping to ensure compliance with royal demands and expectations, so this particular capitulary underlines the intention that such protection go into effect throughout the Carolingian Empire. In the Capitularies for the Missi of Aquitaine and for the Missi of Paris and Rouen of March 802, Charlemagne stated that those who transgressed his orders to protect these groups would have to pay imperial fines.16 The Italian Capitulary of 801 stated that “anyone who shall have broken the peace decreed for the churches of God, widows, orphans, wards, and the weak, shall pay the fine of sixty solidi.”17 Charles the Bald (d. 877), Charlemagne’s grandson, propagated capitula in 853 that included a chapter that again stressed the importance of ensuring justice and protection for orphans, widows, and the church. This text further mentioned the rape of girls ( puellarum) in a list of crimes including those against widows and those in religious orders that deserve justice.18 A concern with orphans, particularly in conjunction with churches and widows, shows the desire to institute a Christian society because biblical Scriptures demanded that the faithful care for them, such as Psalm 82:3: “Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.”19 In a capitulary of 884 issued by Carloman, king of West Francia (d. 884), the preface discusses the need to pray for orphans, the poor, and widows.20 Many consider this text to be among the last Carolingian capitularies.

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Extending from the dynasty’s beginnings with Pippin the Short to its near end with Carloman of West Francia, a concern with orphans is apparent throughout. Drawing from biblical and patristic precedent, these texts tried to guarantee that lay and ecclesiastical authorities alike would look after orphans and ensure that they could seek justice. We know that orphanages existed. The capitulary collection of Ansegis, abbot of St. Wandrille (d. 833), for example, mentions orphanages.21 The General Capitulary for the Missi of 802 maintains that bishops, abbots, and abbesses ought to help and protect orphans, pilgrims, the poor, and widows in addition to its earlier stipulation that the laity ought not be allowed to take advantage of these individuals.22 These social groups, as those perhaps least able to defend themselves from material or physical harm, appear together, but provisions for their care or particular statements regarding their protection crop up elsewhere in the capitularies, demonstrating that authorities equally understood that the needs and problems of orphans, widows, and pilgrims differed at times. Maintaining orphanages or providing food and clothing to orphans was a form of ensuring these children’s well-being, but it also stood as an act of Christian charity and virtue that authorities wished to encourage. Discussion of orphans in capitularies therefore reflects the ideal society that Carolingian rulers wished to produce. A good king protected the defenseless, thereby demonstrating his ability to keep order.23 Orphans composed a subsection of Carolingian society that caught the attention of the powerful because caring for them properly was a clear sign that the world was functioning as it should.

The protection of children from physical and spiritual harm Capitularies prescribe protection to children in some other situations that demonstrate a perception that social status contributed to some children’s problems. When collecting the haribannus, a fine for failing to provide military service, the king’s officials (missi) are allowed to seize goods, including cloth and clothing, in order to exact the required amount from an individual. Yet according to the Double Capitulary of Thionville of 805, “wives and children are not to be stripped of their clothes on this account.”24 This statement suggests both that officials may sometimes have taken the clothing from the backs of children and women and that it may have been acceptable to carry out such an act against a man. Given the other stipulations protecting orphans and widows, however, this chapter’s protections rather reflect the desired right order of the realm. A man who needed to steal clothes from the backs of children hardly deserved the title of king. In a chapter in the capitulary collection of Ansegis, the children of a dead free woman could retain their free status even if their father lost it because debt or crime placed him in servitude.25 One can see in this capitulary the possibility that it would be logical to perceive the children of an unfree man as also being unfree even if their mother had been free.26 The children of such a union required legal protection. Here one senses the desire of Carolingian authorities to order society at every level.

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Some capitulary texts emphasize the importance of nourishing children physically and spiritually. The Capitulare Septimanicum apud Tolosam datum of June 844 includes a section concerning the division of parishes and the construction of churches and altars. The chapter insists that priests and bishops use “reason and authority” (cum ratione et auctoritate) in deciding where to construct locations of worship. It points out that distance or the danger of waters and woods may prevent children, along with women and the disabled, from reaching the main church. In such cases, priests could build altars in alternate locations.27 Children were members of Christendom, worthy of efforts to include them in worship and the wider Christian community. Infant baptism had become standard by the ninth century, although it does not appear that ninth-century Carolingian clerics understood when or how it became the norm. Infant baptism may have referred to children as old as three, though it is clear that the Carolingians preferred that parents baptize their children earlier.28 Charlemagne’s late-eighth-century Capitulary on the Saxon Regions stipulated that children should be baptized by their first birthday. Failure to have one’s infant baptized was to result in a fine ranging from 30 solidi if one were a litus (that is an unfree person) to 120 solidi if one were an aristocrat.29 This chapter of the capitulary reflected a crucial way to make the newly conquered Saxons part of the Carolingian world. Moreover, it suggests a desired age for baptism. A number of episcopal capitularies discuss the act of baptism, noting that parents and godparents were to be present when a priest carried out the sacrament. One such case appears in the Second Capitulary of Gharbald of Liège (bishop 785/87–809), dated to 802–809 and one of the earliest episcopal capitularies, which, in some manuscripts, was appended to a letter of Charlemagne as a means to lend the capitulary imperial authority.30 The Capitulary of Ruotger of Trier (archbishop 915–931) is one of the most recent of all episcopal capitularies, dating to 915–929. One chapter guarded the right of priests to baptize infants, although condemning laity who presumed to carry out baptisms.31 This example indicates how infant baptism in the church had become the norm by the end of the Carolingian era. More broadly, episcopal legislation related to baptism demonstrates that church leaders believed that children from a very young age were to be part of Christian society. Such regulations equally reminded recipients of the peril to unbaptized children’s souls, demonstrating a concern for the salvation of children. These cases make clear that royal and episcopal authorities worked together to achieve common goals in relation to children and to protect them from perceived dangers. Clerics worried about infants who died before they could be baptized and welcomed into the Christian community, particularly those who died at the hands of their parents. Determining the frequency of infanticide in the Carolingian world remains impossible, but ecclesiastical authorities concerned themselves with this crime in a range of sources.32 A number of episcopal capitularies condemn infanticide. Three versions of the Second Capitulary of Theodulf, bishop of Orléans (d. 821) stipulate severe punishment for mothers

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guilty of this crime. The bishop forbade them from entering a church for forty days, from worshipping with others for four years, and from taking the Eucharist for a decade.33 The most fulsome version of this capitulary is that produced by Ademar of Chabannes (989–1034), a monk who worked for the bishop of Angoulême in present-day southwestern France. After episcopal legislation in the form of capitularies ceased in the mid-tenth century, these earlier documents were sometimes reissued by later bishops.34 In addition to the aforementioned chapter, it includes another, not found in the other redactions, which states that a woman who killed her baby was to do penance for fourteen years, fifteen if the baby was a boy. If she aborted prior to the passage of forty days (after which ecclesiastical authorities generally believed the fetus became animate), her penance was to last seven years. In all cases if the baby died prior to baptism, the parents were to remain penitent for an entire year and never again to be entirely free of the need to do penance.35 Because it survives in no earlier versions, this chapter probably reflects Ademar’s era more than Theodulf’s. Yet the similarities between the two chapters and Ademar’s inclusion of both in his version underline that the influence of these ideas concerning infanticide and baptism lasted at least into the eleventh century.

Oaths and vows When capitularies discussed the vows of children, they differed in their understanding of boys and girls. Male youths could swear oaths at a much younger age than their female counterparts. Quite a few capitulary chapters repeat the insistence that boys must reach the age of twelve before they can swear an oath.36 The Capitulary for the Missi of 789, for example, states that boys over twelve should attend assemblies ( placita) where judgments would be made.37 The stipulated age doubtless reflects biblical precedent. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was twelve when he spent three days in the temple of Jerusalem questioning the elders (2:41–52). Although such protections surely helped keep children from making foolish promises, their primary purpose may have been to protect familial interests and to assure imperial authority. One gets a sense of what was at stake in the vows forbidden to boys under twelve by examining the statement concerning fidelity to the emperor found in the General Capitulary for the Missi of 802. This document appeared within two years of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation in Rome. The text therefore refers to the fact that he was now an emperor and not merely a king. Chapter two states, And [Charlemagne] has ordered that every man in his entire kingdom, whether ecclesiastic or layman, each according to his vow and way of life, who has previously promised fidelity to him in the name of the king is now to make that promise in the name of the Caesar; and those who have not yet made that promise are now to do likewise, all who are twelve

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years and over. And that it is to be expounded publicly to all, in such a way that every person can understand how important and how many are the matters which that oath comprehends – not only, as many have hitherto thought, fidelity to the lord emperor as regards his life and not bringing an enemy into his realm for hostile purpose and not consenting to, or remaining silent about, another’s infidelity towards him, but that all should know that oath.38 Authorities appear to have expected that children under twelve would not be able to comprehend the full ramifications of their oaths nor the obligations of fidelity to the emperor. This text demonstrates the serious nature of the oath itself, underlining to adults that the emperor would not accept arguments that they may not have understood the ramifications of their oaths. By excluding children, the king preempts excuses. Charlemagne however wanted boys to swear the appropriate oaths once they turned twelve: “And children previously unable to swear because of their tender years are now to promise fidelity to us.”39 This statement in the Double Capitulary of Thionville of 806 prevents any men who had enjoyed a prior exception to taking the oath because of their young age from avoiding the oath later in life. Kings also appear to have been concerned about children being forced to swear oaths. The General Admonition of 789 issued by Charlemagne at Aachen, states that “children who have not reached the age of reason are not to be forced to swear, as is the practice among the Burgundians.”40 The Capitulary of Frankfurt of 794 has a similar admonition: “Children are not to be dragged to an oath, as is the Burgundians’ practice.”41 Because of Carolingian interest in earlier Germanic law texts, those writing and issuing capitularies would have been well aware of the Burgundian insistence that men suspected of committing a crime had to swear oaths along with twelve related witnesses in addition to their wives and their sons, apparently regardless of the sons’ ages: “If a native freeman, either barbarian or Roman, is accused of a crime through suspicion, let him render oath, and let him swear with his wife and sons and twelve relatives.”42 Carolingian authorities wished to preserve earlier law codes and sometimes expanded upon them, as seen in the example with which this chapter began. In fact, it is mainly through Carolingian manuscripts that these legal texts survived.43 How much they influenced Carolingian normative texts such as capitularies remains subject to debate, but capitularies sometimes repeated their stipulations, expanded upon them, or simply commented upon them, as here. With regard to their value as sources for understanding conceptions of childhood, the most striking aspect of these references is the way in which Carolingian authorities used their perception of the roles and intellectual capabilities of children as a means to set the Franks apart from the Burgundians. In contrast to boys, girls were not to make vows until they reached early adulthood. Many capitularies repeat older church canons concerning girls and young women who wished to take up the veil and enter the religious life. They

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insist that only young women who understand the repercussions of their vows should be allowed to take them. The Double Capitulary of Thionville of 806, for example, insists “that little girls, in early childhood, are not to be veiled before they are capable of choosing what they want”.44 Often capitularies stipulate that women had to reach the age of twenty-two or twenty-five before taking religious vows.45 The General Admonition of 789, for example, states that “virgins are not to be veiled before the age of 25 except when reasonable necessity compels it.”46 Virtually the same language appears in the Capitulary of Frankfurt of 794.47 This difference between boys and girls in age requirements for binding oaths underlines crucial gender differences and expectations in the Carolingian world. Women had to remain under male authority whereas boys could grow out of it. Yet these capitularies may equally reflect a concern with protecting the interests of powerful aristocratic families who wished to maintain access to a marriageable daughter for as long as possible. Authorities perceived girls and young women to be vulnerable and therefore insisted upon their protection. The Capitulary of Frankfurt of 794, for example, insisted “[c]oncerning girls who have been deprived of their parents: let them be entrusted, under the supervision of the bishops and priests to women of sober character, as canonical authority instructs.”48

Experiencing childhood in the Carolingian world A fascinating contrast to these stipulations is the aristocratic laywoman Dhuoda’s (d. after 843) insistence that she had the right to direct her own teenage son William. Married to the lay magnate Bernard of Septimania (d. 844), Dhuoda would be lost to the historical record were it not for the advice book she wrote between 841 and 843 for William.49 From 840 to 843 the Carolingian Empire was rent apart by a civil war among the three sons of the emperor Louis the Pious (d. 840). Dhuoda’s husband Bernard ran afoul of one these royal sons, the West Frankish king Charles the Bald, who demanded that William (d. 850) remain at court as a hostage. Dhuoda wrote the handbook far from the royal court; she remained in Septimania near the present border of France and Spain. She wished to pass on her motherly advice to her absent son. Dhuoda’s book represents a woman’s assertion of authority over a sixteenyear-old youth. Even if a boy could swear oaths at age twelve, her handbook’s tone and the careful advice it provides concerning behavior toward one’s elders, particularly at court, suggests that some thought that elite male youth over the age of twelve continued to face danger from the persuasion of others. She wrote, for example, to William about the dangers of accepting advice: “As things are now, one does not know whom to choose as a counselor or whom one ought first to believe, and for many the hope of finding help from anyone remains uncertain.”50 The handbook serves as a reminder that legal status may not reflect lived social status. Measuring the capitulary evidence against the lived experience of children in the Carolingian world requires consideration of a much broader range of

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sources. To some degree the work of earlier scholars makes such an endeavor possible as do other types of primary texts and archeological remains. In addition to Dhuoda’s handbook, Carolingian sources remind modern scholars that, despite a desire to protect children, authorities, parents, and interested bystanders often could not keep them safe. Here I offer only a few examples of children’s dangerous realities. Outside forces did not necessarily spare the lives of children in battle. When Abbo (d. 921), a monk at the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, described the Viking attack against Paris in 885–886, he noted that the Northmen slaughtered children before their parents’ eyes.51 This statement appears as part of a list of dreadful acts, meant both to convey the suffering he had witnessed and to provoke a response of horror. The expectation that the deaths of children could arouse deep emotions along with the types of reports of actual deaths that survive from this era indicate both the ubiquity of childhood death and the sense that few adults ever got so used to it that it failed to affect them.52 Starvation was another possible peril for children. The Annals of Fulda, in its discussion of a famine that struck the area along the Rhine in 850, uses tales involving children to underscore the misery in this region. The annalist relates how a starving woman and her very young son ( parvulus) sought food from Raban Maur, the archbishop of Mainz. Just before she could cross the threshold of the archbishop’s villa, she died. The child then attempted to nurse from his dead mother causing “many of those who saw this to groan and weep”. Immediately following is a purposefully heart-wrenching account of a man, his wife, and his young son who left the region of Grabfeld for Thuringia in the hope of finding food. On their way, the desperate father suggested to his wife that they eat their child. She begged him not to, but he went so far as to draw his sword to kill the boy before God saved the child by having the man notice that wolves nearby were killing a deer. He drove the wolves away, and the family ate the deer meat, not the boy.53 As with the account of the Vikings killing children, these accounts were meant to provoke a certain response, and they are extreme, if not perhaps exaggerated, cases. Yet they highlight a situation that was all too common: a lack of food for children and those who cared for them. Archeological remains have provided rich evidence concerning children’s health and their treatment after death in the early Middle Ages that both contextualizes and expands upon textual evidence. Striking differences appear in the early medieval record of children if one examines archeological evidence from cemeteries and church burials. In the earlier centuries, cemetery evidence of individuals under eighteen is rare, for newborns and infants almost nonexistent. Yet by the ninth and tenth centuries, infants and children appear in rather high numbers both in cemeteries and in burials near the walls of churches. Rates for those under eighteen often fall between about thirty to fifty percent of the graves in ninth- and tenth-century Carolingian sites. Those most vulnerable appear to have been younger than ten because their graves number the highest.

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Interpreting this apparent change over time has proved difficult. It may relate to gradual Christianization in rural areas; or it may result from the increasingly sacralized nature of cemeteries particularly by the tenth century; or burial customs may simply have varied and changed for other reasons.54 Some have suggested that in the seventh and eighth centuries (and to some degree in late antiquity) infants and children may have been buried at home, rather than in cemeteries. The state of many cemetery excavations also complicates any effort to draw clear conclusions. Archeologists can only rarely be certain that they have excavated a full cemetery, making it difficult to be sure that a certain group of individuals was excluded and muddying attempts to determine if age may have played a role in the location of one’s burial in a given cemetery.55 Some have suggested that the quantity and placement of children’s graves relates to baptism.56 Across the early Middle Ages children’s burials often demonstrated care and purposeful positioning. Excavations of graves can therefore provide enormously valuable information about children that is unavailable in the written record.57 Cécile Tréffort, for example, has identified increased burial of very young children along the walls of parish churches from the eighth to eleventh centuries. She notes of course that finding the remains of young children is complicated by the small size of their bones and by dating their remains, although improvements in dating methods involving teeth has helped identify them more readily than in past decades.58 These brief examples provide some context for the evidence of capitularies, showing that the perception of children as a group in need of protection reflected an awareness that children indeed faced real and present dangers.

Conclusion Occasionally a capitulary states that children ought to do something. The General Admonition of 789, for example, repeats the biblical precept that children are to honor their parents, quoting Exodus 20:12, but this may well remind adult sons and daughters of this obligation more than young children.59 Capitularies often reflected on the actions of adults, using children as a way to discuss how adults ought to behave. Good Christians protect children, and therefore a king could show himself to be an able ruler by providing for the safety of the children of his realm. Children appear frequently in the corpus of Carolingian capitularies because they allowed authorities to demonstrate how they sought to protect the defenseless and ensure that others could not take advantage of the weak. In this regard, they were often listed with other defenseless individuals such as widows and pilgrims. Children did not however merely serve as a means to make certain points in capitularies. These texts equally reflect the consideration and care afforded to the youngest members of Carolingian society. Many capitularies make clear that authorities believed real dangers threatened the young. Because capitularies have long been central to the study of the Carolingian world, one wonders why historians have often overlooked the children that

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appear in them. In part, this absence of specific scholarship reflects the way children appear – as means to address adult matters of authority, power, property, and the right ordering of the Christian realm. Yet we should not overlook the fact that when children are addressed in capitularies, they are clearly children, a group set apart by their young age, lack of reason, weakness, defenselessness, and dependence. One finds hints of the legal status of the young in capitularies and for a social desire to keep them safe. Children composed a part of the Carolingian reforms because they were a means to achieve those goals but also because they were “good to talk with”. That is, discussing children became a way of working out and agreeing upon what constituted the good of the realm, of the Franks, and of Christians as a whole. We should not forget that capitularies sometimes grew from assemblies and that they were meant to be disseminated relatively widely among the Carolingian elite with the intention that their ideas then be passed on to those of lower social status. Capitularies set children apart, demonstrating a conception of children as needing adult care and protection, in ways that made children central to the ordering of Christian society in the Carolingian world.

Notes 1 I wish to thank the organizers, particularly Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, and participants in the workshops in Oslo that led to the production of this volume. I benefitted from their feedback and learned a great deal from their work. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the NIU history department who offered valuable critiques of an earlier version of this piece during a departmental seminar and to Jennifer Davis who helpfully lent her critical eye to an earlier draft. Any remaining errors are of course my own. For an overview of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (hereafter abbreviated MGH ), see http://capitularia.uni-koeln.de/cap/publ/resources/Mordek_Bibliotheca_ 1995.pdf. 2 Munich BSB Clm 19416, f. 54r–54v. This manuscript is available digitally at http:// bildsuche.digitale-sammlungen.de. This passage also survives in three other manuscripts, all with links to Italy and to one another. See also MGH Capit. 1, no. 129: 257, and in the same volume Capitulare legi Ribuariae additum, no. 41: 117–18. Determining if the boys were the lords of the instigator or of the servant is ambiguous in the Latin text, but it makes the most sense if the man commanding the servant is subject to the boys. Otherwise why would the servant obey his order? All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 3 See, for example, Mordek 1986; Pössel 2006; Davis 2015: 35–8ff. 4 Yver 1968. 5 De Jong 1983, 1984, and 1996; Boswell 1988; Quinn 1989; see also the chapter by McGuire in this volume. 6 Rubellin 1982; Phelan 2014. 7 Riché 1989; Hildebrandt 1992; de Jong 1995 and 1998. 8 Meens 1994; Lutterbach 2003; Garver 2005. 9 Riché 1973; Nelson 1994a. 10 De Jong 2009: 5. 11 Van Rhijn 2007: 47–8, 214–16. 12 See notes 6 and 7. 13 Capitulare Vernense duplex, 16, MGH Capit. 1: 26.

222 Valerie L. Garver 14 Ibid., c. 23: 27. Although they often served in some judicial capacities, the term iudex as used in Carolingian texts has no single clear modern English equivalent, so it is left untranslated here. 15 Capitulare missorum generale, 5 and 40, MGH Capit. 1: 93, 96. 16 Capitularia missorum specialia, 18, MGH Capit. 1: 101. 17 Capitulare italicum, 2, MGH Capit. 1: 205. A solidus was primarily a means of reckoning in the Carolingian era, as the main coin in use was the silver denarius. Carolingian rulers effected monetary reforms that stipulated that twelve denarii equaled one solidus. According to an edict at the Council of Frankfurt in 794, one denarius should allow purchase of at least twelve loaves of wheat bread. MGH Capit. 1: 74. Thirty to 120 solidi was therefore an enormous amount of money. For a brief overview of Carolingian money, see Verhulst 2002: 117–25. For greater depth, see Coupland 2007, chs. 1, 3, 7, 8 and 9. 18 Conventus Silvacensis, 2, MGH Capit. 1: 424. 19 See also Exodus 22:22; Job 29:12; Psalms 68:5 and 148:9; James 1:27. 20 Capitula apud Vernis palatium, MGH Capit. 1: 551. 21 2.29, MGH Capit. N.S. 1: 550. St. Wandrille, also known as Fontanelle, was in the diocese of Rouen. Ansegis was responsible for producing an organized collection of capitularies issued during the reigns of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious (d. 840). 22 Capitulare missorum generale, 14, MGH Capit. 1: 94. 23 Nelson 1994b: 60. 24 Et uxores vel infants non fiant dispoliati pro hac re de eorum vestimentis, c. 19 (35), MGH Capit. 1: 125. 25 Capitulary Collection of Ansegis, 1.106, MGH Capit. N.S. 1: 494. 26 According to Germanic law, children were to retain the status of their mothers, not of their fathers. In practice, however, such laws were treated with some flexibility. See, for example, Rio 2006: 15–23. 27 Cf. 7, MGH Capit. Franc. 2: 257. 28 Van Engen 2014: 104. 29 Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, 19, MGH Capit. 1: 69. 30 Second Capitulary of Gharbald of Liège, 3, MGH Capit. episc. 1: 26. 31 Capitulary of Ruotger of Trier, 9, MGH Capit. episc. 1: 64. 32 Garver 2012: 237–9. 33 Second Capitulary of Theodulf of Orléans, 5.1, MGH Capit. episc. 1: 160–1. 34 Head 2007: 255. 35 Second Capitulary of Theodulf of Orléans, 10.17, MGH Capit. episc. 1: 177. 36 See, for example, Capitulary Collection of Ansegis, 3.8, MGH Capit. Franc. N.S. 1: 574; Capitulare missorum generale of 802, 2, MGH Capit. Franc. 1: 92. 37 Capitulare missorum, 4, MGH Capit. Franc. 1: 67. 38 Capitulare missorum generale, 2, MGH Capit. 1: 92. Translation from King 1987: 234–5. 39 Et infantis, qui antea non potuerunt propter iuvenalem aetatem iurare, modo fidelitatem nobis repromittant, c. 9 (25), MGH Capit. 1: 124. 40 Admonitio generalis, 63, MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui usum scholarum separatim editi 16: 216. 41 Synod of Frankfurt, 45, MGH Capit. 1: 77. 42 Liber constitutionem, 8.1, MGH Leges 3: 536. Translation is from The Burgundian Code (ed. Drew 1972: 29). 43 McKitterick 1989: 37–60. 44 Ut infantulae aetatis puellulae non velentur antequam ille elegere sciant quid velint, salva canonica auctoritate, c. 14, MGH Capit. 1: 122. 45 See, for example, Capitulary Collection of Ansegis, 1.101 and 1.109, MGH Capit. N.S. 1: 498. 46 Admonitio generalis, c. 46: 202. 47 C. 46, MGH Capit. 1: 77.

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48 C. 40, MGH Capit. 1: 77. 49 The scholarship on Dhuoda’s handbook is extensive, but among the best and most recent works are Claussen 1990; Claussen 1996; Nelson 2007. 50 Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 3.6. Translation from Handbook for William, trans. Neel 1999: 30. 51 Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bella Parisiacae urbis: 36–9. 52 For further discussion of responses to the death of children, see the chapter by Giladi in this volume. 53 Annales Fuldenses, MGH SS rer. Germ. 7: 40. 54 Tréffort 1997: 106–7. 55 Alexandre-Bidon and Lett 1999: 29–31, 33. 56 Tréffort 1997: 103–5. 57 Ibid., 101. 58 Ibid., 99–100. 59 Admonitio generalis, c. 67: 220.

14 Children and youth in monastic life Western Europe 400–1250 CE Brian Patrick McGuire

In the early Middle Ages in Western Europe, from about 500–1100 it was common for children to be given by their parents as gifts to monasteries. These socalled oblates were looked upon as offerings whose own intentions and desires were not of concern. Early medieval popes insisted that it was unacceptable for such oblates later to leave the monastery when they reached adulthood.1 A promise was a promise, and just as the baptismal promise could be given by godparents on behalf of an infant, so too the monastic vow could be given by biological parents on behalf of their child. The institution of monastic oblation more or less disappeared in the twelfth century. The Cistercians, who originated from the Burgundian monastery of Cîteaux, were the first monastic movement that refused to accept children into their monasteries. From an early point in their history, they required recruits to their monasteries to be fifteen years of age. Later the minimum age was raised to eighteen. Several scholars have seen this development as indicative of a new view of childhood in the period, according to which children were considered as not belonging in monasteries because they were not yet ready to make the choices that the monastic vocation required.2 An awareness of this new view of childhood precludes Philippe Ariès’s claim that until modern times, children were considered to be no different from adults. This interpretation of attitudes toward medieval children as being children and requiring special attention is not questioned today. Especially in the work of the greatest monastic historian of the twentieth century, Jean Leclercq, the seminal contribution of the Cistercians has been noted in the way the monks distanced themselves from children out of a realization of their difference from adults.3 Despite earlier studies on the view of children in monastic life, it remains to be established what cultural factors lie behind this change in attitude. In the most important recent study about oblation, the historian Mayke De Jong traces the institution to the twelfth century and shows how it disappears, but does not offer any explanation for why this change happened.4 I will try to understand with greater depth why this development came about. In reviewing the sources from the desert fathers of late antiquity to Cistercian writers of the thirteenth century, I do not base my exposition on any grand theory. As

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a historian who since the 1970s has tried to get inside the minds and hearts of the people behind the sources, I will be looking carefully through the sources available to us in order to see if there is a pattern in what they reveal. I concentrate for the most part on narratives and legislation concerning boys. I do not include girls in this study because the sources for them are much more limited and would not necessarily lead to the same conclusions as with boys. At the same time, I do not attempt to limit myself to a well-defined age group but use the term “children and youth” to indicate individuals whose surroundings considered them not yet adults and thus requiring special attention. The sources themselves rarely make clear distinctions based on age, but they do show a perception of a marked difference from childhood to adulthood.

The desert fathers and their Western counterparts We have to begin with the beginnings of Christian monastic life, which we find in the desert of Scete south of the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Here from the fourth century we have records of the men known today as the desert fathers, outstanding spiritual figures whose words and actions were remembered by later generations of monks. The sayings of the fathers were collected in the fifth century and later, first in Greek and arranged according to the fathers’ names, in the so-called Alphabetical Collection.5 In later centuries, the sayings were translated into Latin and ordered according to subject matter. To see how the desert fathers viewed children, we have to consider the Alphabetical Collection, for here there are abundant materials. It might be added that it was considered common in this literature that boys were present in the desert, but the attitude toward them was generally not positive. It is impossible to date these sayings precisely but they represent the wisdom of monastic life in Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. In general, male youths are looked upon in these sayings as dangerous. Thus Abba (father) Matoes warned, “Do not be friendly with a boy nor with an heretical friend.”6 The boy is just as much a threat as the heretic, presumably because the presence of the boy could lead to sexual temptation.7 More specific is Poemen, known as the Shepherd, whose sayings are among the most plentiful in the collection: “A man who lives with a boy and is incited by him to no matter what passions . . . and yet keeps with him . . . is like someone who has a field which is eaten up by maggots.”8 Children are to be avoided, insisted Abba Macarius: “when you see young children, take up your sheep-skins and go away.”9 Abba Carion warned, “A monk who lives with a boy, falls, if he is not stable, but even if he is stable and does not fall, he still does not make progress.”10 Another father, Isaac, forbade that the brethren live with youths: “Four churches in Scete are deserted because of boys.”11 The Alphabetical Collection was drawn up at a time after the flourishing landscape of monasticism in the desert of Scete had disappeared. The fathers are remembered to have warned about what could happen when ascetic ideals were not observed. Here male youths are considered to have contributed to

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the downfall of monastic discipline. It is rare to hear a voice in the desert that is positive about the presence of children. Poemen, however, did once oppose monks who complained about “the little children who cry [and] do not let us have interior peace”. He insisted that children had “the voices of angels”.12 The desert fathers do not seem to have dismissed children entirely, but they were wary about bonding between an older and a younger man or youth. For some of the fathers, the memory of their own childhoods was painful, as with Abba Paphnutius, who recalled how he would associate with other children who “used to go and steal little figs. As they were running away, they dropped one of the figs and I picked it up and ate it. Every time I remember this, I sit down and weep.”13 The story recalls Augustine’s recollection of how he as a youth had stolen pears.14 Looking back on childhood involves regret about what one has done. Thus, it was important for the fathers to overcome such memories in order to follow the path of self-denial and asceticism. Here there was no room for close bonds with children or youths. As we saw previously, Abba Carion warned that “a monk who lives with a boy, falls.” There is a clear consensus about the matter in the sources originating from the Eastern Mediterranean, whereas in the Western Mediterranean, the fear of what we today would call homosexual relationships is almost completely absent. If we turn to the Latin Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Verba seniorum), as opposed to the Greek Alphabetical Collection I mentioned previously, and arranged according to subject, we find practically nothing about any danger of older men living with youths in the monastic life. At the same time, however, the sources reveal that boys were found in the Western monastic environment. Part of this collection is devoted to fornication, but sexual sin is seen almost solely in terms of male-female relationships. Children or youths of either sex are hardly mentioned.15 The main concern is the inner struggle of the individual monk. When a brother plagued by lust sought help from an older man, the response of the older one was to assure the young man that “if God permitted the thoughts with which my own mind is stung to be transferred to you, you would not endure them.”16 In this source, it is one’s thoughts that are the problem, not one’s actions. Similarly, when a brother told “a certain old man” that two brothers living together were “of evil life”, the senior realized that his informant was imagining a wrongful relationship that did not exist. He replied, “Shut that brother into a cell by himself: for the passion which he would fasten on them he has in himself.”17 The interiorization of lust is also the concern of John Cassian (ca. 360–430), the outstanding monastic author of late antiquity in the West. The twenty-second chapter in his Conferences, a guide to monastic life and discipline, is devoted to nocturnal illusions, which are a problem not because of their physical existence but because they can result from daytime thoughts that stimulate the nighttime body. Cassian tried to determine under what circumstances a brother who experienced such “pollution” could allow himself the next morning to take communion.18 There are no boys or children mentioned in the text of Cassian, who in his twelfth conference on chastity says

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that the monk must “not be deluded by the alluring images of women even when asleep”.19 The Latin thematic collection of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers says virtually nothing about children. There is an almost complete failure to mention the existence of children in the monasteries, even though the sources indirectly allow us to conclude that there were in fact children. The Greek version worries about intimate contacts between monastic men in the desert and young boys, whereas the Latin has no such qualms. Instead, the Latin collection emphasizes mutual concern and forgiveness, for example in a story about two brothers who went to the city to sell their wares, when one “sinned in the flesh”. When the two returned to the monastery, the one who had not sinned claimed that he too had committed the same fault. He did so because of love for his brother. This act of devotion was revealed to one of the monastic seniors, who came to understand that thanks to the sinless brother, God had forgiven the sinful one: “Truly this is to lay down one’s soul for one’s brother.”20 Years ago, in writing about the ideal and practice of friendship in the monastery, I noticed this gulf between Eastern fear of homosexual bonds and Western indifference to the matter.21 At the time, I simply noted the difference but did not try to explain it. Even now, I cannot explain why the two cultures, which after all were grounded in the later Roman Empire, manifest such different attitudes, but I think it is important for understanding Western views of children to realize that monasticism in the West was apparently unencumbered by the Eastern fear that having children and youths in the vicinity would create tensions and temptations. I am not claiming that older-younger sexual bonds did not exist in the monastic West, only that the sources show apparently little concern about boys as a source of sexual temptation. The presence of boys and young men in a monastery was not looked upon as a threat to maintaining chastity.

Benedict of Nursia and his tradition Benedict of Nursia outside Rome (ca. 480–550 CE) left behind a Rule for monks, which by the eighth century became the norm for Benedictine monasteries in Western Europe. Its clarity, simplicity, and relative brevity made the Rule accessible for monastic communities of almost any type seeking a basis for their lives. Benedict took it for granted that every monastery would have some children. In chapter 37 of the Rule, he considered their needs together with those of old men in the community and asked that “there be constant consideration for their weakness, and on no account let the rigor of the Rule in regard to food be applied to them”.22 Thus, both children and old men in the monastery would be allowed to eat prior to the hours otherwise prescribed for the monks. This gentle approach did not extend to disciplinary methods. Disobedient boys or youths were to “be punished with severe fasts or chastised with

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sharp stripes, in order that they may be cured”.23 Grown-up monks were to be disciplined by being excluded from the life of the monastery and would have to take their meals separately, a treatment called excommunication. Benedict assumed that boys “do not understand the greatness of the penalty of excommunication”. Thus, physical punishment would have to be used, because “every age and degree of understanding should have its appropriate measure of discipline.”24 In such a recommendation, Benedict probably reflects an aristocratic Roman attitude toward children as not being capable of understanding anything but physical duress.25 He came himself from a solid Roman family of a type that continued to exist even after the disappearance in 476 of the last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus. But the Rule does not indicate concern that the presence of children in the monastery would provide a temptation for the senior monks. Benedict in fact recommended that “the younger brethren shall not have their beds by themselves but shall be mixed with the seniors.”26 In this way, older monks could make sure that the younger ones did not misbehave. He also provided that a light burn in the dormitory through the night, something that has been interpreted as a caution against sexual activity.27 The light may well have been there for the sake of children who were afraid of the dark, or to make it easier for monks at night to go to the bathroom or down to the church for communal prayer. The Rule of Saint Benedict has none of the overt fear of sexual bonds manifested in the Greek Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Benedict legislated for a community that was thought to be made up of sensible men who would act in a rational and orderly manner. Thus, he writes in the exhortation, “Let prayer be short, and when the superior has given the signal, let all rise together.”28 In this community there was room for children, as Benedict made clear in a chapter titled “The Offering of the Sons of the Rich and of the Poor”. If parents desired to give their son to the monastery “and the boy himself be still very young” then they were to draw up a written petition on his behalf. During the mass, the parents were to wrap the petition together with “the boy’s hand in the altar cloth and so offer him”.29 The parents were to promise never to give their son any property, thus making it impossible for him to leave the monastery for the sake of any inheritance. The parents, however, were free to give the monastery property as alms. “In this way let every opening be stopped, so that the boy may have no expectations whereby . . . he might be deceived and ruined, as we have learned by experience.”30 Benedict seems to have seen in his monastic past that boys tried to get back what their parents had handed over to the monastery on their behalf. He wanted to make oblation a final act, with no later discussion about who gave what or what the child’s intention might have been. A gift was a gift. This provision also was valid for poor people who gave their sons to the monastery: “those who possess nothing at all shall simply draw up the petition and offer their son at the Offertory [of the Mass].”31 At the offertory, the priest offered the bread and wine to God, and at this point, the boy would become part of

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the offering. Thus, when the priest was in the process of offering up the gifts of wine and bread to God, the boy was brought forward and became part of the offering. Benedict can be seen at work not only in his Rule but also in the chapters concerning his life and works included by Pope Gregory I (590–604 CE) in Gregory’s Dialogues, which became an immensely popular collection of miracle stories. We hear how a boy named Placid, who belonged to Benedict’s monastery at Monte Cassino, was saved from drowning. Later, according to the text, he explained, “When I was being hauled from the water, I saw the abbot’s cape above my head and thought he was dragging me out of the water.”32 The boy thus had a vision in which Benedict assisted him in his need. Another boy, who was working with the brothers to build a wall, was crushed by it when it collapsed. Benedict ordered that the youth be brought to him: “At that very hour he sent the young man, healed and as vigorous as ever, back to the same work to finish the wall with the brothers.”33 This story shows Benedict’s concern and involvement in the fate of a youth, even though he did not belong to the monastery. At the same time the anecdote indicates that children or young men could be used to carry out dangerous and difficult tasks, even though it is rare in Western sources to find indications that children were exploited in this respect.34 The most dramatic story, called by the monastic scholar Terrence Kardong “the crowning miracle” of the Dialogues, concerns a peasant who intended to bring to Benedict the body of his dead son.35 He laid the corpse at the monastery door and begged Benedict, “Give me back my son . . . He is dead. Come and raise him up.” Benedict insisted that such an action was “not for us but for the holy apostles”. The peasant nevertheless refused to leave until Benedict had revived the child. The boy was restored to life and given back to his father. Such a story has to be looked upon as belonging to a genre of hagiographical literature that was inspired by the gospel narratives. Benedict is another Christ figure, healing the sick and raising the dead. Or in the words of Kardong, “Gregory is striving mightily to show that Italy has as many great saints as any other place.”36 At the same time, Gregory was showing that Benedict had fruitful contacts with boys. Some entered his monastery, others benefited from his healing powers. One of the lessons for us is that children were included in this monastic world. Benedict did not turn his back and insist that his vocation left no room for their needs. He was in principle open to them, in a manner that his Eastern predecessors had not been.

Child oblation as the norm In the 730s an Anglo-Saxon monk summarized his life and writings: I was born on the lands of this monastery, and on reaching seven years of age, my family entrusted me first to the most reverend Abbot Benedict, and later to Abbot Ceolfrid for my education. I have spent all the

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remainder of my life in this monastery and devoted myself to the study of scriptures.37 The author of the passage is known as the Venerable Bede (673–735 CE), more celebrated today for his history of the English church and people than for his studies of Scripture. But this passage indicates how for Bede it was a matter of course to be given to a monastery at such a young age. He made no apology for being given over to the monastery as a child. Another well-known early medieval figure who entered a monastery as a child is Wynfrith, who later took on the name Boniface (ca. 675–754 CE). His biographer claims that the boy had a strong desire for the cloister, but his father resisted. In this case, oblation was out of the question, until the father became ill and looked upon his sickness as God’s punishment for resisting his son’s decision.38 Wynfrith got his way, but usually the initiative seems to have been taken by parents and not by children. In the Carolingian period bishops seem to have shown more respect for the decisions of families than for the desires of children. In 817, however, a reform council at Aachen decreed that the boy was to confirm the petition of his parents when he reached the age of understanding.39 Such a confirmation did not always take place and oblation was still considered to be the act of parents on behalf of their child. For those who defended the practice of oblation, it could be argued that it was easier to educate children than adults. The conversio morum, or change of ways, required for monastic life was less demanding for boys than for men.40 At the same time there came to be more emphasis on sexual purity in the monastery. It was thought that boy oblates who had never had any sexual experience would more easily live up to this ideal.41 This is a far cry from the Eastern view that boys were sources of sexual temptation for grown men. Looking back on his life in the 1130s, the monk and historian Orderic Vitalis (1075–ca. 1142 CE) described how he had come to the Norman monastery of Saint Evroul “from the remote parts of Mercia as a ten-year-old English boy, an ignorant stranger of another race”.42 Mercia was a kingdom in central England, and so far from Normandy. Orderic described how at the age of five his father first had handed him over to a priest “to learn my letters”. But “in my eleventh year my father renounced his share in me for the love of God.” Thus the father sent his son to Normandy, where the boy was taken in at the monastery of Saint Evroul. “Since then, joined forever to the community of monks by a solemn vow, I have gladly borne the easy yoke of the Lord for forty-two years.” Orderic celebrated his life as a monk, in which he had “joyfully walked in the way of God as the Rule prescribes”.43 This beautiful passage was written by a man who saw adulthood as the fulfillment of the promise of childhood and who did not question in any way the fact that the most important decision of his life had been made for him by his father, and apparently without any questions being asked by the son. Orderic’s reference to the Rule of Saint Benedict invites us to consider the process by which the entrance into the monastic life took place. In chapter 58

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of the Rule, Benedict makes it clear that applicants had first to remain outside the cloister for a few days in order to show that their intentions were serious. Then they would be allowed into the novitiate, where they would remain for a year before taking their vows. At that point, they would take on the monastic garb. The recruit’s old clothes, however, were to be kept in the monastery, in case he “be persuaded by the devil” to leave. This chapter must be referring to adults who enter the monastic life. In their case, entrance meant the final profession. When it was a child who was taken in, however, the parents made the promise on behalf of their son. His entrance was clearly a matter of their discretion and choice, as expressed in their writing out a petition and wrapping the boy’s hands in an altar cloth.44 Here Benedict does not specifically describe the novitiate, but presumably, there also was some form of initiation to the monastic life that took place before formal entrance by the submission of a written petition.

The twelfth century: a new attitude toward children and youth At the time Orderic wrote of his monastic career, attitudes toward children in the monastery were changing. One of the earliest manifestations of a new concern for children is found in a contemporary biography of Saint Anselm (1033–1109 CE), who as prior and then abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy lived in a monastic house not far from Orderic’s Saint Evroul. Anselm entered the monastic life as a grown man in his early thirties. Even though he did not reject oblation as a monastic practice, he looked upon children in a way that was quite different from the view found in the Rule of Saint Benedict. He never openly rejected Benedict’s teaching that disobedient children or youths in the monastery should be beaten, but he made clear his view of the matter in what he told Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, who became his confidant after Anselm in 1093 became archbishop. It is to Eadmer that we owe Anselm’s biography, one of the most lively and detailed personal accounts of the period.45 Eadmer tells how Anselm was speaking with another abbot about the question of monastic discipline and concerning “boys brought up in the cloister”. The abbot lamented that they were being punished “day and night” but only seemed to “get worse and worse”. Anselm reacted sharply: “You have spent your energies in rearing them to good purpose: from men you have reared beasts.” In order to exemplify his own view of children, Anselm described how it is necessary to give tree plants room to grow. If not, they will have “branches all twisted and knotted”: Without doubt, this is what you do with your boys. At their oblation they are planted in the garden of the Church, to grow and bring forth fruit for God. But you so terrify them and hem them in on all sides with threats and blows that they are utterly deprived of their liberty. And being thus

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injudiciously oppressed, they harbor and welcome and nurse within themselves evil and crooked thoughts like thorns.46 Anselm continued at length in warning against the dire consequences of this kind of mistreatment: such youths sense that there is no love or tenderness for them “but believe that all your actions proceed from hatred and malice against them”.47 Because they have not experienced love, “they regard everyone with suspicion and jealousy.” Anselm excoriated his fellow abbot: “Are they not human? Are they not flesh and blood like you?” He concluded his response with a description of how goldsmiths form leaves of gold or silver by gentle coaxing of the material, as well as by blows: “If you want your boys to be adorned with good habits, you too, besides the pressure of blows, must apply the encouragement and help of fatherly sympathy and gentleness.”48 Anselm here did not rule out corporal punishment, but he believed it should be modified and limited by gentler treatment and understanding for the individual. The Latin vocabulary of the passage speaks for itself. Words like amor (love), pietas (devotion), benevolentia (good will), and dulcedo (tenderness or sweetness) represent a world of caring and nurturing in which Anselm believed and which he practiced in his own monastery. According to Eadmer, he managed to convince the harsh abbot, who admitted, “We have indeed wandered from the way of truth.” He fell at Anselm’s feet, “seeking pardon for the past and promising improvement in the future”.49 Eadmer explained that he had included the story “so that from this example may be known how much gentleness and discretion he showed towards all men”.50 In many ways Anselm was theologically conservative, one who refused to accept that his kinder, gentler approach to monasticism brought a strong response from his surroundings. Many times the recipients of his letters would turn to him for friendship and love and discover to their dismay that Anselm in spite of all his declarations of devotion still insisted on keeping them at a distance.51 In considering boys in the monastery, Anselm opened a new era in Western monasticism, manifesting concern for their inner lives and a desire to educate them in trust and love. He did not exclude the possibility of corporal punishment, but he concluded that loving care was much to be preferred. Anselm died in 1109, just at the time when a little colony of monks was doing its best to live up to the Rule of Saint Benedict. In 1098, the brothers in Burgundy had established what they called Novum monasterium, “The New Monastery,” which later would be called Cîteaux. By 1119, they had founded four daughter houses and were drawing up a “Charter of Charity” (Carta caritatis), a constitution for the first fully developed monastic order in medieval Europe, the Cistercians.52 We do not know how the earliest monks dealt with the question of oblates, but all the monks who settled at Cîteaux were adults with experience from the monastic life at their former home in Burgundy, Molesme. Apparently, the monks of Cîteaux were convinced that the choice of the monastery was only for adults. Certainly, their successors in the Cistercian Order legislated on this basis. In the Institutes for the Order drawn up in 1157, it is made clear

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that the minimum age for entrance was fifteen.53 By the standards of medieval Europe, this age meant adulthood, or at least a time by which the individual could make existential decisions without the intervention of parents. Later this minimum age was raised to eighteen, but the decision met opposition in some of the monasteries. In 1201 the abbots at the General Chapter in Cîteaux, which was a yearly assembly to legislate for all the Cistercian houses, deplored “the confusion and contempt of the Order and lack of discipline concerning the reception of boys less than eighteen years.”54 The abbots pointed out that this age limitation had been decided by “our fathers” but “we have heard that some abbots” did not keep to it. It was decided that abbots who failed to observe the matter would have to exist on bread and water every Friday until the time that their novices reached the required age. Moreover, abbots who persisted in allowing underage novices would be deposed by their father abbots. Finally, it was forbidden that children be taken in to be taught reading and writing at Cistercian abbeys or the grange farms that belonged to them, “unless dispensation is given by the General Chapter because of great usefulness and unavoidable need”.55 The detail of this statute indicates that it was a real problem for the Cistercians to habituate themselves to the new ordering of monastic life that prohibited taking in boys. In 1201 the monastery of Cîteaux had existed for more than a century and the order itself for almost as long, but old habits die hard. It was difficult to prevent abbots from accepting boys who may have insisted that God was calling them to the monastery. Officially, the Cistercians did not allow oblates, but eager underage recruits seem nevertheless to have appeared and were sometimes accepted. Thus, we have a story in a miracle collection gathered by Caesarius, novice master at Heisterbach on the Rhine, near Bonn, in the first decades of the thirteenth century: In our house there is a certain monk who came to the Order and had an only brother. He was less suitable for the monastic life because of his age, and so he was left behind in the world. But the monastic brother was afraid that the other would be blocked by the hindrances of the world and kept from becoming a monk, and so he prayed to the Lord for him and especially to his Blessed Mother, so that she would deign through his prayers to hasten his conversion to the monastic life.56 The monastic brother tried to convince his abbot to make an exception, but the abbot well knew that he could not accept an underaged novice “without endangering his office”. Then one of the monks had a vision in which a “most beautiful woman stood before the gate of the monastery with a lovely boy in her arms”. When she was asked who the boy was, she replied that he was “the son of that monk”, naming the brother in question. Mary was indicating that the older brother, because of his concern for his sibling, had become the boy’s spiritual father. As such, he was enabling the boy to obtain a special dispensation to enter the monastery.

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Here we are almost returning to the Eastern desert, where spiritual fathers looked after their spiritual sons. In both cases, East and West, there was resistance to the practice: in the East in late antiquity apparently because of the fear of sexual bonds, whereas in the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because the contemplative life of Cistercian monks simply did not leave room for looking after and educating children.57 This distancing from an established practice in the old monasteries of early medieval Europe could, however, be interpreted as a refusal to take responsibility for children, also because, as the historian and expert on medieval monastic history, Giles Constable, has pointed out, children were noisy and undermined the community’s need for long periods of silence.58 But the monastic historian Jean Leclercq has a different point of view. According to him, the Cistercians can also be seen as refusing oblates and very young novices because they believed that only those old enough to make responsible, individual choices could enter their monasteries.59 Thus, it was precisely because the Cistercians looked upon childhood as a time preceding adult decisions that they excluded children from their monasteries. The Cistercians did not love children, but they do seem to have respected their integrity. As far as the monks were concerned, children belonged to their own world and could not be included in the adult one.

Why the new attitude? When the historian moves from describing what happened in the past to trying to explain why it happened, it is not always easy to provide satisfying answers. In the case of the disappearance of the oblate system by the end of the twelfth century, I find two possible explanations. First of all, our medieval Christian ancestors came to see consent as an essential part of human life. Second, medieval monks came to dwell on the birth of Jesus, his childhood, and human development in the context of his earthly family. In the first place, it became clear that children could not enter a monastery before they had reached the age of consent. If they did so and then regretted their decision, they had to take responsibility and remain where they were because they had freely chosen this life. Here children and families became part of the economy of salvation. Cistercian insistence on individual choice can be seen in a cause célèbre in which the most renowned Cistercian of the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), involved himself intimately. He had accepted in his monastery a relative who was probably his cousin but is usually called his nephew, Robert. The youth had come to the monastery before he was of age and had been made to wait a couple of years before he was allowed to enter.60 After he had taken his vows, Robert regretted the decision and claimed that his parents had promised him as an oblate to the rich and powerful monastery of Cluny in Burgundy, founded in 910. The Cluniac monks did their best to establish their prerogative. When Robert left Clairvaux for Cluny, Bernard wrote a rousing letter that upbraided Robert and ordered him back. The letter

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has traditionally been placed first in collections of Bernard’s correspondence, for it summarizes so well his view of monastic life and is, at the same time, an elegant piece of prose. Bernard opened the letter in telling Robert how long he had waited for him to regret his error, but he had been disappointed. At first Bernard had blamed himself: “I was too severe with a sensitive youth, I was too hard on a tender stripling.”61 He accused Cluny’s prior of plotting to get Robert to come there: “He was brought to Cluny and trimmed, shaved and washed. He was taken out of his rough, threadbare and soiled habit, and clothed with a neat and new one.”62 Bernard was well into his long letter before he let out the full force of his anger: “You foolish boy! Who has bewitched you to break the vows which adorned your lips? . . . Why then are you so anxious about the vow your parents made and yet so regardless of your own?”63 He was to be judged “out of your own mouth and not out of the mouth of your parents”. Here is the central matter for Bernard: Robert had himself chosen the monastic life at Clairvaux. He could not go back on a promise he made as a consenting adult, and he could not refer to what his parents might once have done on his behalf. In such a view, the oblate system does not work, for the individual must heed his own inner voice: “Listen to your conscience, examine your intentions, consider the facts. Let your conscience tell you why you left your monastery, your brethren, your own place.”64 This letter indicates a new mentality in which individual choice is central. The decision of parents must be subordinated to the choice of the child who has become an adult. At the same time, however, Bernard strongly emphasized his own role as spiritual father to Robert: “Sadly I weep, not for my lost labour, but for the unhappy state of my lost child. . . . You . . . were taken from my side, cut from me.”65 Bernard had taken Robert into his care. “I nourished you with milk, when, while yet a child, it was all you could take.” Such passages might appear to be pure rhetoric, a manifestation of the literary fireworks in which Bernard excelled. I think, however, that he meant what he said: that he had looked after Robert, had been his caregiver and nurturer, even his mother, and now his son had left him. In the very Cistercian assertion of the independence of the individual in making his own choice, there is at the same time an expression of the love of one brother for another in paternal and maternal bonding. The decision to become a monk was an individual and personal one. In Bernard’s view, Robert could not revert to his parents’ earlier decision. He had made his own choice and would be held to it. Outside the monastery in society as a whole, an emphasis on individual choice was also having an impact. The theologians who by about 1200 had formed the first northern European university at Paris made it clear that it was impossible to enter into marriage without full and public consent to the arrangement.66 Clandestine marriages were questionable. If the woman claimed that she had been forced by her parents or fiancé into the arrangement, then no marriage had taken place. The canon lawyers who clustered around the southern European university at Bologna were not so certain: for them what mattered most was the act of

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sexual intercourse, but the theologians rejected the importance of an external, physical act. What mattered to them was the inner disposition of the person. Consent makes a marriage, not sex.67 I see the ending of oblation and the new theology of marriage as different aspects of twelfth-century humanistic culture in Western Europe, where new attention was given to individual choice. I am not claiming that such choices were always respected. Certainly, the monks of Cluny believed that Robert’s parents had made the necessary decision for him when he was a child. But Bernard of Clairvaux belonged to a new world, where consent took place within the individual person, regardless of the family’s intentions. A father or mother could no longer determine the life of the child, neither in the monastery nor in a marriage. In both cases, the individual makes his or her own decision and has to live by it. A second reason I find for the new attitude toward childhood and adulthood is that monastic writers turned to the childhood of Jesus and in a sense spiritualized or even sacramentalized the time of childhood. The Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, Aelred (1110–1167 CE), wrote a treatise on Jesus at the Age of Twelve.68 Aelred meditated on the meaning of the few lines in the Gospel of Luke (2:41–52) that describe how the child had stayed behind in Jerusalem and how much sorrow and confusion he had caused his parents. But the boy Jesus in his teaching had amazed those in his surroundings: “Old men kiss him, young men embrace him, boys wait upon him.”69 Aelred imagined what Jesus had done during the three days when he was apart from his parents: “Who provided you with food and drink? Who made up a bed for you? Who took off your shoes? Who tended your boyish limbs with oil and baths?”70 This concentration on the physical experience of the boy Jesus is followed up later in the treatise by an investigation of the passage’s symbolic meaning. But Aelred’s point of departure is the reality of the twelve-year-old, who provided “an example of humility and modesty for boys and youths, teaching them to be silent in the midst of their elders, to listen and ask questions so as to learn”.71 The child is encouraged to be respectful of his elders but also to ask questions. This is part of the learning process which Aelred apparently himself had experienced as a boy, before he had joined the monastery as a young man.72 In imagining the boy Jesus’s reunion with his parents, Aelred borrows from the erotic language of the Song of Songs. Aelred describes how Mary must have thrown her arms around her son: “I found”, she says, “him whom my soul loves. I held him fast and would not let him go” (Song 3:4). Hold him fast, dearest Lady, hold fast him whom you love, cast yourself upon his neck, embrace him, kiss him and make up for his absence during three days with increased delight.73 The child Jesus is conceived as being “so beautiful to those who look upon him, so sweet to those who embrace him” that his brief absence is almost unbearable.74

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Why did Aelred choose to write about Jesus the youth, instead of following the lead of previous spiritual writers who concentrated on Jesus the man? Aelred’s personal motives may lie in his own sexuality, but on the surface of his treatise is a desire to link childhood with innocence, beauty, and insight.75 A similar, even if briefer, celebration of the childhood of Christ can be found in the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux. One of his earliest sermon collections is devoted to Mary. Here we find one of the first celebrations in medieval spiritual writings showing Joseph as a man who tenderly loved his son, embraced, and held him: To him it was given not only to see and hear what many kings and prophets had longed to see and did not see, to hear and did not hear, but even to carry him, to take him by the hand, to hug and kiss him, to feed him and keep him safe.76 In later sermons for Christmas, Bernard asked why we are afraid of a God who “became a little child. The virgin mother wraps his tender limbs in swaddling clothes and do you still tremble with fear?”77 Such tender language recalls a passage in the Life of Bernard written by his friend William of Saint Thierry (ca. 1085–1148) and composed five years before Bernard’s death. William referred to a vision Bernard had experienced when he was a child. It was Christmas Eve. The boy Bernard was waiting in church for the liturgy and fell asleep. In his slumber, he seemed to experience the actual birth of Christ, which was reenacted for him.78 William may have heard this story from Bernard himself, and it was clearly a central event in his childhood. Does dwelling on the Christ child better the status of living children? We meet a paradox here: just as the Cistercians tried to keep children at a distance, so too they embraced the Christ child and meditated on his life. For them childhood required a type of nurturing that they could not provide. It was not good enough for boys to be relegated to a corner of the monastery and told to be quiet and not disturb the choir monks. If the Cistercians stood for anything, it was the expression of affectivity in terms of attachments not only to the saints but also to each other.79 Their devotion to the Christ child indicated their interest in childhood, which they valued so much that they felt a monastery was not a good place for young boys. They deserved the upbringing that could only be possible with biological parents. So the Cistercians left it up to parents to look after their children, educate them, and prepare them so they in adulthood would choose to become monks.

Conclusion: a new value placed on childhood We can now look again at Caesarius of Heisterbach and one of his stories that reveals so well the mentality of early thirteenth-century Cistercian monks. He wrote about Ensfrid, the dean of the collegiate church of Saint Andrew in Cologne, a man whom Caesarius had known well when he was a teenager going to school there and before he joined the monastery at the age of

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eighteen. Ensfrid was in charge of the school at Saint Andrew and “taught many by both word and example, not only to learn, but what is more worthwhile, to live well”.80 One day when Ensfrid was passing by a classroom, he heard the cries of one of the students who was being held and beaten by four others at the command of the teacher. Ensfrid went inside and freed the terrified youth. He challenged the teacher, “What are you doing, tyrant? Your job is to teach the pupils, not to kill them!”81 Ensfrid defended the same attitude toward understanding the situation of youths that Anselm had represented more than a century earlier. Neither of them precluded the possibility of corporal punishment, but they believed that children learn better when they are not made to be afraid. By the end of the twelfth century, Western monasticism had excluded children and at the same time softened its attitude toward them. In keeping children out of the monastery, monks insisted that they should be educated in a humane manner so that they could become good monks later on in their lives. It is impossible to prove that this change in attitude altered the general treatment of boys and young men, but the end of oblation meant that, at least in monastic circles, childhood became more highly valued than ever before in medieval Europe.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

As Tangl 1955: 46. Epistolae, no. 26: 46, dated 726, from Pope Gregory II. For children in Byzantine monasteries, see also the chapter by Talbot in this volume. Leclercq 1979: 8–26; also Lynch 1973: 283–97, and Pierre Riché 1975: 689–701. De Jong 1996, esp. 290–302. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 1975. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, no. 11: 122. Schroeder 2009a has addressed the question of sexual temptation of monks when children were present in Early Christian monasteries. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, no. 176: 161. Ibid., no. 5: 108. Ibid., no. 3: 101. Ibid., no. 5: 85. Ibid., no. 155: 159. Ibid., no. 37: 115. See also the chapter by Horn in this volume. Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 73, col. 873–88. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, no. vi: 77. Ibid., no. xxix: 80. Ramsey 1997: 763–78. Ibid., 443–4. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, no. xxvii: 79. McGuire 1988: 41–2. The Rule of St. Benedict: 44. Ibid., ch. 30: 38. Ibid. Marrou 1981: 272; McGuire 1996: 311–12. The Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 22: 33. Boswell 1980: 188. The Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 20: 32. Ibid., ch. 59: 65.

Children and youth in monastic life 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

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Ibid. Ibid. Kardong 2009: 33–4, Dialogi VII.1. Ibid., 52, Dialogi XI.1. See the chapter by Talbot in this volume. Kardong 2009: 115–16, Dialogi XXXII.1. Ibid., 121. Shirley-Price 1964: 329; Historia ecclesiastica V.24. Levison 1905, ch. 1: 4–6. De Jong 1996: 62–3. Ibid., 154. Ibid., 141. Chibnall 1972, book V, ch. 1: 7. Ibid., 9. Note 25. Southern 1966: 335–6. Southern 1962: 37. Ibid., 38. Ibid., 38. Ibid., 39. Ibid. Southern 1966: 72–6; McGuire 1988: 216–19. Newman 2013: 27–9. Waddell 1999: 490. Instituta Generalis Capituli, nr. LXXX. Waddell 2002: 481. Ibid. Translations of this source are my own. Strange 1966: 27; Distinctio prima, cap. XX. My translation. Compare the Cistercian attitude with that found in Byzantium, which preferred a later age for admission to the novitiate. See Talbot’s chapter in this volume. Constable 1996: 198. Leclercq 1979: 10–11. The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux 1. Ibid., 1.2: 2. Ibid., 1.5: 4. Ibid., 1.9: 6. Ibid., 1.9: 7. Ibid., 1.10: 7. Brooke 1991: 128–38. Duby 1985: 179–85. Berkeley 1982: 3–39. Ibid., ch. 5: 9. Ibid., ch. 6: 10. Ibid., ch. 8: 11. McGuire 1994: 39–40. Berkeley 1982, ch. 8: 11–12. Ibid., 12. McGuire 1994: 34–8. Saïd 1993: 29; Homilies in Praise of Mary II.16. Parvulus factus est, tenera membra Virgo Mater pannis alligat; et adhuc timore trepidas? See Leinenweber 2007: 101; Christmas Sermon 1: 3. Cawley 2000: 6; Vita prima 1.4. McGuire 1988: 291–2. Strange 1966: 345; Distinctio sexta, ch. V. Ibid., 353.

15 Childhood in middle and late Byzantium Ninth to fifteenth centuries Alice-Mary Talbot

The Byzantine Empire (330–1453), the Christian prolongation of the Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople, produced a civilization based on the Greek language, Roman law, and Christianity. As a result, Greco-Roman attitudes toward children were combined with the Christian teachings of the Bible, and in particular the New Testament. Perceptions of childhood in the Mediterranean world in late antiquity, influenced by this hybrid tradition, have been well studied in recent years.1 Research on children and childhood in the middle and late Byzantine eras is another recent phenomenon. This field of investigation emerged from the women’s studies movement that began in Europe and America in the 1970s and subsequently developed into family and gender studies, including research on masculinity and the status and role of eunuchs. Among the pioneering publications on Byzantine childhood in the 1970s and 1980s were studies on education, breastfeeding and wet nursing, the legal status of children, and their role within the family; some of these articles were influenced by the French Annales school.2 The new millennium saw a marked upsurge in research on Byzantine children, signaled by dissertations and books on elementary schooling, orphans, images of children, and inclusive overviews of childhood.3 Also worthy of note was the 2006 Dumbarton Oaks symposium dedicated to the topic “Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium”.4 First, a brief word about the sources of information on Byzantine children: to an even greater extent than in the medieval West, data on Byzantine childhood is sparse and scattered. Children are pretty much ignored in Byzantine histories and chronicles, which focus on palace intrigue, religious controversy, and foreign wars rather than on family life. Much useful evidence comes from hagiography, because saints’ lives often recounted stories about the childhood of future holy men and women, presenting materials on both the lower classes and the elite, and both the village and the city. Other information can be found in funeral orations, letters, legal sources, and material culture. This chapter focuses on babies, toddlers, and prepubertal children, that is roughly up to the ages of twelve to fourteen, a common age of marriage for Byzantine girls. These fourteen years were divided into two “ages”, from birth to seven, when permanent teeth erupt, and from eight to fourteen, the

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age of puberty. Byzantine Greek, with its rich and nuanced vocabulary, had many terms for the various stages of infancy, childhood, and early adolescence, but they seem to have been used imprecisely and are not discussed here.5 My chapter emphasizes the middle Byzantine centuries (ninth to twelfth), which have been less studied than late antiquity, and the later Byzantine period of the Comnenian and Palaiologan dynasties (1081–1453), usually omitted in previous treatments of this subject.6

Naming and baptism ceremonies As soon as a baby was born, he or she was introduced to its local Christian community through religious rites. It was customary for the newborn baby’s nurse or midwife to take the infant to church on the eighth day after his or her birth for his or her official naming ceremony, because the mother was still confined to her home. On the fortieth day, the mother would take the baby to church for the ritual of “churching”, to mark the end of her period of “purification”, that is her bleeding as a result of childbirth. There was no fixed time for baptism, but sometime during the first forty days of life was considered preferable; sickly newborns could be baptized immediately if necessary.7 Occasionally baptism was delayed as late as the age of two or three, as in the case of Symeon Stylites the Younger and Euphrosyne the Younger.8 The preference was, however, for an earlier rite, because of the fear that the baby might die unbaptized, and thus be denied the opportunity to enter the kingdom of heaven. The newly baptized children were sponsored by one or more godparents with whom they maintained a close spiritual relationship throughout life. Noticeably absent from the calendar of coming-of-age rituals for Byzantine children was any equivalent of the “First Communion” rite (at age seven) that had developed in Western medieval Europe by the thirteenth century, or the bar mitzvah of a Jewish teenager, that is a designation of an age at which a child was deemed competent to engage in religious rituals, such as partaking of the Eucharist or reading from the Torah. Byzantine theology did not intentionally omit any such “coming-of-age” ritual, but it simply did not have to require or introduce it, because the child, or anyone whatever her or his age, was considered already from the point of baptism onward as a full Christian, with all rights, who could fully participate in the sacraments – that is the Eucharist was administered to babies from the time when they received baptism.9

Breastfeeding and weaning Byzantine babies began to breastfeed soon after birth; if their mothers were unable to produce sufficient milk, or were too ill to nurse, recourse was had to a wet nurse.10 In the upper classes wet nurses were sometimes used not out of physical necessity, but to spare the mother the expenditure of time and energy necessitated by breastfeeding. A passage from the encomium for his mother by

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Michael Psellos, an eleventh-century statesman, monk, polymath, and prolific author, indicates, however, that maternal breastfeeding was viewed as preferable, and that his mother did not use a wet nurse.11 In the following century the archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike criticized mothers who gave birth to, but did not suckle their babies.12 Some saints’ lives report, evidently with approval, that holy babies rejected the nipple of a wet nurse, and insisted on feeding from their mother’s breast.13 Wet nurses also bathed babies, changed their diapers, and swaddled them.14 The evidence of Psellos’s funeral oration on his daughter Styliane shows that at least some wet nurses may have continued to raise the child and maintain a close relationship even after weaning, considering themselves as members of the household.15 There is some textual evidence for the use of glass baby bottles to feed infants. A late seventh- or early eighth-century account of the life and miracles of St. Theodore Teron, an early Christian martyr, reports that Theodore’s mother died in childbirth. His father could not find a Christian wet nurse, and in desperation devised the following method to feed his newborn infant: Cleaning grains of wheat and grinding barley he boiled them both together properly in water, and mixing them with honey in proportion, he put them into a glass vessel shaped like a teat, which the infant held in his mouth instead of the breast and sucked out the liquid sweetly just like milk.16 Confirmation of this textual evidence is found in a group of late antique glass vessels from Roman Gaul that have been tentatively identified as baby feeders.17 It is questionable whether a newborn would have survived on the diet described previously, but bottles were probably also used for goat’s milk or human breast milk expressed by hand. As recommended by Greco-Roman physicians, solid foods were introduced around the age of six months, probably in the form of porridge, bread crumbs softened with milk and honey, or a very soft-cooked egg, as prescribed by Soranus.18 The Life of St. Theodore Teron specifies that after his baby teeth developed, that is after the first year, “his father fed him on fine wheaten bread soaked in water and on the more tender fruits and the most nourishing vegetables.”19 These solid foods were considered supplemental to breastmilk, for weaning was gradual in Byzantium and toddlers continued to breastfeed until the age of two or even three.20 Textual evidence on the age of weaning, primarily from hagiography, has recently been confirmed by the analysis of stable nitrogen isotopes in the skeletons of very young children; although the data testing is still in the preliminary stages, it suggests that Byzantine children were weaned somewhat later than Western European children, who tended to stop breastfeeding around the age of two.21 There was good reason for Byzantine mothers to postpone weaning of their children, for weaning seems to have been risky, often leading to illness or even

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death. The shift from breast milk to a diet that was cereal based and included goat’s milk and honey often led to nutritional deficiencies, in iron and folic acid, which might cause anemia. Honey could also cause botulism in young children. A variety of evidence shows a high mortality rate for children up to the age of five: tax registers in fourteenth-century Macedonia indicate that fifty percent of children died by that age.22 Statistics for burials of children aged zero to five vary from site to site, but can range from eleven to twentytwo percent of the total number of skeletons.23 Particularly poignant is the testimony of hagiography and other literary sources. We learn of a Constantinopolitan cobbler named Demetrios whose first four babies all died shortly after birth, before baptism.24 A wealthier man from Thessalonike also lost four children at a tender age: As long as the infant was an embryo in his wife’s womb or was breastfeeding, Theodotos was a father and was so called. But when the child grew and reached its second or third year, the child would die and Theodotos would again be childless.”25 In this last case, the connection between weaning and early mortality seems clear.

Toys, games, and playacting As in all societies, play was an important childhood activity. The archeological record has preserved specimens of rattles, often hollow animal figurines with a pebble inside, and clay and wooden pull toys, such as a wheeled horse. Also found are animal-shaped whistles, dolls, balls, hoops, and knuckle bones.26 Children took great pleasure in imitating adults. They would pretend to be generals, emperors, and even priests celebrating the liturgy. It is reported that the playmates of the young Athanasios of Athos foresaw his future monastic career: For when his companions took him along to play and they went to a local cave, they did not choose him as an emperor or general or make him a bridegroom, as children usually do, but they appointed him as a leader and legislator of monastic life. And the children would obey him, and he would be treated by them as if he were in the position of their spiritual instructor.27 Among the meager evidence for girls at play is the description of Psellos’s daughter, Styliane, an only child, who is described as playing with her maidservants, as well as with girls her own age. In the ninth-century encomium of St. Agatha there is also a reference to a teenaged girl pretending to breastfeed a baby.28

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Elementary education In a society such as Byzantium where a good education was essential for advancement in an ecclesiastical or bureaucratic career, as well as for teaching at the secondary or tertiary level, boys of the middle and upper classes normally received an elementary education from around the age of six to eleven. The curriculum was pretty standard no matter the type of school. It was devoted to the so-called holy letters (hiera grammata), a vague term that included learning to read and write, with the Books of Psalms, the psalter, as the primary textbook. It also involved some memorization and rote recitation, as well as an introduction to numbers and arithmetic. Children were taught to read by first learning the alphabet, then combining letters into syllables, and then combining syllables into words. Although the Bible served as the basic primer, thus prompting the term “holy letters”, some privileged children would go on to secular studies at the secondary level, where they would be introduced to Greek classical literature, philosophy, and rhetorical theory. Boys received instruction in a variety of venues: they could have lessons at home from their parents or tutors, or go to school, most often an ecclesiastical school within the precincts of a church with a clerical teacher, although there were also schools with secular teachers. The elementary level of church schools was open to all male children, at least those whose families could make a suitable donation. The secondary level, on the other hand, was reserved for boys who intended to go on to a clerical career.29 A few boys were educated in monastic schools, but this opportunity was limited to those who intended to take monastic vows. In contrast to the medieval West, lay children very rarely attended these schools. Options for girls were much more limited, because there is no persuasive evidence that they ever went to schools outside the house.30 They could, however, be tutored at home in “holy letters”, just like their brothers; thus, Athanasia of Aegina is said to have memorized the psalter by age seven and to have “eagerly studied all the Holy Scriptures”.31 Most interesting is Psellos’s description of the education of his daughter Styliane, which she began at age six. She quickly learned to read, especially the Psalms which she committed to memory. In fact, she seemed to have had a natural aptitude for learning. More puzzling is Psellos’s allusion to her “teachers” and his statement that “she was the first and best among her classmates”.32 This passage suggests that Psellos, a man committed to education, decided to set up classes for his daughter in his house and hired teachers for that purpose. A select number of girls, such as the princess Anna Komnene, were able to pursue advanced studies at home and receive a classical education. Girls who wished to pursue a monastic vocation might also learn to read and sing within the convent, but normally lay girls were not permitted to attend these classes. Most saints’ lives allude only briefly to the education of holy children, but especially in the hagiography of later centuries we find a bit more information. Take, for example, the biography or vita of Germanos Maroules by Philotheos

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Kokkinos, a fourteenth-century patriarch and hagiographer.33 Germanos, destined to become a celebrated monk on Mount Athos, was one of eight children born in Thessalonike to pious parents. Germanos, the third-oldest child, was an assiduous student who worked steadily and silently all day long, and was wise beyond his years. So far, these are commonplaces of hagiography. But Philotheos goes on to describe how the young Germanos was ridiculed by some of his peers and even tormented physically by them, on account of his studious ways; he suffered this bullying in silence, however.34 In his lengthy oration on Gregory Palamas, a future archbishop of Thessalonike and theologian, Philotheos devotes no fewer than eleven pages to his description of the holy child’s early years.35 He relates, for example, how Gregory struggled when he commenced his schooling at age seven, because at first he had difficulty with the requisite rote memorization. His recitation improved greatly, however, after he began genuflecting three times with a prayer in front of an icon of the Virgin before starting his lessons.36 He went on to become one of the most erudite intellectuals of his generation, whose writings championed the new fourteenth-century monastic spiritual movement called hesychasm, which emphasized prayer and contemplation.

Children’s work Although we must assume that children of the lower classes were put to work at an early age, there is little information on child labor.37 Peasant children were frequently sent out to herd domesticated animals. It is reported, for example, that the young David of Lesbos was caught in a violent thunderstorm while grazing sheep. While the other boys ran off to seek their own safety, David rounded up his flock under the shelter of a tree.38 Paul of Latros and Ioannikios of Bithynia both tended pigs as youngsters: Ioannikios was entrusted by his parents with this responsibility around the age of seven and continued the work into his teenage years. Supposedly he would make the sign of the cross over the animals and then go off on his own, while the pigs grazed safely without supervision.39 Luke of Steiris and Gregory of Akritas also worked as shepherds.40 Boys were also expected to carry water and forage for wild greens.41 We have almost no information about the apprenticeship of young children to artisans, except that in the eighth century Elias of Helioupolis was trained as a carpenter when still a boy.42 Some children from more well-to-do families were also expected to assist with household responsibilities. Thus Germanos Maroules was one day entrusted by his father with supervising workers in the family vineyard. The boy took pity on the laborers and gave them a noonday break, so that they could prepare a hot lunch of freshly picked wild greens, cooked in a pot, take a nap, and pick lice off their clothing. Meanwhile Germanos sat apart reading his psalter. This idyllic scene was interrupted by the arrival of Germanos’s father, who was angered by his son’s lax supervision and punished him.43

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As for girls, all of them, even those from wealthier families, learned to spin and weave at a young age, as this was considered essential women’s work. Athanasia of Aegina was weaving at a loom as a young child when she had a miraculous vision.44 By the time she was nine Psellos’s daughter Styliane had learned to weave fine linens and silks and was taught embroidery by her mother; she is described as dividing her day between her studies and the loom.45 Girls from poorer families might be sent to fetch water from a nearby well.46 They would also help their mothers with grinding grain and taking care of younger children.47

The devotional life of children Most of our evidence of children’s devotional practices comes from accounts of the childhood of future saints.48 Byzantium was a predominantly Christian society in which private family devotions and church attendance were the norm; children really had no option but to follow in their parents’ footsteps, learning to say their prayers, light candles, and venerate icons at home, as well as at church services. Children would also imitate their parents in observing the prescribed fast days and in offering charity to the poor. As we have seen, they learned to read from Scripture. Their bedtime stories were tales from the lives of saints and stories about holy children from the Old Testament.49 Their childish play might include imitating the celebration of the liturgy, or pretending to be monks and clerics, such as abbots. Church festivals such as Easter were the high points of the year for children, when they traditionally cracked hard-boiled eggs.50 Philotheos Kokkinos offers a charming anecdote that illustrates how even a family weekend excursion might be for the purpose of visiting a famed monk. The Palamas family’s recreational activities revolved around religious devotions. The parents used to take all their children, even toddlers, along with them, to listen to sermons by monks and clerics. Once when they were making an excursion by boat up the Bosporos to visit an ascetic at the monastery of St. Phokas, they realized that they had forgotten to bring the monk a gift of food. Remarkably the father, trailing his hand in the water, caught a large fish which made an excellent present for the monastic refectory.51 Holy children often carried devotional observances to an extreme. The young Germanos Maroules, for example, shared a bedroom with his brother Demetrios on the upper floor of the family house; this room served a secondary purpose as the family chapel. Their father was accustomed to pray privately in this room very early in the morning before going to the local monastery on a daily basis for matins and communal prayers. When the two boys retired to their separate beds in this room, Germanos would lie quietly until Demetrios had fallen asleep. Then he would get out of bed and spend much of the night in prayer and the recitation of psalms, making genuflections and prostrations, sometimes yielding to the temptation to nap on the bare floor. If he heard his father coming into the room for his own devotions, Germanos would leap into bed and pretend to sleep and snore.52

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At an early age, Germanos also demonstrated charitable behavior at home, asking permission to distribute his portion of food to beggars, again a commonplace. But Philotheos adds telling details: that his mother at first approved of his behavior, but then became worried about his well-being, when the boy insisted upon eating only beans that had been barely cooked with water and salt, plus a little bread, and refused to share in the family’s regular meals.53 A similar story is told of the young Athanasios of Athos, who abstained from refined foods and delicacies, but subsisted on barley bread, raw fruits and vegetables, and water.54 His hagiographer goes on to describe his ascetic practices as follows: Thus he disciplined and tormented his flesh to such an extent that, when he was overwhelmed by the natural need to sleep, he resisted it with lengthy endurance, using the following stratagem: he would fill a basin with water, empty it over his face, and immediately be relieved from drowsiness. When he did this even in the wintertime, his face would be encrusted with ice. If he did indulge in a little sleep, he did not doze upon a bed, but on a chair.55 Philotheos’s vita of Isidore Boucheiras also provides some interesting details about the childhood of the future saintly patriarch and his predilection for the religious life.56 The oldest of ten siblings, Isidore was a serious child, who did not indulge in normal fun and games. He had a talent for music and preferred to spend his time singing hymns which he had memorized by listening to his father, a priest, chant in church. He also imitated his father by pretending to swing a censer and perform parts of the liturgy. When he began his primary education, he studied church music, as well as learned to read the psalter.

Children in monasteries Byzantines might take the monastic habit at various stages of life, most commonly as older teenagers, around the ages of eighteen to twenty; in middle age, after marriage and raising a family; or in old age, seeking care in their final years, or even taking vows upon their deathbed. A canon of the Quinisext Council of 691–692, held in Constantinople, prohibited the entrance into monasteries of children under the age of ten.57 The rules of some individual monasteries or holy mountains refused to accept as novices “beardless youths”, an imprecise term that in the Middle Ages could designate teenagers, as well as youths in their early twenties.58 Nonetheless children were often to be found in Byzantine monasteries and convents, many brought there by their parents as a thank offering to God for their conception, birth, or survival of infancy. The Life of Saint Theodora of Thessalonike describes two such girls offered as oblates. Theodora herself brought her daughter Theopiste to a convent at the age of six in thanksgiving that she had made it through the perilous years of infancy and early

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childhood, whereas her two younger siblings had died soon after birth.59 Theodora couched her action as the offering of the first fruits of her marriage, that is her oldest child. Likewise, Theodotos, a patron of the monastery where Theodora herself took vows after being widowed, offered to the convent his infant daughter, his only surviving child, because none of his four other children had lived past the age of three.60 Other children might enter a monastery to join a parent or family member, often an aunt or uncle. Thus Theodora Synadene dedicated her young daughter Euphrosyne to monastic life when she founded the convent of the Virgin of Sure Hope in Constantinople. Yet others were orphans or abandoned children who found refuge in a monastic complex; one such girl, who had been exposed as a newborn, was rescued and raised by a nun in Theodora’s monastery in Thessalonike. It seems, however, that the nun may have viewed the child more as her own personal attendant than as a novice who would eventually take monastic vows.61 It is noteworthy that none of the children I have mentioned so far could have had any choice in selecting a monastic vocation. If we are to believe the saints’ lives, however, some children fervently aspired to the monastic life from an early age and entered a monastery as soon as they could leave home. For example, in the ninth century, Epiphanios reportedly entered a monastery in Constantinople at the age of six, “having chosen the monastic life almost from his mother’s breasts”.62 Antony Kauleas first entered a monastery at age twelve, and John of Kathara at age nine.63 In the fourteenth century, Niphon of Athos went at age ten to live in a monastery with his paternal uncle, but did not take his monastic vows until a few years later.64 I should like to emphasize that Byzantine civil law recognized children’s right to make such decisions for themselves, and forbade their parents to remove them from monasteries against their will: “We forbid parents to remove their own children from holy monasteries when the children have chosen the monastic life.”65 The inconsistent policy of Byzantine monasteries with regard to the admission of children reflects varying attitudes toward the innate character of youth. At one extreme were monastic leaders like Nikephoros Blemmydes in the thirteenth century who argued that it was important to introduce children to monastic life when they were still young enough to be malleable. Calling children “innocent hearts, which are as pure as fresh new writing tablets”, he gladly accepted them in his monastery from the age of ten, admitting them to the novitiate at twelve.66 The opposite view was expressed in the rule for the twelfth-century monastery of Phoberou, near Constantinople on the Asian shore of the Bosporos, where beardless youths were forbidden. The founder John was clearly worried about homoeroticism in his institution. He felt that youths offered sexual temptation to the older monks and were potentially agents of the devil.67 Monastic founders also feared that the presence of children and teenagers would disrupt the tranquility of a monastery; thus the founder of the Charsianeites monastery in Constantinople forbade boys under sixteen because of their “loose behavior”.68

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The death of children Regrettably, many Byzantine children did not survive to adulthood. Both texts and archeological excavation of cemeteries provide graphic evidence of high infant and child mortality. The fifteenth-century Byzantine statesman and chronicler George Sphrantzes lost two children in infancy and a third at the age of five. His contemporary, the scribe Demetrios Leontares, had twelve children, six of whom did not live to maturity. Angeliki Laiou’s study of tax registers in fourteenth-century Macedonia suggests that fifty percent of children in rural villages died by the age of five.69 Bioarchaeologists have just begun to make a special study of subadult remains, but their findings to date suggest that many of the children in their study samples suffered from anemia and malnutrition which made them more susceptible to infectious and opportunistic diseases. Among the sobering statistics, one could cite the cemetery at the church of St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople, where twenty-seven percent of the studied population died between the ages of one and nine, and the burial finds at Panakton in Boeotia, where forty-one percent of the skeletons were subadult.70 As we have already seen previously in the section on breastfeeding, weaning was an especially perilous time in the young child’s life, both on account of the adjustment to new foods and the possibility of contamination.

The desire for children Following this overview of what we can ascertain about the lives of Byzantine children, let us turn our attention to the ways in which Byzantines perceived both their own children and other unrelated children. Despite the importance in Byzantine society of monasticism, an institution that imposed celibacy on men and women, there can be no doubt that most Byzantines had a strong desire to bear children.71 Even some monks and nuns delayed taking the habit until they had married and raised a family. The reasons that couples wanted children were many: to continue the family line and provide heirs for the family property; to have someone to look after them in their old age; and for lower-class families, to help with the housework and tasks of peasant life, such as herding animals and working in the fields. It was the norm for a married couple to have children. The failure to produce offspring was viewed as shameful, especially for the mother, who was considered to bear the primary responsibility. Occasionally we see parents express a strong preference for the birth of a boy, but girl babies seem to have been equally loved, and equally mourned upon their premature deaths. The Old and the New Testament, as well as the apocryphal Gospel of James, provide several models of infertile mothers who eventually bore children thanks to divine intervention: Sarah and Isaac, Anna and Samuel, Elisabeth and John the Baptist, Anna and the Virgin Mary. Thus, infertile couples, or the mothers on their own, resorted to various tactics to achieve a successful

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pregnancy: prayer to the saints and the Virgin Mary, but especially to St. Anne, Mary’s mother, who herself had difficulty in conceiving a child. Thus, in the early eighth century, Anna, destined to become the mother of St. Stephen the Younger, is described as going frequently to the church of the Virgin in the Blachernai region of Constantinople, when she neared menopause and was still childless, to pray for the birth of a son.72 Other women resorted to the medical arts, whether Greco-Roman or popular, for drugs to promote conception in the form of potions, pessaries, ointments, and fumigations. Favored ingredients might include the testicles of a male goose, goat bile, and quince jelly. Some women would carry amulets made from certain kinds of stone for protection during pregnancy and to ensure safe childbirth.73

Parental affection for children More than a half century has passed since Philippe Ariès first published his thesis that “in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist” and that medieval parents had fewer emotional ties to their children than modern parents. In the intervening years medievalists have produced much evidence to rebut this hypothesis.74 Ariès himself retreated from his original position and modified his views before his death in 1984. Although the reasons Byzantines gave for wanting children may seem practical in nature, once the child was born there can be no question of the strong bonds between parents and their offspring. The principal difference between Byzantine and modern parents in this regard can be seen in the willingness of Byzantines to dedicate their children to monastic life at an early age; ironically, this seems to have been especially true when the child was born after a long period of barrenness for the mother or after the child survived a dangerous illness. Today it would be inconceivable for a mother who finally achieved a pregnancy through in vitro fertilization to give that child away. Yet this is precisely what happened with Anna, the mother of Stephen the Younger. When praying for the conception of a male child, she vowed to dedicate him to God once born.75 A number of texts reveal the great joy Byzantines took in their children and grandchildren. Paramount among them are some of the writings of Michael Psellos, already frequently cited here, who wrote with unusual depth of affection and emotion about his daughter and grandchild. Psellos had a particular predilection for newborn babies, as is shown by his description of his four-month-old grandson, unique in Byzantine literature. In a letter sent to announce the boy’s birth, Psellos writes that he was so anxious to kiss the new baby, who had not yet been washed, that he all but bloodied his lips with the blood of childbirth.76 Another letter recounts his pleasure in visiting the baby at bath time, listening to the songs of the wet nurse, and checking the temperature of the bathwater.77

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His encomium on his grandson, supposedly dictated while he was holding the baby in his arms, contains further precious details on the care of a Byzantine baby.78 Its translator, Anthony Kaldellis, calls the work “an exercise without precedent and . . . an additional tribute to Psellos’ literary imagination. It is also a superb example of what we may call his ‘humanism’, namely his willingness to explore all the facets of human life.”79 This was a model infant, who did not cry when the wet nurse removed her breast, who did not greedily guzzle breastmilk, but drank with moderation, enjoyed bath time, smiled and laughed at his grandfather, and recognized individual members of the household. The baby patiently endured his grandfather’s expressions of affection, as he administered unrestrained kisses, crushed his lips with his “rough touch”, and lifted him high up in the air.80 One thing alone the baby did not like, namely being tightly swaddled, with his arms stretched out straight along his sides; this caused him to look “upset and cross”. But once the swaddling bands were removed, as Psellos comments, “then you were up for anything! Your glance became more cheerful, your smile sweeter, and you moved your hands here and there, kicking your feet in every direction.”81 Psellos even found his friends’ babies irresistible and wrote to an acquaintance about how much he looked forward to lifting up his friend’s newborn child in his arms and making funny faces at him.82 The affection between a grandfather and his grandchildren is also depicted in the writings of another eleventh-century author, Basil Kekaumenos, who wrote a poem of consolation to a friend, Anastasios Lizix, whose son had just died. He comforted his friend by reminding him of the loving relationship Anastasios would have with his son’s orphaned children: You desire to see him, even though he is dead? Embrace his children, do not look further. Even if the infants seem to you young and small, They will rather drive you, their grandfather, To pity, simply by their baby stammering. Perhaps they also seem to feel Your sensitive and kind disposition toward them. They crawl toward you as suppliants, And eagerly embrace your legs. Thus if you offer your hand for a bit, And stretch out your leg like a ladder, You will see them running up to your neck, So that they may offer more kisses. Open the breadth of your kindness to them, Offer them affection daily, Revealed to them now by fate, not as their grandfather, but rather as their father, Because of your strong love for them.83

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Mourning for deceased children One of the best ways of perceiving the love between Byzantine parents and children is to read texts that describe a parent’s grief at the premature death of a son or daughter or letters of consolation that attempt to assuage that sorrow.84 Psellos’s only child, Styliane, died around the age of nine, from a disease that ravaged her beauty, perhaps smallpox. Psellos’s funeral oration for his beloved daughter is both a moving account of a parent’s grief at the premature death of a child and one of the most detailed accounts we have of the life of a girl from a privileged background; I have already alluded to this text on several occasions. The oration verges on hagiography: Psellos describes his nine-year-old daughter as a pious child, who dutifully attended vespers and matins services at a nearby church, reciting the psalms she had memorized, and joining in the singing of the choir “with halting whispers”, in her father’s words.85 She was also devoted to the veneration of icons, lighting candles and burning incense before them.86 Some of Psellos’s descriptions echo the topoi of a saint’s life, as Styliane is said to have avoided childhood games if they were “indecorous”, to have been charitable to the poor, to have been obedient to her parents, and to have refused to use cosmetics or wear jewelry. She needed no such artificial adornments, because she was unusually beautiful, with symmetrical and wellproportioned features, long blond hair that flowed down her back, black eyes, white skin, and lips ruby red like a pomegranate. Styliane and her father were extremely close and adored each other; as he writes, the proofs and signs of her affection were many, hugging me around the neck often, rushing to embrace me, spending long days together, lying together on our bed, sitting on my knees, passing from one bosom to another, eating the same delicacies, sharing the same drinks, in sum, wanting to share everything that was offered and set before her on account of the boundless sea of love that she felt for me.87 No one reading this passage can doubt that true love existed between Byzantine parents and their children. Again in Psellos’s words, “[God] knew the innate love that parents bear for their children, how brightly they burn with affection for them, and our natural and innate tenderness for our offspring.”88

The innate character of children Byzantines were very much influenced in their attitudes toward children by the teachings of the New Testament, such as Jesus’s blessing of children with the words, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). Children were greatly desired by parents, and treasured once born. They were viewed as innocents, as “pure and without blemish”, as “stainless”, and as malleable creatures who needed to be molded by their parents and teachers.89 It is striking that one consolation for

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bereaved parents of prepubertal children was the thought that their child died innocent of sexual relations, what Psellos calls “marital pollution”.90 Holy children of course were particularly virtuous, in their piety, charity, precocious wisdom, and seriousness of purpose, avoiding frivolous pastimes. They are often contrasted with their schoolmates or playmates, who might be boisterous or engage in bullying behavior or play silly tricks.91 Again we must turn to hagiography and epistolography for examples of what we would today perceive as normal childish behavior: the servant boy who served scalding hot wine to a holy man and then burst into laughter when the saint burned his mouth and throat; the boy oblate at the monastery of St. Nikon in Sparta who was tempted by gluttony to steal money in order to buy fruit in the marketplace; boys stealing eggs from birds’ nests, or taking baby pigeons from their nests in a church gallery.92 Quite rare is a very negative assessment of the character of children, such as we have seen previously in the typikon of the Phoberou monastery which viewed prepubescent and beardless youths as a source of sexual temptation. Most harsh is the opinion expressed in the vita of an early ninth-century saint, Nikephoros of Sebaze. The holy child is said to have entered, after weaning, therefore very young indeed, into “that tender and immature age, when the child grows rapidly and rejects the noble things in life, while also being drawn to every base impulse”.93 Yet Nikephoros of course was the exception and did not follow this typical pattern of childish depravity.

Concluding reflections In our review of the sources of evidence for information on childhood, two authors stand out, Michael Psellos and Philotheos Kokkinos. Psellos is a wellknown personality, a prolific and versatile author whose writings on his family provide unique testimony rarely found in any of his eleventh-century contemporaries.94 Philotheos Kokkinos, the fourteenth-century hagiographer and patriarch, is much less well known, but his rich body of work deserves more study.95 His attention to the childhood of his holy subjects finds no known parallel among other writers of the fourteenth century. Where a middle Byzantine hagiographer might devote one paragraph to the childhood of a holy man, often limited to the usual commonplaces, Philotheos draws out his description of the formative years to several pages, filled with fascinating details about the young boy’s activities at home, at school, in church, at play, and at work. I would suggest, however, that Philotheos’s interest in the everyday life of children is not an isolated phenomenon. It is also clearly reflected in the art of the Palaiologan period which was characterized by an elaboration of narrative scenes. Typical is the scene of playing children which has been added to the bottom part of a depiction of the Multiplication of Loaves in the outer narthex at the Kariye Cami church in Constantinople. Brigitte Pitarakis has interpreted the mosaic as showing children snatching up pebbles, knuckle bones, or nuts.96 Doula Mouriki expanded on this theme, remarking how fourteenth-century

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frescoes at Mistra in the Peloponnesos and Verroia in Macedonia “illustrate perfectly the tendency to incorporate children’s activities in the iconography of the scene in monumental decorations during the Palaiologan period”. She has also drawn our attention to the inclusion in Palaiologan scenes of boys fishing, diving, and swimming; of a girl picking flowers; and of children dancing on a bridge. From such observations she concludes that these depictions of children “reflect . . . the humanist tendencies prevalent among the elite of Constantinopolitan society”.97 Further research is necessary in the abundant but not fully exploited sources of the Palaiologan period to investigate attitudes toward children in late Byzantium and to determine if there is indeed a marked change from earlier centuries, as suggested by vignettes in the works of Philotheos Kokkinos and artistic renderings of children in churches of the Palaiologan period. We can also expect that further excavation and analysis of subadult skeletons from Byzantine cemeteries of all periods will provide additional information on issues of infant and child mortality, breastfeeding and weaning, and dietary regimen.

Notes 1 See, for example, Horn and Phenix 2009; Horn and Martens 2009; and the chapter by Horn in this volume. 2 See Antoniadis-Bibicou 1973; Patlagean 1973; Moffatt 1977 and 1986; Beaucamp 1982. 3 Kalogeras 2000; Miller 2003; Hennessy 2008; Ariantzi 2012. 4 Papaconstantinou and Talbot 2009. 5 On the issues of the ages of man, terminology for children, and legal status, see Ariantzi 2012: 28–50, and Prinzing 2009. See also the chapter by Baker in this volume. 6 Cohen-Raz 2011 and Kalogeras 2000, for example, deal with late antiquity and the sixth to mid-ninth centuries respectively; Ariantzi 2012 only goes to the eleventh century; the Comnenian and Palaiologan periods (twelfth–fifteenth centuries) have been completely neglected. 7 On naming and baptism, see Ariantzi 2012: 92–118; Baun 1994 and 2013. 8 See Life of Symeon, ch. 5 (ed. and trans. van den Ven 1962); Life of Euphrosyne the Younger (AASS Nov. 3: 862 E). 9 I thank Cornelia Horn for her elucidation of this point. 10 On breastfeeding and wet nurses, see Ariantzi 2012: 79–91; Beaucamp 1982; Rey 2004. 11 Psellos, Encomium for His Mother, 19 and ch. 5(a) (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 59). 12 Eustathios of Thessalonike, Commentaria ad Homeri Odysseam (ed. Stallbaum, 1: 88; commentary on Book 2.130–131). 13 See, for example, Life of Cyril/Constantine (trans. Dvornik 1933: 350). 14 See Psellos, To His Grandson (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 164). 15 They are singled out as being in attendance at her deathbed, and lamenting her death; see chs. 5 and 37. 16 Life and Miracles of Theodore Teron ( BHG 1764), ch.3 (ed. Delehaye 1909: 185). The English translation is from Haldon 2016. 17 See Rouquet 2005. 18 Bourbou and Garvie-Lok 2009: 72–3. 19 Life and Miracles of Theodore Teron (ed. Delehaye 1909: 185). 20 Bourbou and Garvie-Lok 2009: 73–4.

Childhood in middle and late Byzantium 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

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Ibid., 82. Laiou-Thomadakis 1977: 295. For some figures from specific excavations, see the summary in Talbot 2009: 284–5. Life of Evaristos, ch. 34 (ed. van de Vorst 1923: 317). Translation of the Relics of Theodora of Thessalonike, ch. 13 (trans. Talbot 1996: 228). On artifacts related to children’s play, see the important contribution of Pitarakis 2009. Life of Athanasios of Athos, chs. 2–3 (trans. Talbot 2016: 133–5). Krausmüller 1999: 62. On elementary education for boys, see Kalogeras 2000; Ariantzi 2012: 168–81. On the education of girls, see Ariantzi 2012: 178–80. She argues that Psellos’s daughter Styliane was educated outside the home, but this would be a unique circumstance, and I believe that her teachers and fellow students came to her house for lessons. Life of Athanasia of Aegina, ch. 1 (trans. Sherry 1996: 142). Psellos, Funeral Oration, ch. 9 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 121). Life of Germanos Maroules (ed. Tsames 1985: 97–158). Germanos’s childhood is described on 98–107. Life of Germanos Maroules, chs. 3–4 (ed. Tsames 1985). Life of Gregory Palamas (ed. Tsames 1985: 427–37). Ibid., ch. 10 (ed. Tsames 1985). The most systematic study of this topic, drawn mostly from hagiography, is by Ariantzi 2012: 135–41. Life of David, George, and Symeon of Lesbos, ch. 4 (trans. Abrahamse and Foraste 1998: 154–5). For Paul, see Life of Paul of Latros, ch. 3 (ed. Delehaye 1913: 106.16–17); for Ioannikios, see Life of Ioannikios by Sabas, ch. 2 (AASS, Nov. 2.1: 333C–334A). There is also a reference to children herding swine in the Life of Eustratios of Agauros (ed. PapadopoulosKerameus 1897–1898: 384.31–2). Life of Luke of Steiris, ch. 4 (trans. Connor and Connor 1994: 11); for Gregory, see Life of Gregory of Akritas (ed. Delehaye 1902: 372). Life of Ioannikios by Sabas (AASS, Nov. 2.1: 352C–353A); Life of Sabas and Makarios (ed. Cozza-Luzzi 1893: 21–2). Life of Elias, ch. 5 (ed. Papadopoulos-Kerameus: 45.12–13). Life of Germanos Maroules, ch. 7 (ed. Tsames 1985). Life of Athanasia of Aegina (trans. Sherry 1996: 142). For another reference to girls weaving, see Life of Theodora of Thessalonike, ch. 28 (trans. Talbot 2006: 188). Psellos, Funeral Oration, ch. 10 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 121). Life of Nikon, ch. 27 (trans. Sullivan 1987: 99). Although it is in a monastic context, Theodora of Thessalonike’s young daughter, Theopiste, worked at grinding grain; see Life of Theodora of Thessalonike, ch. 28 (trans. Talbot 2006: 188). On this topic, see Hatlie 2006. See Psellos, Encomium for His Mother, ch. 8a (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 65). See Gerstel and Talbot 2006: 86, for reference. Life of Gregory Palamas, ch. 7 (ed. Tsames 1985). Life of Germanos Maroules, ch. 6 (ed. Tsames 1985). Ibid., ch. 5 (ed. Tsames 1985). Life of Athanasios of Athos, ch. 6.1 (trans. Talbot 2016: 141). Ibid., ch. 6.2 (trans. Talbot 2016: 141–2). Life of Isidore Boucheiras, chs. 3 and 5 (ed. Tsames 1985). Canon 40 of Quinisext Council, 11 (ed. Mansi 1765: 961–2). See the discussion in Talbot (forthcoming); also the chapter by McGuire in this volume. Life of Theodora of Thessalonike, chs. 8–9 (trans. Talbot 2006: 169–71). Translation of the Relics of Theodora of Thessalonike, chs. 13–15 (trans. Talbot 2006: 228–31).

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61 For more on orphaned children in monasteries, see Miller 2003: 127–32, 159–68, 270– 1; for the abandoned girl, see Miracles of Gregory Palamas, ch. 6 (trans. Talbot 2012: 316–19). 62 Life of Saint Basil the Younger, pt. I, ch. 32 (ed. and trans. Sullivan et al. 2014: 133) 63 Encomium of Antony Kauleas, chs. 4–5 (ed. Leone 1989: 415); Life of John of Kathara (ed. Delehaye 1902: 631–2). 64 Life of Niphon of Athos, ch. 1.1 (trans. Greenfield 2016: 571). 65 Novel 123 of Justinian (eds. Schoell et al. 1928, 3: 623). 66 For more on his views, see Greenfield 2009: 254–6, and the typikon of Blemmydes in Thomas and Hero 2000, especially ch. 9, vol. 3: 1202–3. 67 Greenfield 2009: 256–8. See also the chapter by McGuire in this volume. 68 Typikon of Charsianeites, ch. C2, in Thomas and Hero 2000, vol. 4: 1652. 69 For bibliography and further evidence, see Talbot 2009: 283–90; Ariantzi 2012: 299–324. 70 Talbot 2009: 284–5. 71 For more detailed information on this subject, see Congourdeau 2009; Gerstel and Talbot 2006. 72 Life of Stephen the Younger, ch. 4 (ed. and trans. Auzépy 1997: 92). 73 Kalavrezou 2003: 274–305. 74 Ariès 1962: 125. 75 Life of Stephen the Younger, ch. 4 (ed. and trans. Auzépy 1997: 92, with French trans.: 183–4) and ch. 11: 101 (with French trans.:195). 76 Psellos, Letter S 72 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 172). 77 Psellos, Letter S 157 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 174). 78 Psellos, To His Grandson (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 157–65). The grandchild was apparently born to Psellos’s adoptive daughter. 79 Ibid., 157. 80 Ibid., 163–4. 81 Ibid., 164. 82 Psellos, Letter S 157 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 175). 83 The English translation by Frederick Lauritzen is in Pitarakis 2009: 174–5. 84 See Talbot 2009: 291–308; Ariantzi 2012: 324–34. On mourning for deceased children, see also the chapter by Giladi in this volume. 85 Psellos, Funeral Oration, ch. 12 and ch. 29 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 122 and 128). 86 Ibid., ch. 30 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 129). 87 Ibid., ch. 11 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 122). 88 Ibid., ch. 39 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 133). 89 Ibid., chs. 39 and 47 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 133 and 136); for more examples, see the index of Papaconstantinou and Talbot 2009, under “children, innocence of”. 90 Psellos, Funeral Oration, ch. 32 (trans. Kaldellis 2006: 130). 91 See Kalogeras 2001. 92 Life of Saint Basil the Younger, pt. III, ch. 18 (ed. and trans. Sullivan et al. 2014: 303); The Life of Saint Nikon, ch. 75 (trans. Sullivan 1987: 258–61); Letter by John Apokaukos (ed. Bees 1971–1974: 151); and Pachymeres, History, 3 (ed. Failler 1984–2000: 277), respectively. 93 Life of Nikephoros of Sebaze, ch. 2 (ed. Halkin 1953–1954: 20). 94 See Cojocaru 2016 for analyses of texts by Michael Psellos and of other ninth- to eleventh-century sources. 95 Mihail Mitrea, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh, is currently writing a dissertation on his hagiographical corpus. 96 Pitarakis 2009: 236. 97 Mouriki 1983: 463, 473.

16 New perspectives on parent-child relationships in early Europe Jewish legal views from the High Middle Ages Israel Zvi Gilat The purpose of this chapter is to present aspects of parent-child relationships in the Jewish communities of the High Middle Ages. I shall do this by focusing on the religious legal system of European Jewry in this period, and especially that of the great codifier of Jewish law, Moses Maimonides (ca. 1138–1204), whose enormous impact on rabbinic Judaism is felt down to our day. The central aspects will be parents’ obligations to maintain their children and to teach boys the Torah. My approach will be comparative, and in order to highlight the specific features of this, I begin with a presentation of modern English law, which, in my view, stands in complete contrast to medieval Jewish law. I shall then describe the unique characteristics of Jewish religious law which is called “halakah”. The halakah is the normative part of the Jewish religion, and is constructed of layers upon layers of oral traditions that are not to be found in the books of the Bible; most of them are otherwise undocumented. The traditions of Oral Law were written down over a very long period, and are collected in the canonical halakic literature, which primarily includes the Mishnah, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. The traditions come mainly from the Second Temple period, beginning with the return of the exiles under Ezra the Scribe (from 457 BCE), down to the period of the Great Synod and the Tannaites (third century BCE to 219 BCE), and ending in the redaction of the Talmud (ca. 500 CE, which is also the end of the Amoraic period). After the redaction of the canonical literature of the Oral Law, the halakah was further developed by halakic scholars in three historical periods: the period of the gaonim (“The Excellencies”; 589–1040 CE), the medieval halakic scholars (ca. 1040–1492 CE), and the later halakic scholars (1492 CE onward).1 In my discussions, I shall make active use of this material.

The relationship between parent and child in modern legal systems The association between a father’s responsibilities and rights vis-à-vis his sons and daughters is found in legal systems from the beginning of the modern era. The focus of these laws is on the father’s obligations toward his children;

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his rights to their property and earnings are almost secondary. In English law, for example, the father has a fundamental obligation to maintain his sons and daughters and supply their needs. He cannot divest himself of this responsibility at will. The notion of a father’s absolute responsibility derives from the fact that English law regards him as a natural guardian. In the eighteenth century, the jurist William Blackstone (1723–1780) expressed this incisively in his influential Commentaries on the Laws of England: The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation laid on them, not only by nature itself, but by their own proper act, in bringing them into the world: for they would be in the highest manner injurious to their issue, if they only gave their children life, that they might afterwards see them perish. By begetting them, therefore, they have entered into a voluntary obligation, to endeavor, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved. And thus the children will have a perfect right of receiving maintenance from their parents.2 In exchange for this obligation, and secondary to it, a father has certain rights with respect to his sons’ and daughters’ property and the earnings from their labor, as Blackstone then explains: A father has no other power over his son’s estate, than as his trustee or guardian; for though he may receive the profits during the child’s minority, yet he must account for them when he comes of age. He may indeed have the benefit of his children’s labor while they live with him, and are maintained by him: but this is no more than he is entitled to from his apprentices or servants. The legal power of a father (for a mother, as such, is entitled to no power, but only to reverence and respect), the power of a father, I say, over the persons of his children ceases at the age of twentyone: for they are then enfranchised by arriving at years of discretion, or that point which the law has established (as some must necessarily be established) when the empire of the father, or other guardian, gives place to the empire of reason.3 It should be added that, from the perspective of modern law, guardianship is a status which involves agency or fiduciary arrangements whereby a trustee is appointed for another person. The object of such an agency or fiduciary arrangement is the minor, the child. But the source of authority is the state, because the minor lacks intellectual capacity and cannot assume responsibility. The state appoints each parent as its agent to care for his or her children. It imposes upon them, as parents, fiduciary duties toward their children. Moreover, guardianship is a duty that parents may not divest themselves of. It is regarded as belonging to the sphere of natural law.4 This view of guardianship serves as a basis for many modern-day judicial systems.

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In 1985, the parent-child relationship in English law was changed from guardianship to parental responsibility, because the word “guardianship” was thought to carry connotations of ownership over the child, akin to a relationship to land or personal belongings. And in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by many nations in 1990, parent-child relationships are defined as follows: “States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child.”5 Another fundamental element that derives from guardianship obligations and parental obligations is the concept of “the best interest of the child”. Because it is the state that appoints the parent as guardian, it is the state that establishes the criteria for fulfilling these obligations. In modern legal literature, there is no exhaustive definition of this term.6 In contrast to this, for the medieval halakah, the father did not serve as a guardian. He was thus under no obligation to act as a trustee with regard to his sons’ and daughters’ assets, as he would in modern legal systems. The reasons for this difference will become clear in what follows.

Parent-child relationships in the halakah Talmudic literature and medieval halakic literature contain several laws that address the issue of the dependency of boys and girls on their fathers. This dependency has two facets: rights and obligations. As far as rights were concerned, the father had a right to be given the property of his sons and daughters. He was also entitled to the earnings from their labor or from ownerless objects which they discovered. With regard to his obligations, the father had the duty to maintain his children and to supply all their needs. These two facets appear to be complementary: the father’s right to his children’s money and their earnings derived from his obligation to maintain them and supply all their needs. Conversely, his obligation to maintain them and supply all their needs derived from his right to their money and earnings. I shall now examine central Jewish legal sources, and especially Talmudic writings from late antiquity and medieval halakic commentaries on them. I shall focus in particular on how they address the financial relationship between a father and his child. My reading will indicate that there is no clear presumption of reciprocity between the responsibilities and the rights in the fatherchild relationship. Talmudic sources do not use the term “guardianship” to describe a father’s legal relationship to his sons and daughters. In Talmudic law, the term “guardian” (Gr. epitropos) refers only to an agent.7 Anyone could appoint a guardian or agent to perform a legal action in his name and in his stead. The guardian or agent, as a fiduciary, had to act for the benefit of the one who appointed him. In general, the guardianship mentioned in the Talmud refers to the management of an orphan’s financial holdings by someone who was appointed either by the orphan’s father before his death, or by the Rabbinical Court.8 Because the

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father is not defined in the Talmud as an epitropos, this means that he was not appointed by the Rabbinical Court to manage the financial holdings of his sons and daughters, and was thus not under any obligation to treat their financial holdings in the way that an epitropos was obliged to treat the financial holdings of an orphan or of any other individual for whose benefit he was acting. An examination of the writings of the medieval halakic authorities reveals that they too had no need of the term “guardianship by the father” in order to describe the financial relationship between a father and his sons and daughters. The term epitropos in the context of the father-child relationship appears only at the end of the Middle Ages. In one of his legal decisions, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel, called Rosh (ca. 1250–1328), was asked whether an epitropos should be appointed to manage the assets that a child inherited from his mother’s family, or whether his father should manage the assets. Rosh responded, “The court should not appoint a guardian for minor children when their father is alive. A father may manage the assets of his minor children, and the court does not supervise his acts.”9 This clearly indicates that when a minor child owned property or possessed rights, the court was not obliged to appoint an epitropos for the child. Instead, it trusted the father to deal wisely and sensibly with his children’s financial holdings and to act in their interest. However, this did not mean that the father had to behave in this fashion. Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli, a Spanish halakic authority also known as Ritva (ca. 1250–1330), objected a priori to appointing the father as an epitropos over his children’s financial holdings, because the father is “a relative who is entitled to inherit” from his minor child.10 And just as “no relative is ever given possession of the property of a minor”, one does not appoint the father as epitropos over his own children’s financial holdings. In view of the fact that the father did not serve as a guardian vis-à-vis his sons and daughters, and because Jewish law did not regard him as the natural guardian of his minor children, how should his halakic responsibility toward his sons and daughters be defined? I argue here that the sources that address the father’s obligations to maintain his children make a clear distinction between sons and daughters who are minors, and sons and daughters who have attained their majority.11 It is only with regard to his minor children that the father is entitled to the earnings from their labors and to their financial rights, and it is only them that he has an obligation to maintain. Sons and daughters who have reached their majority are independent and are not entitled to have their father provide for their subsistence; moreover, all their earnings and all their proprietary rights are theirs alone.

Alternative approaches in Jewish law: Samuel of Nehardea and Rabbi Yohanan The definition of minority and majority was debated already among the Babylonian Amoraites of the first generation. According to Samuel of Nehardea (ca. second to third century CE), the distinction lies in their intellectual capacity.12

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Because small children “do not have intellectual capacity”, their earnings and the ownerless objects which they discover do not belong to them. Children who have reached their majority, on the other hand, have “sufficient intellectual capacity”. “Sufficient intelligence” has elsewhere been defined in a functional manner, namely according to age or maturity. As far as the possession of ownerless objects is concerned, the Jerusalem Talmud states as follows: Any child who is given a nut and throws it away, and who is given a pebble and keeps it [has little understanding and is therefore not legally entitled to own it.] Therefore, if a child holds something in his hand, it may be taken from him, [and this is not theft] because it is as if the object was found in the garbage. However, if a child keeps the nut and throws away the pebble, [even though he is not yet considered to have intelligence,] one may not take it from him, because of the Rabbinic enactment “for the sake of peace.” But a child who keeps the nut and the pebble, and hides them from others, and only later brings them with him, [this child is regarded as sufficiently intelligent to be entitled to own them,] and taking them from him is regarded as theft. However, this child’s intelligence is not sufficient for him to transact for others.13 However, there also exists a different opinion on this point, which cites Rabbi Yohanan, one of the Palestinian Talmudic sages: [By] major [we do] not [mean one who is] legally a major, nor [do we mean by] minor [one who is] legally a minor, but a major who is maintained by his father is regarded as a minor, and a minor who is not maintained by his father is regarded as a major.14 This opinion was accepted as halakically binding by the medieval European halakic authorities. In a Mishnah commentary, Maimonides writes, “Any son who is living with his father, an ownerless object that he finds belongs to his father, even if the son is forty years old. Any son who does not live with his father and is six years of age or older, the object belongs to the son.”15 Majority and minority here are not ages of maturity or understanding, but are determined by whether or not the son is living with his father. It is important to note that in Talmudic times, the definition of childhood was not necessarily a matter of chronological age but would refer rather to the social status of the individual. As we see from Rabbi Yohanan’s approach, there is a dichotomy in the Talmudic halakic sources and the medieval halakic authorities. Some sources regard the father’s obligation to maintain his sons and daughters and supply their needs as an independent duty, unrelated to the father’s entitlement, as a parent, to their monetary rights.16 However, according to other Talmudic passages and their medieval commentaries, the father’s obligation to maintain his

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children is a secondary obligation, one that is subordinate to the father’s monetary rights vis-à-vis his sons and daughters. The father’s obligation to maintain his sons and daughters arises from his right to receive the earnings from their labors, from ownerless objects which they discover, and even from the payment of damages which they receive.17 The father’s duty, according to these passages and commentaries, depends on his subjective wish. He may relieve himself of this duty at any time if he so wishes.18 The Talmudic sources themselves, like the post-Talmudic medieval halakic commentaries, are obscure and do not explain this dichotomy.19 In order to come to terms with this contradiction, we must assume that a father did not serve as his children’s epitropos. In other words, he was not an agent of the state nor of a communal body with regard to caring for his children, as in modern legal systems. This, however, did not mean that he had an unlimited authority over his children. The father’s responsibility revolved around a single axis: his desire to care for his sons and daughters, to sustain them, and to supply their needs. According to the Talmud, the monetary relationship between the father and his sons and daughters was based on his natural desire to promote his children’s welfare, to maintain them, and to supply their needs, although he was not by duty bound to do so; this position was accepted by all the medieval halakic authorities. However, in order to provide an incentive for the father to maintain his sons and daughters and supply their needs, the sages determined that a father who promoted his children’s welfare was entitled to monetary rights that accrued to the children for as long as they were living with him. This enactment incentive was not based on coercion by the state or on a divine command. Rather, it presupposes normative human behavior.20 If all other parents maintain their children and supply their needs, then the individual parent is regarded as consenting to this kind of behavior and as desiring it. This objectively implied consent as the basis for monetary obligations was – and still is – a fundamental of Jewish law. For example, in business transactions, many Rabbinic enactments are based on implied consent, in accordance with the parties’ lifestyles and views.21 In Jewish law, an enactment puts into words a practice that is already in existence. The enactment is binding on the members of a community because it has been accepted by one’s fellow community members. A father’s “volunteering” is not determined by the subjective view of each individual father, but by the general consent of fathers to support their helpless children. The enactments and edicts of the halakic authorities reflect their understanding of when, how, and under what conditions a father would decide to obligate himself with respect to his child. Thus, the sages presupposed that a father’s decision to have his children live with him, to maintain them, and to supply their needs would depend on his being entitled to their monetary earnings. This would also be true if he decided to maintain and supply the needs of his sons and daughters even without being entitled to their monetary profits. For example, the sages “determined” that a father should strongly desire to

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receive the profits from an ownerless object which his children found, because if he was not entitled to these profits, he would not support them. Accordingly, ownerless objects found by sons and daughters became the property of their father. This suggests that a father’s monetary rights with respect to his sons and daughters were not an independent expression of his authority over his children. On the contrary, the rights were intended to influence the father in his decision about whether or not to undertake various obligations vis-à-vis his sons and daughters.22

The meaning of the father’s duty to maintain his children By contrast, the Talmudic sources impose the obligation on the father to maintain his children, without this obligation being conditional upon the degree to which the father “volunteers” to do so in order to be entitled to the profits that accrue to his children.23 Here too, this obligation derives primarily, not from the role of the father as a guardian, but from his father’s religious obligation to practice charity. In Judaism, practicing charity is the religious duty of every Jew. However, this obligation is not enforceable, because it is based entirely on the desire of the giver, who decides how much and to whom to give.24 This means that no individual has the right to demand charity. There are only two circumstances in which an individual may be compelled to practice charity, and in fact, both are dependent on the giver’s real desire, as assessed by the sages on the basis of their life experience. In the first instance, if a person refuses to give the sum of money that he vowed to give to charity, he is compelled to give it, on the basis of the commandment in Deuteronomy 23:24, “That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform.” His explicit commitment derives, not from an obligation, but from the desire he expressed with his own lips.25 In the other instance, the charity constitutes part of the commitments made by a local community – similar to modern social security laws – whereby the townspeople stipulate among themselves that they will contribute to the town’s coffers for such vital needs as security and the like.26 There is no need for the subjective consent of all the townspeople to contribute to their security needs, because of the implied consent of the vast majority, who stand to benefit, and the same applies to donations of charity to the town’s coffers.27 This duty is based on the consent of the vast majority of the townspeople, because they would benefit from this charity if they were to become impoverished. From this general principle, we can move to the father-child relationship. According to Tannaitic sources from the first century CE, providing for the subsistence of one’s minor children is purely a matter of fulfilling one’s religious duty to give charity, and nothing else: “Happy are they that keep justice, that do righteousness at all times” (Ps. 106:3): Is it possible to do righteousness at all times? – This, explained our Rabbis of Jabneh (or, as others say, R. Eliezer), refers to a man who

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maintains his sons and daughters while they are young. R. Samuel b. Nahmani said: This refers to a man who brings up an orphan boy or orphan girl in his house and enables them to marry.28 Just as no one has ever been forced to raise an orphan, if they have no interest in doing so, no one is forced to comply with the religious duty of maintaining one’s minor sons and daughters. Nonetheless, Amoraic sources state that maintaining one’s children eventually developed into an obligation. In several sources, this appears to have been an enactment made at the Synod of Usha.29 It remains, however, unclear even in these sources whether this enactment became an undisputed law, and whether it applied to all minor children or only to children who were “very young”. It is also unclear who fell under the category of “minor” and who fell under the category of “very young”. Another, more latent assumption was that the father’s obligation toward his children, which derived from his obligation to practice charity, was based on his actual ability to provide for his minor child. One must thus draw a distinction between an affluent and a nonaffluent father.30 But not even the medieval Rabbinic authorities could clarify whether the obligation to give charity was intended to supplement the enactment at Usha or to replace it, and whether there should be a difference between providing for very young minor children up to the age of six, and providing for minors above this age.31 I argued previously that the father’s obligation to maintain his children was akin to the obligation of an individual to make charitable donations to the town’s coffers. The obligation to give charity is a Rabbinic enactment rooted in the implied consent of the father, which in turn is based on normative human behavior, because a father is interested in the welfare of his minor children. The difference between the father’s obligation to maintain and supply the needs of his minor children and those of his “very young” minor children is dependent on his changing circumstances. His obligation to maintain his “very young” minor children is absolute, and not dependent on his financial state, because it is implied that a father consents to seriously exert himself in order to maintain the “very young” minors who are unable to earn a livelihood by themselves. This is not the case for minor children, however, who are able to earn a livelihood even from occasional sources of income, albeit with difficulty. In this case, there is no implied consent on the part of the father to maintain them and supply their needs unless he has the means to do so; this, however, does not apply when he himself is in difficult financial circumstances. Only a father who is sufficiently prosperous is compelled to maintain his minor children.32 Not only was a father’s basic duty to provide for his sons and daughters dependent upon his objective, implied consent. The scope of the obligation likewise depended on such a consent. A father would exert himself in order to maintain his very young minor children. To do so he would be prepared to take on additional work, but this would refer only to the children’s most basic needs. A father was not obligated to exert himself for luxuries; he could not

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be compelled to take on additional work in this regard. It is clear from all the halakic decision makers, like Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona (1235– 1310) and Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rottenburg (1215–1293), that if minor children, and even very young minor children, had assets of their own, which could provide them with earnings, the father was not required to maintain them and supply their needs out of his own assets. Instead, they should support themselves from their own assets.33 We can thus affirm that according to these legal Jewish sources, a father’s obligation to maintain his children was not a fundamental obligation to which the father’s rights to his children’s financial holdings were subordinate, as in English law and in other modern legal systems. Rather, it was an obligation that supplemented the children’s subsistence when they had no means of their own. When they had their own source of income, the father could choose to let them live with him, to maintain them, and to supply their needs, and thus be entitled to their financial earnings, or else he could relieve himself of this obligation and prefer neither to provide for them nor to be entitled to their money.

Why do mothers have no responsibility for the children? It is also important to note that Jewish law did not address the equality of the sexes. A husband was required to maintain his wife; a wife, however, was not required to earn a livelihood, but only to do housework. As a consequence, many mothers were not in a position to support their children. The fundamental inequality between husband and wife, according to which the husband ran the domestic economy, its expenditures and income, meant that he was to bring in a livelihood whereas the wife was exempt from working and earning. If she did earn an income by working, or through income from her property, her earnings belonged to the husband and could also go toward maintaining the home. The consequence was that the children could be dependent only on the support of their father, not of their mother. The mother was not obligated to feed her children, because she was dependent on her husband and had no independent possessions. Even in the case of a divorce, the mother was not obligated to support her children. This was presumably because she was unaccustomed to running a household, or because in a case of remarriage her earnings would belong to her new husband. The mother’s exemption from feeding her children continued even if she was widowed, because under Torah law sons and daughters inherited their father’s possessions, whereas the mother was entitled only to be fed from the trust. This meant that the mother was not obligated to feed her children, and certainly was not obligated to go out and seek work to provide for her children in the way the father was. An exception was the mother’s obligation to nurse her children until they were a year and a half old, even if she was divorced or widowed – given the risk that the infant would refuse milk from another nurse.34

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The parent-child relationship in the Code of Maimonides: the enigma in Maimonides After this previous discussion of medieval halakic authorities’ commentaries on Amoraic examples from late antiquity, we now focus on the development of Jewish law in medieval times, by addressing some of the legal principles established by Maimonides. Some of these are very similar to modern-day principles. The Talmud, for example, did not concern itself with the location of a child’s custody when parents separated. Nor did it address the conditions of child support when there was a dispute between a father and a mother who had divorced. Maimonides was the first to formulate a law in this regard, a law that was not deduced from any Talmudic source. In his code, Book of Women, Marriage Treatise (hereafter, Maimonides) 21:17, he states, [The following rules apply after the twenty-four] months have been completed, and the child has been weaned. If the divorcee desires that her son remains in her custody, he is not separated from her until he completes his sixth year [of life]. Instead, his father is compelled to provide him with his sustenance while he lives with his mother. After the child completes his sixth year, however, the father has the right to say, “If [my son] is in my custody, I will support him. If, however, he continues to live with his mother, I will not give him anything.” A mother, on the other hand, is given custody of her daughter forever, even after [she passes] the age of six.35 Many of Maimonides’s commentators explain his gender distinction with regard to custody in terms of life experience: it is better for a daughter to be educated by her mother in matters of modesty and desired modes of behavior.36 On the other hand, a six-year-old son, who was obligated to study the Torah, should live with his father, who had the responsibility to teach him the Torah. Maimonides was criticized for his seemingly arbitrary choice of the age of six with regard to a son. Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquieres, a Talmudic authority from Provence (called Ra’avad, 1125–1198), stated that Maimonides was wrong in setting the age when a son should be handed over to his father as late as six, because the son was obligated to learn the Torah from the moment he began to talk.37 Already in Tannaitic times, the Talmudic sources state, “If he is able to speak, his father must teach him the reading of the Shema and the Torah and the holy tongue.”38 Accordingly, the son had to be with his father from an earlier age. It is worth noting that the concept of “the best interest of the child” is absent in Maimonides’s code. We can infer that if the mother refused to give the child to his father, the father’s only recourse was to threaten to refuse to maintain the child; but if the mother took it upon herself to maintain her son, the father was not entitled to custody. Various attempts have been made to resolve Maimonides’s apparent self-contradiction. At any rate, the notion of the child’s best interests plays no role in his argumentation.39 Furthermore, whereas halakah

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21:17, which I dealt with previously, discusses a dispute between a mother and a father who both wish to have custody of their children, halakah 21:18 deals with the opposite situation, in which neither parent wishes to have custody. Maimonides writes, If a mother does not want her children – either males or females – to remain in her custody after she weans them, she has this prerogative, and she can give their father their custody, or make them wards of the community if there is no father, and [the community] must care for them. How can the mother, who is described as being entitled to custody of the child even against the father’s wishes, suddenly change her mind and make the child or children wards of the community (if there was no father)? Conversely, how can the father, who could not demand custody of the child against the mother’s wishes, suddenly be obligated to take custody if the mother decided that she did not want them, and he could not make them wards of the community? Did Maimonides believe that the mother had only rights, and no obligations? That if she so desired, she could waive the father’s child support and have custody of the children? And that if she desired otherwise, she could “make them wards of the community”, without anyone daring to object?

A proposal for solving the enigma in Maimonides All of these queries presuppose that Maimonides was referring in halakah 21:17 to the rules of custody. This is why his commentators attributed to him the assumption that the son remains with his mother until the age of six for psychological reasons. They also treated the case of the mother who is given “custody of her daughter forever” in a similar way. In my opinion, however, Maimonides does not address the issue of custody and of child-custody decisions between parents, but rather a father’s obligation to support his children. Six is the age at which a son is mature enough to understand business transactions, and six-year-old children are entitled to keep ownerless objects which they find. A child who is under the age of six is defined as “very young” and incapable of finding ownerless objects, that is finding sources of incidental earnings. Until the age of six, therefore, a father is required to maintain his child even if the child is with the mother, because the father does not incur damage from the fact that the child is with the mother. But when the child is above the age of six, the father may support his son on the condition that he lives in his father’s household, so that the child’s incidental earnings could be used to the advantage of the household. By contrast, a daughter is under “the patronage of her father” until she reaches majority at the age of twelve.40 The fruits of her labors and the ownerless objects which she finds belong to her father, even if she does not live with him, but with her mother. Therefore, the father need not make

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his obligation to provide for her conditional upon her living with him. This shows that we cannot draw any conclusions from Maimonides’s writings about the laws of custodianship themselves, or the scope or conditions of these laws. Bearing in mind the criticism by the halakic authorities, my analysis has shown that it was not Maimonides’s intention to establish a law depending on where a child was placed in custody, nor was his age distinction meant to tear families apart. Maimonides’s aim was simply to establish the right of sons and daughters to demand support as children from their fathers; in that case, the rules applying to a minor son differed from those which applied to a son who had reached the age of six. The rules applying to a son who was under six differed from those applying to a daughter. That is why Maimonides stated only that “if, however, he continues to live with his mother, I will not give him anything” and did not enter into a consideration of whether the mother or the father were fit for their role as parents, a matter which was addressed by the gaonim in their response. That is also the reason why Maimonides did not set a younger age differential, as suggested by Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (RaBad), because in the matter of child support, a “very young” minor child, under six, was more entitled to child support than a minor child who was over six. The exposition of Maimonides presented previously is my own. Many of the halakic authorities who interpret Maimonides, including contemporary rabbis, have, however, understood Maimonides in his Halakot as referring to rules of child custody;41 and several of them have found Maimonides’s apparent conclusion – that the father could not demand the Rabbinical Court to grant him custody over the child, but that he could only threaten to terminate child support – highly unpalatable. Thus they have attempted to resolve the problem in different ways. Some late medieval authorities also argue that Maimonides was referring to a situation in which the father was not interested in the custody of a son, but wished to relieve himself of supporting the child.42 However, if the father was interested in obtaining custody over the son, he had the right to demand the child per se. Others interpreted Maimonides as addressing the question of a father who wished to have his son live with him, but without being able to demand custody even if the son was under six.43 Other rabbis would contend that, according to Maimonides, the father had no right to demand custody over his son per se, but only to threaten that he would not support the son if he did not live with him.44

Toward an understanding of the parental duty to teach children the Torah In the Code of Maimonides, not only the halakic financial duties toward children were upgraded, but also the nonfinancial duties, as well as the duty of the father to teach his child the Torah.45 In the Babylonian Talmudic sources, the father’s duty to teach his son the Torah refers both to the Mosaic laws, “the

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Written Law”, and to transmitting the unwritten traditions, “the Oral Law”, which are Biblical verses followed by oral interpretations (called Mikrah). In the Talmudic sources, teaching a child the Torah was partly accomplished through the public reading of the Torah on the Sabbath, accompanied by a reading from the Targum (an Aramaic translation), which included substantial details deriving from mostly unwritten traditions.46 However, the father’s obligation to teach his son the Torah did not include the halakah and the haggadah (i.e. the nonhalakic component of Talmudic traditions). Furthermore, the father’s ritual obligation of Torah instruction meant teaching his son Mikrah several times until the child knew it well. This obligation even applied to a mature child. The obligation to hire a teacher is not mentioned in the Babylonian or the Jerusalem Talmud. The high priest, Joshua ben Gamla, who officiated in ca. 64 CE, decreed that “there should be teachers in Jerusalem for children who have no father.”47 According to the Talmud, this decree was meant for the education of orphans and for children whose fathers were absent. His decree was later extended to make teachers available in every city and town. Joshua ben Gamla’s decree did not abrogate the father’s obligation to teach his son the Torah, beginning as soon as the child begins to speak. It offered a communal alternative to the secondary stage of individual paternal teaching. Accordingly, the communal obligation was defrayed by a poll tax or an income tax. The teachers were not paid by the fathers.48 According to the Talmud, a father’s duty to teach his son the Torah and other duties, such as circumcision and redeeming his first born, were not only obligations and responsibilities. In each of these cases, although he could choose to fulfill his obligation by appointing an agent, the father was the privileged agent in the fulfilment of this obligation. The religious obligation of teaching the Torah applied to fathers alone, not to mothers. In medieval times, the content of Torah instruction changed and the teaching of the “Oral Law” became more systematic. Maimonides writes in Rules for Studying the Torah, “He [the father] is obliged to hire a teacher for his son,” and in a later passage, “the custom is to hire and pay a teacher to teach children.”49 Yet Maimonides’s approach, not found in either Talmud, required a textual or homiletic grounding. This led to a more nuanced view, namely that a father’s duty to teach his son the Torah was limited, up to the end of his childhood. From that point on, the adult son, like every Jew, had an individual obligation to study the Torah. It is possible that Maimonides conceived of the father’s obligation to teach his son the Torah as part of his obligation to maintain his very young children. Paternal charity to children was not specifically prescribed, but was rather based on social norms that saw the fathers as responsible for providing for their children. Maimonides also extended the concept of paternal charity to include spiritual and intellectual needs, “if when providing physical needs, close relatives have precedence over others, how much more so for nurturing the relative’s soul, to impart knowledge of God’s ways and His Torah.”50

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The same reasoning, that Torah instruction belongs to the sphere of paternal charity, led Maimonides to include the study of Mishnah, Talmud, and haggadah in the required curriculum, despite the fact that the Talmud obligated the father only to teach his son Mikrah. Maimonides likewise required a father to hire a professional teacher to teach his sons if he could not do so himself – further evidence that the obligation of teaching the Torah to one’s children is part of the requirement of “spiritual maintenance” of one’s children, a branch of paternal charity.

Conclusions Jewish law concerning the legal relationships between parents and children in the Middle Ages is not compatible with the modern legal model of guardianship, nor with the Roman patria potestas legal model, termed “vitae necisque potestas”, in which the father had the power of life and death over his children.51 Instead, the father and his children constituted a form of “living together” that is not dissimilar to the relationship today between an unmarried man and woman. Thus, according to the Talmud, and all the medieval halakic authorities, the monetary relationship between the father and his sons and daughters was premised on the father’s natural desire to promote his children’s welfare, to maintain them, and to supply their needs, although he was not obligated to do so. However, in order to provide an incentive for the father to maintain his sons and daughters and supply their needs, the Talmudic sages stated that a father who promoted his children’s welfare was entitled to monetary rights that came their way for as long as they were living with him. The father’s basic duty to provide for his sons and daughters depended upon his objectively implied consent, but the scope of the obligation was also dependent upon his financial possibilities in terms of charity. The father’s central role in the household economy, compared to the married wife’s dependence, led to a state of affairs in which the mother could not live with them in this kind of “cohabitation”. She could not even support her children as a form of “charitable obligation”. Moreover, the father’s obligation to feed his children extended from “physical” to “spiritual” nourishment. Thus, the obligation of Torah instruction for his children shifted from a personal religious ritual obligation to a cultural obligation, in which the father had to hire experienced teachers who would methodically instruct his young children also in Mishnah, Talmud, and haggadah.

Notes 1 All of these scholars regarded the canonical literature as binding and indisputable. These post-Talmudic halakic scholars produced creative interpretations of the canonical literature, which were based on an in-depth study of this literature that led to halakic conclusions. Gaonim was a title given to the heads of the Jewish academies at Sura and Pumbedita in Babylonia. 2 Tucker 1969: 452.

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3 Ibid., 452. 4 See Holdsworth 1972: 648; Eversley’s Law of the Domestic Relations: 459–60; Glendon 1971: 263–5; Eekelaar 1993: 51–64. 5 Cretney and Masson 1997: 609–10; see also Gilat 2008: 88–101. 6 Goldstein et al. 1996; Goldstein et al., 1980: 62–3. 7 Mishnah (hereafter abbreviated M) 9:4; Babylonian Talmud (hereafter abbreviated BT) Kettuboth 86b. 8 BT Gittin 52a; Talmudic Encyclopaedia, II: 121. Rabbinical Courts are the tribunals in which internal financial conflicts between Jews are adjudicated according to Jewish halakah, and in which one’s personal religious status is established when necessary. The rabbinical judges’ opinions are based exclusively on Torah law. 9 Rosh was an eminent rabbi and Talmudist best known for his abstract of Talmudic law. See Responsa, rule 87:1. 10 Ritva, Responsa (Kapach edition) sec. 162. 11 M Bava Metziah 1:5; ibid., 7:6; M Eruvin 7:6; M Ma’aser Sheni 4:4; Tosefta (hereafter abbreviated T) Pesakhim 7:4 (p. 177); T Ma’aser Sheni 4:3 (p. 262); BT Eruvin 82b; BT Bava Kama 87b; T Bava Kama 9:8, 9, 10 (p. 44). 12 BT Bava Metziah 12a. 13 Jerusalem Talmud, M Ma’aser Sheni 4:3. 14 Died in Tiberias in 279 CE. BT Bava Metziah 12b. 15 M Bava Metziah 1:5 (p. 35). 16 BT Kettuboth 49a; 65b; BT Kettuboth 4:8; M Nedarim 4:3; Mekhiltah de Rabbi Ishmael Mishpatim, sec. A (p. 250). 17 Rabbenu Tam Sefer Hayashar Hidushim, sec. 126:93; Rabbi Isaac b. Sheshet in Shitta Mekubatzet Bava Metziah 12b s.v. ufliga ; Nahmanides, Hidushei 12b s.v. ufligah. 18 See Sefer Meirat Einayim on Shulhan Arukh Hoshen Mishpat, sec. 270(b). 19 See Beraita in BT Kettuboth 48a and 107a; Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhki (Rashi) Kettuboth 48a s.v. ve’lo shanu‘ Magid Mishneh on Maimonides’s Code of Matrimony 12:17. 20 See Albeck 1976: 46–57; ibid., 2013: 61–76. 21 Ibid. 22 Gilat 1994: 119–63. 23 See the sources, note 17. 24 Gilat 1995: 44–6. 25 BT Rosh Ha’shanah 6a. 26 See Albeck, note 20: 514–5. 27 BT Baba Batra 8b; Maimonides’ Code, Book of Agriculture, Treatise: Gifts to the Poor 9:1. 28 BT Kettuboth 50a. 29 BT Kettuboth 65b. The synod was a convention of sages that revived the Sanhedrin; it was held in Usha, Galilee, about the middle of the second century CE. 30 BT Kettuboth 49b. 31 See Gilat 1996: 523–39. 32 Ibid., 540–9. 33 Rashba, Responsa 2:39; Maharam, Responsa, 242: 241–2. 34 Gilat 1995/1996: 361–9; Gilat 1998: 178–86. 35 In my view, until the age of twelve and a half. 36 See Rashi first edition, in Shitta Mekubetzet Kettuboth 102b s.v. zot omeret. 37 See his criticism of Maimonides 21:17. 38 BT Suk. 42a; Arak. 2b. 39 See Rabbi Vidal of Tolosa (scholar of the latter half of the fourteenth century), Magid Mishneh on Maimonides 21:17; Rabbi Moshe Al-Sheikh (Sefad, 1508–1600), Responsa 38; Rabbi Moshe Lima (Lithuania, 1604–1658), Helkat Mehokek on Shulhan Arukh Even Ha’ezer 82:9. 40 M Kettuboth 4:4–5. 41 Gilat 1990: 310–11, 315–25, 329–34.

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42 See Rabbi Moses ben Joseph of Trani (ca. 1505–1585) (HaMabit) Responsa 1:165; Rabbi Hayyim Algazi (Constantinople, in the seventeenth century), the author of a commentary on Sefer Mesharim, which is the part that treats civil law in the ritual code Toledot Adam wa-Ḥawwah (by Rabbi Jeroham ben Meshullam, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). This commentary was published under the title Netivot Mishpa ṭ. 43 See Rabbi Samuel ben Moses de Medina (Maharashdam) (ca. 1505–1589), Responsa, Even Ha’Ezer, sec. 123. 44 Rabbi Isaac of Melona (sixteenth century), in Zerah Anashim, Responsa 8 (Heb. 2001): 557–9; Rabbi Moshe Al-Sheikh supra note 39. 45 For further reference, see Gilat 2012: 111–32. 46 See Yitzhak D. Gilat 1992: 350–9. 47 See BT Bava Batrah 21a; see also BT Ketuboth 50a. 48 Ibid. 49 Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:3 and 1:7. 50 Rabbi Moshe Sofer, Hidushei Hatam Sofer B.B. 21a, s.v. v’hanireh le’aniut da’ati bazeh ; Ned. 37a. 51 Schulz 1969: 142–69.

17 Voci puerili Children in Dante’s Divine Comedy Unn Falkeid

In his autobiographical Vita nuova (The New Life), the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265–1321) gives his childhood a pivotal role in his life.1 In this work, written in his early youth, he describes his first meeting and falling in love with the Florentine girl, Beatrice, when he was nine and she was eight years old: Nine times already since my birth the heaven of light had circled back to almost the same point, when there appeared before my eyes the now glorious lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice even by those who did not know what her name was. She had been in this life long enough for the heaven of fixed stars to be able to move a twelfth of a degree to the East in her time; that is, she appeared to me at about the beginning of her ninth year, and I first saw her near the end of my ninth year. She appeared dressed in the most patrician of colours, a subdued and decorous crimson, her robe bound round and adorned in a style suitable to her years. At that very moment, and I speak the truth, the vital spirit, the one that dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that even the most minute veins of my body were strangely affected; and trembling, it spoke these words: Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi (“Here is a god stronger than I who is coming to rule over me”).2 This passage conveys a set of notions embedded in the love literature of the Middle Ages.3 Dante’s meeting with his beloved is described within the conventions of courtly love, transmitted from the Provençal poets to Italy by way of the Sicilian School of the early thirteenth century. These conventions were further developed by Dante’s immediate predecessors, such as Guido Cavalcanti (ca. 1255–1300), whose sophisticated, refined intellectual poetry of the self became known as the “sweet new style”, il dolce stil nuovo. Beatrice comes to Dante miraculously, as is indicated by the triple repetition of “appear” (apparve) and by the christological number nine which is linked to her throughout the book.4 Both heaven and earth take part in this event, and a little later he describes her as a divine angel, as most gentle ( gentilissima) and blessed, which is a pun on her name Beatrice (meaning “she who blesses”).

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Some have claimed that Dante neglected childhood in his works. According to the French historian Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Dante regarded the age of eight as the beginning of adolescence, thereby disregarding the traditional notions of infantia (childhood up to the age of seven) and pueritia (between eight and fourteen).5 Influenced by scholars like Philippe Ariès, Edward Shorter, and Lawrence Stone, who all presented somewhat pessimistic portrayals of premodern childhood, Klapisch-Zuber argues that Dante’s presumed neglect was a general tendency in Florence: before the turn of the fifteenth century, when the attitude toward children became more enlightened and affectionate, Tuscan children led wretched lives. She writes, “in iconography as in vocabulary or in daily life, the child was no longer, after seven years of age, anything more than a second class individual, often passed over in silence or brutally thrown into the world of adults.”6 Such claims have later been contested, for instance by Louis Haas, who has presented a far more nuanced and radically different image in his study of childhood in Florence between 1300 and 1600. Sources such as the many memoirs, ricordanze – the diary-like genre popular among merchants and ordinary citizens – as well as humanist letters, tracts and treatises, and poetry and iconography, all testify to the general importance of, and the deep care felt for, children during this period. When one considers Dante, however, it is true that few children seem to feature in his poetic universe. In addition, few – if any – scholarly studies have examined the role of childhood per se in his literary corpus. Nonetheless, the meeting described previously played a pivotal role in Dante’s autobiography and in his narrative description of how he became a poet. The multitude of studies of Beatrice’s impact on Dante reflects this fact.7 After meeting his beloved, he starts writing poems to her, which are interspersed in the Vita nuova with long prose sections that discuss and interpret the content of the poems. His physical love for Beatrice mobilizes Dante’s mind, his thinking, and his pen. Later, after Beatrice has been dead for several years, he imagines her returning to rescue him. In the Divine Comedy (1308–1321), Beatrice appears as a spiritual guide leading Dante to insight into the greatest mysteries of life. The Divine Comedy is a grandiose, wide-ranging poem in which Dante depicts his fictional wanderings through the three realms of the afterlife: Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). His pilgrimage is framed by encounters with infants, both at the beginning and at the very end. The very first souls that Dante meets in Hell are the children in Limbo (Inferno 4). Similarly, the souls closest to God in the Celestial Rose of Paradise are infants (Paradiso 32). Between these events, there are two other episodes in which childhood plays a crucial role. In the very depths of Hell, we are told the dreadful story of Count Ugolino and the sacrifice of his four sons (Inferno 33). The story is one of the most heartbreaking in the Divine Comedy, because children are involved. In the next canticle, in the earthly Paradise on top of Purgatory mountain (Purgatorio 30), Dante finally sees his beloved again. Evoking the powerful story from the opening of Vita nuova, this encounter with Beatrice causes the pilgrim to regress to the state of a babbling, witless child.

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This chapter aims to trace the configurations of children and childhood in these four episodes, which in many ways reflect and yet contradict one other. The children depicted by Dante are placed between conceptions of coercion and liberty, contempt and respect. He both draws on and contests medieval notions of children which are rooted in the theological doctrines of Augustine (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Dante’s reappraisal of childhood may also be read in the context of the late medieval Italian city states and of fourteenth-century Franciscan spirituality. Both cultures, which are featured prominently in Dante’s poem, focused on the uniqueness of the single human being, as well as on the possibility of breaking free from feudal bonds and the obedience that was expected. Finally, I shall discuss how Dante challenged the traditional understanding of love. The encounter with Beatrice is depicted in Dante’s work as both a conversion and a transcending experience. The love from his childhood individualizes him as man, offers him a voice, and defines him as poet.

The infants in Limbo After passing through the portal which bears the famous inscription warning all newcomers to abandon hope, and after crossing the dark river Styx in the boat of the ferryman Charon, Dante and his guide, the long-dead Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE), enter the first circle of the Hell (Inferno 4).8 Rather than being a proper part of Hell, this circle is described as a brink or edge bordering the abyss of pain. The image evokes the etymology of limbo, meaning “edge” or “border”. As Charles S. Singleton, the American Dante scholar and translator of the Divine Comedy, has suggested, Dante uses the word Limbo both as a description of its physical position and of the spiritual condition of the souls entrapped there.9 In fact, the place is filled more with a deep melancholy than with pain (Inf. 4.25–30): Here, for as much as hearing could discover, there was no outcry louder than sighs that caused the everlasting air to tremble. The sighs arose from sorrow without torments, out of the crowds – the many multitudes – of infants and of women and of men. The first souls to be condemned and placed in the Inferno are infants. The dead persons whom Dante had encountered earlier were all on the same journey on which he had embarked; they had not yet been punished and put in the correct circles of the Inferno in keeping with their sins. But to end up in Limbo was not thought of as a punishment. As Virgil explains to Dante, being in Limbo was due more to unhappy circumstances than to sin (Inf. 4.31–42): The kindly master said: “Do you not ask who are these spirits whom you see before you?

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I’d have you know, before you go ahead, they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace. And they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways; and of such spirits I myself am one. For these defects, and for no other evil, we now are lost and punished just with this: we have no hope and yet we live on longing.” The idea of putting unbaptized children in a place less awful than the Inferno proper was not Dante’s invention. The notion of Limbo was already widespread by his time. It owed its origin to a need to give an account of the eternal fate of unbaptized infants who had not sinned before dying. In an attempt to harmonize the Augustinian notion of original sin with the Aristotelian understanding of childhood as a time of innocence and uncultivated potential, Thomas Aquinas had already developed the idea of Limbo.10 Augustine’s view was grounded on the idea that unbaptized infants, because of their lack of ability to tame their innate selfishness and desires through the sacrament, prayers, and teaching, would be excluded from salvation. Aristotle’s philosophy, in contrast, which was reintroduced into Europe in the late Middle Ages, did not present infants as evil, although their reasoning was immature. In her study of the role of childhood in Thomas’s theology, the American theologian Christina Traina has argued that Thomas chose to combine and modify these two opposing views, which could ultimately result in two heresies: although the pessimism of Augustine’s theology could lead to a deterministic nihilism, the Aristotelian model, suggesting that people were essentially virtuous and might reach salvation through good works alone, contained the seeds of Pelagianism – the conviction that human beings are basically good and not tainted by original sin.11 Thomas’s solution to the problem of unbaptized infants was a realm called limbus puerorum where children would not suffer the physical and spiritual pains of Hell, but where they would still be deprived of an intimate union with God. As he explained in his Summa Theologiae, unbaptized children recognized their separation from God but did not protest against it: If one is guided by right reason one does not grieve through being deprived of what is beyond one’s power to obtain, but only through lack of that which, in some way, one is capable of obtaining . . . Children were never adapted to possess eternal life, since neither was this due to them by virtue of their natural principles, for it surpasses the entire faculty of nature, nor could they perform acts of their own whereby to obtain so great a good. Hence they will nowise grieve for being deprived of the divine vision; nay, rather will they rejoice for that they will have a large share of God’s

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goodness and their own natural perfections . . . Wherefore the lack of such a grace will not cause sorrow in children who die without Baptism, any more than the lack of many graces accorded to others of the same condition makes a wise man to grieve.12 Dante’s oeuvre displays a deep familiarity with Thomas, expressed chiefly in the idea of the twofold goal and twofold happiness of the human being. Dante discusses this in his political treatise Monarchy (Monarchia), in which he suggests that because of humans’ dual nature consisting of the corruptible body and the incorruptible soul, Providence has set two goals for mankind to attain: “the blessedness of this life . . . and the blessedness of eternal life”. In Dante’s political theory, these reflect the separate jurisdictions of the emperor and the pope.13 The method through which punishment is meted out in Inferno and Purgatorio, the so-called contrappasso, “suffer the opposite” – a process in which the souls are punished by penalties that either resemble or contrast with the sins committed – is founded on Thomas’s theology. Moreover, we encounter the saint himself in “The Heaven of Sun”, in the majestic canto 11 of Paradise.14 As far as Limbo is concerned, Virgil’s explanation, quoted previously (Inf. 4.31–42), is a gloss on Thomas’s account of the fate of unbaptized children. The inhabitants of Limbo do have merits but, because they lack Christian baptism, they cannot expect the happiness of heaven. Because of this, Virgil explains, they are “neither sad nor joyous” (Inf. 4.84).

Tiny voices in the Celestial Rose Although Dante’s interpretation of the unbaptized children in Limbo is based on Thomas’s notion of limbus puerorum, he brings in two new elements that radically alter the idea of such a realm. First, in Dante’s Limbo the infants are accompanied by the noblest of souls from antiquity and the Old Testament, all of whom cast a glorious light on the children. Second, Virgil’s narrative includes the story of Christ’s harrowing of Hell, an act which liberated a great number of souls from Limbo – including children – as we learn at the very end of the Divine Comedy (Paradiso 32). In addition to the infants, a number of other souls are recorded in Limbo, such as the group of four Greco-Roman poets: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. They hail Virgil as the greatest of them: “Pay honor to the estimable poet” (Inf. 4.80). A series of other famous names from the heroic age of classical antiquity is mentioned, both historical and literary figures, such as Electra and Hector, Aeneas, Caesar, Camilla, Brutus, Lucretia, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Zeno. Even figures born after Christ reside there, such as Avicenna and Averroes (from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively), perhaps the two most significant philosophers in the Islamic tradition – a fact which reflects the liberal understanding of the Gentiles and honorable infidels in Thomas’s theology. Virgil explains that the inhabitants of Limbo have not sinned but, although they are virtuous, “they did not worship God in fitting

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ways” (Inf. 4.38). This expression clearly evokes Thomas’s remarks about the works of the pagans in his commentary on the Gospel of John: “because they did not pay due honor to God”.15 Yet, unlike Dante, Thomas reserved Limbo only for unbaptized children, thus presenting it as a far gloomier place than the mild and even enlightened Elysian meadows in Dante’s poem. Another group of virtuous souls is discussed in Inferno 4. In response to Dante’s question about whether anyone has ever escaped Limbo, either through his own or another’s merits, and who afterward was blessed (vv. 49–50), Virgil tells the story of Christ’s descent to Hell, whence he released Adam, “the shade of our first father” (v. 55); his son Abel; and a series of biblical figures, such as Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, and Rachel. These figures are now among the blessed, according to Virgil; in Paradiso 32, under the guidance of the Cistercian abbot, theologian, and poet Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Dante sees them all in the ranks that make up the petals of the Celestial Rose. The circle of the rose is divided in two: the first half consists of the blessed from before Christ’s birth, and the second half of those who were born afterward. The innermost circle of the rose, however, closest to its center and thus closest to Christ, is made up by all the children, who are described by means of the tender image of a group with tiny voices. Like the adults, these baby souls are also divided into two groups – those who were baptized and those who have attained bliss through the merits of others (Par. 32.40–48): And know that there, below the transverse row that cuts across the two divisions, sit souls who are there for merits not their own, but – with certain conditions – others’ merits; for all of these are souls who left their bodies before they had the power of true choice. Indeed, you may perceive this by yourself – their faces, childlike voices, are enough, if you look well at them and hear them sing. In these lines, Dante is given the answer to the question he asked in the fourth canto of Inferno: children have been liberated from Limbo and are now among the legions of the blessed. Soon after, Bernard of Clairvaux explains that those who were born before Christ and who were not able to receive baptism have earned their place in the Celestial Rose thanks to their parents’ faith, the Jewish practice of circumcision, or their innocence (Par. 32.76–84): In early centuries, their parents’ faith alone, and their own innocence, sufficed for the salvation of the children; when those early times had reached completion, then each male child had to find, through circumcision, the power needed by his innocent

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member; but then the age of grace arrived, and without perfect baptism in Christ, such innocence was kept below, in Limbo. The salvation of children, as described previously, not only breaks with the common belief, in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, that unbaptized children would be confined to Limbo. The purity of the infants is also strongly emphasized by the triple repetition of the word “innocent” or “innocence” (Par. 32.77, 32.80, and 32.84), thus challenging the notion of original sin. Of further interest, as the two Dante scholars Charles Singleton and Charles Hall Grandgent have noted, is the way in which the figure of the babies in Dante’s Celestial Rose – both baptized and nonbaptized – contests the established doctrine of the Resurrection. As Thomas states in his Summa Theologiae, all the elect will rise again in the prime of their lives, which he describes as the youthful age, no matter the age at which they died, whether as infants or elderly.16 In Dante’s poem, however, the blessed infants appear as they died – as babies. Grandgent offers a poetical comment: In his striking departure from current belief, Dante was influenced certainly by a desire for significant visible contrast and also, we may conjecture, by that love of little children which he has more than once revealed. The sweet conception of an encircling sea of baby faces, all twittering with baby voices, must have charmed him as it charms us.17 We may add that Dante’s reappraisal of infants and children also reflects a general tendency in the Italian city states in the late Middle Ages, a tendency to which I shall return. An episode which takes place in the depths of the Inferno seems to make this question resonate even more deeply and offers a glaring juxtaposition to the children in Limbo and Paradise. The story harshly criticizes a system of moral standards and ideas whereby the individual human being, and the child even more than the adult, is constrained by strict family ties and concerns.

Count Ugolino and his sons Two figures whom we encounter in the frozen lake of Cocytos at the bottom of Hell (Inferno 33) offer a brutal contrast to the children of the Celestial Rose. Here, those who have betrayed their kin are held fast. One of them is Count Ugolino – only his head is free from the ice, and it is bent over another man’s head. With a scandalous reference to cannibalism, Ugolino is gnawing at the neck of the other man, Archbishop Ruggieri, Ugolino’s sworn enemy on earth. When the count realizes that Dante and Virgil are there, he tells his story in the form of a dramatic monologue, which is in fact the longest individual speech in the Inferno.

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As with many stories in the Divine Comedy, Ugolino’s tale is based on reallife events; the chronicles of the contemporary historian Giovanni Villani (1275–1348) confirm that Ugolino was a traitor to his country, his party, and his grandsons and nephews. He also reportedly abused the power entrusted to him by bestowing lavish wealth and political office on family members.18 The story, however, is distorted by Dante’s Ugolino, who is enmeshed in his own interpretations of the events. He recounts that in a bitter feud between families and political fractions – the violent conflicts between the Ghibellines and Guelphs of thirteenth-century Italy – he and his four sons were attacked by Ruggieri and imprisoned in the tower of La Muda at Pisa. The tower, he adds, was later referred to as the Tower of Hunger, where he and his children supposedly suffered the most painful of deaths. After several months in the tower, Ugolino had a nightmare but was woken up by his children, who were crying in their sleep, begging for bread. The next morning, as they waited for the food that was usually brought to them at this time of day, they heard the guards nailing up the cell door. One of the most agonizing scenes in the Divine Comedy then unfolds (Inf. 33.49–63): I did not weep; within, I turned to stone. They wept; and my poor little Anselm said: “Father, you look so . . . What is wrong with you?” At that I shed no tears and – all day long and through the night that followed – I did not answer until another sun had touched the world. As soon as a thin ray had made its way into that sorry prison, and I saw, reflected in our faces, my own gaze, out of my grief, I bit at both my hands; and they, who thought I’d done that out of hunger, immediately rose and told me: “Father, it would be far lesser painful for us if you ate of us; for you clothed us in this sad flesh – it is for you to strip it off.” The children would not have been as young as this passage implies. According to Villani’s record of the story, Ugolino was almost seventy years old in 1288, when he was imprisoned with his sons and grandsons, who were all adults, apart from Anselm. Yet Ugolino’s tender use of the diminutive Anselmuccio mio, “my poor little Anselm”, accompanies the reader throughout Dante’s story and makes it even more awful because the poet seems to be deliberately encouraging us to think of all the sons as children, or at least as very young. What happens next is highly ambiguous, as the reception history of these lines of verse confirms. Ugolino and his children remained silent until the fourth day, when one of the sons threw himself at his father’s feet, saying, “Father, why do you not help me?” (Inf. 33.69). This plea, which clearly echoes

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the last words of Christ on the cross, is followed by the boy’s death. In the following days, the other children succumb, one by one, until their father, blind with grief, gropes over their bodies while calling their names. The story concludes with a vague phrase, which has caused disagreement among Dante’s readers: “then fasting had more force than grief” (Inf. 33.75). Does this mean that the father died of hunger rather than of grief? Was his hunger stronger than his grief? Or did he yield to hunger and, bereft of all humanity, eat his children, as the artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) so famously configured the event in his sculpture of Ugolino?19 Although Dante seems to have deliberately rendered the meaning of the expression ambiguous, the presence of biblical language turns the event into a deep tragedy. As the Dante scholar Giuseppe Mazzotta has argued, Ugolino’s story reenacts and echoes the story of the cross, which is commemorated in the Holy Eucharist.20 The entire scene serves as a prelude to the wanderers’ encounter with Lucifer in the next canto. Caught in the ice at the bottom of Hell, Lucifer beats his terrifying wings, generating the coldness around him while chewing three sinners, one in each mouth of his three heads. Lucifer is a reversed image both of the Trinity and of the Holy Eucharist, and as such he turns the preceding martyrdom of Count Ugolino’s sons into a painful story: unlike the sacrifice of Christ, whose death symbolically broke the circles of violence and offered redemption and renewed innocence to believers, the sacrifice of Ugolino’s children was futile – their death was just one of the many absurd acts of violence that permeate human history, strengthening the desire to take revenge rather than to seek solutions. The sacrifice of the children is a contrast to Christ’s sacrifice. The story also questions the widespread notion of children as “family property”. The dying sons offered their father their bodies as food because, as he had given them their bodies, he also had the right to take them back; this reveals the grotesque consequences that may arise from such a notion. The idea that children were their parents’ property was sacrilegious, in view of the Christian idea that one’s body is a gift from God, as Genesis 1:27 emphasizes: “So God created man in his own image.” This idea of children as their parents’ property also ran counter to the increasing respect for childhood that one may observe in the Middle Ages, especially in the reflections of the soteriological, the rational, and the legal status of children. I shall now briefly present the new understanding of childhood that emerged in Italy within the walls of the late medieval city-states, a development that can enhance our understanding of Dante’s configuration of children in the Divine Comedy.

Reflections on the status of children in fourteenth-century Italy A number of studies have strongly challenged the traditional view that there was no “childhood” in the Middle Ages.21 In his erudite volume Medieval Children (2003), Nicholas Orme has shown that English children from Anglo-Saxon

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times to the sixteenth century were recognized as special and different, possessing their own rich culture, which was not so very different from that of modern children.22 In the case of Italy, Louis Haas has offered a nuanced picture of Florentine children in the same period. Focusing on infancy (from birth to the age of seven), he has explored the structures of everyday life regarding childhood – the process of birth, its rituals, the tradition of wet nursing, and the children’s first years at home with their families. His conclusion is that Florentines in general cared for their children and recognized childhood as a distinct stage in the development of the individual human being. The literature of Dante’s contemporaries contains a most moving portrait of the appreciation of infants in a letter by the poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313– 1375), Dante’s first biographer, to his friend Francis Petrarch (1304–1374), the great fourteenth-century Italian humanist. The letter was written after a visit to Padua in 1366, where Petrarch was living with his daughter Francesca, her family, and his little granddaughter Eletta: Your Eletta, my delight, greeted me with a smile although she did not know who I was. I was not only overcome with joy: I took her into my arms eagerly imagining that I was holding my own little girl. What can I say? If you think I exaggerate as William of Ravenna or our Donato [degli Abbruzzi], for they both know her. Your child has the identical aspect of the child who was my Eletta, the same expression, the same light and laughter in her eyes, the same gestures and walk, the same fashion of carrying her little self, save that my Eletta was somewhat taller for her age at five and a half, when I saw her for the last time. She has the same way of talking, the same vocabulary. She has the same simple manner. In truth there is no difference between them except that your little one has golden hair while mine had locks of chestnut. Ah, how often, holding your child in my arms and listening to her prattle, the memory of my own lost little girl has brought to my eyes tears that I conceal from all.23 Boccaccio had lost his own little daughter, and when he met her namesake, Petrarch’s granddaughter Eletta (named after Petrarch’s mother), it reminded him of his own child, and generated in him a blend of emotions – from tender joy to longing and grief at his own loss. In the last years of his life, Petrarch lived with his daughter Francesca and her family; Francesca, like his son Giovanni, was illegitimate. Their illegitimacy, however, did not prevent Petrarch from caring for both of his children, although his relationship with his son was rather problematic. He expressed great disappointment at his son’s lack of literary interests, but he was proud of his daughter’s marriage, and he was deeply grieved when one of his grandsons, Franceschino, died in 1369.24 Boccaccio too was probably illegitimate, but he grew up in his father’s house, where, like many young sons of Florentine merchants, shopkeepers, and bankers, he received an education in accounting and mathematics so that he could

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become a part of, and later heir to, the family business. Some of the novelle, the short stories collected in his extensive work The Decameron, mention children who were adopted and raised in other households.25 In other words, this was not uncommon in Florence in the fourteenth century. With regard to the schooling of Florentine children, Giovanni Villani famously claimed in his Cronica that between sixty and eighty percent of the entire lay population of Florence in 1338 were literate to some extent. Most boys, and a not insignificant number of girls, were taught to read at primary schools; some were sent to business schools, whereas others attended the four grammar schools in the city. Although Villani’s estimates may not be precise, they do give a picture of the availability of children’s education and of how it was valued in fourteenth-century Italy. The rapid growth of the educational system in the Italian city-states was obviously a response to the needs of lay society, created by the economic and cultural revolution in the thirteenth century and the subsequent growth of the state.26 Toward the end of the thirteenth century, lay schools became common, whereas in the fourteenth century the secular schools which had been established by the cities spread throughout the Italian peninsula.27 There were also teachers trained to teach children, doctores puerorum, and textbooks for children, such as prayer books for learning the alphabet, and short grammatical texts, above all the books by the mid-fourthcentury Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus, who was the teacher of Jerome (ca. 347–420 CE). Late classical or medieval moralizing stories and poems were also memorized. Among the most popular of these were the fables by the ancient Greek author Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE); the Epigrammata, a compilation of epigrams in elegiac verses on various theological or moral topics, written by Augustine’s disciple Prosper of Aquitaine (ca. 390–ca. 455 CE); and The Double Testament (Dittochaeon) by the Roman Christian poet Prudentius (ca. 348–ca. 413 CE), a series of hexameter stanzas composed to explain a sequence of church paintings of biblical scenes.28 We also find instructions for parenting, such as Giovanni Dominici’s work On the Education of Children (Regola del governo di cura familiar) from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and somewhat later, Leon Battista Alberi’s famous Books on the Family (Libri della famiglia), written between 1433 and 1441, which give us valuable glimpses of the centrality of children in the Italian cities. There is no space here for a full presentation of the historical and social contexts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It must suffice here to add that beneath the increasing focus on children in the Divine Comedy – on childhood as a valuable stage in human life, as reflected in Thomas’s theology, and on the child as an independent subject – there ran a stream of popular piety in which the child Jesus played a key role.29 The adoration of the Christ Child was especially pronounced among the contemporary Franciscans, whose founder, Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226), was regarded as the “second Christ” (alter Christus), because of his voluntary vow of poverty and because of the stigmata he received on Mount Alverna. As the central Franciscan theologian Bonaventure

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(1221–1274) configured it in his Life of St. Francis of Assisi (Legenda major), Francis was reenacting the Passion of Christ in his own body. Likewise, his disobedience toward his father was a part of Francis’s profound imitation of Christ. According to the legend, powerfully recapitulated in Dante’s Paradiso 11, the young Francis, the son of a rich merchant, rebelled against his father’s will when he entered into a mystical marriage with Lady Poverty. Together with Francis’s own suffering, this rebellion, which Bonaventure saw as an act of humbleness, represented the true restoration of the human being. Art historians such as Hans Belting and Anne Derbes have studied how the new focus on Christus Patiens in Franciscan art and literature in late medieval Italy – the contemplation of the descent, the body, and the human suffering of Christ – changed the entire narrative program not only around the cross but also around Christ’s mother Mary and all that pertained to the Child Jesus and the earthly life of Christ.30 Together with images such as the nativity, the flight into Egypt, and the mothers’ mourning for their children massacred at King Herod’s command, central motifs included the birth of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin’s first steps, her affection for her parents, and her presentation at the Temple. All these images convey a deep sense of realism and an understanding of true wisdom as linked to the devotion and humble simplicity of the child. The idea was that children in general reflected the purity of the Child Jesus. Thus, Franciscan writers and artists encouraged those who read their narratives or saw their art to become children with the infant Savior.31

Dante’s transformative experience We have seen that the configurations of children in Dante’s Divine Comedy can fruitfully be read against the background of the cultural and religious changes in Italy in the late Middle Ages. The fate of the children in Limbo reflects an understanding of unbaptized children that is not as harsh as that found in the theological tradition from Augustine to Thomas. In addition, the infants of the Celestial Rose who have received bliss through the merits of others represent a break with every earlier theological doctrine. Moreover, the sacrifice of the children in the tale of Count Ugolino reveals the danger of viewing children as their parents’ possessions. There tended to be an increased respect in Florence and other Italian cities for childhood, as representing a significant step in human life. There was an understanding of children as independent subjects whose simplicity might even be an expression of true wisdom and piety, a notion which may be regarded as closely connected to the general revaluation at this time of the human being as an individual. The origin of the human soul in Purgatorio 25, where the etymology of infancy (infante) is disclosed, is relevant to this chapter. The Roman poet Statius (ca. 45–ca. 96 CE), whom Virgil and Dante meet at this stage of their journey, explains the complex relationship between the human body and the human soul. He talks about the physical process of eating food, digestion, and the refinement of the spirit. The crux of this highly scholastic lecture is

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the tripartite structure of the soul, that is the vegetative, the sensitive, and the rational, which originates in Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul (De anima) but also owes much to Augustine’s work On the Trinity (De Trinitate) and Thomas’s Summa Theologiae. In the present context, we should note the use of the noun fante as an expression for the transition of the soul from that of an animal to that of a human being: “But how the animal becomes a speaking being ( fante), you’ve not yet seen” (Purg. 25.61–62). The interesting point in this short passage is how Dante uses the word fante, which stems from the Latin verb fari, meaning “to speak”. As he affirms in other contexts in Dante’s oeuvre, such as his philosophical treatise The Banquet and On Vernacular Eloquence, his treatise on the origin of the vernacular language, the ability to speak denotes the rational soul that is specifically human.32 Of all beings, only humankind has been given the gift of language. In other words, to be rational or fante is to be able to speak, whereas the opposite, the infante, is one who cannot speak. Language, then, is the sign that a child is approaching the threshold of rationality, with a fully developed soul. This leads us to the last passage from Dante’s Divine Comedy that I shall focus on, namely the meeting with Beatrice atop Purgatory mountain. The meeting recasts Dante’s love from childhood as the essential, transformational experience in his life. Moreover, in evoking the theory of language (the transition from an infante to a fante), the encounter marks his birth as an auctor, with the double meaning of an author and an authority.33 Before examining Dante’s meeting with Beatrice, let us briefly return to Vita nuova, the text from Dante’s youth. In the tradition that runs from Andreas Capellanus and his treatise The Art of Courtly Love (from the 1180s) to Dante’s friend, the Florentine poet and philosopher Guido Cavalcanti, love was mostly considered a clandestine and potentially violent emotion, a bewilderment, a captivating or victimizing force, and even a disease. In Vita nuova, however, Dante gives Beatrice a salvific status that runs counter to the earlier writers’ interpretation of love. Vita nuova is, however, an open-ended, incomplete work. When Beatrice dies as a young woman, grief, confusion, and paralysis overwhelm her lover (chs. 28–34). While he seeks solace in other women, his mind moves in tortuous, labyrinthine circles (chs. 35–38), until the eightyear-old Beatrice reappears to him in a dream, which takes him back to the starting point (ch. 39). The dream is followed by Dante’s observation of the many pilgrims passing through Florence. He begins to reflect on the fact that these pilgrims do not know about his own sad story, and that they are on the move, both spiritually and physically (chs. 60–61). Both episodes reveal the selfcenteredness and the private character of his love story. He understands that he has failed and he decides to undertake a new journey. He promises to remain silent until, at some point in the future, he will be able to write about Beatrice what has never been written about any other woman. Dante’s vow at the end of Vita nuova marks a shift from the private narrative to the public mythology of the Divine Comedy. As Mazzotta has convincingly argued, the poet involves the passions and experiences of others in his own

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discourse in the Divine Comedy.34 He invents a new literary verse form – the terza rima (tercet) and uses it to describe a journey through the realms of the afterlife.35 It is an epic in which the protagonist is an ordinary man, in contrast to the classical models, such as Homer’s Odysseus and Virgil’s Aeneas. This means that the Divine Comedy is also the beginning of the modern novel: Dante is no hero, but rather an ordinary man with a good portion of weakness, passions, doubts, and longings. Above all the poem describes an encyclopedic journey through the artes liberales, the medieval system of knowledge whose aim was to make the human being free of mundane concerns.36 Dante the pilgrim, however, never loses sight of the world. He constantly turns around and reflects on the political situation in Florence, Italy, and Europe. Soon we understand that it is the history and the fate of the world that occupy the poet’s mind. The journey in the Divine Comedy started by describing Dante becoming lost in a dark wood. In the first canto, the pilgrim is presented as a limping man, whose left foot or “firm foot” ( piè fermo) is always the lowest (Inf. 1.30). This figure takes up the Christian idea of “the two feet of the soul”, which was promoted chiefly by the Franciscans, but which also stems from Aristotle’s dictum that all motion originates from the right.37 The image in Dante’s text shows the left foot, an allegory of the will, as slower or more rigid than the right foot, which was the intellect. Both feet were wounded by the Fall – the right by ignorance and the left by evil desire. This is why the soul of Adam and Eve’s children is lame and limping. But the will has been even more badly wounded; it is more rigid and therefore represents a greater hindrance to the human being. At the request of Beatrice, who is among the blessed in Paradise, Virgil comes to rescue Dante from the perils of the wood. He leads him first through the depths of Hell, before they ascend the Purgatory mountain. After countless endeavors, dangerous trials, and encounters with a multitude of dead souls, who all more or less eagerly recount their tales to the two pilgrims, they reach the top of the mountain, where the Earthly Paradise is located. On its threshold Virgil, who is not allowed to go any further, crowns Dante: “I crown and miter you over yourself” (Purg. 27.142). Dante is lord over himself and, as the restored Adam, he is now prepared to enter the Earthly Paradise from which the first man was once expelled. Moreover, he is finally ready to meet his beloved Beatrice. But what happens when she appears? Beatrice arrives on a triumphal chariot on the far side of the river Lethe, hidden in a cloud of flowers. Although he cannot see her, Dante senses her power and is immediately hurled back to the moment when he first met her, the moment described in the opening of Vita nuova when they were both children. And, indeed, he acts again like a little child (Purg. 30.40–54): As soon as that deep force had struck my vision (the power that, when I had not yet left my boyhood, had already transfixed me), I turned around and to my left – just as a little child, afraid or in distress,

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will hurry to his mother – anxiously, to say to Virgil: “I am left with less than one drop of my blood that does not tremble: I recognize the signs of the old flame.” But Virgil had deprived us of himself, Virgil, the gentlest father, Virgil, he to whom I gave myself for my salvation; and even all our ancient mother lost was not enough to keep my cheeks, though washed with dew, from darkening again with tears. A web of complex emotions is brought to life in Dante: earthly love and friendship, paternal and maternal feelings, and memories of the tears of Hell and of the morning dew that cleaned his face at the foot of Purgatory mountain. Beatrice, however, rebukes him like a mother and in a most authoritative manner, and for the first and only time in the entire poem Dante’s name is mentioned “Dante, though Virgil’s leaving you, do not yet weep, do not weep yet” (Purg. 30.55–57). The meeting represents the crisis point and the turning point of the poem. The meaning is clear: only by recalling his childhood memories is Dante able to enter the next realm. Only by bringing the experiences of his first meeting with Beatrice, when they both were children, is he able to cross the threshold from a selfish love poet, as we see him in Vita nuova, into the state of a morally responsible human being. The journey so far has provided him with knowledge. But Beatrice once moved his will or his capacity also to love. Without carrying the memory of his first encounter with Beatrice into this new state, he would still be limping, as in the opening of the poem. What follows underlines the significance of this experience: Dante has to confess and ask for forgiveness for his many errors and sins, but he is paralyzed and lost for words. The impression is that he has to learn everything from the very beginning – to walk and talk – like a little child. However, after Beatrice’s long reprimand he is finally able to whisper a “yes” (sì, Purg. 31.14) and is ready to be purged of all his guilt in Lethe. This little word marks the transition from infante to fante as described in Purgatorio 35, and is consequently the decisive step for the emerging author Dante. He has now received the insight he needs in order to enter Paradise, and his will is finally free and healed. Immersed in Lethe, the river of oblivion, the pilgrim forgets his past sins. This signifies that his penitence is now brought to an end. However, the memories of the love from his childhood still remain, and when he arrives on the other side Beatrice receives him. She then invites him to follow her to the City of God, which is not the New Jerusalem of Augustine, but the New Rome (Purg. 32.100–105): Here you shall be – awhile – a visitor; but you shall be with me – and without end –

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Rome’s citizen, the Rome in which Christ is Roman; and thus, to profit that world which lives badly, watch the chariot steadfastly and, when you have returned beyond, transcribe what you have seen. These verses reveal the purpose of the journey. With Beatrice’s aid, Dante has been raised to the heavenly spheres in order to return and write a poem about what he has seen. In other words, the poem itself is the goal. His private experience from Vita nuova is transformed into a mighty tale about Europe’s past, present, and future. Its aim is to exhort readers to return to their everyday life and to view their surroundings, bearing in mind the newly gained perspectives to which Dante’s journey, fictive or not, has contributed. The mythical foundation of this journey, however, is the love for an ordinary girl from Florence who saved an ordinary boy from her neighborhood. Dante’s Divine Comedy thus testifies to a profound revaluation of childhood per se, as I have shown in this chapter. In addition, however, the crucial encounter with Beatrice – “the power that, when I had not yet left my boyhood, had already transfixed me” (Purg. 30.41–42) – when he was eight and she was nine, is configured as the fundamental, transformative episode from Dante’s own life, an episode which gave birth to one of the most powerful and influential poets in the Western literary canon.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Giuseppe Mazzotta, Mary Dzon, Brian Patrick McGuire, and the editors of this volume for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this study. 2 Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova 2: 28–31 (trans. Musa 1973: 3–4). 3 For a good introduction to Dante’s Vita nuova, see Harrison 1993. See also Mazzotta 1983 and 2014. 4 In Vita nuova 29.3, Dante connects the number nine both to the Trinity and to Beatrice: “Therefore, if three is the sole factor of nine, and the sole factor of miracles is three, that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are Three in One, then this lady was accompanied by the number nine so that it might be understood that she was nine, or a miracle, whose root, namely that of the miracle, is the miraculous Trinity itself.” Vita nuova (trans. Musa 1973: 62). 5 Klapisch-Zuber 1987: 96–7. 6 Ibid., 116. 7 See, for instance, Harrison 1988, and Holmes 2008. 8 The inscription above the gateway of Inferno (3.1–9) is: “Through me the way into the suffering city, / through me the way to the eternal pain, / through me the way that runs among the lost. / Justice urged on my high artificer; / my maker was a divine authority, / the highest wisdom, and the primal love. / Before me nothing but eternal things / were made, and I endure eternally. / Abandon every hope, who enter here.” All the following quotations from Dante’s Divine Comedy are taken from Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (trans. Mandelbaum 1980). 9 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (trans. Singleton 1970); Inferno (vol. 2: Commentary), note 45: 60. 10 See the chapters by Aasgaard and Fossheim in this volume.

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

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Traina 2001: 106. ST, Appendix 1, 1.2. Monarchia 3.15.7 (trans. Cassell 2004: 172). The idea of contrappasso – equal suffering in payment for an earlier action – is discussed by Thomas in ST, Appendix 1, 1.1, the section preceding the discussion of the unbaptized children. Here he writes, “Punishment should be proportionate to fault, according to the saying of Isaiah (27:8), ‘In measure against measure, when it shall be cast off, thou shalt judge it.’ ” quia Deo cultum debitum non reddebant, in Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in evangelium Joannis, III, iii, 5. See also Singleton, Inferno (vol. 2: Commentary), note 38: 59. qui est in juvenili aetate, in Thomas Aquinas, ST Suppl. 81.1; see also Singleton 1975, Paradiso (vol. 2: Commentary): 540; and Grandgent 1916: 283 (290). Grandgent 1916: 283 (290). Giovanni Villani, Cronica, book 7, ch. 121 (ed. Aquilecchia 1979: 63–5). Auguste Rodin, “Ugolino and His Children” (ca. 1881), Musée Rodin, Paris. Mazzotta 2014: 113. In addition to the studies by Haas 1998 and Traina 2001, see, for instance, Shahar 1990; Classen 2005. For a thorough presentation of studies of childhood in this period, see also Hanawalt 2000. See Orme 2003. Epistola 15, in Giovanni Bocacccio (ed. Branca 1992: 634–41, English trans. Bergin 1981: 50–1). For a detailed list of letters relating to Petrarch’s son Giovanni, see Foresti 1974: 405–31. For a discussion of Petrarch’s complex ambivalence about fatherhood, filiation, and literary imitation, see Martinez 2010. The short stories in which the adopted children appear are The Decameron 2.2; 4.1 and 5.7. A rich survey of the economic, political, and cultural changes in the Italian city-states of the fourteenth century is Larner 1971. Larner 1971: 188–9. For a comprehensive study of the educational culture of medieval and renaissance Italy, see Black 2001; see also Gehl 1993. For a rich study of the adoration of the Child Jesus in medieval culture, see Dzon and Kenney 2012; see also Aasgaard 2009; Davis 2014. For a discussion of the clashes between “the child as family property” and “the child as an independent subject” dramatized in the hagiographical literature of the late Middle Ages, see Shahar 1990: 205–6; and Traina 2001: 109–10. See also the chapter by McGuire in this volume. Belting 1990; Derbes 1996. See Cartlidge and Elliott 2001. Dante, Convivio 4.7.15; De vulgari eloquentia 1.2–3. For an important study of Dante’s evolving, transformative relationship to medieval ideas of authorship and authority, see Ascoli 2008. Mazzotta 2014: 21. The terza rima is Dante’s invention and is composed of tercets that are woven into rhyming verse stanzas (aba, bcb, cdc, ded). Together with the three-part structure of the Divine Comedy in three canticles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), the tripartite stanza symbolizes the holy Trinity. For the encyclopedic structure of the Divine Comedy, see Mazzotta 1993. John Freccero has written a commentary on this passage in Dante’s Inferno, in which he explores the long tradition from Aristotle, via Augustine, to Bonaventure of the metaphor of the two feet of the soul. See Freccero 1986: 29–55.

18 Viking childhood Ármann Jakobsson

A view from the outside In 1978, the historian David Herlihy stated, “Of all social groups which formed the societies of the past, children, seldom seen and rarely heard in the documents, remain . . . the most elusive, the most obscure.”1 Finding the voice of children in medieval sources is a difficult task. We do not have primary sources that go back to the children themselves; all the sources we have, as far as we know, originate from adults, who of course had been children earlier on. There is no utterance in the medieval sources from the North that can be verified as the unambiguous expression of a child, in spite of the abundance of extant texts. On the other hand, children do figure in the medieval Norse textual sources. Thus far, scholars have barely scratched the surface of these narratives with regard to investigating them for the information they contain about social interaction among people in general – and even more so as concerns children – and what they can tell us about rules and relationships among individuals and within groups in the medieval North.2 In these sources, the distance between text and reality is manifest, no matter what theme is being explored.3 Although they are often used as sources of pagan myths, all the Old Norse prose narratives were in fact put into writing only after the Christianization of Iceland, so that pre-Christian religions come to us through the filter of Christianity. As sources for earlier periods, such as the ninth century in Norway and Iceland, the Old Norse texts are also far removed from the events they depict. This means that “historical figures” from the ninth and tenth centuries such as King Harold Fairhair of Norway and Ingólfur Arnarson, the first settler of Iceland, are known only from documents that are distant from them in time.4 There is in fact no history of the settlement of Iceland, only legends, shaped by a long tradition in the period from the tenth to the twelfth century.5 It is these traditional narratives that scholars must address, and my study therefore focuses on one part of this tradition: the social myths of Viking childhood that we can discern from thirteenth- to fifteenth-century narrative sources.6 Although I use “Viking” in the title of my chapter, I am referring to sources that were composed long after the end of the Viking Age, if we

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mark its ending in the late eleventh century. The sagas and the poetry associated with the Viking Age, although many of them are concerned with events from that age, are late medieval and in their present form are closer in age to Chaucer than to Beowulf. This chapter focuses on three types of representations of childhood that can be regarded as fairly common in the sagas that originated in Iceland from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.7 The first is the motif of the “coal-biter” (Old Icelandic: kolbítr), the unpromising youth who eventually matures and becomes a hero.8 The second is the endangered child who is threatened during childhood, usually as a reaction to the threat posed by its own superiority. The third is the subversive and disruptive child who in some way causes chaos in society. I shall mine these social myths for information about the general perceptions about children in society, an approach that can be termed both psychological and sociohistorical. It needs to be stressed that the texts do not offer any direct path to individual psychologies. But they do offer an expression of their culture’s psychological concerns. My chapter will also offer a detailed examination of one specific narrative which focuses on a child. Finally, it moves from the literary to the historical and discusses the relationship between these mythical forms and the “social reality” of thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Scandinavia, using the contemporary narrative the Saga of King Hákon, Hákonar saga, to present a case of an authentic quotation from a child that has survived in a medieval text, albeit mediated by adult narrators who stand between the actual words of the child and their textual representation half a century later.

Late bloomers As has been noted for some time, the “generation gap” is a popular theme in many sagas of Icelanders, usually played out as a conflict between a grown son and an aging father.9 In some instances, however, the focus of the narrative is on an unpromising child who is bullied and mocked by a parent or by the environment in general. The term “coal-biter” (kolbítr) has become a standard term for this type, although the word is actually found only once in the Saga of Egill, Egils saga, and once in the Book of Settlements, Landnámabók, in addition to two occurrences from the fifteenth-century legendary sagas ( fornaldarsögur).10 This chapter does not discuss the coal-biter narratives en masse but focuses on a couple of them, starting with the Saga of Finnbogi, Finnboga saga.11 No two kolbítr narratives are precisely the same but Finnboga saga is a good representative of the motif of a disadvantaged child who rises to prestige. Finnbogi is an unwanted child before he is born. His father has instructed his mother to expose him to the elements as a punishment for having given their daughter in marriage to a Norwegian without his consent. The child is saved by the ugly and poor Syrpa, who raises Finnbogi under the alias Gravecat (Old Icelandic: Urðarköttr). Soon Finnbogi is as big and strong as boys twice

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his age. It seems no secret that he is not Syrpa’s son, and his real mother treats him kindly, whereas his father is indifferent.12 At a tender age, he performs a famous feat by managing to draw a huge fish onto the shore, and yet he remains unpopular for assaulting his mother’s servants and generally causing havoc in his home. Finally, he is noticed by the law speaker Þ orgeirr Ljósvetningagoð i, who perceives instantly that this is not only a precocious but also a noble boy. The truth comes out, Finnbogi is reunited with his real parents, and his mother is delighted. For a while, however, his father remains distant, although he later begins to warm up, and the relationship between father and son finally become amicable.13 Finnboga saga is a fairly conventional narrative. Its main subject is the rise of Finnbogi to unparalleled fame and excellence. His worth is obvious from the outset: all that is needed is a wise and generous magnate like Þ orgeirr to right the wrongs and return Finnbogi to his proper status. Unlike many foundlings, Finnbogi has been well treated by his poor and ugly foster parents. His father, though the cause of his misfortune, does not fight against his return and quickly becomes affectionate toward his son. The Saga of Án the Bow-bender, Áns saga bogsveigis, tells of a less promising youth who is also coldly received by his father. Án is large but does not seem to possess any skills. People in the region refer to him as an idiot (an afglapi), although he does not lie in front of the fire.14 In fact, not all the coal-biters in the sagas lie in the ashes; we are explicitly told that some of these unpromising youths did not frequent the fireplaces.15 As scholars have noted,16 the significance of these narratives lies not only in their emphasis on the uncertain promise of the child – there is no necessary congruity between how a child is behaving and what the individual will later amount to – but also in the fact that they can be seen as subtle psychological narratives that act out everyday concerns in a fantastic setting.17 The late-blooming youth is usually the hero of his own tale.18 His maturity is the main topic. Although the narratives are written by adults, they may still contain some traces of childhood anxiety and a belated expression of the disaffection caused by cold and distant fathers. Thus, the child’s voice may speak indirectly through these narratives. The same might apply to the motif of the endangered child, which was especially popular in the medieval royal biographies.

The endangered child In the Saga of King Sverrir, Sverris saga, by Abbot Karl Jónsson of Þ ingeyrar monastery (d. 1213), the troubles suffered by King Sverrir in his youth, on the run from his enemies, resemble ancient tales:19 “His hardships in these trips were such that they most resemble what is told in old tales, when children of kings were hit by stepmother spells.”20 It is interesting that the author himself draws attention to the fairy-tale quality of his narrative, which can safely be regarded as a structural element in the saga as a whole.21 The parallel also draws

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our attention to the motif of the persecuted child, which has a significant presence in many sagas concerning royal or special children. King Sverrir was one such child. Raised in the Faroe Islands as the son of a comb maker, Sverrir is in fact the son of a king but enjoys none of the privileges to which he is entitled. Although he is not exactly in hiding, he is really a prince in disguise who has yet to stake his claim. This narrative pattern is repeated in the Saga of King Hákon, Hákonar saga). Like Sverrir, his grandson Hákon Hákonarson, later king of Norway, is initially not acknowledged as the son of a king. Like his grandfather, the tiny Hákon meets with adversity in his childhood. When a wicked bishop invites his mother along with the little boy to stay with him, the allies of the royal family (Birkibeinar, literally “birch legs”) are full of mistrust. Mother and child must take flight. According to Hákonar saga, composed just after King Hákon’s death in 1263, the journey was no less arduous than Sverrir’s journeys in his youth: “During this journey they were castigated by bad weather and frost and snow, and were often out at night in forests and the wilderness.” This story of hardships reaches its climax when they run out of food and the child is starving. Fortunately, there is a lot of snow around in Norway during the winter: “The boy had no other food than the snow they melted into his mouth.”22 Although this demonstrates the loyalty of the Birkibeinar, it also highlights the fact that King Hákon was not born into luxury. Like his grandfather, he had to suffer before becoming king. The author of Hákonar saga, Sturla Þ órð arson (1214–1284), is just as eager as Abbot Karl to draw attention to the parallels to his hero’s predicament.23 He dedicates the next chapter to a comparison with King Óláfr Tryggvason (d. 1000), the founding father of Norwegian and Icelandic Christianity, whose mother had to flee Norway with him to escape from the clutches of the wicked Queen Gunnhildr and her sons. Sturla does not stop at pointing to the parallel: he interprets it as the mercy of God whose intent is to save the princes in order that they may support and spread Christianity.24 The persecution of Hákon is thus one of many indications of his worth, because his childhood imitates that of Óláfr Tryggvason, the missionary king of Norway and Iceland. The childhoods of King Sverrir and King Hákon are dramatic starts to dramatic lives, and neither childhood is unique. In fact, what they are said to have experienced is a recurrent motif in several sagas of various ages and types, including the story of Óláfr Tryggvason, who had to flee in his childhood from Queen Gunnhildr, the widow of Eiríkr Blood-Axe. Óláfr is disguised in poor clothes (vánd klæði), and has to hide on an island in a lake, but is later recognized as a true king during his adolescence.25 This motif can be seen in Eddic poetry, legendary sagas, romance sagas, and in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum.26 The aspect of imitatio Christi is palpable.27 The motif demonstrates the extraordinary quality of the persecuted protagonist. It also provides the hero with maturation through adversity. There is no doubt that, as in all legends, social reality is one factor that fuels the narrative about the endangered child. Children were indeed vulnerable in

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the Middle Ages. They were affected by various kinds of upheaval: a Norwegian prince before the time of King Hákon, who stabilized the kingdom in the mid-thirteenth century, could not reasonably expect to live to the age of forty.28 Accordingly, the adversity the royal child meets in these stories is partly founded in reality. Yet there is also no denying that adversity certainly makes a better story than a quiet life; in other words, what we encounter here is the “quicksand effect” described by the late John Boswell in his influential study of the abandonment of children.29 The certain death which the hero faces in childhood gives all the more allure to his later greatness. It is possible that the endangered child motif is also, to a certain degree, founded on a state of paranoia that is typical of adolescence: the adults incorporate within themselves the experience of their childhood and adolescence that later on frames their adult experiences, perhaps to a large extent – in fact, one could argue that most adults are to some degree their earlier selves, so that the child’s voice remains present in the adult. King Magnús, King Sverrir’s main adversary in the saga, describes himself as having become king at the age of five, and as being more interested in childlike games with other boys than in sitting with the magnates.30 But, true to the general spirit of the saga, there is an element of irony in this speech, because the saga has demonstrated that King Magnús is still in some ways a child, dependent on his father and not in charge of his own life and destiny.31 The childlike logic of the endangered child motif is thus eerily representative of the child within the adult. Whereas the story is composed by an adult for adults and mostly concerns adults, the narrative of the persecuted child follows the paranoid logic of fairy tales of persecution, with wicked stepmothers and feelings of powerlessness and fear preserved within the man from the first years of his existence. The fairy-tale logic inherent in the motif involves such concerns as security, fear of abandonment, wicked adults, and persecuting stepmothers. The very banality of this logic enhances its effect – in adult life, there is nothing more cathartic than that which appeals to our remaining childish sensibilities, everything that is simple, brutal, and sentimental: paralyzing fear, simple joys, and the presence of children who become representatives of our own childlike selves, gone and yet still present. The haunting power of these anecdotes of persecuted children, as well as of all stories of cruelty toward children, appeals to this primitive side of our psyche.

Aggressive truth saying of children Although it is most common for children to act as protagonists in the depictions of childhood that are presented in late medieval Icelandic texts, there are some instances of children as the “other”, as the eerie and slightly frightening beings whose motives and fears are unrepresented in the texts and unknown to their audience. These descriptions may possibly be fueled by the uncanny nature of the relationship between the adult and the child. To an adult, a child is both strange and familiar. Adults are no longer children, but they have been

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children and still carry – sometimes hidden deep beneath the surface – not only childhood memories but also the remains of childish fears and hopes. In the most common motifs about childhood, both medieval and modern, children are seen as minors, small and weak, innocents who neither threaten nor intimidate the grown-ups. In a narrative that unfolds in the world of adults and that is dominated by the point of view of adults, children will often be regarded as passive rather than active, victims rather than threats. Indeed, the “persecuted child” motif discussed previously feeds on this notion. On the other hand, there are also some examples of children who are not reliable, but rather troublesome, or even sinister and dangerous. Almost all the children one is liable to meet in a medieval Icelandic narrative are future adults. They are not only children but also a portent of what they will be like later in life and in the saga. There is, however, at least one excellent example, in the famous Saga of Njáll, Brennu-Njáls saga, of children who appear only as children and never figure as adults, who are impertinent, who misbehave, and who are subversive, although possibly unintentionally, and who serve to reveal the childishness and the game-like nature of grownup society.32 The situation is this: the accomplished warrior Hrútr Herjólfsson has, with little foresight, become engaged to the daughter of the celebrated Mo˛rð r Fiddle, the greatest lawyer in Iceland. Even more unwisely, Hrútr goes abroad before the marriage and steps right into the clutches of the formidable Queen Gunnhildr, who was raised by Sami sorcerers and now rules Norway along with her son. Gunnhildr first commands him to be her new lover. Later on, when he wishes to leave and also denies being engaged to an Icelandic woman, she lays a curse upon him for having been dishonest to her. The curse affects Hrútr’s marriage negatively, because from then on he is unable to have intercourse. His wife finally leaves him after having summoned the courage to tell her father about the precise nature of her husband’s embarrassing problem. Her overreaching father sues Hrútr for his daughter’s property. Angered by the loss of his wife, Hrútr refuses to return the dowry and challenges Mo˛rð r to a duel. The lawyer does not wish to fight the warrior, and there the matter rests. On their way home, Hrútr and his brother Ho˛skuldr stop at the farmstead of their ally, Þ jóstólfr Bjarnarson. It is a moment of relief, after the ruthless struggle for the dowry at the parliament. But the narrative takes an unexpected turn, when the great men meet with minuscule “adversaries”: Rain had fallen heavily during the day and people were soaked and long fires had been lit in the centre of the hall. Þ jóstólfr the host sat between Ho˛skuldr and Hrútr. Two boys were playing on the floor, poor boys under Þ jóstólfr’s care, and a girl was playing beside them. They were very loquacious, as they did not know any better. One said: “I will be your Mo˛rð r and summon you to give up your wife for not having fucked her.” The other boy replied: “I will be your Hrútr and I say that you must forfeit all property claims if you do not dare to fight with me.” They repeated this a few times. Then much laughter arose among the household.33

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These boys, a classic example of naïve impertinence, may perhaps be more representative of boyhood, because they remain anonymous and disappear promptly from the saga after this episode. They appear only as children, playing a similar role as other kinds of marginalized figures, such as servants, old men, and beggar women. They are outside the constraints placed on more respectable members of society, in that, for example, their words are not taken equally seriously. Thus they are able to say the unspeakable, which is exactly what they do. And although their words are categorized as “chatter”, their talk may prove extremely dangerous to Hrútr, Ho˛skuldr, and their family, resulting in derision on the part of others. Is it pure chance that children serve this commentary purpose in this scene in Njáls saga ? It seems, at least, possible that the author is making a point about childhood, in particular, by comparing the games of children to the serious business of adults. These boys obviously have the same kind of function as the unnamed child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837), who is the first to mention the emperor’s nudity and consequently to reveal him as a dupe. By projecting adult-world interactions into childish social interactions, which appear only as a game from the point of view of the adults, these boys transfer the serious business of the parliament into a childish game. In this way, they reveal the game-like nature of the adults’ lawsuits. The crossover of social worlds, or the leaking through of the childlike into the adult, delivers the message and the judgment. Furthermore, the children crudely mention Hrútr’s inability to satisfy his wife, not mincing words. That may be the reason why Ho˛skuldr hits the boy who pretends to be Mo˛rð r in response. This is the child who, in crude terms, mentions the unmentionable, and this causes much mirth among those present. The game may seem innocent and childlike, but it can be its very innocence that makes it so dangerous. The carnivalesque element of this kind of speech, which turns serious lawsuits into a game, is metamorphosed into something more serious by the fact that the boys are innocents and thus cannot have a specific purpose in deriding Hrútr.34 Their very innocence makes them truth sayers.35 The childish banality of their game is much more hard-hitting than the more deliberate mockery of adults could possibly be. The irreverence of children in this case obviously reflects the irreverence of adults. The boys themselves are hardly old enough to know much about sex. Accordingly, the language they use would seem to have been picked up from adults. Their bantering must reflect what has been said about Hrútr’s misfortunes by the people of the region. Furthermore, not only does childish irreverence reflect adult irreverence: in this instance, it also leads to the irreverence of adults, exactly as in Andersen’s fable. The poor boys may seem like witless innocents, but their talk is very dangerous to the magnates Hrútr and Ho˛skuldr, not least because they have no obvious strategies to deal with such an “attack” from below. It is not surprising that Ho˛skuldr responds angrily and strikes the more offensive boy. The wise Hrútr, however, calls the boy to him and gives him a

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ringlet. He makes the boy his friend, demonstrates his magnanimity, and at the same time reveals that he has some sympathy for boyish irreverence. After all, he had himself challenged the foremost lawyer in Iceland to a duel and refused him his dowry. He may perhaps discern something of his own rebellious self in the two anonymous boys, who seem to be sitting idly on the floor but are in fact engaged in a duel of their own, within what the adults see as a childish game. His humiliation in his failed marriage is for them an exciting subject for a game, which, when played by children, reveals the game-like structure of the politics of the commonwealth. Hrútr manages to diffuse the situation and rise above the sordidness of the whole affair, so that the two boys do not start a feud with their childlike banter. Their words lead to nothing, in contradistinction to the actions of the anonymous boy in the Saga of the Sons of Droplaug, Droplaugarsona saga, who disrupts the chess table, farts, and makes a warrior laugh, which consequently brings to light the fact that he has killed a neighboring magnate.36 The boys of Njáls saga do not have such an important function in the plot, because the scene is the last in this particular segment of the saga, but they provide a significant commentary on the narrative. Furthermore, their childlike rendering of the plot adds a new dimension to it: the absurdity of the situation is revealed, along with the game-like structure of the assembly processes. As all of this takes place in the very first part of the saga, even before the main protagonists of the saga appear, the all-important institution of parliament (the alþing), and by extension the law itself, are thus undermined in the remainder of the narrative. The boys in Njáls saga are simultaneously innocents and extremely dangerous. In their innocence, they provoke laughter at the expense of the strong and the powerful. Their alþing game reveals that the real alþing in all its dignity is perhaps really nothing more than a more refined sort of game. Normally, children in the sagas grow up to be leading characters and are thus an “introduction” to their future selves. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the child is not also a child and different from the adult he may grow into. The narrative of the two boys, whom we never meet except as children, is a very realistic and credible depiction of how children make games out of the concerns of the adults around them. In this instance, their childlike understanding of the adult world and the unintentional irreverence inherent in this kind of game are exactly what make them dangerous.

Egill the Viking child The most famous “Viking child” of the Old Norse sagas may well be young Egill Skalla-Grímsson, protagonist of the Saga of Egill, Egils saga, a saga hero depicted in the story both as a child and as an old man.37 When he is only three years old, it has become clear that he will turn out to be ugly and black haired. He is also said to be just as big as boys twice his age. He is described as talkative and with a gift for words, but difficult to deal with in his games with other children – and this turns out to be no exaggeration. Yet, although the young

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Egill might be described as a prodigy, he is nevertheless easily recognizable as a garrulous child.38 He is more interested in games than in preparing for his future role, unlike, for example, the protagonists of Icelandic saints’ lives, both indigenous and translated, who from the start are wise beyond their years (the puer senex motif), avoid childish games, or take the opportunity to play the role of a bishop.39 The first anecdote about the child Egill concerns a feast given by his grandfather. Egill wishes to go, but his father forbids it, because the boy is “enough trouble when sober”.40 This may seem a remarkable description of a threeyear-old child, but it is perhaps less outrageous than many have found it to be, as those who have had to deal with a hyperactive three-year-old will confirm. Is Skalla-Grímr joking or does he really expect the three-year-old child to get drunk at the party? Again, it is possible for a child to naïvely take a sip of alcohol if it is available to him. A child would not need much to get drunk. Indeed, this is the plot of one of the Emil stories of Astrid Lindgren, in which Emil accidentally eats berries that have been used in the making of wine.41 Egill is disgruntled about being left out of a party. Even children aged one or two show clear (indeed sometimes quite violent) signs that they dislike being left out of the fun. The author of Egils saga seems to have had an interest and a great deal of respect for the personality of a child. So Egill follows his family’s party all the way to his grandfather’s abode, which is no mean feat for such a small child. Egill is welcomed by his grandfather, who, as grandparents tend to, sides with the child against the parent. Then Egill recites convoluted verses, which is certainly a prodigious feat for a child of any age. The verses make Egill popular, and the episode may indicate that it is with his poetry that Egill can win the favor of others. These early verses thus foreshadow his later successful attempt to escape death and the wrath of King Eiríkr through poetry. As a rule, the upbringing of children entails teaching them to obey their parents. Children who do not heed parental authority may reasonably be expected to be ungovernable also later in life. Some may even grow into a menace to society, which must rest on the foundation that authority is to be obeyed. So although Egill’s willfulness at the age of three can be seen as charming and eccentric, and indeed not untypical of an age often characterized by temper tantrums (“the terrible twos”), there is a danger inherent in it. The next time we meet Egill, he is seven years old and so quick-tempered that boys are taught to give in to him. In a ball game on the plains by the river, Egill turns out to be a very bad loser.42 He strikes his opponent, the twelveyear-old Grímr Heggsson, who dashes him to the ground, while the other boys jeer at the humiliated Egill. His older friend and mentor, Þ órð r Granason, then gives the boy an axe which Egill uses to kill Grímr in revenge. Curiously enough, Egill’s parents do not scold him for this. Apparently, killing is not to be discouraged in a child of a noble line. On the contrary, his mother praises him and calls him a true Viking, in reply to which Egill speaks a verse about the happy Viking life. His father, Skalla-Grímr, however, “seemed indifferent”.43 In any psychological discussion of Egils saga, this fatherly indifference

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would obviously make for a very promising explanation of Egill’s difficult character.44 The third scene involving Egill the child also takes a violent turn when Skalla-Grímr suddenly goes berserk in a ball game, kills Egill’s friend Þ órð r, and grabs Egill, probably intending to kill him too. Egill is saved by the intervention of his foster mother Þ orgerð r, whom Skalla-Grímr kills instead. Egill becomes furious, quietly kills Skalla-Grímr’s favorite servant in revenge, and father and son do not speak for a whole winter.45 Egill is becoming rather aggressive, and he asserts himself further by thwarting his older brother Þ órólfr’s efforts to go abroad on his own. Even when he is castigated for this, he replies promptly that he would not hesitate to cause Þ órólfr more trouble and damage unless he took him away from his father.46 In these latter two anecdotes, Egill’s behavior is excessively violent. Though the killing of Grímr Heggsson might in itself be justified, it provokes a quarrel in the neighborhood in which seven lives, in addition to Grímr’s, are lost. Egill does not appear to care about this, nor does he acknowledge his responsibility. This is hardly to be expected of a seven-year-old child, but it demonstrates that Egill’s ability to slay, hurt, and wreck far exceeds his self-control and his willingness to take responsibility for his actions. This lack of temperance is important. Witnessing the temper tantrum of a child will alert us to the fact that lack of self-control is childish, whereas maturity brings temperance. Although Egill has a good reason to harm Skalla-Grímr, the killing of his servant is hardly a noble deed either, because the servant has done Egill no harm. Although we can well understand that Egill is desperate to escape from his father, his recklessness in getting his own way is nevertheless excessive and suggests an over-the-top mentality. Egill seems to be a bit of a sociopath. What matters to him is to come out on top, to get even, and to get his way. In this, the child Egill resembles the man whom the audience later encounters as the protagonist of this saga. Although some of Egill’s later killings are more honorable, he remains an ambiguous figure, partly grotesque, partly sympathetic, but always dangerous. The behavior of this unappreciated prodigy represents a rebellion against parental authority, made somewhat more sympathetic by the fact that maturity is hardly to be expected of such a young hero. In addition, the father is cold and indifferent, and in some instances downright cruel toward his son; this culminates when he goes berserk and tries to kill Egill. To understand Egill is easy; to pardon him, more complicated. More importantly perhaps, in the childhood scenes, Egill asserts himself as a rebel against authority. Throughout the saga he remains hostile toward, and yet fascinated by, any form of authority, in particular that of King Eiríkr of Norway. Egill has been called an individualist, or even an existentialist, but, less generously, one could also simply call him an egoist.47 In spite of his many talents, his morality must have seemed extremely dubious to a thirteenth-century audience. Egill always fights his battles for his own benefit. In this instance, an egotistical child grows into an egotistical adult.

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Is the portrayal of young Egill in Egils saga realistic? Although Egill is certainly not a normal child, his actions are nevertheless narrated in a realistic manner, although saga realism is never totally free of exaggeration. Riding a horse at the age of three and reciting skaldic verse are prodigious feats, but not utterly implausible. Although children of seven are rarely killers, some present-day examples to the contrary sadly force us at least to acknowledge the possibility. The main difference between the childlike Egill and the mature Egill is that the semipsychopathic brutality of the child can be excused by his lack of maturity, whereas the grown Egill really has no excuse. The uncontrolled aggressiveness of this hero is more to be expected of the child than of the man. What makes the child Egill especially sinister is that his childlike behavior pretty much matches the behavior of the mature Egill, although on a smaller scale. One important difference between the child and the man is that the mature Egill gets away with much more than the child, because he adapts rather well to a heathen and brutal world as an accomplished but immature warrior and poet. Does that mean that the child Egill is really not that childlike, or that the adult Egill retains his childish immaturity? The saga cleverly leaves it to its audience to ponder whether the boy and the man are all that different.

King Hákon and the butter This study has focused on textual representations of early medieval and high medieval childhood in the Icelandic textual sources of the late Middle Ages. These texts are neither contemporary nor reliable sources for the everyday life of the ninth and tenth centuries, let alone of earlier periods. Even when they are close in age to the period they describe, they are still narrative sources that are subject to narrative laws. This means that they are sometimes governed by a fairy-tale logic that insists on the motif of persecuted children, who, like Christ, hide from their oppressors before eventually triumphing and coming into their inheritance. Characters from the sagas, such as Egill Skalla-Grímsson, are unlikely to be real representations of the tenth-century flesh-and-blood humans who inspired them. It is important to keep in mind that it is not only the tale of Egill composing skaldic poetry at three that has to be assessed as fictional: nothing of Egils saga, except possibly the bare facts of Egill’s name and his place of residence in Iceland, can be regarded as reliable history. It is a finely wrought artistic narrative, based, of course, on traditional material; but because that traditional material was shaped over two or three centuries, it is no more reliable than the innovations of the author. We rarely have “real children” in the sagas, only images. If we want to find the actual words of children in the Old Norse textual sources we might have better luck in contemporary narratives such as Sverris saga and Hákonar saga. It is very likely that the former contains a significant amount of Sverrir’s own words, but these are speeches made in adult life. With King Hákon, his

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grandson, on the other hand, we have one anecdote from his childhood that contains his actual words: The next winter thereafter, when the prince was in his fourth year, was by people referred to as the “bad winter”, but Birchlegs referred to it as “the Seal Islands winter”, as they dwelt in the Seal Islands for a long time in the autumn when the prince was with the earl. He had the Óláfr ship, which had thirty-one oars. Then the frosts were such that all drink froze and the butter became so hard that it could not be put on the bread for the prince. Yet he preferred being in the front with the court since all treated him well, those best who were the oldest. The earl gave the prince white bread so thick and wet that it could be crumpled together. The prince stood in front of the court and it was very cold. He saw that some bit one bite of the bread and another of the butter. He took the butter and wrapped the bread around it and said: “Let’s bind the butter, Birchlegs!” But everyone laughed at him who heard him. And these words became so famous in the army that a saying arose: “Let’s bind the butter, Birchlegs, as the prince commands!” The lad was feisty though small and young. He spoke like an adult and comically so that the earl and others who heard him often enjoyed the boy’s amusing phrases. Often two Birchlegs would take him, one at the head and the other at the feet, and jokingly they pulled him between themselves and said they were lengthening him, since they felt he was growing slowly.48 It is possible that the exact words of the boy prince in this anecdote have been accurately preserved in the half a century that had passed between the event and the composition of his biography by Sturla Þ órð aron. If so, they are a rare event: the actual words of an actual thirteenth-century child from the West Norse region. It is easy to fall into the trap of wanting them to be more profound, but perhaps it is very apt that they concern dairy products, which have traditionally been of great importance to Northern children throughout the ages. At least the image is striking: the loveable child cut off from his peers because of his superiority and brought up instead with these fully grown warriors, who make him into a comical small person who talks like an adult and offers entertainment at his own expense, yet receives the admiration and respect that only world-weary people can muster for their own descendants. The depiction of King Hákon is less excessive than Egill’s representation at the same age. Yet the depictions are still strikingly similar, the main difference being that the small anecdote about the king is essentially comic, whereas Egill’s neglect at the hand of his father makes his story tragicomic at best. Viking or not, Egill was first and foremost a person with whom his thirteenthcentury descendants could easily empathize, as the audience of Egils saga, generation upon generation, has continued to do ever since. This chapter has focused more on social myths than on the “reality” of Viking childhood. The latter is very hard to uncover. However, the narratives

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that have been examined demonstrate complexity and nuance in the perception and representation of childhood in Old Norse narrative sources. Most strikingly, children are shown not only as victims but also as agents, a force to be reckoned with in this still rather brutal society.

Notes 1 Herlihy 1978: 109. 2 When I use the term “medieval North” or “Old Norse”, I refer in most instances to the narrative tradition preserved in Iceland, which it would nevertheless be wrong to treat as uniquely Icelandic. Starting in the late twelfth century and continuing well into the fifteenth century, Iceland was the home to a substantial production of written texts: poetry, romance, hagiographies, and, most famously, sagas. Some of these texts may be said to belong to the Germanic tradition, others to the North in general; still others could be termed West Norse, and some are uniquely Icelandic. 3 The representation of reality in texts is always a contentious issue, but when it comes to the Old Norse sources of the late Middle Ages, there is often the added complication of considerable distance between (purported) event and narrative. 4 On this subject, see, for example, Ghosh 2011. Before the 1970s, historical information provided by the sagas was used mostly as either good or bad history. In recent years, however, the myth making of the sagas has been explored by scholars interested in historiography as a part of literature rather than as an extension of reality. The historical legends about ninth-century semihistorical figures have been explored in their own right, as legendary narratives. See, for example, Sørensen 1974; Sverrir Jakobsson 2002; Lincoln 2014. 5 I see no reason to distinguish sharply between myths and legends in this study. Demarcation between the two is far from clear, and definitions vary. Bascom 1965 defines myths as having nonhuman principal characters and as belonging to the ancient past, whereas legends are closer in time and do have human principal characters. This definition has been criticized by Csapo 2005: 3–9, who questions the need for such a clear demarcation. 6 I do not intend to provide a holistic picture of the life and treatment of children in medieval Iceland, such as is to be found in the studies of Stein-Wilkeshuijs 1970 and Kreutzer 1987. Stein-Wilkeshuijs’s work is encyclopedic. Rather than analyzing narratives, she provides examples of various aspects of childhood. She deals first with “normal” children, but then with those who are either above or below the norm. Kreutzer’s main focus is on births, newborn children, and the abandonment of children. 7 Most Icelandic prose narratives from the Middle Ages are referred to as sagas, but some are actually a variation of well-known European genres, such as romances and hagiographic narratives. The most typical sagas are the sagas of Icelanders, mostly concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century Iceland, and the kings’ sagas, which relate the history of Norway from the relatively distant past to the twelfth century. In addition, there are some sagas, namely kings’ sagas, sagas of a hagiographic nature, and the sagas contained in the Sturlunga collection (focusing on the history of Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries), that are closer to the events described and have thus more historical value with regard to people and events. 8 The term kolbítr is rare (see note 10), but is now frequently used as a technical term for the “ashlads” in medieval Icelandic narratives who show little promise but end up reaching their full potential as men; see Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2005. 9 Schach 1977. Cf. de Vries 1953. 10 Sigurð ur Nordal 1933: 62; Jakob Benediktsson 1968: 287; Ranisch 1900: 15 (“hímalldi ok kolbítr”); Rafn (Ketils saga) 1829: 114. The Icelandic medieval prose narratives are

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traditionally grouped into various subgenres, such as sagas of Icelanders, hagiographic sagas, Romance sagas, and kings’ sagas. The fornaldarsögur, sometimes also referred to as mythic-heroic sagas or legendary sagas, are narratives which are set in the North (or the Germanic area) but outside Iceland and in the distant past, from ca. 300 to ca. 900. They are influenced by the romance tradition, but they also share characteristics with kings’ sagas and sagas of Icelanders. Jóhannes Halldórsson 1959a. Finnboga saga is often seen as a late saga (e.g. Sigurð ur Nordal 1952: 268), but it actually exists in Möð ruvallabók, one of the oldest manuscripts which contains many Icelandic sagas. Its “late” status thus owes more to the fact that twentieth-century scholars found it harder to believe in its historical value than in its actual age. The general idea was that more “fictional” sagas, that is the so-called postclassical sagas, postdated the more reliable ones. Jóhannes Halldórsson 1959a: 257–8. Ibid., 259–67. Rafn (Áns saga) 1829: 327. Áns saga is preserved in a late fifteenth-century manuscript. Jónas Kristjánsson 1990: 258, using Reuschel’s 1933 categories, classified it as a nontraditional legendary saga or a Märchensaga. Cf., on the one hand, Jóhannes Halldórsson 1959c (Króka-Refs saga): 119, Ranisch 1900: 15, Rafn 1829 (Ketils saga): 109, and Jóhannes Halldórsson 1959b (Gunnars saga Keldugnúpsfífls): 344, and, on the other, Unger 1860: 521, and Rafn (Áns saga) 1829: 327. Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2005; Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2009; Larrington 2008. As Bettelheim 1976 and others argued long ago, fairy tales may be regarded as partly reflecting the mentality of the audience (i.e. the children they are told to). Cf. Kreutzer 1993: 158–66. McTurk 1991: 64–8 sees the threat to the youthful hero as a part of what he terms “the heroic biographical pattern”. Cf. Schlauch 1934: 95–7. Karl Jónsson is acknowledged as the author of the saga in its introduction where the writing of the saga is presented as a collaborative project between him and King Sverrir himself. Sverris saga is thus commonly dated to the early thirteenth century, although the oldest manuscripts are from the late thirteenth century. It is possible that the extant version was finished by someone other than Karl. Þ orleifur Hauksson 2007: 12. All translations in this chapter are my own (ÁJ). Ármann Jakobsson 2015. Þ orleifur Hauksson et al. 2013: 175. Whereas the earliest manuscripts of Hákonar saga date from the beginning of the fourteenth century, Sturlunga saga states that it was the work of Sturla Þ órð arson, written between 1263 and 1265. Sturla was a lögmaðr (attorney general, chief law officer of Iceland) during the reign of King Magnús, son of King Hákon, and a noted historian. Like Sverris saga, Hákonar saga can thus be regarded as contemporary. Therefore, although no work of history can be regarded as absolutely trustworthy, the proximity between the events and the narrative is far greater than in the Icelandic sagas. Nevertheless, as with Sverris saga, the narrative can still be said to be governed in part by the structure of fairy tales. Þ orleifur Hauksson et al. 2013: 178. Bjarni Að albjarnarson 1941: 227. This story also appears in the Óláfs saga of Oddr Snorrason (Halldórsson 2005: 131–8) and in the longest saga of Óláfr; see Ólafur Halldórsson 1958: 67–79. In Oddr’s version this Hákon is made into the wicked, heathen Earl Hákon Sigurð arson (d. 995), who ruled Norway after the sons of Gunnhildr had been killed or exiled. See, for example, Boberg 1966: 170 (K515). See, for example, Ármann Jakobsson 2004. Ibid. Boswell 1988: 6–7. The “quicksand effect” means that because of their dramatic qualities, certain motifs are far more frequent in narratives than in actual life. Death by

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Ármann Jakobsson quicksand was Boswell’s example, but a more modern example would be cars blowing up in action films more frequently (thankfully) than in real life. Þ orleifur Hauksson 2007: 139. Cf. Ármann Jakobsson 2015. Brennu-Njáls saga has been dated with considerable certainty to 1270–1290. It is a complex narrative of marriages, friendships, and power struggles in the south of Iceland. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson 1954: 28–9. I use the term in the tradition of Bakhtin 1984. This has a clear counterpart in the biblical-Talmudic tradition (cf. Ps. 8:2, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength”). Jón Jóhannesson 1950: 172. This saga, like Finnboga saga and Njáls saga, can be found in the famous manuscript Möð ruvallabók, and is thus presumably one of the earlier sagas, composed in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. See, for example, Yelena Sesselja Helgadóttir Yershova 2008: 285–305. Egils saga is possibly one of the oldest sagas of Icelanders, existing in a manuscript fragment from ca. 1250. It has often been ascribed to the author of the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), although that attribution is late and by no means certain. On Egils saga, see Torfi H. Tulinius 2014. That (a prodigy) is certainly the definition of Stein-Wilkeshuijs 1970: 88–90. See, for example, Ásdís Egilsdóttir 1992: 210. It is possible that this motif serves a similar function to the adversity of king narratives in the kings’ sagas. Because Christ, after having been hounded out of his home by King Herod for being referred to as “king”, showed at the age of twelve a remarkably mature interest in his discussions with the elders in the temple, both motifs demonstrate the importance of imitatio Christi for kings and religious leaders alike. Sigurð ur Nordal 1933: 81. Lindgren 1970: 84–109. The precise contours of this ball game are uncertain, because the sagas do not describe the rules of the game. What is actually going on has to be inferred from scanty information. From Björn Bjarnason 1950: 162–85 onward, scholars have nevertheless attempted to find out as much as possible about what was going on. The consensus seems to be that knattleikr most strongly resembled modern-day hockey (i.e. that it was a game with balls and sticks). Sigurð ur Nordal 1933: 100. See, for example, Ármann Jakobsson 2008. Sigurð ur Nordal 1933: 102. Ibid., 103. Regarding calling him an existentialist, see Jean-Paul Sartre, interview with the newspaper Morgunblaðið on August 15, 1951. Þ orleifur Hauksson et al. 2013: 182.

19 Reactions to the death of infants and children in premodern Muslim societies Children in Marʿi Ibn Yusuf ’s plague and consolation treatises Avner Giladi Issues relating to infant and child mortality are essential to the history of childhood in any given society.1 Mortality rates and the causes of death reveal some of the environmental, social, and cultural conditions under which children lived in the past. In addition, adult reactions to a child’s death mirror to a great extent the prevailing image of living children, including gender differences, as well as parent-child relationships. This chapter is dedicated to two relatively late examples of Arabic writings which initially were compiled by medieval Muslim scholars (mostly in the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) to help believers cope, on the theological, practical, and emotional levels, with the plague and its tragic consequences. The justification for including a chapter on texts from the early Ottoman period in a volume on childhood in antiquity and the Middle Ages is threefold: first, the rather exceptional combination, in the work of one scholar, Marʿi Ibn [the son of] Yusuf (d. 1033 AH/1624 CE), of two genres – that of plague tractates and that of consolation treatises for bereaved parents and other relatives – sheds light on earlier modes of writing through which Muslims dealt intellectually and emotionally with the devastating consequences of outbreaks of plague in general and the loss of children in particular. Second, the scholar at the center of this chapter, like authors of treatises on the plague and consolation treatises from the Islamic Middle Ages, relies heavily on old Arabic sources, mostly from the seventh through the tenth century. Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s treatises consist of commentaries on different Qur’anic verses, hadith (“oral tradition”) – sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (ca. 570–632) and his Companions and accounts of their behavior – as well as early narrations and anecdotes of other sorts. These reports and narrations, whether or not truly reflecting concrete events in the times in which they appeared – the first centuries of Islam – seem to represent types of adult responses to infant and child mortality that existed in Muslim societies throughout premodern times.

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Finally, Marʿi Ibn Yusuf is, probably, the only scholar born, reared, and educated in Palestine who contributed to these genres. In this chapter, I wish to draw attention to his legacy.

Historical background Outbreaks of epidemic diseases of various sorts – smallpox and measles, tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery, and possibly typhus – which occurred in the Middle East from the first centuries of Islam onward, raised medicalhygienic, theological, and legal-ethical questions.2 It became even more urgent to find satisfactory answers when a bubonic and pneumonic plague pandemic (the Black Death) and its recurrences struck the Middle East from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries. For instance, in Egypt, which, in addition to Syria, was probably the region primarily affected, there were recurrences on average every eight to nine years between 1347 and 1517.3 It has been surmised that a high proportion perished – between onequarter and one-third of the population in the affected areas.4 Ibn Khaldun, the well-known historian and philosopher of history (d. 1406), who lost his parents and many relatives and teachers in the epidemic of 1348–1349 in Tunis, describes the colossal impact of the plague (al-taʿun al-jarif ) “which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out.” “Civilization,” he says, “decreased with the decrease in mankind. . . . The entire inhabited world has changed.”5 It is reasonable to assume that children, who were generally vulnerable and highly exposed to deadly diseases, were among the first victims of the plague and that the incidence of their mortality was higher than that of adults.6 Moreover, unlike infant mortality in normal times, the death of children in times of plague was sudden. Sometimes it resulted in the disappearance, within a very short time, of all the children in one family.7 This is the background against which the Arabic-Islamic writings that I analyze here should be read. As a response to the Black Death and its tragic effects, Muslim religious scholars (called ʿulamaʾ ) in the Mamluk period (1250–1517) renewed their commitment to formal expressions of piety and morality.8 They collected early materials concerning epidemics and assembled them in special treatises. Juridical, theological, and medical-hygienic aspects of the plague are generally dealt with in plague tractates.9 Where these touch on infant and child mortality, they reflect their authors’ awareness of the uniqueness of children and of the religious problems connected with their premature deaths. The emotional confrontation with the phenomenon emerges in other genres, in poems of lamentation and special treatises compiled to console family members, in particular bereaved parents.10 To this, one should add inscriptions on the tombs of deceased Muslim children in the Middle Ages, which include expressions of bereavement and sorrow for children, as well as for their parents.11

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Children in consolation treatises The Arabic consolation treatises, most of which were compiled in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, give us only a general impression of the causes and rates of infant and child mortality. But they contribute to our understanding of the reality of children’s lives in medieval Middle Eastern societies, when we supplement them with more concrete details about the relationships between parents and their living children, and about outbreaks of the plague and their consequences; we find this information in chronicles, collections of biographies, and diaries from the Mamluk period.12 The primary significance of the consolation treatises as a source for the history of childhood lies in the psychological relationships between parents and their children which they reflect through their ample descriptions of the reactions of adults to infant and child death. They also demonstrate their authors’ growing awareness of the difficulties that parents experienced in coping with the sudden loss of a child. Although the consolation treatises sought to channel the strong emotional reactions of bereaved family members into legitimate religious modes of mourning, the efforts made by Muslim scholars to impose on the believers a certain cultural pattern for the emotional expression of grief did not lack an understanding of human psychology.13 It is not surprising that many of these scholars were driven to approach the painful subject after having themselves lost either a child or children, or other relatives. Moreover, the fact that it was repeatedly found necessary to attempt to channel spontaneous emotional expressions of grief over infant and child death bears enduring witness to the strong feelings involved. It gives the impression that parental love and concern, even against a background of high rates of infant and child mortality, were not uncommon in medieval Muslim societies. By analyzing the contents of the Arabic-Islamic consolation treatises, my aim is to show that many parents in premodern Middle Eastern societies were strongly attached to their children and consequently had to struggle with severe psychological difficulties when they lost them. This is in clear contrast to Philippe Ariès’s much-debated conclusions that high mortality rates made adults in medieval Europe indifferent to the fate of their offspring.14 More than forty titles of consolation treatises for the bereaved, quite a few of which focused on the parents’ misfortune, are known to me in printed editions and in manuscript form.15 The most remarkable example is the fifteenthcentury Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sakhawi’s The Contentment of Parents [lit. Parents’ Livers] with the [Religious] Advantages [Gained through] the Loss of Children.16 This and other treatises of the same genre gained apparent popularity and were widely circulated. The broad demand for such compilations is in itself an indication of the emotional ties between parents and children. It is reasonable to assume that the psychological trauma in the case of bereavement led parents to turn avidly to these treatises for advice on how to react.17 As far as I know, only two other scholars combined both the plague tractate and the consolation treatise genres. The first is Ahmad Ibn Yahya Ibn Abi

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Hajala (b. 1324; d. in Cairo during a plague in 1375), the author of Consolation for Those Mourning the Death of Sons and Thrusting [God’s] Wrath Aside through Prayer to the Prophet of the Merciful [God].18 The other is Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Manbiji (fourteenth century), who composed a plague tractate titled What the Heedful [Scholars] Reported about the Plague, as well as a consolation treatise, Consolation for Those in Distress on the Death of Children and Relatives.19 The distinction between the two genres is somewhat blurred in Marʿi Ibn Yusuf, who may have been influenced by Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani’s plague tractate (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries), and who was no doubt familiar with earlier consolation works.20 Unlike earlier compilations of this genre, the greater part of the text of his consolation treatise takes up theological issues (which are usually discussed in plague tractates) rather than psychological and ethical questions about how to cope emotionally, in line with Islamic rules of conduct, with the consequences of deadly epidemics. What can be learned from Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s writings, as well as from earlier relevant texts, about the reactions of adults to infant and child mortality in premodern Muslim societies? How and to what extent do such reactions reflect the modes of relationship between adults and living children? These are the issues I shall discuss here.

A glance at consolatory texts in other cultures Neither Jewish nor Christian scholars created a special group of writings intended to offer consolation to bereaved parents that is comparable in scope and content with the Greek and Latin consolationes of late antiquity (e.g. by Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, see the section on Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s consolation treatise) or the Arabic-Islamic consolation treatises. It is obvious, however, that both Judaism and Christianity found a variety of ways to grapple with the same set of problems. The death of children is frequently discussed in Jewish sources, which contain advice on how to react to it according to traditional moral values, whereas early Christian thought dealt with the theological questions provoked by cases of infant and child mortality.21 Evidence from historical narratives of the middle and late centuries of the Byzantine Empire shows that parents had strong emotional bonds with their children and therefore were extremely affected by their death. Bereaved, grieving parents lived “a bitter and painful life”, according to the testimony of a father who lost his “most cherished and beloved daughter” in 1435.22 Members of the elite commissioned funeral orations, intended for public delivery, and highly educated individuals wrote letters of a more private character to console bereaved parents, all based on the assumption that “parents are in anguish and inconsolable.”23 Funerary liturgies for young children were elaborated, and special segregated burial areas, as well as entire cemeteries, were allocated to the burial of children.24 The various ways of commemoration, including inscriptions on tombstones, funerary monuments, icons, and epigrams, also

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reflect the close relationships between parents and children, and the psychological difficulties with which bereaved parents were struggling.25 There is evidence for similar parental reactions in the western and northern parts of Europe too.26 An indicative text is Pearl, a Middle English poem, probably composed by an anonymous late fourteenth-century author as an elegy for his or her lost daughter and regarded as a “most complex medieval expression of grief for a lost child”.27 But it appears that the Arabic-Islamic consolation treatises, which are extensive and highly elaborated compilations, and different in style and application from consolatory letters and orations, stand out as a unique genre with no exact parallel in neighboring medieval cultures.28

Marʿi Ibn Yusuf and his work Marʿi Ibn Yusuf Ibn Abi Bakr Ibn Ahmad al-Karmi al-Maqdisi al-Hanbali was born in Tur al-Karm (today Tulkarm) in Palestine, studied in Jerusalem, and then worked as a lecturer of Hanbali law in Cairo, where he died in 1624. He wrote around seventy books on a great variety of subjects from Arabic poetry through Qur’an exegesis to theology and law.29 During Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s lifetime and later, the plague broke out repeatedly in Egypt and Greater Syria, including Palestine, although there is less certainty about its outbreaks for this than for the previous period.30 Plague epidemics in this region are reported in seventy-nine out of a total of nearly three hundred and eighty years between 1517 and 1894. It is estimated that there were twenty major epidemics between 1571 and 1865. It is possible that the author experienced the epidemics in 1571, 1575, and 1589. His birth date is unknown, but if we assume, on the basis of his literary production, that he lived at least fifty to sixty years, he would have been born sometime between 1564 and 1574, and would have endured the plagues of 1571 and 1575 as a child, that of 1589 as a young man, and some outbreaks of the plague in Egypt in the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, for example the plagues of 1572–1576, 1580–1581, 1587–1589, and 1603. He may have been one of the victims of the plague that, according to Arabic chronicles, affected Cairo between 1620 and 1626.31 Those parts of Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s scholarly work that deal with outbreaks of the plague in his time are of particular interest. They include two compilations of different, yet closely and complementary related, genres. Most importantly, they highlight the connection between outbreaks of plague and the emergence in the High Middle Ages of the genre of Arabic consolation treatises for bereaved Muslims. These texts are a plague tractate, Examining the Opinions Concerning the Reports on the Plague, as well as Consoling Those Smitten by Calamity on the Separation from Their Beloved.32 Like most other compilations of this type, these works refer only vaguely to the concrete events that motivated him as an ʿalim (a religious scholar) to write. Given the lack of exact data, we have to be content with some “demographic impressions” his texts convey. For instance, his quotations from early sources

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say that the plague (taʿun) caused a massive loss of children, sometimes many in the same family – seven, nine, and even thirty-eight and forty almost at once (matu jamiʿan ; dafʿa wahida). This may hint at the situation in his own time.33 When we remember that Muslim men were allowed to marry up to four (free) women, and to have sexual relations – and therefore beget children – with their own female slaves and concubines, these numbers should not surprise us. It is of course true that only well-to-do men could afford such large families, but the plague did not discriminate between the poor and the rich.

Marʿi Ibn Yusuf ’s tractate on the plague Examining the Opinions Concerning the Reports on the Plague discusses twenty themes that are introduced as questions to which the author offers lucid, intelligible answers.34 It was probably intended for a wide circle of readers. These themes and questions can be divided into five groups. First, he discusses the natural causes of the plague and the classification and definition of its various types: “What is the difference between pestilence (taʿun) and a contagious disease (wabaʾ )?”; “What is the essence and the proper definition of taʿun, according to physicians and jurists?”; and “Is there any basis for the astrologers’ forecasts concerning the occurrence or disappearance of a plague?” He then turns to matters related to the history of the plague: “When in human history did the first plague break out?” This is followed by a discussion of the theological meaning of epidemics in the human race and of their long-term religious consequences: “Should they be regarded as an indiscriminate chastisement or as a punishment upon infidels only, while, simultaneously, being an act of mercy upon true believers?”; “If one regards the medical explanation as worthless, then what is the religious cause of plague? Is it the spread of immoral behavior?”35; “Is the victim of the plague, whether a pious Muslim or one who is debauched, regarded as a martyr (shahid )?”; “What is the number of Muslim martyrs?”; “How are they classified and what are the rules concerning them?”; and “Is it certain that the Prophet Muhammad wished his community to be affected by the plague?”36 Furthermore, Marʿi Ibn Yusuf discusses the validity of some popular beliefs connected with the plague: “Is it really stated [in religious sources] that demons (djinn) die in the plague?”; “If one argues that the plague is contracted when a demon stabs the victim, how should we explain the occurrence of an epidemic in the month of fasting (Ramadan), during which time the devils are supposed to be fettered?”37;and “Does a plague spread in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina?” Finally, he deals with questions concerning the correct behavior in contaminated areas in the light of Islamic ethics and law: “Is there any authoritative prohibition to escape from a contaminated area or to enter one?”; “Should one offer supplications for the lifting of the plague individually or in public?”; and “Should a Muslim pray for the longevity of a person who contracted pestilence?”38

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These theological and practical themes show the profound moral and psychological impact of deadly epidemics in the late medieval Middle East, and the desperate need to understand their causes and effects. Some of the issues that are introduced in this work involve children and are therefore particularly relevant here: “If the cause of the plague is the spread of immoral behavior,” asks Marʿi Ibn Yusuf, “why are those who have not committed any wrong, such as children, among the victims?” Relying on Muhammad Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya of Damascus (d. 1350), a prominent jurist and theologian of the Hanbali school of law and theology, Marʿi Ibn Yusuf argues that any punishment inflicted by God harms intentionally both the innocent and the wicked, but for different reasons: to purify the former and take revenge on the latter. Accordingly, we are told that God takes the lives of children, victims of plagues, for their own benefit, that is to say in order to make them martyrs (shuhadaʾ, sing. shahid ), thus conferring on them the ultimate divine blessing.39 Other questions also point to the urgent need to provide bereaved parents with moral resources in order to help them grapple with their loss: “How should we console those who lose their beloved ones (ahibbaʾ ) and how should we strengthen their steadfastness (sabr)?” “What is the fate of deceased children (designated here as “a portion of one’s heart and the light of one’s sight”) in the Hereafter?”40 He also presents accounts in the hadith literature of how Muslim children who die prematurely are not only admitted to Paradise on the Day of Judgment but also ensured the admission of their parents and adds some religious-rational arguments which I discuss in the next section.41 Moreover, in order to comfort parents who are worried about the destiny of their deceased children, he promises them, in the spirit of Islamic tradition, that Ibrahim (the Abraham of the Bible) and his wife Sarah are temporarily looking after their young and that, after the resurrection, they will return them to their fathers and mothers.42 The discussion of these themes in Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s tractate on the plague reflects the special difficulty caused by infant and child mortality from the psychological, theological, and ethical points of view. This discussion is similar to that of some passages in the author’s consolation treatise, Consoling Those Smitten by Calamity.

Marʿi Ibn Yusuf ’s consolation treatise The first four of the six chapters of Consoling Those Smitten by Calamity on the Separation from Their Beloved deal with the following topics: disobedience and adultery as causes of the plague, the etymological (and the genuine) connection between the term designating the plague (taʿun) and the term for pricking pain (taʿn) that the devil causes to human beings, the death of Muslims during an outbreak of plague as an act of martyrdom (shahada), and the Prophet’s wish to see his believers plagued (and thus blessed as martyrs). In this way, they cover themes similar to those discussed in Examining the Opinions Concerning the Reports on the Plague.

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It is the last parts of Consoling Those Smitten, chapters 5 and 6, that mark it as a consolation treatise, albeit with some unique characteristics when compared with other works of the same genre. This is the case with chapter 5, which gives advice “on [the religious ideal, rooted in the Qur’an, of] steadfastness (sabr) and the superiority of the steadfast, the praising, and the thankful [Muslim]”, but particularly with chapter 6, “on how to be consoled and steadfast when one is smitten by the loss of good and beloved ones”.43 The strict religious-rational attitude of the author is remarkable, as is the fact that he pays no attention to the emotional reactions of bereaved family members, or to the religious ways of dealing with such reactions. This is in contrast to earlier writers of consolation treatises who seek to portray a model for balanced expressions of grief in the spirit of Islam. They present, sometimes in special chapters, detailed stories about the sentimental reactions of the Prophet Muhammad, his Companions, and other Muslim personalities to infant and child death. For example, al-Manbiji devotes the second chapter of his Consolation for Those in Distress on the Death of Children and Relatives to “Weeping over a mishap and what religious scholars have to say about this matter”, and Ibn Abi Hajala, in Consolation for Those Mourning the Death of Sons, dedicates a whole chapter to “Weeping and wailing for the dead – what is forbidden and what is allowed in this regard”.44 Most medieval Muslim scholars were aware of the difficulty in achieving the ideal of steadfastness in the face of calamity, and of accepting the divine decree, and avoiding any protest against it. They called, not for a total repression of emotional display, but rather for an effort to control it in compliance with the Prophet’s instructions in such a situation: when asked about his emotionally charged reaction to the death of his little son Ibrahim, he replied, “The eye sheds tears and the heart aches, but we say nothing which might displease God.” The eye and the heart symbolize the emotional domain, whereas speech represents the religious-rational domain.45 In the central chapter of Consoling Those Smitten (chapter 6), Marʿi Ibn Yusuf repeatedly addresses the “intelligent, wise man” (ʿaqil ) in an effort to convince him that death redeems body and soul alike. Some of his arguments refer particularly to children, and therefore are meant to console bereaved parents. He starts by depicting human beings as the weakest and most vulnerable creatures, exposed to disease and suffering from the moment of birth. Quoting Qur’an 90:4, “We created man to try him in affliction (kabad ),” and the commentary by Muhammad al-Qurtubi (d. in Egypt, 1272) on this verse, Marʿi Ibn Yusuf shows how agonizing and painful the period of childhood is, involving swaddling and tying, breastfeeding and weaning, teething, circumcision, and then the hardships of education.46 It is thus clear that he, like other ʿulamaʾ, perceived childhood as a hard time, not “a happy state to which one would wish to return”, during which children deserve protection and much attention.47 Moreover, one’s child is only on loan from God and must be returned upon demand.48 In this context, the moral value of ihtisab (anticipation of God’s reward for the loss of a child; “sacrificing” a child in anticipation of God’s reward) is praised along with sabr (steadfastness).49 Those who grieve for their

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dead, says Marʿi Ibn Yusuf, should remind themselves of other cases of bereavement, particularly the most tragic cases of Muslims who lost one or more of their children. Many examples of such parents are quoted, once more with the emphasis on their steadfastness.50 Finally, bereaved parents should console themselves by citing prophetic sayings about the religious advantage of the death of children, namely the recompense in store for parents and children alike in the Hereafter. Marʿi Ibn Yusuf presents several traditions where this is the moral.51 It is interesting that his arguments, formulated in the spirit of a monotheistic worldview and expressed in Islamic terminology, are similar to a certain extent to those presented by Plutarch (45–120 CE) in the philosophical texts he wrote to console his wife on the death of their daughter Timoxena, and to comfort Apollonius, who had lost his own son; or those presented by Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE), for instance On Consolation to the Bereaved, On Consolation to Marcia, and Consolation to Helvia.52 Although some of Plutarch’s works were translated into Arabic, there is, as far as I know, no evidence of any direct influence of his consolations on Muslim thinkers.53 Unlike the Arabic consolation treatises, which are addressed almost exclusively to fathers and other male relatives, several of the Greek and Latin tracts of this genre address bereaved mothers. Nevertheless, females – mothers and young female children – are not altogether absent from Arabic-Islamic texts (as the story in the next paragraphs shows), but they play a secondary role. In any case, chapter 6 of Consoling Those Smitten reflects the psychological difficulties which bereaved Muslims in the author’s time and earlier generations experienced in the face of death in general, and of child mortality in particular, and the great efforts the ʿulamaʾ made to reduce their pain. In a supplement to chapter 6 of Consoling Those Smitten, the author quotes a touching anecdotal text from The Book of Repenting People by ʿAbd al-Rahman Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200).54 This is the only passage that depicts directly the emotional dimension of adult reaction to the death of children. This emotional element, which is so salient in other consolation tractates in Arabic, is mostly absent in Ibn Yusuf’s treatise with its religious-rational tone. The anecdote vividly describes the strong psychological ties between a father and his little daughter who was born to his female slave, and who passed away at the age of two years: I was a policeman and I bought a precious female slave who pleased me very much. She then gave birth to a girl whom I loved passionately (fa-shaghaftu biha). When she started crawling, the love for her grew even further in my heart (izdadat fi qalbi hubban). She became fond of me and I had fond feelings for her (wa-alifatni wa-aliftuha). When she reached the age of two years she passed away. The grief for her made me heartsick (fa-akmadani huznuha). In a dream following the girl’s death, the father sees how, in the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad’s promise to bereaved Muslim parents, his young

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daughter courageously saves him from the fire of Hell after a dangerous adventure, and guides him to Paradise. The description of their imagined meeting in front of the gate of Paradise, including the physical expression of their closeness, is touching: She reached me, stretched out her left hand and held my right hand and I clung to her ( fataʿallaqtu biha) . . . She then made me sit down and took a seat in my bosom (wa-qaʿadat fi hijri) and inclined with her right hand towards my beard (wa-darabat bi-yadiha al-yumna ila lihyati ). Thus, against this eschatological background, the anecdote depicts what appears to have been a warm relationship between a father and a daughter in real life. As I pointed out previously, most of the hadith reports and anecdotes included in consolation treatises for bereaved parents refer to fathers and their male children, and thus hide an essential dimension of life in patrilinealpatriarchal families. Despite the closer proximity of mothers to their children and their more intense relationships with them, particularly with male children, mothers in medieval Muslim families and their grief are mentioned less frequently than fathers.55 Taking into account the fact that these treatises were compiled by men in patrilineal-patriarchal societies, this is not surprising. The preference given to male children is reflected also in the Arabic-Islamic theoretical writings that deal with child-rearing and child education. Given such a context, the anecdote quoted by Marʿi Ibn Yusuf is rather exceptional. Even more noteworthy from this point of view is the consolation treatise by al-Sakhawi (d. 1497), who was known for his favorable attitude toward women. It reflects an unusual sensitivity on the part of the author to the impact made by the death of female children. It also assigns much more importance to the mother’s role than do other consolation treatises.56

Concluding reflections One may argue that emotional responses to child mortality are not necessarily an indication of warm relationships between parents and living children, that, as Lloyd DeMause puts it, “expressions of tenderness toward children occur most often when the child is non-demanding, especially when the child is either asleep or dead.”57 This may be true, but, as far as our sources are concerned, it is not the whole truth. For instance, two diaries from the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries compiled by the religious scholars Ibrahim Ibn ʿUmar al-Biqaʿi and Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Tawq reflect parental love and tenderness toward living children, with much attention to, and understanding of, their needs.58 Thus they confirm the impression we get from the consolation treatises.59 It is reasonable to assume that both ʿulamaʾ are not unique in their attitude toward children, at least not among urban scholars. Their writings reveal close relationships between fathers and their children: sons in the case of al-Biqaʿi, and children of both sexes in that of Ibn Tawq. In both cases, the texts reflect

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the emotional investment on the part of fathers. These are relationships that developed in social and demographic circumstances, the psychological impact of which is rather difficult to reconstruct today: the incidence of disease; the high mortality rates, particularly of infants and children; and the reality of family life in extended, patrilineal-patriarchal households.60 Muslim families were occasionally polygamous, with all the implications this has for the status of women and children – some of whom were the children of their fathers’ female slaves – and for the relationships between genders and generations.61 We have no direct statements by Middle Eastern women themselves. Only men were the authors of the entire corpus of ethical and legal writings in the Islamic world. Yet these men did acknowledge the huge physical and psychological investment on the part of their fertile and caring wives (or female slaves, for that matter) in giving birth and in keeping their offspring alive, thereby taking part in establishing a long-lived lineage.62 When we read and analyze jointly Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s plague tractate and his consolation treatise, the causal connection between the Black Death and the flourishing of consolation treatises for bereaved relatives and parents in the late Islamic Middle Ages is clearly established. Moreover, these works shed light on a wide range of problems – legal, moral, theological, and psychological – with which Muslims had to cope in the face of the rapid and devastating spread of deadly diseases. In both texts, the death of infants and children is presented as a particularly painful challenge. Thus, they testify to the close relationships between parents and their children, even against a background of extremely high rates of mortality. Unlike most authors of consolation treatises, Marʿi Ibn Yusuf does not deal extensively with emotional expressions of grief for children and other family members. But the considerable effort he invests, by means of religious-rational arguments, in inculcating the Islamic values of steadfastness and the readiness to lose children in anticipation of a divine reward affirms, even if only indirectly, the psychological difficulties parents faced through the premature loss of their offspring. As in most other compilations of this sort, female members of family – mothers and daughters alike – are underrepresented, although not completely ignored.

Notes 1 I would like to thank the participants of the “Centuries of Childhood” project, particularly Reidar Aasgaard, Cornelia Horn, Brian McGuire, Mary Dzon, Alice-Mary Talbot, and Valerie L. Garver, for their useful comments and for supplying me with important references. My thanks go also to Ms. Liz Yodim for editing the chapter. 2 Shoshan and Panzac, “Wabāʾ”: 2–4; Akasoy 2007: 387–410. 3 Dols 1979: 162–89, especially 168–9. 4 Shoshan and Panzac, “Wabāʾ”: 2–4. 5 Ibn Khaldun 1958, I: 64; Fromherz 2011: XI. Fromherz 2011: 32 claims, moreover, that “it was the plague, and the changed world that it caused both for him [Ibn Khaldun] personally and for history more generally, that initially inspired him to write his philosophy of history.”

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6 On the high rates of infant and child mortality in the middle and late centuries of the Byzantine Empire and their causes, particularly anemia and malnutrition, which made children more vulnerable to infectious disease, see Talbot 2009: 283–91. On the high rates of infant mortality in the Merovingian and Carolingian eras in Europe, see Garver 2012: 236. 7 Dols 1977: 178; see also 181–6. 8 Berkey 1998: 168. 9 Prominent examples from the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries are Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani 1993 (see a review of the 1993 printed edition by Conrad 1995: 391–3); al-Suyuti 1997. On Tahsil al-gharad al-qasid fi tafsil al-marad al-wafid by the fourteenth-century scholar Ahmad Ibn Khatima from Almeria in Al-Andalus, a tractate (in manuscript form) written following an outbreak of plague in 1348–1349, see Gibert, “Ibn Khātima”: 837. On the development of this genre and the main motifs in its contents, see Sublet 1971: 141–9; Conrad 1981: 51–93. The theological discussions in these treatises inspired, in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a debate about the plague and the proper measures that should be taken against it, and in particular about the reforms in the quarantine system. These reforms were regarded by some scholars as contradicting the Islamic worldview, according to which the plague is sent by God as a punishment for unbelievers and, at the same time, as a mercy for Muslims in that “it dispatched the believer to heaven”. See Bulmuş 2012: 15–38, especially 17; Sublet 1971: 144–6; and Conrad 1995: 392. 10 See, for instance, Bauer 2003: 49–96. 11 Diem 2004: 208–11. This study contradicts and admittedly corrects my own earlier conclusion, namely that “in contrast to [Muslim] adults, deceased [Muslim] children did not have tombstones erected on their graves,” Giladi 1992: 82. 12 Conrad 1995: 392; Giladi 2011: 235–47, especially 236–7; Giladi 2013, especially 558–62. 13 Cf. Garver 2010: 157–8. 14 Ariès 1986: 37. 15 Giladi 1995b. See an additional list in al-Maqdisi 2008: 9–10 (editor’s introduction). 16 Irtiyah al-akbad ‘inda faqd al-awlad ; the liver was regarded in Arabic-Islamic thought as the center of painful grief in the human body; see also Giladi 1993. 17 Giladi 1995b: 198. 18 On Ibn Abi Hajala, see Robson and Rizzitano, “Ibn Abī Ḥadjala”: 686. The original titles of the treatises by Ibn Abi Hajala are Sulwat al-hazin fi mawt al-banin and Dafʿ alniqma fi al-salat ʿala nabiyy al-rahman, Escorial, Ms. Arabe 1772, fols 1a–87b. Another treatise by Ibn Abi Hajala, The Prescribed Medical Treatment to Thrust the Plague Away (al-Tibb al-masnun fi dafʿ al-taʿun), is a brief summary of the author’s Thrusting [God’s] Wrath (Dafʿ al-niqma). Following the plague epidemic of 1326 in Cairo and the death of his son, Ibn Abi Hajala also wrote a treatise on dying, death, and burial practices titled Being Close to the Excellent [Muslims] in the Hereafter ( Jiwar al-akhyar fi dar al-qarar). See Dols 1977: 326–7; Conrad 1981: 52 (note 3), 73ff.; al-Suyuti 1997: 82–3 (editor’s introduction). 19 Ma rawahu al-waʿun fi akhbar al-taʿun, see Al-Suyuti 1997: 85 (editor’s introduction); Tasliyat ahl al-masaʾib fi mawt al-awlad wa-al-aqarib, see Al-Manbiji 1986. 20 Al-Suyuti 1997: 85–6; Sublet 1971: 148. 21 On parents’ reaction to children’s death in Jewish sources, see Baumgarten 2009: 42. On the Christian response to the loss of children, see Bunge and Wall 2009: 107; Horn 2017. 22 Talbot 2009: 292–3; see also the chapter by Talbot in this volume. 23 Ibid., 294–8, particularly 294–5. 24 Ibid., 298–301. 25 Ibid., 301–6. 26 Garver 2010: 157–8. For Carolingian society in particular, see Garver 2012: 241–4. 27 See Andrew et al. 2002; Garver 2010: 158.

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28 Interestingly, some similarities to the documented reactions to child mortality in Byzantine and Islamic cultures are to be found in Chinese literature during a period parallel to the European High Middle Ages and early modern times (800–1700). See Wu 2012, especially 79–80, 83, and 86–9. 29 Brockelmann 1949, vol. 2: 369. 30 Dols 1979: 175. 31 Ibid., 176, and note 23; Shoshan and Panzac, “Wabāʾ”: 3. 32 Tahqiq al-zunun bi-akhbar al-taʿun ; Sulwan al-musab bi-furqat al-ahbab. The first tractate is still in manuscript form; see Al-Karmi, Ms. BnF, fols. 63a–81a. For a printed edition of the second tractate, see al-Karmi 2000. 33 Al-Karmi, Ms. BnF, fol. 60b; al-Karmi 2000: 67–8, 72. 34 Ibid., fols. 23a–62b. 35 Cf. al-Karmi 2000: 24. 36 Ibid., 33–6. 37 Ibid., 26. 38 Dols 1977: 334. 39 Al-Karmi, Ms. BnF, fols. 24b, 32a–32b; al-Karmi 2000: 25. 40 hushashat al-qalb wa-nur al-absar; see Al-Karmi, Ms. BnF, fol. 25b. 41 Al-Karmi, Ms. BnF, fols. 58a–60a. 42 Ibid., fol. 62b. On a similar role played by Abraham in the Byzantine tradition, see Talbot 2009: 297, 299. 43 Benkheira et al. 2013: 299–304. 44 See Al-Manbiji 1986: 37–46; and Ibn Abi Hajala (no date): 99–111. 45 Giladi 1993: 380–1. 46 Al-Karmi 2000: 54–5. 47 Rosenthal 1952: 5. 48 Al-Karmi 2000: 63; Benkheira et al. 2013: 299–304. On this motif in Islamic and Jewish sources, see Giladi 1989: 38–40, 43–7. 49 Al-Karmi 2000: 64. 50 Ibid., 66–9, 70–3. 51 Ibid., 75–8. 52 Plutarch (trans. de Lacy and Einarson 1959); Plutarch (trans. Babbit 1962); Giladi 1993: 378–9; Seneca (trans. Costa 1997: 3–28), where Seneca consoles his mother for her grief at his exile. 53 See, for instance, Alon 1991: 12, 123. 54 Al-Karmi 2000: 79–81; Kitab al-Tawwabin, probably confused with Kitab al-Tawwabin by ʿAbdallah Ibn Qudama (d. 1223). This anecdote tells the story of how Malik Ibn Dinar of Basra (d. 747 or 748) became an ascetic preacher. 55 Bouhdiba 1985: 212–30. 56 Giladi 1995a: 291–308; Giladi 1993: 382–5. Cf. El-Cheikh 2003: 395. 57 DeMause1974: 17. 58 Giladi 2011: 236–7. 59 Giladi 1992: 89–90. This does not rule out the existence of other, rather gloomy types of behavior of adults toward children, such as neglect, abuse, and abandonment. See Giladi 1992: 61–6, 78–9. 60 On the special difficulties involved in the study of attitudes, modes of thought, and feelings in the context of European historical societies, see Wilson 1984: 198; Rosenwein 2006: 191–203. 61 Tucker 1993: 195–207, especially 202; Bouhdiba 1985: 212–30; Khatib-Chahidi 1992, especially 123–4. 62 Giladi 2015: 37–8.

20 Perceptions of children in medieval England Nicholas Orme

The concept of childhood Few historical remarks have been so mistaken as that in Centuries of Childhood, the English translation of the work of Philippe Ariès on childhood in Ancien Régime France: “in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist.”1 The statement is incorrect because there were well-developed ideas on the subject in the Middle Ages, inherited from classical times. Medieval philosophers believed that human life passed through a series of stages: “the ages of man”.2 Some divided life into three stages: youth, maturity, and old age; others into four, which might separate youth into childhood and adolescence. Yet others proposed schemes of six or seven ages, which might further distinguish infancy up to the age of seven, childhood from seven to fourteen, and adolescence from fourteen to twenty-one or twenty-eight. The phases of childhood were regarded as having distinctive features. Infancy implanted growth, childhood was characterised by play, whereas adolescence saw the development of physique, sexuality, and mental and moral maturity. Words for these periods existed in Latin and later passed into French and English: infancy, puerice and puerility (usually replaced in English by child and childhood), and adolescence. Research on the history of childhood over the last fifty years has shown that concepts of childhood were not merely philosophical but were rooted in everyday life.3 Adults were aware of the nature and needs of children as they passed from birth to adulthood. Special arrangements were made for their feeding, clothing, and training in skills and behaviour. The medieval Church developed procedures for overseeing children, notably at birth and at puberty, and so did the legal system. Arrangements were made for dealing with orphan children, criminal children, and the inheritance of property by children when they reached an appropriate age. Systems of education were devised to teach children literary and other accomplishments, and much ingenuity was used to produce pedagogical methods and textbooks for the purpose. The world of work embraced children and, through the institution of apprenticeship, provided a system by which they were taught a manufacture or trade while living under adult discipline. Finally, there were those who observed and described

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childhood through depicting children in art and literature, and eventually by recording children’s rhymes and by writing literature for children to read.4 This is too large a field to survey in a single chapter. The present study is concerned with three major areas of the perception of childhood: in the Church, the law, and education, from about 600 to 1500 CE. In a concluding section, the question is raised whether this period was characterised by continuity or by change and whether there were significant turning points in the understanding of childhood in medieval England during the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.

Children and the church The concern of the Church with children centred on their baptism.5 Originally this rite was associated with the Saturdays before the great festivals of Easter and Pentecost, and the linkage continued during the Middle Ages to the extent that children born during the week before these festivals were reserved for baptism on the Saturday. However, the growth of a belief that baptism was necessary for salvation led, by about the seventh century, to children being baptised as soon as possible after their birth. This was hard to achieve in the early years of Christianity in England because of the scarcity of churches and clergy. King Ine of Wessex (688–726) ruled that a child should be baptised within thirty days on pain of a fine, expecting that a church or cleric could be reached in that period. But if the child died before baptism the fine was greatly increased, which implied a concern that baptism should be done as early as possible.6 Later, when parish churches proliferated after about 900 CE, it was feasible to find a church and priest close by, and baptism on the day of birth became normal except in the aforesaid weeks before Easter and Pentecost. Baptism made a child a Christian and therefore eligible for salvation, qualified by the need for confession and absolution once he or she reached adolescence. The baptised child also became a member of the church, like it or not, and remained thereafter obliged to accept the church’s doctrines and duties. Children received their forename at baptism, so that this name was (as popular usage called it until recently) their “Christian name”. They were given spiritual parents to supplement their temporal ones in the form of three godparents: two of their own gender and one of the other. The baptism ceremony included an admonition by the priest to the child’s parents and godparents to guard him or her from fire, water, and other perils until he or she reached the age of seven. The godparents in particular were told to ensure that the child was taught the three Latin prayers that all were expected to know: the Paternoster (Lord’s Prayer), Ave Maria (“Hail Mary”), and the Apostles’ Creed. The godparents were also required to see that the child was taken as soon as possible to a bishop, who was responsible for confirming the baptism.7 Once baptism was conferred, however, the Church had little direct involvement with children. Although all were expected to be confirmed, there was no

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set time or place for that to happen. A baby could be confirmed immediately after his or her baptism if he or she was the child of a king or nobleman who had arranged for a bishop to be present.8 Parents and godparents who lived in cathedral cities or near episcopal residences had the opportunity to gain access to a bishop within a year or two. But in most of the countryside, bishops were rarely seen, and a child might grow up for several years before he or she could receive confirmation of baptism, sometimes not until adulthood, so that the rite lacked a specific place in the human life cycle.9 Moreover confirmation was merely a ceremony. It had no educational purpose, and parish clergy did not usually teach children the elements and practices of the faith before the Reformation, but left this to parents and godparents. There seems to have been no requirement for parents to bring children to church services, although this was sometimes done because we hear complaints about noise made by the young.10 Most children learnt about religion by absorption from their elders. They became familiar with services (especially the mass) by attending them, with Christ and the saints from the images in churches, and with the seasons of the Church year and their various feasts and fasts by living through these seasons as they grew up. In short, until the Reformation, the Church authorities assumed that children would grow up as Christians without formal intervention. Even when an organised heresy, Lollardy, appeared in England in the late fourteenth century, it was not sufficiently widespread or threatening to change this attitude. Theologians regarded children as regenerate through their baptism and any sins they committed as too modest to require confession, absolution, or penances. Only when children reached puberty were they considered to pass to adulthood and its more demanding obligations to the Church. But the Church developed no significant rite of passage for children as they passed from childhood to adolescence. It is merely likely that a girl of twelve or a boy of fourteen, the accepted ages of puberty, would be told by a parish priest or be propelled by his or her parents or godparents to join the adults in the principal annual cycle of religious observances which began on Ash Wednesday, forty days before Easter. The chief of these observances was to fast from foods derived from animals; to attend confession in church; and to receive communion on Easter Day, the one day in the year when that was normally done. There is no evidence that special provisions were made for children when they first took part in these procedures; they simply joined their elders in doing so. Thereafter they were counted as adults in discharging the duties that the Church demanded of adults, without any special commemoration of the transition.11 The twelfth century stands out as an apparent exception to this lack of interest in children by the Church authorities. During that century, a larger body of church or “canon” law came into being, made up of papal pronouncements, the decrees of ecumenical councils, and the statutes of provincial synods – some old, some new.12 Once legislators made laws, they had to specify the kinds of people to whom the laws should apply, and children became an issue because they could not be expected to know or do all that was required of

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adults. One of the emphases of twelfth-century canon law was on belief. People were required to believe in the doctrines and institutions of the Church, not merely to follow them, and if they did not follow them, it was important to find out why not and what they believed in. So, at a personal level, there was the rise of confession, in which lay people were examined by a priest at least once a year about what they believed. If someone was found not to believe in something of importance, they had to be taught what to believe, and if they refused, they could be brought before a Church court and punished. As far as children were concerned, twelfth-century theologians and lawmakers followed classical science in assuming that adult belief begins at puberty. Before that point, a child had an imperfect understanding, and only after puberty was he or she mature mentally, as well as physically. Such an assumption affected children in several departments of Church life. The first of these was the question of sin and its consequences. Sin could only compromise the regeneration acquired by baptism when sinners were mentally able to sin and physically capable of doing so. Because these powers came at puberty, children could not commit mortal sins that would earn them damnation. In earlier ages when there were sometimes children in monasteries, they had been included in regimes of confession and penance, but now they were excused from the need to go to confession or to fast as a penance. It followed that when they were gravely ill, they could not receive the sacrament of anointing (or unction) because they had not sinned enough to need it and they did not sufficiently understand that the Holy Spirit was present in the anointing process.13 A similar issue was the reception of Holy Communion. Up to the twelfth century, there was no prohibition on children receiving it. The rite of confirmation allowed even a baby who had just been baptised and confirmed to receive communion. But in the twelfth century, the Church evolved and enforced the doctrine of transubstantiation. Catholics had to believe that when the priest consecrated the bread and wine, these became in substance the body and blood of Christ. It required an adult understanding to believe this, and so children under the age of puberty could not receive communion – a rule that remained in force for the rest of the Middle Ages and long afterwards.14 A third such change is discernible in attitudes towards marriage. This also required mature understanding in the Church’s eyes, so that a definite and enduring marriage between children was not possible. Such marriages could take place, but they had only a provisional status. The partners (or their parents) could change their minds and the marriage be dissolved. Only when the partners reached puberty and could intellectually affirm the marriage and consummate it could the tie become definitive and permanent.15 In a fourth and further parallel, one could not make a binding commitment to the religious life before puberty. In previous ages, some boys and girls, known as oblates, had been vowed as monks or nuns by their parents and had been obliged to stay in that condition throughout their lives. This practice diminished during the twelfth century so as to disappear almost wholly from monasteries, although the orders of friars founded after 1200 took in boys from about

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the age of twelve and the oblation of girls lingered in some nunneries.16 But on the whole, by about 1300, there were clear distinctions between children and adults in canon law, and the rights and duties of children were not those of adults.

Children and the law The secular law also developed views about childhood and its demarcation from adulthood. A common issue was the care of orphans and their property after the death of a father, the relevant parent when property was concerned. Property might consist of moveable goods or realty in the form of lands and tenements. The former came under the care of the Church and could be bequeathed in wills which the Church administered. Here the custom grew up that a father should leave a third of his moveable property to his widow and a third to his children, or half to them if he had no wife. Lands and tenements were subject to secular law, which varied according to the kind of property that was held. Heirs of property in “feudal tenure”, chiefly those of the nobility and gentry, were subject to the wardship of the superior lord from whom the lands were held. He or she took care of them and of the heir until the heir was fourteen, in the case of a girl, or twenty-one, in that of a boy. Heirs in “socage tenure”, who were modest freeholders in the countryside or citizens and burgesses in towns, were assigned to the wardship of a relative who was not a potential inheritor, and here the heir (whether girl or boy) inherited at about the age of fifteen. Heirs in “villein tenure”, who were unfree serfs or villeins, came under the power of the lord of the manor concerned, who appointed a guardian. Here again such an heir was likely to inherit in the midteens, at least in the case of a boy who could only then discharge the services of work and rent that belonged with the land.17 Another important legal issue about children concerned the age of criminal responsibility. This was at first set rather low. Laws from the English kingdoms of Kent and Wessex in the late seventh century settled on the age of ten as the boundary when a child no longer needed a guardian and could be tried as an accessory to a theft.18 The first king of England, Æthelstan (924–939), ruled that a thief who was over twelve years of age and was seized in the act should be subject to the full power of the law, which might involve the death penalty. Later the king felt this to be too cruel to young offenders, and after discussing the matter with others, laid down that no one should be slain for theft under the age of fifteen unless he resisted arrest, escaped, or refused to surrender.19 By the thirteenth century, when information first survives about actual offenders rather than laws, conflicts can be seen between an awareness of a child’s immaturity and the wish to enforce the law and give justice to a victim. Cases are recorded of young children who, having caused homicide, were being imprisoned, at least until a royal justice arrived to free them, or alternatively were being exonerated on the grounds that their fault was accidental. In 1302, Henry Spigurnel, a prominent royal justice, argued that no child could be

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judged for a crime before the age of seven and only for injury to life or limb up to the age of twelve. Accordingly, Spigurnel sentenced a boy of ten to death in 1299 for the murder of a younger girl, having established that the boy knew what he was doing because he concealed the body. But this case and a few others like it were unusual, and their rarity was noted by contemporaries. On the whole, the English common law developed a view that a child could not be guilty of a felony (a serious crime) before the age of seven and that there was a presumption to this effect up to the age of fourteen, although it could be rebutted. Only after the latter age was someone fully able to commit a felony and liable to receive the due adult punishment – a view similar to that of the church.20 There remained the question of how the death of a child should be regarded at law. By 1200 every unnatural death had to be reported by neighbours to a coroner, a public officer of whom there were four in each county. He summoned a jury of local people who heard evidence about the death and gave a verdict as to its cause. These deaths included those of children, even babies in the cradle, showing that the life of even the youngest child was regarded on par with that of an adult and deserving of the same protection.21 The burial of children was a matter for the Church. Here, too, there was no distinction between baptised children and adults, in that each was given a funeral service and burial in a churchyard, where children were sometimes buried close to the church walls. The Church did not permit the burial of stillborn children, on the other hand, because they had not been baptised, but this rule appears often to have been ignored, especially by parents. Such children were sometimes buried illicitly in churchyards.22

Children and education The history of education is another area in which the perception of children by adults can be studied. Once the English were converted to Christianity in the seventh century, schooling developed to train young recruits to be monks, priests, and nuns, and gradually also to educate boys and girls who would remain as lay people in adulthood. Up to about 1100, such schooling was generally centred in religious houses or the households of kings and bishops, after which these outlets were joined and eventually surpassed by free-standing schools, which were self-contained bodies open to anyone able to pay their fees. Classroom work required textbooks and pedagogical methods suitable for children. These were at first taken from classical writers such as Donatus (fourth century CE) and Priscian (ca. 500 CE), who had written for Latin speakers to improve their speaking and writing skills and to introduce them to literary criticism. But teachers in the British Isles faced the problem that their pupils were not Latin speakers. They saw that it was necessary to modify the grammars of the classical tradition so that the language could be taught in more structured ways than had been necessary in the Roman Empire.23

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Numerous textbooks were produced in England for teaching Latin in school from the seventh century and thereafter throughout the Middle Ages. At first, their chief concession to children was limited to trying to simplify the study of Latin. Thus, the text most often taught to children was the alphabet. This was presented merely as a list or framework of letters without illustrations to accompany the letters. The same is true of much of the literature that was followed in the next stage of learning: grammar, meaning the learning of the Latin language. Grammars were produced that were indeed simple and well constructed, but did not use examples of words and phrases that related to children’s culture and interests, such as references to everyday life.24 Nor did the Latin literature read in schools seek to be attractive to children. It consisted of texts for adults that were thought to be sufficiently easy in form and morally suitable for children to read.25 There were a few exceptions to this rule. An early writer of textbooks friendly to children was Ælfric of Eynsham, a monk teaching Latin to boys at Cerne Abbey in Dorset in about 1000. He broke new ground in two respects. One was by compiling a Latin grammar in English; previously all such works had been in Latin, presumably interpreted orally in English by the teacher. The other was by making distinct references to children in the grammar. Thus he explains the cases and paradigms of the noun puer (“a child or boy”) with phrases such as “boys learn”, “the teaching of these boys”, “I minister to these boys”, “I beat these boys”, “O boys, sing well”, and “I am taught by these boys”.26 This method attempted to engage the sympathy of the boys by referring to them. The approach is unlikely to have been a new one because one would expect earlier masters to have tried to interest their pupils via their oral teaching, but this was the first time that the technique was put into a formal school text in England. Ælfric also produced a Colloquy – a series of English and Latin dialogues to help pupils practise their skill at reading and speaking Latin. The work begins with pupils asking their master to teach them to speak correctly. Then it develops into dialogues between the master and a series of characters (monk, ploughman, herdsman, etc.) who explain their occupations. Very likely the boys played these characters. At the end, there is a discussion about the daily life of a boy in a monastery.27 This kind of teaching was not unique to Ælfric because it is found in the Latin Colloquies of a slightly later teacher, Ælfric Bata, who may have modelled his name on Ælfric of Eynsham. His work also discusses the experience of boys in a monastery, and because very little of the teaching of this period has survived in textual form, there may have been more such works or procedures in schools.28 Ælfric of Eynsham hardly established a tradition, however, because the use of English in Latin schoolbooks ceased after the Norman Conquest. Twelfthcentury Latin schoolbooks written in England or imported there from the Continent reverted to being formal and are not particularly child oriented in their contents. The next writer to seek to engage children’s interests was Walter of Bibbesworth, a knight of Essex in the mid-thirteenth century, who

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wrote a treatise on the French language in French verse for a noblewoman to use while teaching her children.29 This imitated Latin works, especially in helping pupils to distinguish homonyms and homophones (words of similar sound or spelling), but began by describing the birth of a baby, how children should dress themselves, and what they should eat. Thereby it came closer to a child’s experience than most language textbooks. The thirteenth century also saw the development of a genre of courtesy books to teach good behaviour.30 One of these, a Latin poem beginning Stans Puer ad Mensam (“O boy standing at the table”), was addressed to a youth in a noble household. It instructed him how to relate to his elders and equals, particularly in speech and table manners. This poem became widely read in English schools from the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century.31 Towards the end of the fourteenth century, more literature in England began to be written in English. This included Geoffrey Chaucer’s scientific work, The Astrolabe, which he began in 1391 (but never finished) for the benefit of his ten-year-old son Lewis, and which was evidently used for teaching other children because four of the surviving manuscripts are headed with the title “Milk for Children”.32 At about the same time, there was a revival of the writing of Latin grammars in English for the first time since Ælfric of Eynsham. The major author here was the Oxford schoolmaster John Leland in about 1400, who wrote short works in English on Latin accidence and syntax, the latter of which, like Ælfric’s works, uses examples familiar to children. “The master sits in the school. The master teaching in the school, I am aghast [afraid]. The sun rising, I come to school. The master beats me.”33 Another unknown writer compiled a pioneering English and Latin dictionary, Promptorium Parvulorum (A Prompt for Little Ones), completed in 1440. This was the first attempt at an English-and-Latin dictionary, and therefore the first English dictionary because it arranged English words in alphabetical order, but it also aimed itself at children. It contains a significant number of English words relating to play, such as various kinds of tops, see-saws, and active games, evidently to appeal to the interest of pupils. It exists in several manuscript copies and was eventually printed.34 Works other than schoolbooks were produced in the fifteenth century with an orientation towards children. Several were translations and adaptations of Stans Puer ad Mensam. These formed a new class of literature for children alongside that of schoolbooks. Some were for boys like the original Latin poem, but one translation by John Lydgate was gender neutral and could equally well have been used with girls.35 Three courtesy poems for girls have also survived, although these were aimed at adolescents on the threshold of adulthood and married life rather than young children.36 Finally, there is a fifteenth-century poem on hunting known as Tristram. This was allegedly written by a mother for her son, again presumably a teenage boy, but it is not about adolescence and merely explains some of the terminology and usages of hunting as done by adults.37 This review of the literature of teaching prompts three observations. First, textbook writers did not do much to appeal to children beyond making

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instruction simple. Second, when more attention was given to children and their interests, it was in vernacular textbooks rather than Latin ones. Writers of a Latin textbook seem to have envisaged either an environment which was relatively elite, comprising competent schoolmasters and children from wealthy families committed to education, or one in which the masters would interpret the Latin in the vernacular, perhaps with more informality and humour. Writers of vernacular textbooks reached further out, perhaps aiming at masters whose pupils were less advanced or amateur teachers in households (parents or senior servants) whose instruction was more basic and whose pupils needed more encouragement. But a further point must be stressed. Textbooks are not a complete guide to teaching any more than are laws to their implementation. Besides the textbook, there is the person who teaches with it. The textbook itself cannot tell us about how it was expounded, and how far its teachers modified and supplemented it to appeal to their pupils. A sceptic might say at this point that there is no way of overcoming this problem because we possess only the textbooks, not records of how they were taught. That is indeed the case up to 1400, but at about that date, all changes. Not only do textbooks survive, but records of what went on in a classroom. The reason why such records begin to survive in 1400 is due to the arrival in places of education in England of a new medium for recording information: paper. Hitherto it appears that written work in schools was done largely on tablets which could be erased and used again. Only students at an advanced level, or students of high status, would have been given parchment for keeping notes. By the early fifteenth century, a quire of four large sheets of paper, making eight leaves or sixteen pages when folded, could be bought for three or four pennies, a fairly small sum for pupils in school, who mostly came from comparatively wealthy families. Paper allowed them to keep permanent notes and build these into a volume, although it is likely that tablets were still used for rough work whereas paper was reserved for more permanent copying.38 We possess at least twelve manuscripts between about 1400 and the 1520s containing fair copies of notes made in grammar schools in England.39 In most cases the pupils who wrote the manuscripts and the schools that they attended can be identified. The manuscripts include sentences and short passages, sometimes in English with Latin translations, and sometimes in Latin alone. These were dictated by masters to pupils to illustrate Latin usages, or were composed by pupils as exercises in writing Latin. They are noticeably more concerned with the life and experiences of pupils than are the textbooks. In other words, they use as their material the world with which the pupils would be familiar: their family life, the life of the schoolroom, the life of the surrounding town, and news from places farther away. They also exhibit a good deal of humour, especially at the elementary stages of learning. Some manuscripts contain comic sentences to explain the difference between Latin grammar and English grammar. In English, sense is determined by word order; in Latin, by the morphological relationships of words. One manuscript shows how translating a Latin sentence merely in word order produces ludicrous

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effects like this: “I saw thee drunk while thou were sober”; “Mine arse coming to school shall be beaten”; “I standing see the wall running”; and “This man has drunk his legs asunder.”40 These examples relate to the very early stages of learning Latin involving younger children for whom humour would be more appropriate. Other exercises include sentences about everyday life. These may refer to a schoolboy’s family: “When I came home to my father and to my mother, we wept for joy, each to other, and no marvel, for the beholding of the child comforts the old fathers and mothers as much as the pleasant words of the physician comfort the sick body.” School affairs are often mentioned: “As soon as I am come into the school [the schoolmaster is talking] this fellow goeth to make water, and he goeth out to the common privy. Soon after another asketh licence that he may go drink. Another calleth upon me that he may have licence to go home. These and such other [reasons] lay my scholars for excuse oftentimes, that they may be out of the way.” There are allusions to local life: “All the young folk almost of this town did run yesterday to the castle to see a bear baited with fierce dogs within the walls.”41 News from elsewhere filters in; indeed, the exercises mirror the history of the French and English wars between the 1340s and the 1520s.42 Yet other kinds of humour are present in some of the exercises. A manuscript from Devon contains two lists of riddles collected by a schoolboy named John Pollard of Plymouth: “If you have a bull, take off the head, therewith gold is made.” (A bull is taurum, remove the head, t, and you have aurum, gold). “A crow is white if the heart is taken out of it.” (A crow is cornix, take out the heart, cor, and you are left with nix, snow.) “A fly may hold a horse if it is turned around.” (A fly is musca, turn around the syllables and you have camus, a halter).43 A set of exercises compiled at Oxford and later copied at Winchester contains verses in English which are then translated into Latin: “Wed me Robin and bring me home. Have I aught, have I naught, then I am a dame.” “Flowers in my arbour, they grow green. Unless my lady loves me well, my dog will die for tene [rage].” “Seven headless men played at the ball, a crippled man served them all.” “If I were as swift as a swallow, many good morsels I would swallow; beyond the new moon I would fly, so that no other bird should me follow.”44 These are either scraps of popular songs and rhymes, or original works of a similar kind devised in the schoolroom. In either case, they show a regime that was very liberal and inventive in terms of the material that it used for teaching Latin. It would not be correct to represent medieval English schoolmasters as wholly indulgent to their pupils, any more than a school today will be given solely to play and amusement. There was severe discipline by modern standards. School exercises contained plenty of grammatical challenges and the material on which they are based was often didactic. Proverbs teaching wisdom and morality were very common subjects for Latin translation. As pupils grew older and wrote longer passages of Latin, the topics ceased to be amusing

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and focussed more narrowly on accurate descriptions or reflections on religious and moral topics.45 Still, the school exercises show that the evidence of the textbooks does not do justice to what happened in schools. Medieval schoolmasters perceived that their pupils needed teaching appropriate to their ages and interests. Humour, riddles, and the writing of sentences about everyday life were all ways of achieving this.

Change and continuity The perception of children that we have traced in the history of the Church, the law, and education was timeless in as far as it mixed a desire to impose adult skills and standards while modifying this imposition to some extent to take account of children’s immaturity and needs. We have also learnt the need to distinguish precepts from practices, because precepts alone are insufficient summaries of attitudes towards children. It is difficult to make a comparison between the three fields that we have considered (and there are of course others), because each had different priorities. The Church emphasised baptism and to a lesser extent coming of age at puberty, whereas the law might be involved with children at all stages of their lives in respect of care and property, but largely confined its interest in their criminal activities until they were adolescents. Education was the most fertile in producing assistance for children in terms of textbooks and teaching, but because only a minority of children went to school, it touched fewer of the population than did the Church or the law. Comparisons of a different kind are chronological ones. Were there significant changes in attitudes towards children in England during the medieval centuries? Two periods stand out as worth investigating. The first of these is the twelfth century, when greater legal definition was given to childhood and to adulthood. By about 1200 there were stricter prohibitions, at least in the canon law of the Church, in what children could do or be made to do. They were not allowed to receive communion or unction, and to marry or take religious vows, and were excused from confession and fasting. Only at puberty did these restrictions and privileges come to an end. The history of secular law is more complicated, and in England much depended on case law rather than codified law. Nevertheless, the promulgation of laws and the increasing use of documentation in society made more explicit the rights of children to have their deaths investigated, their orphanhood protected by wardship, and their age of majority recognised, albeit with variations that depended on the nature of their property. The problem of writing history from legal history is that law making is not necessarily the same as law enforcement, whereas law enforcement rarely affects the everyday life of any one person. If we ask how different life was for a child in the early 1200s compared with the late 900s, the changes of the twelfth century appear less influential. The prohibition on child marriage only affected a small aristocratic minority, and child oblation in religious houses may also have chiefly involved the aristocracy up to the twelfth century, perhaps

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along with some foundling children. Most people had entered religious houses in adulthood, so the disappearance of oblation in the twelfth century made no difference to the vast majority of the population. There is no evidence that children had widely received communion or unction, or gone to confession or fasted, in earlier times. So, although the twelfth century saw more attention by adults to children in terms of law making, this does not appear to have been translated into adult relationships with children in other respects, or the lives of children to have changed significantly as a result. They were on the margins of Church life in the 900s and still so in the 1200s – more involved among the wealthier literate classes but less so among the poorer and nonliterate ones. The other potential period of change in attitudes towards children began in the second half of the fourteenth century and continued after 1400 with no clearly defined ending. The strands to be examined in this period are cultural rather than legal, namely in matters such as literature, art, music, and the commemoration of the dead. With regard to the first of these, there was very little written literature for children before the late 1300s. Wealthier literate children may have read (or heard read) literature meant for adults, such as romances, but such literature was primarily written with adults in mind. For those wealthy boys who went to Latin grammar schools, there were Latin school textbooks and Latin poems on good manners like Stans Puer ad Mensam. A considerable body of literature exists in Anglo-Norman French in England dating from between 1100 and 1400, but it seems to contain little material aimed primarily at children other than translations of schoolbooks. However, after 1350, when French declined as a spoken and written language in England and English took its place, new works of literature for children began to appear.46 Some of these have been mentioned: Chaucer’s Astrolabe, more works of courtesy literature both for boys and for girls, and the treatise on hunting known as Tristram. One could add other works, such as a moral story for a young man by Thomas Hoccleve, translations of fables by John Lydgate, an Aesop edition with illustrations printed by Caxton, and what is perhaps the first surviving story for children without any didactic function: The Friar and the Boy. There were also the Robin Hood ballads, which are usually considered to be adult literature but were characterised by contemporary observers as appealing to children, as well as to adults.47 In about the same period, children were being visually depicted in art. It is problematic to say that this was happening more than before, because so little art survives from before 1350 or 1400, but it is certainly traceable afterwards. Certain children in the Bible are depicted in the medieval prayer books known as “books of hours” or in wall paintings, notably Jesus but also the young Virgin Mary and the young John the Baptist.48 A favourite motif in stained glass windows was a wounded Christ, whose blood streams out to produce the seven sacraments, including pictures of the baptism and confirmation of babies. Some books of hours and romances included children in their decorative schemes. One such book is the mid-fourteenth-century Romance of Alexander; others are books of hours produced in France or the Netherlands.49 These used

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children’s games as marginalia, because there were many such games which could be reproduced throughout the books. The earliest portrait of an English child appears in Hans Memling’s “Adoration of the Virgin and Child”. It is that of the daughter of Sir John Donne of Kidwelly, a Welsh courtier in Calais, who commissioned the painting in about the 1480s.50 By this date, children’s portraits were being painted for the Habsburg family, and very likely for the children of Henry VII (1457–1509). There was a more definite rise of the importance of children in Church music, which can be termed as new with greater confidence.51 Church music up to 1400 was mostly plainsong sung in the choirs of churches by adult clergy. Some cathedrals and large collegiate churches had choristers, but these boys were basically apprentices learning the adult routine. They spent their day in school learning plainsong, or in the choir assisting with duties such as carrying crosses and incense or helping with small parts of the plainsong. Then, in the fifteenth century, polyphony developed in churches, particularly after about 1450. Most of this polyphony was not sung in the choir but in the Lady Chapel by a specialist group of adult and boy singers, the boys being co-opted because their unbroken voices added to the range of harmony. At the cathedrals, choristers were used for this purpose, and in the churches that had not previously had choristers (chiefly monasteries), boys were trained for the first time to sing in that way. It is from this date, roughly 1450, that modern choristers begin in the sense that we understand them: singing special parts alongside adults. This rise of boy children in Church music was accompanied by the development of new officers to teach them known as “clerks of the chapel” or “masters of the boys”, by the writing of music with parts for boys, and by more elaborate schooling in how to sing. Finally, there was a good deal of depiction of children on tombs, and we can probably also talk of a rise in this case. The portrayal of people on tombs in the form of two- or three-dimensional effigies began in England in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These were wholly of adults. The first major representation of children on an effigy tomb is on that of Edward III in Westminster Abbey in about the 1370s, where his offspring are depicted on the tomb sides. Meanwhile during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the monumental brass came into fashion, set into a “ledger stone” placed in the floor, which was cheaper to make and easier to accommodate in churches than a tomb with an effigy. Only a few monumental brasses survive on the tombs of children, although there may once have been more because the majority of brasses have been lost.52 Children, however, are very often depicted on the brasses of their parents: a group of boys on the left and one of girls on the right, on a smaller scale than the much larger images of the father and mother. These child groups are highly stylised, sometimes identical in size, sometimes tapering in that respect. In whichever way they are portrayed, they constitute a new recognition of children on monuments, even if only as appendages of their parents. Their presence indicates that the father was potent, the mother fertile, the family line successfully carried on, and the family wealthy and successful.

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The children are shown well dressed and usually well grown and healthy even if they died at birth, although in a minority of cases they are shown as babies when they did not survive. It might appear therefore that there was “a discovery of childhood” in about the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, manifested in literature, art, music, and monuments. Such a judgment could call on more evidence than the assumption that such a discovery took place in the sixteenth century, because the presence of children in these mediums continued during that century rather than beginning in it. However, there are dangers in postulating such a “discovery of childhood” because there were special circumstances in each medium as much as some general cultural change in progress. Thus literature depends on literacy. When literacy is relatively uncommon, it is confined to the elites of society who use literature for their purposes. By 1200 there was a literature of religion, of science, of law and government, and of some aristocratic recreations, including reading and eventually hunting and falconry. This did not concern itself with children, except in grammar schools with schoolbooks. Much literature up to about 1350 was also in Latin or French, making access to it even more limited. From at least the thirteenth century, however, more people were becoming literate and had a hunger to read. One reason for the rise of writing in English after 1350 was to satisfy that hunger. Those who could write found that there was a demand for literature among moderately literate people from further down society and from children, who found Latin and French too difficult and wanted reading in English. Such writers realised that there was an opportunity to make money or gain other advantages from supplying these groups. Writers also had a new technical means of reaching audiences through paper, which allowed writing to be circulated more cheaply and was in itself a response to the demand for more writing materials. So, after 1350, there was a burgeoning of writings in English of all kinds: documents, letters, religious works, romances, and practical treatises; literature for children was one of these. They were not being discovered so much as being part of a widening market and demand for literature throughout society. William Caxton, the first English printer, was a shrewd businessman. When he began to print at Westminster in 1476, he identified children as one of his significant markets. His opening list of titles included four short tracts which he envisaged that parents would buy for their children’s education or recreation. Several of his subsequent books, although usually considered adult, had the further objective that their sales would increase because they could be used with children.53 Something similar was going on in the world of visual representation. Tombs with sculptured effigies were the preserve of the very rich and important. They were expensive to produce and to display, because an area of the church had to be set aside for them which could not then be walked over. The monumental brass was cheaper to make and could be laid on the floor in any place. It could be adapted and made to depict not only nobility and wealthy gentry but parish clergy, lawyers, merchants, and even the richer yeomanry.

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The inclusion of children on the brass was also much simpler than to sculpt them on the side of a tomb as was done for Edward III. One might argue that children were included on brasses not because of a discovery of childhood, but because it was now something easy to do. The history of family pride in children is a difficult one to write for the earlier Middle Ages. But from the twelfth century, monastic chronicles recorded the birth dates of the children of their royal or noble patrons.54 By about 1200 a Cornish prior in London, Peter of Cornwall, was writing a history of his family that stretched back into the previous three or four generations.55 Pride in offspring had long existed, but it was only with the development of the monumental brass that this could be easily represented visually. As for children in art and manuscripts, the same applied: it was becoming simpler to represent them through the development of painting and manuscript technology, and eventually printing. Manuscript illuminators were hungry for images, and children’s games provided one solution to their needs. To conclude, there were certainly changes to childhood during the Middle Ages. Children shared in the social and economic changes experienced by society as a whole, year by year and century by century. There were also some changes specifically relating to them. By 1500, they were more regulated or recognised in religion, law, literature, art, and music. But one must enter caveats. This regulation and recognition developed for reasons largely independent of children themselves. It is not clear that it changed how people regarded children. The basic ideas about childhood – the ages of man with their distinct characteristics – continued much as before. So, one suspects, did the dynamic within families: how parents reared their children, interacted with them, disciplined them, played with them, and trained them for adult life. These relationships differed from family to family. Most of the lives of most children still lay outside the areas of regulation and recognition. They did not marry while young, seek to enter monasteries, require coroners’ inquests, sing polyphony, appear on tombs, or often or ever read literature for children. Changes there were, but a great turning point, a significant “discovery of childhood”, remains elusive.

Notes 1 Ariès 1962: 125. 2 Rowland 1975: 17–29; Burrow 1986: 5–54. 3 Orme 1973; Orme 1984; Hanawalt 1986; Hanawalt 1993; Wood 1994; Crawford 2000; Orme 2001; Orme 2006. 4 Orme 1984: 81–6; Orme 2001: 81–2, 274–304; Orme 2011. 5 Orme 2001: 21–35. 6 Attenborough 1922: 36–7. 7 Orme 2001: 29. 8 Ibid., 30, 217–18. 9 Ibid., 218–19. 10 Ibid., 209–11. 11 Ibid., 220.

Children in medieval England 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

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Ibid., 213–16. Ibid., 215. Ibid., 214–15. Ibid., 334–7. Ibid., 224–5; Orme 2006: 20, 45–6, 255–7. Orme 2001: 325–7. Attenborough 1922: 20–1, 38–9. Ibid., 126–7, 156–7, 168–9. Orme 2001: 323–5. Hunnisett 1961: 9–36; Pollock and Maitland 1968: ii, 578; Hanawalt 1986: 1–22. Orme 2001: 124–6. Law 1982: 30–41, 53–80. Tatwin 1968: 1–88; Boniface 1980: 40–56. Orme 2006: 29, 41–2, 97–105. Ælfric of Eynsham 1880 (2003). Ælfric of Eynsham 1978. Ælfric Bata 1997, passim. Walter of Bibbesworth 1990, passim. Nicholls 1985: 7–142. Gieben 1967: 47–74. Chaucer 2008: 661–83, 1195. Thomson 1984: 82–130. Way 1843–1865; Orme 2001: 165, 179–80. Lydgate 1989: 7–39. Mustanoja 1948. Hands 1975: 57–79; Orme 1984: 191–8. Orme 2013: 9, 18. Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 82–85, 106. Nelson 1956: 15, 27, 39. There are references to the fighting of Edward III against Philip VI of France; the Norwich crusade of 1383; the siege of Harfleur in 1415; the English victories of the 1420s; the collapse of English power in France in the 1440s; and subsequent alarms at possible French attacks on England in the 1470s, 1510s, and 1520s. See Orme 2013: 38–9. Ibid., 138, 141, 144. Ibid., 284–90. For example ibid., 182–236. Orme 2001: 274–304. Ibid., 288–9. Alexander and Binski 1987: 283–4. The Romance of Alexander is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. See James 1933, passim. The painting is in the National Gallery, London. Bowers 1995: 1–47. Page-Phillips 1970, passim. Orme 2001: 294–7. Ibid., 48. Hull and Sharpe 1985: 5–53.

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Index

abandon 105, 108, 136–7, 143, 175, 182, 184, 195, 204, 248, 256, 275 abandonment 103, 140, 294, 302, 317 ability 25, 40, 42, 46–7, 50, 52, 55, 68–9, 73–4, 81, 85, 105, 117, 161, 166, 170, 175, 214, 264, 276, 285, 299 Abraham 109, 119–21, 123, 183–5, 191, 195, 197, 202, 206, 278, 311, 317; see also Avraham abuse 16, 58, 116–17, 125, 128, 136, 138–9, 280, 317 adopt 115, 187, 283, 289 adoption 65, 95 adoptive 256 adulescens 81 affection 67, 147, 177, 250–2, 284 affectionate 274, 292 affectivity, affective 34, 68, 237 affects 29, 31–2, 51, 55, 295, 328 age limits 17, 40, 51, 90, 152, 216, 218, 233–4, 240–1, 244, 266, 267, 274, 282, 318, 319, 322–3 agency 40–1, 43, 45, 52, 74, 98–9, 105, 107, 188, 258 agent 12, 43–4, 47, 54, 58, 60, 69, 102, 108, 188, 248, 258–9, 262, 269, 302 age stages 11, 51, 80–2 aggressiveness, aggressive 294, 299, 300 Alexandria 10, 127, 129–35, 137, 139, 141, 143, 172, 178, 185, 225 alphabet, alphabetical 70, 225–6, 244, 283, 324–5 ambition 56, 60, 67–8, 69, 159, 166 amulet 64, 78, 88, 90–1, 250 amuse 59, 301, 327 amusement, amusements 161, 327 anger 31, 43–5, 48, 148, 151, 235 angered 245, 295 angry, angrily 40, 296 Anselm 14, 231–2, 238, 280

anthropology 3, 13, 16, 63, 71, 74, 142, 145, 158 apocryphal 113, 129, 164, 188, 249 apoplexy 87 apostle 111, 121, 130, 134, 161–4, 167, 198, 229, 319 appetite 40–1, 44, 47, 54, 56, 181 apprentice 59, 75, 107, 258, 330 apprenticeship 70, 184, 245, 318 ‘aqīqa 193–205, 207–8; see also ceremony; ritual archaeologists 96, 220 archaeology, archaeological 1, 6, 8–9, 12, 78, 91, 103, 111, 123, 219, 243, 249 arête 39 Aristotelian 8, 37, 39–40, 44, 55, 276 Aristotelianism 143 Aristotle 9–10, 13, 35, 37–55, 58, 68, 79–80, 83, 92, 143–4, 147, 150, 155–6, 276, 285–6, 289 ascetic 12–13, 134–5, 157, 159, 164–5, 171, 178–92, 225, 246–7, 317 asceticism 178, 180–1, 183–6, 188–9, 226 Asclepius 81, 89 Augustine 12–14, 143, 157–67, 169–73, 175, 178–9, 189–90, 226, 275–6, 283–5, 287, 289 Augustinian 134, 170, 276 authoritarianism 22 authoritative 69, 287, 310 authority 49, 117, 158, 167, 183, 189, 201, 204, 210–11, 218, 221; ecclesiastical 214–16, 218, 320; halakic 260–2, 266, 268, 270; parental 97, 262–3, 298, 299; royal 209–13, 215–18; see also power autobiographical 157, 273 autobiography 7, 159, 274; see also story autonomy 13, 22, 158, 164, 169 Averroes 277

372

Index

Avicenna 277 Avraham 260; see also Abraham baby 81, 83–4, 94–9, 102–3, 105–6, 108, 112, 118, 136–7, 146, 169, 190–1, 198, 216, 240–3, 249–51, 253, 278–9, 320–1, 323, 325, 329, 331 ball 243, 298–9, 304, 327 baptism 14–15, 113, 128, 133–4, 140, 157, 162, 172, 175, 202, 211–13, 215–16, 220, 241, 243, 254, 276–9, 319–21, 328–9 baptistery 109 baptize 128, 133–4, 215, 241, 278–9, 319, 321, 323 Barṣauma 180–5, 188–90 Basil Kaukamenos 251 Basil of Caesarea 143, 172, 175, 256 bath, bathing 82, 84, 86, 89, 236, 250–1 bathroom 228 bathwater 250 beard 81, 86, 314 beardless 247–8, 253 beat 116, 118, 125, 324 beaten 116–19, 231, 238, 327 beating 117–18 beautiful 30, 32–4, 41–2, 66, 138, 155, 176–7, 179, 186, 230, 233, 236, 252 beauty 19, 31–3, 50, 138, 148, 179, 237, 252 bedroom, of children 246; see also dormitory beds 228, 246 bedtime 246 behave, behaving 166, 168, 220, 260, 292 behavior 31, 48, 56, 106, 113, 152, 155, 169, 177, 182, 210, 218, 247–8, 253, 262, 264, 266, 299–300, 305, 310–11, 317–18, 325 belief 17, 21, 35, 38, 51, 110, 127–8, 134, 157, 168, 174–5, 198, 203, 205, 208, 279, 310, 319, 321 believer 135, 164, 168, 203, 281, 305, 307, 310–11, 316 Benedict of Nursia 227–32, 238 bereavement 253, 305–9, 311–15 Bible 5, 94–6, 98–100, 102–3, 105–9, 112–14, 118–19, 125, 139, 158, 160–1, 163–6, 168, 171–3, 175, 178, 240, 244, 257, 311, 329 bioarchaeologists 249 biographer 182, 230, 282 biography 95, 109, 112, 123, 142, 144, 150–2, 154, 182, 185, 190, 231, 244, 292, 301, 307 biological 3, 11, 14, 23, 26, 37, 48, 70, 82, 122, 145, 183–5, 224, 237 biology 48, 70

birth: defects of 23; defilement of 134; premature 80; ritual of 11, 15, 193–8, 282; see also ‘aqīqa ; spiritual 97; see also baptism birthday 215 bodily 44, 48, 63, 82–3, 85–6, 89, 102, 149 body 27, 60–1, 67, 75, 77–8, 80–6, 88–91, 94–5, 102, 107, 116–18, 132, 145–9, 154, 164, 167–8, 179–80, 196, 226, 229, 253, 262, 273, 277–8, 281, 284, 312, 316, 320–1, 323, 327, 329 Bonaventure 283–4, 289 born 15, 24–5, 35, 80, 82, 96–7, 99, 102, 104, 110, 112, 115, 119–20, 127, 130, 134, 137, 151, 198–200, 207, 229, 241, 245, 250, 252, 256, 269, 277–8, 291, 293, 306, 309, 313, 319 boy see gender differentiation; male boyhood 68, 82, 94, 166, 180, 188, 286, 288, 296 boyish 236, 297 breast 84, 99, 109, 152, 169, 191, 242–3, 248, 251 breastfeed 23, 87, 241–3; breastfeeding 136, 240–3, 249, 254, 312 breastmilk 187, 242, 251 brothels, children in 136–7 brother 94, 97–100, 105, 107–9, 118, 120, 128, 130, 226–7, 229, 232–3, 235, 244, 246, 295, 299 brotherhood 105 brotherly 165 brutality, of children 300 bulla 64, 78, 91 bullying 245, 253, 291 burial 84, 91, 219–20, 243, 249, 308, 316, 323 care 14, 23, 25–6, 47, 70, 75, 77–80, 83–4, 88–9, 117, 122, 136–7, 153–4, 165, 176–8, 186, 191, 213–14, 219–21, 232, 235, 246–7, 251, 258, 262, 267, 274, 282, 295, 299, 322, 328 caretakers 117 caring 79, 155, 189, 214, 232, 262, 282, 315 catechumenate, catechetical 132–3, 157 ceremony 194, 198–9, 202, 204, 241, 319–20; see also ‘aqīqa; baptism; circumcision; naming character 12–13, 19–21, 23–41, 44–8, 50–1, 53–5, 71, 73, 98–9, 103, 105, 114–21, 150, 152–3, 155, 178–9, 183–5, 198, 205, 218, 248, 252–3, 285, 297, 299–300, 302, 308, 324

Index Charlemagne 209–10, 213, 215–17, 222 chastisement 14, 227, 310 child: definition of 11, 80–2; formation of 12, 13, 161–3; as model 127, 129, 251 childbearing 60, 65 childbirth 77–9, 86, 92, 135, 139, 241–2, 250 childcare 23, 79 childhood: as metaphor 15, 74, 76, 128–30, 139, 158, 167–71; experience of 3, 19, 38, 64, 95, 98–100, 127, 157, 160, 189, 218–20, 236–7, 294, 324–5; philosophy of 20–2, 24 childhood mortality 78, 91, 136, 243, 249, 254, 305–8, 311, 313–15 childhood studies 3–5, 112–14, 211–13, 318–19 childishness, childish 151–2, 155, 162, 246, 253, 294–300 child labor 180, 245, 258–60, 262, 267 childlessness, childless 81, 99, 119, 135, 243, 250 childlikeness, childlike 130, 278, 294, 296–7, 300 childrearing 77, 80, 85–6 Christ see Jesus Christ Christianity 4–5, 8–10, 13–14, 16, 113, 127–8, 132–3, 157–8, 172, 180, 191, 202, 240, 276, 290, 293, 308, 319, 323 Christianization 220, 290 Christianized 121 Chrysostom see John Chrysostom church 2, 112–14, 120, 127, 129–34, 140, 157, 159, 161, 163–4, 166, 181, 211–13, 215–17, 219–20, 225, 228, 230–1, 237, 241, 244, 246–7, 249–50, 252–4, 283, 318–23, 328–31 churching 241 circumcise, circumcised 99, 120, 198, 207 circumcision 15, 194, 205, 207, 269, 278, 312 class, of social class 2, 12, 22–6, 35, 77, 113–21, 123–5, 152, 154, 240–1, 244–5, 249, 329 classmates 244; see also schoolmates classroom 238, 323, 326; see also schoolroom clothed 191, 235, 280 clothes, clothing 1, 61, 84, 102, 149, 180, 214, 231, 237, 245, 293, 296, 318 coerced 52 coercion 129, 262, 275 cognitive abilities of children 22, 32, 46, 49–50, 53–4, 74 command 96–7, 99–100, 105–6, 121, 130, 135, 238, 262, 284, 295, 301

373

commandment 100, 139, 162, 164, 263 commemorate 58–63, 67, 96, 100, 281; commemorating 60, 73, 185 commemoration 14, 56, 58–61, 63–6, 74, 308, 320, 329 commemorator 67 communion 226, 241, 320–1, 328–9; see also eucharist conception 11, 20–1, 44, 48, 70, 80, 89, 92, 221, 247, 250, 279; conceptions 5–6, 9, 11–12, 22, 56, 58–61, 63, 65, 67, 69–71, 73, 75, 77, 80, 139, 158, 167, 194, 209–211, 217, 275 concept of childhood 7, 27, 38, 55, 70, 74, 77–8, 89, 114, 185, 259, 266, 269, 318 concepts 64, 79, 87, 89–91, 108, 128, 211, 318 conflict 4, 71, 105, 160, 164–5, 280, 322 consolation 14, 251–2, 305, 307–9, 311–15; see also bereavement console 187, 306, 308–9, 311–13, 317 constraints 105, 188, 212, 296 correctio 212 culture of children 1, 324 curricula 144–45, 164 curriculum 22, 28–9, 68–70, 76, 131, 161–4, 177, 244, 270 Cyril of Scythopolis 178–180, 183, 190–1 daughter 63, 94–100, 103–9, 136–8, 153, 158–60, 175–7, 187, 189, 191, 198–9, 218, 220, 232, 242–4, 246–8, 250, 252, 255–68, 270, 282, 291, 295, 308–9, 313–15, 330 dead 56, 58–61, 63, 65, 72, 103, 121, 214, 219, 229, 251, 274–5, 286, 312–14, 329 death of children 5, 14, 28–9, 59, 63–4, 67, 75, 87, 94–5, 99–100, 108, 138, 153, 175–6, 179–80, 184, 187, 191, 198–200, 204, 219, 223, 237, 243, 249–250, 252, 254, 259, 270, 280–1, 293–4, 298, 303, 305–9, 311–17, 322–3 decease 184 defenselessness, defenseless 214, 220–1 dentition 79, 84–5, 87, 90–1 desire 8, 32, 41, 43–4, 47–8, 54–6, 58, 135–6, 138, 147, 160, 163, 170, 176, 179–80, 182–3, 203–4, 213–14, 219, 221, 224, 230, 232, 237, 249, 251, 262–3, 266, 270, 276, 279, 281, 286, 328 desired 144, 188, 214–15, 228, 252, 266–7 developmental psychology 12, 31, 43, 77, 80, 91 development of children 3, 11, 13–15, 19–20, 22, 24, 27, 30–5, 37–9, 42–3, 45,

374

Index

48, 50, 52–4, 60, 68, 70–1, 77–91, 112, 118, 145, 150, 157, 160, 168, 170, 172, 175, 182, 185–9, 201, 210, 224, 234, 259, 266, 281–2, 316, 318, 325, 330, 332 diapers 242 didactic 327, 329 didaskaleion 132 die 99, 108, 136, 233, 241, 243, 277, 310–11, 327 died 14, 56–7, 59, 61–2, 64, 67, 84, 86, 88, 127, 183, 190, 199, 203, 215–16, 219, 232, 242–3, 248–9, 251–3, 271, 279, 281–2, 309, 319, 331 diet 82–5, 87, 186–7, 192, 242–3 dietary 254 dietetics 89 disciplinary 12, 227 discipline 132, 170, 179–80, 182, 188, 191, 226, 228, 231, 233, 247, 318, 327, 332 disease 14, 78–9, 82–3, 86–90, 92, 249, 252, 285, 306, 310, 312, 315–16 disobedience 97, 284, 311 disobedient 227, 231 dogs, as pets 85, 181, 327 dolls 103, 243 domestic 271 domicile 94, 99 dormitory 228; see also bedroom dutiful 107, 252 duty 70, 80, 99, 121–2, 153–4, 210, 212, 258–9, 261–4, 268–70, 319–20, 322, 330 eating, by children 247, 252 economy, domestic 265, 270 educability 20, 24, 26, 69 educate 28, 35, 59, 68, 73, 117, 127, 149, 159, 230, 232, 234, 237, 323 education 19, 21, 23–34, 50, 54, 59–60, 64–7, 68–70, 73, 77, 117, 122, 127, 149–50, 153–5, 164, 175, 269, 312, 314, 318–19; Athenian 21; primary 130, 145, 244–5, 247, 283, 323–8; religious 130–2, 178–9, 211–13; Socratic 21, 26 educator 46, 56, 58–9, 68, 161, 168, 187 elite 9–10, 25, 56, 59, 66, 69–70, 72–4, 118, 123, 131, 159, 212, 218, 221, 240, 254, 308, 326, 331 embrace 188, 236, 251–2, 276 embryo 13, 80, 145–6, 243 embryology 79, 91–2 emotion 20, 34, 38–40, 43–4, 46, 49–50, 55, 67, 84, 97, 143, 147–8, 151, 155, 163, 219, 250, 282, 285–7

emotional 14, 23, 25, 28, 30–1, 33–4, 44–5, 49–52, 61, 147, 177, 187, 250, 305–8, 312–15 enjoy 31–4, 43, 53, 55, 79, 147, 293 enjoyed 29, 54, 217, 251, 301 enjoyment, enjoyments 28, 33, 53, 136, 179 epidemics 81–2 epitropos 259–60, 262; see also guardian equal, children as equal to adults 58, 162, 169, 171 ethical 29, 31–2, 34, 37, 39–41, 43, 45–8, 51–5, 68, 115–16, 144–5, 150, 164, 306, 308, 311, 315 ethics 32, 37, 39–40, 135, 144, 148, 150, 310 ethnic 3, 114, 124, 190 ethnicity 12, 120–3, 190 ethos 31, 40, 45 eucharist 216, 241, 281; see also communion exercise 21, 25, 51–2, 71, 73, 82–4, 86, 89, 163, 167, 175, 251, 326–8 experience: emotional 44; mystical 152; sexual 230; transformative 284–8 exposure 16, 51, 84, 97–8, 103, 105, 110, 128, 136–8, 140, 178, 182 faith 17, 60, 131–3, 157–9, 163–4, 169, 188, 276, 278, 320 faithful 72, 116, 137, 212–13 familial 49, 59, 67, 96–7, 99, 105, 107, 122, 162, 164, 189, 216 family conflicts 164–5, 280 family relationships 8–9, 119–22, 131, 165–7, 305, 307, 309, 312–15, 332 family structure 108, 117, 121–2, 165 father 23, 37, 48–9, 56, 61, 63, 66–7, 70, 72, 81, 94–9, 103–8, 110, 113, 115, 120–2, 126–9, 131–2, 137, 139, 143–4, 146, 159, 163, 166, 176, 178, 183–7, 191, 198, 200, 204, 210, 214, 219, 222, 224–30, 233, 235–6, 238, 242–3, 245–7, 251–2, 257–70, 278, 280–2, 284, 287–8, 291–5, 298–9, 301, 308, 311, 313–15, 322, 327, 330 fatherhood 289 fatherly 232, 298 fear, fearfulness 28, 31, 43–5, 48, 50, 90, 147–8, 167, 176, 205, 226–8, 234, 237, 241, 294 fearless 20 feed 27, 30–1, 83–5, 99, 103, 137, 237, 242, 265, 270 feeding 99, 103, 242, 265, 318 feeling 44, 59, 74, 148, 152, 155, 160, 167, 287, 294, 307, 313, 317

Index female 23, 26, 67, 77, 80–1, 84, 86, 88, 91, 94, 96–100, 102–6, 108, 116, 118–22, 125, 136, 157, 167, 177–8, 187, 191, 195–6, 198, 204, 216, 226, 267, 310, 313–15 feminism 35, 124 feminist 23, 111, 114–15, 118, 124 fetus, foetus 79–80, 216 food 82–3, 85, 88–9, 92–3, 96, 130, 144, 147–9, 169, 181, 183, 186, 214, 219, 227, 236, 242, 246–7, 249, 280–1, 284, 293, 320 formation 4, 12–13, 20, 24, 31, 41, 58, 79, 112, 157–62, 164, 167, 169–71, 183, 202 formative 178, 180, 253 foundling 292, 329 free, freedom 28, 61–3, 66–7, 70, 74–5, 103, 115, 117–23, 137–8, 169, 177, 188, 203, 214, 216, 228, 275, 279, 286–7, 300, 310, 322–3 freeborn 117, 122 friend 22, 29, 53, 58, 69, 75, 118, 144, 200, 225, 237, 251, 282, 285, 297–9 friendship 58, 182, 227, 232, 287, 304 funeral 72, 240, 242, 252, 255, 308, 323 funerary 56–7, 59–61, 63–5, 67–8, 72–5, 95, 308 game 1–2, 73, 76, 166, 243, 247, 252, 294–9, 304, 325, 330, 332 gender 1, 11–12, 14, 18, 26, 49, 77, 80, 82, 86, 91, 106, 111, 113–16, 118–24, 160, 167, 172, 187, 195, 209–10, 218, 240, 266, 305, 215, 319, 325 gender bias 178 gender differentiation 26, 84, 86, 160, 167–8, 195, 198–200, 205, 206, 216–18, 244, 249, 322 gendered 81, 115, 178, 188 generation 13, 49, 79, 92, 97, 104, 118, 122, 132, 143, 148, 157, 225, 245, 260, 291, 301, 313, 315, 332 gentle 83–4, 151, 227, 232, 273 gentleness 32, 130, 160, 176, 232 gestation 80, 90 gift: children as gifts from God 281; children as gifts to monasteries/God 224, 228, 229 gifts to children 180 girl see gender differentiation; female girlhood 177 God 13, 15, 46, 96, 98–9, 107, 112, 116–17, 119–20, 125, 128–31, 135–6, 138–9, 161–2, 164, 166–7, 169–71, 173, 176, 180–1, 183–4, 186, 197–8, 200, 203, 213, 219, 226–31, 233, 237, 247, 250,

375

252, 269, 274, 276–8, 281, 287, 293, 308, 311–12, 316 godparents 215, 224, 241, 319–20 gracefulness 30 grammar 69, 90, 283, 324, 326, 329, 331 grammarian 283 grammars 323–5 grammata 244 grandchild 65, 250–1, 256 granddaughter 282 grandfather 63, 251, 293, 298 grandmother 132, 182 grandparents 298 grandson 194, 197, 213, 250–1, 280, 282, 293, 301 grief 14, 58–9, 61, 67, 252, 280–2, 285, 307–9, 312–17 grieve 61, 73, 276–7, 282, 312 guarded 215 guardian 23–5, 31–2, 53, 84, 100, 149, 137, 153, 258–60, 263, 322 guardianship 47, 153, 155–6, 258–60, 270 guidance 161, 185, 278 hadith 193, 196, 206, 305, 311, 314 haggadah 96, 109–10, 269–70 halakah, halakic 257, 259–62, 265–71 handwriting 65 happiness 45, 47, 58, 147, 156, 277 harmful 27, 41, 86, 166, 196 harmless 172 heal 125, 229, 287 healing 81, 89–90, 105, 107, 112, 138, 175, 229 health 12, 60, 74, 77–80, 82–6, 89–92, 113, 151, 219, 331 healthcare 77–8, 88–9 heir 61, 63, 68, 120, 249, 283, 322 helplessness, helpless 107, 167, 196, 262 heredity 23, 25, 45 hero 27, 72, 151, 160, 181, 185, 188–9, 256, 286, 291–4, 297, 299–300, 303 hierarchical 65, 121, 131, 165 hierarchy 24, 49, 52, 115, 159, 165 Hippocrates 83–7, 92 Hippocratic 77–9, 81–3, 84–5, 87–90 homes 77, 89, 130–1 homeschooled 70 homeschooling 76 homework 63 homoeroticism 248 homophobic 125 homosexual 226–7 hoops 1, 243

376

Index

house 60, 104, 107, 116–18, 131, 153–4, 176, 204, 211, 231, 233, 244, 246, 255, 264, 282 household 104, 107, 111, 113, 115–18, 120–2, 125, 131, 153, 165, 176, 178, 183, 189–91, 242, 245, 251, 265, 267, 270, 283, 295, 315, 323, 325–6 houses 232–3, 323, 328–9 housework 249, 265 hug, hugging 237, 252; see also kiss humane 238 humanism 251 humanist 254, 274, 282 humanistic 236 humanity 71, 162, 170, 281 humankind 3, 71, 74, 169–71, 179, 182, 285 humbleness 284 hygiene, hygienic 82–6, 89, 92, 306 ideal 19–22, 24–6, 29, 33, 49, 51, 56, 64, 68, 75, 86, 108, 120–1, 130, 136, 151, 154, 183, 212, 214, 227, 230, 312; see also ideals idealistic 5 idealization 58, 66 idealized 66, 128 ideals 2, 4–5, 12, 14, 61, 77, 111, 127–8, 159, 212, 225; see also ideal identification 22, 110, 178, 204 identity 63–4, 66–8, 96–7, 100, 105–6, 110, 115, 124, 175, 185, 204 illegitimacy 282 illness 78, 82, 88, 90, 242, 250 imitate 28, 36, 66, 69, 71, 73, 129, 139, 183, 243, 246–7, 293, 325 imitatio 293, 304 imitation 27–8, 36, 52–3, 73–4, 129, 182, 189, 284, 289 immature 38, 40, 47, 81, 117, 253, 276, 300 immaturity 16, 39, 300, 322, 328 impulse 47–8, 74, 168, 188–9, 253 impulsive 117 inborn 24–7, 33, 35, 45, 70–1 independence 24, 44, 105, 143, 146, 157, 164, 177, 181, 235, 260–1, 263, 265, 283–4, 289, 332 infancy 3, 67, 71, 77–8, 94–6, 99–100, 104, 129–30, 133, 146, 166, 169, 176, 190, 194, 241, 247, 249, 282, 284, 318 infant 4, 16, 23, 64, 67, 78–80, 82–5, 87–9, 91–2, 94, 96–7, 99, 113, 127–30, 133–4, 136–40, 162, 169, 172, 175–6, 190, 198, 202, 205, 211, 215, 219–20, 222, 224, 241–3, 248–9, 251, 254, 265, 274–7, 279, 282, 284, 305–8, 311–12, 315–16

infantia 71, 81, 274 infanticide 136, 215–16 infantile 152 innate 13, 32, 69–74, 150–1, 170, 248, 252, 276 innocence 75, 130, 133, 169, 237, 256, 276, 278–9, 281, 296–7 innocent 107, 133, 169–70, 182, 248, 252–3, 278–9, 295–7, 311 inscription 56, 61, 63–4, 72–3, 75, 81, 89–90, 100, 123, 275, 288, 306, 308 instruct 85, 121, 159, 163, 177, 188, 270, 291, 325 instruction 31, 51, 129, 131–3, 140, 157, 244, 269–70, 326; instructions 38, 121, 283, 312 instructive 178 instructor 243 intellect 20, 26, 34, 70, 145, 148, 179, 286 intelligence 85, 130, 151, 166, 261 intelligent 38, 261, 312 interiorization 226 internalize 27, 185 intersectionality 12, 111, 114–15, 118–19, 121, 123–4 intrauterine 194, 196, 202, 204 irrational 28, 136, 138, 148, 155 Isaac 94, 106, 108, 119–20, 178, 225, 249, 271–2 Ishmael 94, 109, 119–21, 123, 271 Islam 123, 193–5, 197, 199–205, 207, 305–6, 312 Islamic 8, 11, 89, 143, 199, 201–5, 208, 277, 305–11, 313–17 Jerome 157–73, 181, 190–1, 283 Jesus Christ 111–13, 115–17, 119–25, 127–31, 133–4, 139, 159, 161–3, 166, 171, 173, 183–4, 186–7, 216, 229, 234, 236–7, 252, 277–9, 281, 283–4, 288–300, 304, 320–1, 329 Jew 96, 98, 103, 120, 123, 130–1, 263, 269, 271 Jewish 8–11, 13–15, 94–100, 102–3, 105, 107–10, 119, 121, 123, 131, 138, 241, 257, 259–63, 265–7, 269–71, 278, 308, 316–17 Jewish-Christian 8, 123 jewry 257 John Chrysostom 90, 127, 139, 157–73, 177, 187, 190 John the Baptist 181, 185–8, 191, 249, 329 joy 31, 53, 59, 90, 250, 282, 294, 327 joyfully, joyous 230, 277 Judaism 8, 127, 257, 263, 308

Index

377

katêkhêsis 132 kinship 112, 139, 149 kiss 236–7, 250–1; see also hug, hugging

loveable 301 loved 130, 166, 237, 249, 313 lovely 233

lamentation 29, 306 lamented 231 lamenting 27, 254 laugh 73, 251, 297, 301 laughter 151, 253, 282, 295, 297 law: Byzantine 248; canon 320–1, 328; English 257–9, 265, 322–3, 328–9, 331–2; Germanic 209–10, 217; Islamic 199, 201, 203; Jewish 95–6, 108, 138, 257, 259, 260–3, 266, 268, 270; Roman 136–7, 153, 240 lazy, laziness 31, 149 learn 28, 31–2, 34, 54, 68, 71, 73, 123, 128, 160–1, 163, 167, 173, 182, 230, 236, 238, 243–4, 266, 277, 287, 320, 324, 328 learned 63–4, 166, 168, 176, 181, 221, 228, 244, 246–7, 308 learner 55 learning 19, 21, 31–2, 60, 69, 73, 76, 103, 108, 130–2, 143, 151, 163, 179, 182, 236, 244, 246, 283, 324, 326–7, 330 lection 11, 13, 18, 37, 67–8, 74–5, 107, 121, 157, 162, 165, 171, 178–9, 328 lecture 29, 144, 284 lecturer 309 legal 10–11, 14, 107, 115, 120–2, 153, 193, 195, 206, 209–11, 214, 217–18, 221, 240, 254, 257–63, 265–7, 269–71, 281, 306, 315, 318, 322, 328–9 legislate 228, 232–3 legislation 14, 65, 215–16, 225 legislator 51, 243, 320 legitimacy 61, 66, 72, 108, 210 legitimate 19, 115, 119, 203, 307 leisure 31, 90, 161 lesson 7, 103, 133, 106, 153, 156, 229, 244–5, 255 lifestyle 77, 262 lineage 97, 108, 315 literacy 67, 131, 331 literate 63, 123, 283, 329, 331 liturgical 98 liturgy 237, 243, 246–7, 308; see also ceremony; ritual loneliness 187 loss 12, 14, 56, 58, 85, 282, 295, 305, 307, 310–12, 315–16 love 28, 31–2, 54, 73, 121, 136, 141, 151, 160, 162, 164, 179, 227, 230, 232, 234–6, 251–2, 273–5, 279, 285, 287–8, 307, 313–14

Macrina 175–6, 189 maid 102, 167 maiden 81, 153 maidservants 243 Maimonides 14, 257, 261, 266–71 maladies 78, 86–7 male 23, 26, 49, 56, 67, 74, 77, 79–80, 84, 86, 88, 91, 96–100, 102, 104–6, 111, 114, 116–23, 136, 157, 165, 177–9, 183, 187–8, 191, 195, 197–8, 204, 208, 218, 225–6, 244, 250, 267, 278, 313–14 malformation 85 malice against children 232 malleable 15, 19, 74, 84, 248, 252 malnutrition 249, 316 management of childhood 68, 259 manners of children 90, 325, 329 Marinus 142, 150–2, 154–6 marriageable 218 Mary, the Virgin 187, 233, 236–7, 239, 242, 244–6, 248–50, 252, 254, 256, 284, 319, 329–30 masculine 97 masculinity 240 mathematics 58, 131, 144, 282 maturation 45, 293 mature 38, 40, 42, 45, 154, 169, 267, 269, 300, 304, 321 maturing 47 maturity 71, 76–7, 81–2, 103, 105, 180, 249, 261, 292, 299–300, 318 meals of children 86, 228, 247 memorization 74, 176, 244–5 memorized 244, 247, 252, 283 memory 68, 73, 151, 206, 226, 244, 282, 287 mentality 5, 7–9, 108, 115, 117, 235, 237, 299, 303 metaphor 13, 39, 49, 71, 74, 117, 125, 127–8, 130, 139, 158–9, 162, 167–9, 172–3, 289 methodological 6, 11, 34, 94, 111–13 methodology 5, 11–12, 14, 95, 111, 113–14, 120, 124, 175, 210 midrash, midrashic 94, 96, 100, 106–7, 103, 110 midwife 80, 89, 96, 98, 100, 102, 105–7, 198, 241 mimetic 27–8, 33, 36, 53 mimetics 72

378

Index

mind 21, 27, 50, 71–5, 77, 84, 86, 89–90, 105–6, 115, 129–30, 140, 160, 164, 170, 176, 179, 182, 195, 226, 267–8, 273–4, 285–6, 288, 300, 329 miniature 64–6, 73, 95–6 minor 107, 156–7, 211, 258, 260–1, 263–5, 268, 295 minority 26, 59, 131, 258, 260–1, 328, 331 miracles 184, 203, 242, 288 misbehave 228, 295 mischief 168 misdoings 170 misfortune 29, 198, 292, 296, 307 Mishnah 96, 107, 257, 261, 270 mistreated 116–17, 178 mistreatment 232 mistrust 293 mock 71, 291 mockery 296 mocking 165 model figure 161, 162, 164, 180 modern 3–4, 23, 44, 50, 67–8, 70, 77–8, 89, 95, 116, 132, 142, 162, 164–5, 171, 173, 201, 219, 222, 224, 250, 257–9, 262–3, 265–6, 270, 282, 286, 295, 304, 317, 327, 330 modesty 176, 236, 266 monastery 131, 179, 183–6, 189, 212, 219, 224, 227–38, 246–8, 253, 256, 292, 321, 324, 330, 332 monastic 10, 13, 113, 175, 178–9, 183, 190–1, 212, 224–39, 243–8, 250, 255, 332 monasticism 225, 227, 232, 238, 249 monster 71, 74 moral 20, 22, 24–5, 29, 31, 36, 39, 41, 43, 54, 58, 69, 116, 121, 131, 140, 149, 162–3, 178, 188, 279, 283, 308, 311–13, 315, 318, 328–9 morality 299, 306, 327 morally 107, 117, 147, 169, 188, 287, 324 Moses 12, 94–102, 104–7, 109–10, 138, 257, 272, 278 mother 23, 49, 61, 64, 67, 80, 83–5, 94, 97, 99, 102–4, 106, 108, 115, 119–23, 126, 129, 132, 139, 146, 152, 160, 166–7, 169, 175–8, 180, 186–7, 189, 191, 196, 204, 214–15, 219, 222, 233, 235–7, 241–2, 246–50, 254–5, 258, 260, 265–70, 282, 284, 287, 291–3, 298–9, 311, 313–15, 317, 325, 327, 330 motherhood 119, 190 motherly 218 mourned 60, 249 mourning 10, 14, 183, 252, 256, 284, 307–8, 312

Muhammad, the Prophet 193–4, 196–7, 199, 206, 305, 310, 312–13 murder 138, 209, 323 murderers 136 music 19–20, 27, 30–6, 55, 84, 89, 112, 149, 247, 329–32 Muslim 9, 11, 14–15, 123, 193, 195, 201–3, 205–6, 305–17 myth 144, 290–1, 301–2 mythology 285 na’ar 94, 105, 110; see also adolescent name 37, 45–6, 63–4, 72, 74, 81, 94–6, 106, 109, 111, 120, 148, 153, 186, 194–5, 197–200, 202–5, 208, 216, 230, 259, 273, 287, 300, 319, 324 naming 70, 233, 241, 254 nativity 191, 284 nature of children 15, 27, 33, 48, 69, 73, 79, 127–8, 146, 148–9, 154, 170, 182, 318 naughty 148 needs of children 47, 147, 160, 171, 262, 264, 318 neglect 69, 74, 274, 301, 317; neglected 60, 72, 113, 121, 254, 274 neonate 96, 98, 105–6 Neoplatonism, Neoplatonic 9, 13, 142–7, 149–51, 153–5 Neoplatonist 142–6, 153–5 nephew 234, 280 nêpion 129 newborn 4, 42, 77, 79–80, 83–4, 87, 136, 146, 194–9, 201–3, 205, 241–2, 248, 250–1, 302 nourish 29, 69–70, 130, 235 nourishing 215, 242 nourishment 29, 83, 148, 270 nouthesia 132 novice 233–4, 247–8 novitiate 231, 239, 248 nurse 23, 83–4, 97, 99, 104–5, 130, 152, 166, 219, 232, 241–2, 250–1, 254, 265 nursing 83, 109, 117, 240, 282 nursling 61, 169 nurture 30, 33, 45, 70, 97, 232, 237, 269 nurturer 235 nutrition 27, 29, 48, 70, 78, 83–4 nutritional 243 nutritive 55 obedience 75, 121–2, 180, 183, 275 obedient 99, 181, 252 obey 102, 116, 121–2, 135, 221, 243, 298 oblate 224, 230, 232–5, 247, 253, 321

Index oblation 211, 224, 228–31, 236, 238, 322, 328–9 offenders 322 offspring 14, 23, 138, 249–50, 252, 307, 315, 330, 332 oration 99, 240, 242, 245, 252, 255–6, 308–9 Oribasius 79, 86, 92 Origen 131–2, 134 orphan 95, 136, 153, 175–6, 183, 185, 212–14, 240, 248, 259–60, 264, 269, 318, 322 orphanages 214 orphaned 137, 176, 184, 187, 251, 256 orphanhood 328 orthodox 127, 180, 201 orthodoxy 99, 108, 185 ovine 195, 198–9, 204 paedagogus 128–9, 133, 135, 139 paediatric 78, 90–1 paediatrician 89 paediatrics 77–9, 81, 83, 85, 87–91, 93 paidagôgos 131 paideia 27, 132, 149 paides 129 paidion 81, 186 paidoktonoi 137 paidophthoria 138 pain, painful 33, 40–4, 49, 52–3, 85, 87–8, 147, 170, 226, 275–6, 280–1, 288, 307–8, 311–13, 315–16, 319 pais 81, 112, 116–18, 125, 138 Palaiologan 241, 253–4 Palestine 96, 116, 134, 157, 178, 261, 306, 309 paralysis 285 paralyzed 287 paralyzing 294 parent 12, 14, 23, 25, 29, 32, 46, 53, 56, 58–61, 63–4, 70, 72–3, 75, 79, 89–91, 96, 99, 105, 109–10, 116–17, 119–22, 127, 130–1, 134, 136, 147, 149, 153, 157–60, 162, 165–6, 168, 170, 173, 175–6, 178, 181–3, 185–7, 189, 193, 197–8, 205, 215–16, 218–20, 224, 228, 230–1, 233–7, 244–50, 252–3, 257–9, 261–2, 266–8, 270, 278, 281, 284, 291–2, 298, 305–9, 311–16, 319–21, 322, 326, 330–2 parental 58, 64, 70, 95, 97, 99, 188, 259, 268, 298–9, 307, 309, 314 parenthood 97, 121–2 parenting 283 passion 129, 135, 148, 225–6, 285–6 paternal 97, 106–8, 110, 178, 235, 248, 269–70, 287 paternity 95, 97, 104, 107, 110

379

Paul, the Apostle 79, 87, 89–90, 111, 113, 119–21, 125, 130, 139, 162, 164, 167, 245, 255, 304 pedagogical 21, 30, 103, 145, 157, 159, 162–4, 168, 171, 185, 318, 323 pedagogues 117 pedagogy 7, 20–1, 33, 36, 144, 172 pederasty 58 pediatrics 10 perception 3–6, 8–9, 15–16, 31, 42, 44, 70, 79, 91, 99, 139, 147, 158, 169–72, 187, 194, 214, 217, 220, 225, 240, 291, 302, 318–19, 323, 328 Persia 100, 102–3 personality 12, 168, 253, 298 Petrarch 282, 289 philosopher 13, 20–5, 32, 37, 50, 53–4, 58–9, 79, 89, 131, 143–4, 150–3, 155, 277, 285, 306, 318 philosophy 7–9, 19–22, 24, 29, 32–5, 37, 40, 48, 56, 58, 131–2, 142–4, 147, 152–5, 244, 276, 315 physical 5, 26, 43, 47, 51–2, 56, 66, 73, 77, 80–2, 84, 86–7, 91, 105, 116–17, 136, 140, 151, 165, 180, 204, 212–14, 226, 228, 236, 241, 269–70, 274–6, 284, 314–15 physiology, physiological 48–9, 55 physis 31, 41, 46, 145 piety 98, 179–80, 253, 283–4, 306 pigs 136, 245 pious 28, 61, 144, 164, 179, 194, 218, 222, 245, 252, 310 pity 40, 138, 245, 251 plague 10, 14, 305–11, 315–16 Plato 7, 9–10, 13, 19–37, 41, 52–3, 68, 84, 140, 143–4, 147, 149–50, 155–6, 277 Platonism 134, 143–4 play 2, 17, 33, 43, 45, 49–50, 52, 54, 60–1, 66–7, 73, 98, 115, 120, 122, 161, 166, 169–70, 173, 183, 188, 199, 201, 243, 246, 253, 255, 266, 274, 298, 313, 318, 325, 327 playful 1, 67 playing 1, 55, 68, 116, 118, 243, 253, 295–6 playmates 15, 243, 253 playthings 1, 166 pleasure 27, 30–1, 33–4, 40–2, 43–4, 49, 52–4, 58, 103, 138, 148, 243, 250 Pliny 79, 83–5, 88, 92 Plotinus 10, 142–5, 147–56 Plutarch 20, 26, 28–9, 35–6, 308, 313, 317 political 4, 21–2, 25, 37, 39, 45, 47, 49, 59–60, 68, 71, 75, 86, 107–8, 116, 118, 144, 155, 204, 212, 277, 280, 286, 289

380

Index

politics 51–2, 297 poor 157, 165, 177, 198, 213–14, 228, 246, 252, 271, 280, 291–3, 295–6, 310, 329 poverty 283–4 power 4, 21, 23, 97, 116–18, 121, 129, 158, 163, 165–7, 177, 179, 210, 221, 258, 270, 276, 278, 280, 286, 288, 294, 304, 322, 333 powerlessness, powerless 102, 106, 125, 177, 294 powers 31, 42, 48, 147, 154, 229, 321 pray 98, 166, 177, 213, 246, 250, 310 prayer 186, 191, 194, 205, 228, 233, 245–6, 250, 276, 283, 308, 319, 329 precocious 105–6, 253, 292 prepubertal 240, 253 prepubescent 103, 253 preschool 67 prestudent 63 Proclus 142–4, 150–2, 154–6 procreation 23, 49, 99, 105, 134–5, 139 prodigy 152, 298–9, 304 Psellos 242–4, 246, 250–6 psychology, psychological 11–12, 31, 36–7, 39, 41–4, 46, 48, 54–6, 60, 76, 148, 154–5, 169, 267, 291–2, 298, 307–9, 311, 313, 315 puberty, pubescence 68, 76, 78, 82, 86–7, 91, 241, 318, 320–1, 328 puer senex 61, 63, 298 pueritia 274 pupil 144, 166, 194, 238, 323–8 purity 167–8, 230, 279, 284 Pythagoras 150–1, 156 Pythagoreanism, Pythagorean 80–1, 134, 152 Quintilian 14, 56, 58–60, 67–76, 125, 160–1 rabbinic, rabbinical 94–6, 100, 103–5, 107–10, 257, 259–62, 264, 268, 271 rape 94, 107, 213 reading 19–20, 25, 29, 34, 38, 63–4, 67–9, 98, 100, 123, 163, 182, 197, 233, 241, 245, 252, 259, 266, 269, 324, 331 reason 9, 19–20, 25–32, 34, 41–3, 45, 49–54, 91, 106, 129, 135, 143, 147, 149, 154, 187, 192, 197, 215, 217, 221, 236, 242, 258, 268, 276, 296, 299, 302, 326, 331 reformation 9, 58, 320 reformed 202 reformers 145 reforms 22–3, 210, 221–2, 316 regimen 77, 79–80, 82–6, 89–93, 254

relative 98, 203, 205, 217, 234, 260, 269, 305–8, 312–13, 315, 322 relaxation 161 religion 7, 112, 120–1, 132, 138–9, 144, 188, 257, 290, 320, 331–2 Renaissance 9, 155, 289 representations 54, 58–9, 66–7, 75, 114, 175, 291, 300 reproduction 72, 76, 97 reproductive 97, 120, 122 respect, respectful 16, 38, 40, 44, 82, 127, 152, 163, 165, 187, 203–4, 229–30, 236, 258, 262–3, 275, 281, 284, 298, 301, 328, 330 responsibility 16–17, 26, 33, 105, 132, 138, 149, 155, 167, 191, 234, 245, 249, 257–60, 262, 265–6, 269, 299, 322 rhetoric 37, 43–4, 48, 55, 115, 235 rhetorical 49, 68–9, 119, 244 rhetorician 56, 70, 144, 159–60 riddle 129, 327–8 rite 14–15, 66, 194, 199, 202–3, 206, 241; see also ceremony ritual 11, 14–15, 66, 71, 95, 113, 193–5, 197–205, 207, 241, 269–70, 272, 282; see also ceremony role-model 27, 28, 30–2, 124, 158, 164, 166–72, 182–3 rule 107, 124, 131, 163, 179, 191, 198, 200, 227–32, 247–8, 266–9, 271, 290, 304, 308, 310, 321–4 Sabas 178–80, 183, 190–1, 255 Samuel 100, 161, 167, 249, 260, 264, 272 Sarah 67, 109, 119–21, 249, 311 school 2, 7, 10, 34, 37, 51, 61, 64, 67–73, 86, 103, 118, 130–3, 144–5, 152–5, 166, 204, 206, 212, 237–8, 240, 244, 253, 273, 283, 311, 323–31 schoolbooks 324–5, 329, 331 schoolboy 64, 327 schooling 68, 70, 76, 152, 173, 240, 245, 283, 323, 330 schoolmaster 64, 67, 325–8 schoolmates 253; see also classmates schoolroom 68–9, 326–7; see also classroom schoolteacher 70; see also teacher self-control 134, 179–80, 299 selfish 34, 287 selfishness 276 Seneca 68, 82, 92, 308, 313, 317 sensation 145 senses 42, 50, 83, 135, 145, 159, 165–6, 168, 214, 286

Index sensibility 203 sensible 145, 147–8, 228 sensitive 27, 33, 115, 165, 235, 251, 285 sensitivity 32, 113, 314 sentiment 59–60, 67, 74 sentimental 60, 67, 294, 312 sentimentality 75 sentimentalization 68 sex 49, 79, 82, 85, 91, 106, 122, 136, 148, 158, 187, 195, 200, 204–5, 226, 236, 265, 296, 314 sexism, sexist 49, 55, 125 sexual 16, 27, 83, 86, 91, 97, 105, 118, 128, 134–6, 138–9, 141, 160, 225–8, 230, 234, 236, 238, 248, 253, 310 sexuality 23, 114–15, 119, 134–5, 237, 318 sexualized 118 shame, shameful 28, 30, 41–2, 48, 51, 138, 148, 249 shapeless 165 shoes 236 sibling 164–5, 169, 176, 233, 247–8 sick, sickly 77, 85, 113, 229, 241, 327 sickness 230 silence, silent 28, 108, 123, 217, 234, 236, 245, 274, 280, 285 silliness 151 simplicity 129–30, 227, 284 sincerity 151 sing 244, 278, 311, 324, 330, 332 singers 330 singing 55, 247, 252, 330 sister 12, 94–100, 102–5, 108–9, 118, 128, 175 sisterly 94 skeletons 242–3, 249, 254 skills 25, 28, 68–9, 85, 176, 184, 292, 318, 323, 328 slave 26, 55, 59, 61, 69, 74, 81, 94, 103, 111–13, 117, 115–23, 125, 131, 136, 138, 177, 183, 190, 310, 313, 315 slavery 28, 49, 111, 115, 123–5, 128, 177 sleep 82, 83–4, 105, 166, 180, 246–7, 280 small 60, 64, 66, 71, 73, 81, 133–4, 147, 157, 166, 169, 177, 197, 220, 251, 261, 295, 298, 301, 326, 328, 330 smallpox 252, 306 smell 168 smile 166, 251, 282 sociability 71 socialization 39–40, 43, 49, 52 socialized 95 societal 6, 178 sociocultural 24

381

sociohistorical 291 Socrates 19, 21–4, 26–8, 30–2, 34–5, 37, 144, 277 soft, softness 31, 72, 83–4, 149, 242 Solomon 163–4 son 59, 61, 63, 70, 72, 94, 96–7, 99, 102, 104–6, 110, 119–21, 123, 136–8, 151, 159, 161, 178, 186–7, 190, 198, 206, 213, 217–20, 222, 228–31, 233–7, 245, 250–2, 257–70, 274, 278–82, 284, 289, 291–3, 295, 297, 299, 303, 305, 308, 312–14, 316, 325 song 31, 36, 167, 236, 250, 327 Sophia 176–7 sophia 45, 50 Soranus 79–80, 83–5, 92, 242 sorrow 177, 236, 252, 275, 277, 306 soul 13, 20, 24–36, 40–2, 48, 55, 90, 135, 145–9, 151, 154, 159, 167–8, 180, 215, 227, 236, 269, 274–5, 277–8, 284–6, 289, 312 speech 32, 34, 36, 51, 69, 71, 83, 85, 97, 99, 129, 135, 168, 182, 279, 294, 296, 312, 325 spelling 152, 160, 163, 325 spiritual 130, 140, 176, 179, 184–5, 187, 189, 213–15, 225, 233–5, 237, 241, 243, 245, 269–70, 274–6, 285, 319 spirituality 180, 188, 275 sports 86 statue 73, 159, 162, 165 stature 66, 102, 166, 177 steadfastness 183, 311–13, 315 stepchildren 115 stepmother 292, 294 stillborn 207, 323 Stoicism, Stoic 5, 9, 35, 134, 143, 148 stomach 83, 138 story: biblical 94–6, 99–100, 103, 106, 112, 119, 161–5, 177, 179, 197, 278–9; autobiography: of Count Ugolino 274, 281; of childhood 129, 157; for children 28, 51, 164, 171, 189; of Euphemia 176–8; as myths 160; Viking stories 293–4; see also tale student 17, 21, 26, 28, 37, 63–4, 68, 71–3, 75, 132–3, 144–5, 151, 238, 245, 255, 256, 326 studiousness 75 subadult 249, 254 subelite 56, 66, 75 submission 231 submissive 165 subordinate 147, 262, 265

382

Index

subordinated 23, 235 subordination 115, 125 suckled 138, 186 suckles 61 suckling 155, 304 suffering 87, 148–9, 164, 219, 284, 288–9, 312 superiors 121 surgery 79, 89 survival 3, 95, 102, 247 survive 80, 136–7, 181, 242, 248–50, 331 survivors 60, 63–4 swaddling 84, 89, 237, 242, 251, 312 sweetness, sweet 61, 83–4, 88, 147, 167, 187, 194, 232, 236, 273, 279 syllables 244, 327 symbol 15, 66, 68, 91, 95, 107, 128, 139, 166 sympathy 56, 232, 297, 324 Syria 100, 110, 144, 177, 182, 184, 306, 309 tale 51, 90, 98, 103, 107, 219, 246, 280, 284, 286, 288, 292, 294, 300, 303; see also story talent 25, 27, 35, 71–3, 125, 247, 299 Talmud, Talmudic 94, 96, 100, 103–6, 109, 257, 259–63, 266, 268–72, 304 taste 31–2, 88, 93 teach 41, 90, 116, 157, 162, 168, 170, 238, 257, 266, 268–70, 283, 318, 320, 324–5, 330 teachable 73 teacher 21, 23, 58–9, 61, 63, 67, 70, 72, 74–5, 90, 132, 144, 158, 165, 186, 189, 238, 244, 255, 269–70, 283, 306, 323–4, 326; see also schoolteacher teaching 26, 32, 45, 65, 128, 130, 132–3, 160, 163, 201, 231, 236, 244, 269–70, 276, 298, 324–8 teachings 28, 156, 193, 240, 252 tears 177, 280, 282, 287, 312 teenage 218, 245, 325 teenager 212, 237, 241, 247–8 teens 1, 11, 81, 86 teeth, teething 79, 81, 83–6, 88–90, 220, 240, 242, 312 temper 298–9 temperament 79, 82–3, 85–7, 89 temperance 39, 150–1, 299 temptation 178–9, 183, 225, 227–8, 230, 238, 246, 248, 253 tender 19, 31, 66, 167, 184, 217, 235, 237, 242–3, 253, 278, 280, 282, 292 tenderness 232, 252, 314 tension 13, 16, 97, 119, 160, 164–5, 171, 227 Tertullian 133–4, 140 textbook 244, 283, 318, 323–6, 328–9 theologians 235–6, 320–1

theological 7, 11, 112, 114, 116, 118–19, 125, 132, 161, 164, 172, 203, 275, 283–4, 305–6, 308, 310–11, 315–16 theology 8, 128, 171, 175, 236, 241, 276–7, 283, 309, 311 theory 19, 22, 24, 28–9, 35, 37, 41, 43, 46, 48, 54–5, 68–70, 72–3, 78, 81, 89, 114, 124, 155, 160, 172, 224, 244, 277, 285 Thomas Aquinas 275–6, 279, 289 threat 88, 167, 176–7, 225, 227, 231, 291, 295, 303 toddler 61, 74, 84, 94, 190, 240, 242, 246 tolerate 139, 141, 169 tomb 60, 177, 306, 330–2 tombstone 64, 308, 316 topos 139, 174, 182–3, 188, 252 touch 11, 61, 72, 136, 168, 251, 306 toy 61, 103, 243 tradition: Byzantine 8, 240; Christian 8–9, 113, 123; Greco-Roman 68, 116; Islamic 8, 9, 11, 123, 193–9, 201, 203, 205, 277, 305, 311, 313; Jewish 8, 11, 94–9, 105, 119, 123, 257, 269; Syriac 182, 188 training 45, 50–2, 54, 68–70, 74, 77, 81, 122, 131, 149–50, 179–80, 184, 187, 318 transgression 117, 209, 213 transition 14, 44, 83, 86, 102, 184, 285, 287, 320 trauma 85, 307 Trinity 281, 285, 288–9 tripartition, tripartite 24, 31, 37, 41, 48, 55, 285, 289 trouble 23, 107, 146, 292, 298–9 tutelage 183 tutor 58, 131, 153, 166, 182, 185, 244 twins 200 unbaptized 15, 173, 215, 241, 276–9, 284, 289; see also baptize unborn 4 uncle 178, 248 underage 233 uneducated 26, 31, 59 unmarried 81, 103, 112, 270 unruly 56 unschooled 182 unskilled 191 unwanted 24, 33, 291 upbringing 37, 43, 45, 47, 52–3, 97, 132, 149, 154, 157, 160, 178, 190, 237, 259, 298 valuable 58, 76, 283 value 4, 9, 11, 15–16, 23, 41, 58, 59–60, 64, 67, 107, 131, 137, 148, 160–2, 209, 217, 237–8, 283, 302–3, 312

Index vice 39–41, 44, 46, 52, 56, 148, 150 victim 44, 184, 194–200, 202–5, 208, 210, 295, 302, 306, 309–11, 322 Viking 10, 219, 290–1, 293, 295, 297–9, 301, 303 violence, violent 115–18, 176, 184, 245, 280–1, 285, 298–9 Virgil 72, 163, 275, 277–9, 284, 286–7 Virgin Mary see Mary, the Virgin virgin 81, 176, 218, 237 virginity 134 virility 69, 75 virtue 19–23, 25–7, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39–41, 44–7, 49, 51, 56, 58, 60, 63–4, 67, 71, 74–5, 99, 144, 147, 150, 163, 188, 212, 214, 276 virtuous 19–20, 28, 32–4, 36, 47, 52, 54, 58, 77, 150, 253, 276–8 voice 6–7, 24, 71, 84–6, 91, 99, 111, 115, 124, 127, 174, 185, 206, 226, 235, 275, 277–9, 290, 292, 294, 330 vow 107, 208, 212, 216–18, 224, 230–1, 234–5, 244, 247–8, 283, 285, 328 vowed 159, 250, 263, 321 vulnerability 3, 16, 74, 149, 165 vulnerable 3, 5, 113, 119, 125, 187, 218–19, 293, 306, 312, 316 warmth 83, 86, 88 wash 83, 102, 197, 202, 235, 250, 287 weak 80, 83, 113, 149, 155, 176, 213, 220, 295 weakest 211, 312

383

weakness 169–70, 187, 221, 227, 286 weaning 83–4, 136, 241–3, 249, 253–4, 266, 312 weaving 246, 255 weep 219, 226, 235, 280, 287 weeping 177, 183, 312 welfare 15, 262, 264, 270 wicked 27, 104, 117, 293–4, 303, 311 widow 100, 176–7, 211, 213–14, 220, 293, 322 wife 49, 98–9, 104, 106, 117, 120–2, 131, 136, 138, 153, 176–8, 190, 214, 217, 219, 243, 265, 270, 295–6, 311, 313, 315, 322 wisdom 21, 30, 38, 45, 50, 86, 131, 150–1, 154, 162, 182, 225, 253, 284, 288, 327 womanist 114 womb 80, 146, 204, 243 workshops 54, 221 wrap 228, 301 wrapping 231 wrong 20, 24, 29, 35–6, 39, 41, 47, 53, 66, 99, 105, 149, 196, 266, 280, 292, 302, 311 wrongdoing 159, 195 youngsters 1, 16, 27–8, 30–1, 35, 163, 169, 245 youth 29, 39, 46, 49, 53, 67–9, 72, 78, 82–3, 86, 88, 90, 94, 103, 105, 110, 150–2, 159, 180, 182, 187, 189, 191, 209–12, 216, 218, 224–7, 229, 231–9, 247–8, 253, 273, 285, 291–3, 318, 325 youthful 48, 103, 151, 163, 279, 303