Kids Those Days: Children in Medieval Culture 9789004458260, 9004458263

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Kids Those Days

Explorations in Medieval Culture General Editor Larissa Tracy (Longwood University) Editorial Board Tina Boyer (Wake Forest University) Emma Campbell (University of Warwick) Kelly DeVries (Loyola University Maryland) David F. Johnson (Florida State University) Asa Simon Mittman (CSU, Chico) Thea Tomaini (USC, Los Angeles) Wendy J. Turner (Augusta University) David Wacks (University of Oregon) Renée Ward (University of Lincoln

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/emc

Kids Those Days Children in Medieval Culture Edited by

Lahney Preston-Matto Mary A. Valante

BOSTON

Cover illustration: Marginal drawing (probably drawn by a child) from fol. 1, Angers, Bib. Mun. 0337 (0328) / © Ville d’Angers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Preston-Matto, Lahney, editor. | Valante, Mary A., editor. Title: Kids those days : children in medieval culture / edited by Lahney  Preston-Matto, Mary A. Valante. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Series: EMC, 2352-0299 ; 13  | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021027117 (print) | LCCN 2021027118 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004315174 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004458260 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Children—Greece—History. | Child abuse—Greece—History.  | Suffering in children—Greece—History. | Children’s literature,  Medieval. Classification: LCC HQ792.G8 K54 2022 (print) | LCC HQ792.G8 (ebook) |  DDC 305.230932—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027117 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027118

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2352-0299 ISBN 978-90-04-31517-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-45826-0 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To our own kids: Coulson, Arthur, Margaret, and Michael

Contents List of Illustrations ix Notes on Contributors x

Introduction: Out from a Shadow 1 Lahney Preston-Matto and Mary A. Valante

part 1 Children in Medieval Religion 1

The Disrobing Child in the Entry into Jerusalem Scene: An Element of Realism or Symbolism in Byzantine Art? 11 Sophia Germanidou

2

Boy Becoming Man: Liturgical Inversion in the Boy Bishop Ceremony in Medieval England 26 Gavin Fort

3

Apocryphal Youth: The Childhood of the Irish Saint 47 Máire Johnson

4

Minors and the Miraculous: The Cure-Seeking Experiences of Children in Twelfth-Century English Hagiography 59 Ruth J. Salter

5

The Infirm Child between Parental Worry and Divine Powers 87 Jenni Kuuliala

part 2 Children in Medieval Law and Justice 6

“I Would Like to Make It Up to You by Fostering Your Son”: Fosterage and Fixing Relations in Medieval Iceland 109 Lahney Preston Matto Childhood in the Common Law Courts of Medieval Ireland 127 Bridgette Slavin

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Puerile Justice: The Voice of a Boy in Jack and His Stepdame 149 Melissa Raine

9

Foreign Guardianship and the Networked Child in Medieval English Romance 171 Paul A. Broyles

part 3 Vulnerable Children 10

The Loss of Innocence: Childhood and Transition to Adulthood in the Mortuary Practices of the Early Viking Age 197 Sarah Croix

11

It Takes a Village: Community Responses to Child Death in High and Late Medieval England 228 Danielle Griego

12

Havelok’s Sisters: Vulnerability and the Child Body 247 Eve Salisbury

13

Patriarchy, Violence and Sacrifice in the Middle English Slaughter of the Innocents Plays 267 Daniel T. Kline

14

Abandoned, Overworked, Abused: The Dark Side of Childhoods in Early Medieval Ireland 309 alante Bibliography 323 Suggested Additional Reading  Index 357

Illustrations

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 10.1 10.2 10.3

Church of St. George of Vardas, Rhodes 15 Church of St. Nicholas, Laconia 15 Church of St. John Chrysostom, Laconia 16 Church of the Taxiarchs, Laconia 17 Church of St. Dimitrius, Laconia 18 Church of St. Dimitrius, Euboea 25 Diagram of St. Mary’s Cathedral Church, Salisbury 39 Map of early Viking Age sites in Scandinavia 206 Plan of the Ribe cemetery 207 A small wine pitcher reused as an urn for the cremated remains of a 2-year old, Ribe cemetery, 8th century 213 10.4 Selected examples of young female graves from Viking age Scandinavia 218 11.1 Chrisom brass of Thomas Greville (1492) at St. Margaret’s Church, Stanford Rivers, Essex 235

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Tables Latin terminology used in first instance to denote the age of minors within Willelmi 63 The presence of minors within the seven miracula 67 The variety of ailments suffered by minors within Willelmi 69 Analysis of the person(s) recorded as supporting young cure-seekers in Willelmi 73 Analysis of the distances travelled, and the places of residence recorded for young cure-seekers in Willelmi 75 Locations of minors at the time of their miraculous healing within Willelmi 81 Data on burials of individuals with an age at death (osteologically defined) under 18–20 from the Ribe cemetery

Notes on Contributors Paul A. Broyles is a Lecturer in English at North Carolina State University, where he formerly held a CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for Medieval Studies. As Technical Director of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET) and Technical Editor of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, he works on textual encoding and digital environments for medieval literature. His research interests include romance, geographic thought, and translation of medieval popular literature. Sarah Croix is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), School of Culture and Society, the University of Aarhus, Denmark. She is a specialist in Viking Studies and has published previously on various aspects of daily life, urbanism, cross-cultural contacts, and identities in early medieval Europe and Viking-age Scandinavia from an interdisciplinary perspective. Since 2012 she has worked extensively with the archaeology of Ribe, including her recent research project funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture’s Research Committee “The City of the Dead,” dedicated to the study of Ribe’s pre-Christian cemetery. She is currently involved in the publication of the results of the major research excavation at the emporium Ribe conducted in the frame of the “Northern Emporium” project (2017–2018). Gavin Fort received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in medieval history. He has published three articles on the phenomenon of proxy penance in the early Middle Ages (“Penitents and Their Proxies: Penance for Others in Early Medieval Europe,” Church History), in scholastic texts and female religious communities (“Suffering Another’s Sin: Proxy Penance in the Thirteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval History), and in late medieval pilgrimage prac tices (“ ‘Make a Pilgrimage for Me’: The Role of Place in Late Medieval Proxy Pilgrimage,” in Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern ). More broadly, his research focuses on the way emotions like empathy and nostalgia influenced medieval religious culture. His interest in the history of medieval children and the Boy Bishop ceremony stems from his own two children and their predilection for misrule.

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Sophia Germanidou is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle. She specializes in Byzantine art and material culture and her recent publications include the book Byzantine Honey Culture published by the National Hellenic Recearch Foundation. Danielle Griego received her PhD at the University of Missouri. She specializes in emotional responses to child death in medieval England and has an essay, “A Mother’s Guilt: Female Responses to Child Death in High and Late Medieval England,” in Literary Cultures and Medieval/Early Childhoods. Máire Johnson earned her doctorate at University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies in 2010. She is now Associate Professor of History at Emporia State University in eastern Kansas. Máire has spoken and published on a number of aspects of medieval Irish hagiography, with particular focus not only on the ways in which early Irish law intersects with the hagiographical genre, but also on the prevalence and uses of apocryphal material in the literary portraiture of Ireland’s saints; she explores both of these themes in two monograph pro­ jects on which she is currently hard at work. Máire is additionally interested in medieval medical practices and in concepts of identity in the Middle Ages, both within Ireland and beyond. Daniel T. Kline (Ph.D, Indiana University) is Professor of English and Director of General Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he specializes in medieval literature, literary theory, and digital medievalism. Widely published in many venues, his current research concerns children, violence, and ethics in late-medieval England; the ethical thought of Emmanuel Levinas; and digital gaming and neomedievalism. His recent edited collections include the Continuum Handbook of Medieval British Literature (Continuum, 2009), Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012, with Gail Ashton), and Digital Gaming Re-Imagines the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2014). Jenni Kuuliala is currently working as a Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. She has studied late medieval and early modern dis ability, the cults of saints, and healing. Her current project analyzes religious

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experiences of infirmity in late medieval and early modern Italy. Among her publications are the monographs Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages: Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Brepols, 2016). Lahney Preston-Matto is Professor of English at Adelphi University, located on Long Island, New York. She has a long-standing interest in women and children in the Middle Ages, and has written about the use of women and children as hostages in medieval Ireland, as well as the fosterage system in medieval Europe and how it is represented in medieval Irish saints’ lives and Icelandic texts. She is the author of Aislinge meic Conglinne/The Vision of Mac Conglinne (Syracuse University Press, 2010). Melissa Raine is a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communication. She has published on Middle English writing about food in New Medieval Literatures, Viator, JEGP and Routledge’s Studies in Social and Political Thought series. She recently co-edited Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries. Her current research focuses on children’s voices in both Middle English Literature as well as in contemporary Australian culture, projects that offer mutually informative insights into the concept of childhood over the longue durée. Her interest in the significance of language within an integrated (embodied) concept of communication informs her participation in an interdisciplinary project exploring autism, music and social connections amongst children and young adults. Eve Salisbury Professor Emerita of English, Western Michigan University, is the author of Chaucer and the Child, editor and co-editor of four volumes for the Middle English Texts Series, founding co-editor of Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, and consulting editor for Comparative Drama. She is currently at work on a book project that explores ways in which medical treatises, plague narratives, and prescriptive poetry provide therapeutic reading as well as remedies for bodies in pain. Ruth Salter graduated from her Arts and Humanities Research Council doctorate at the University of Reading in 2016. Currently she holds the post of Lecturer

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in medieval history (part-time) at Reading, working with the Department of History and the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies. Ruth’s research interests are focused on the long twelfth century, healthcare, and particularly where ill-health and healing overlap with religion. Her monograph, Saints, CureSeekers and Miraculous Healing will be published in August 2021 with Boydell & Brewer and York Medieval Press. She has also written on the representation of pain within posthumous miracle accounts, and has provided case-studies for the cult of St Æbbe of Coldingham. Bridgette Slavin is currently Assistant Professor of the Practice in History in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of the Honors Program at Medaille College. She recently published an essay entitled, “Secret Killing and Magic in the Law of Adamnán,” for the volume Murder Most Foul: Homicide in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era (Boydell Press, 2018) and is currently working on a manuscript for the University of Wales Press entitled Druídecht: Perceptions of Magic and Druidry in Early Irish Texts. In addition to her interest in the topics of children and magic in medieval Irish law, Bridgette’s other areas of research include kingship, liminality, and the experience of women in the criminal justice system of Anglo-Norman Ireland. Her next book-length project is on the female felon in medieval Ireland. Mary Valante is a Professor of History at Appalachian State University and a former Scholar at the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of The Vikings in Ireland: Settlement, Trade and Urbanization (Four Courts Press, 2008), as well as articles on Irish and Viking-Age history. She has volunteered at archaeological sites including the Crannóg Archeology Project at Loch Ennell, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, and at an excavation of a medieval cemetery in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin. Her current research is on women’s work and identities in Viking Age Ireland.

Introduction

Out from a Shadow Lahney Preston-Matto and Mary A. Valante It is not difficult to come up with a list of adults who were famous as children: Taylor Swift; Daniel Radcliffe; Justin Bieber; Christopher Paolini; Helen Oyeyemi; Emma Watson; Millie Bobbie Brown; Aidan Gallagher; Michael Phelps; and LeBron James are just some recent few. That’s not even mentioning children such as Shirley Temple, Mary Shelley, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Nadia Comanechi, and Pelé. Children have always been part of popular culture, and today they are prevalent in literature, film, television, sports, and music, but it is much more common for the focus of that popular culture to be on the parents or responsible adults instead of the children. The same phenomena can be seen outside of Hollywood, where childhood itself has been turned into a competition for adults, with the best way to raise children one of the testing grounds: do adults coddle children too much or have they reduced childhood too much? So-called “free-range,”1 or hands-off, parenting approaches appear to conflict with supposedly over-involved “helicopter”2 hands-on parenting. The focus remains on parents, not on children themselves, except as they fail to achieve a “proper” adulthood due to the supposed failings of the adults in their lives. Popular culture replicates the bifurcated attention to parenting. In some forms of media, such as television or film, children are present, but problematic, as they are only considered to be interesting during specific times in their lives, generally school-aged and tweens. In television shows, there is no problem too large (or small), that loving and involved adults cannot help resolve in half an hour. If sit-com television represents “hands-on” parenting, film usually shows us teenagers, and their (and their parents’) attempt to join the adult world. Children in family shows outgrow their tv-friendly stage somewhere in the mid-teen years, often when life’s problems become far more real, and the actors themselves start experiencing the awkwardness of puberty. In film, though, teenagers are often represented as having or wanting to figure things out on their own, with parents who are either absent or over-involved to the point of suffocation. On television, the problem-solving remains the work of 1 http://www.freerangekids.com/. 2 https://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/what-is-helicopter-parenting

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_002

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good parenting, making the children most often reflections of the adults in their lives; on film, the problem-solving is handed to children on the threshold of adulthood, in an effort to create their own identities separate from that of their parents, either good or bad. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in the books and films that participate in the dystopian young adult (ya) genre so popular at the moment. Whether discussing Jonas in The Giver3 or Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games,4 the teens who are the center of their narratives must rise up and tear down the social structures that created their dystopia. It is vital to the genre that when readers or viewers meet these teens, their childhoods are already behind them in key ways. It is their transition from teen to adult, from passive persona to active world-changer that matters. Adults may offer support, but the teens must accomplish things for themselves, as this is the way to prove that they represent a viable alternative to the current adults in power who have created the circumstances they are all trying to free themselves from. In today’s popular culture, then, children generally segue from a handson parenting approach by adults when they are school-aged and tweens to a hands-off approach (or at least an approach that allows for more freedom) when they are teens, especially as they become older teens. This is in line with the standard division of childhood, which marks childhood in roughly three stages: infancy, from birth until age 6 or 7; school-aged kids, from 6 or 7 until adolescence and puberty; and young adulthood, from adolescence to majority (usually at 21). This childhood segue has also made its way into real life. Teenagers and young adults throughout the world have started vocally protesting everything from gun violence to global climate change to civil rights issues. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for example, have taken up the issue of gun violence themselves, determined to destroy the social structures that led to the murders of so many of their classmates.5 As they have said themselves, it is the adults who have failed to protect the country’s children, and they have embarked on an attempt to change the world that adults have given them.6 The same is true of other social 3 Lois Lowry, The Giver (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993). 4 Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic Press, 2008). 5 “I’m not sure why people are so surprised that the students are rising up—we’ve been feeding them a steady diet of dystopian literature showing teens leading the charge for years. We have told teen girls they are empowered. What, you thought it was fiction? It was preparation.” (Jennifer Ansbach tweet). 6 The day after the shooting in an interview with cnn, David Hogg implored lawmakers to change laws: “We’re children; you guys are the adults.” (“Student to Lawmakers: We’re Children, You Are the Adults,” CNN February 1 . Only a few weeks later he began

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movements, including the Black Youth Project, a precursor to March for our Lives, and the “Dream Defenders,” which preceded Black Lives Matter. Underlying the struggle over parenting, and the representation of parenting as being more noteworthy than the actual children, is the subject of agency. This is why teenagers and young adults are so challenging to the status quo: they have been taught to question their world, but when they do, they are often told that they are not going about effecting change in the right way. Their attempts at autonomy, their search for agency, are routinely stifled by parents and adults. And in popular culture, especially for younger children when the focus is more on parenting, their agency is elided. For teens and young adults, the emphasis in popular culture is on the struggle between adults and children, with the teens’ agency constantly contested. So popular culture that aims to represent childhood does not really represent childhood, but parents’ or adults’ views of childhood, which is problematic. If modern views of children are usually determined by adults, it should not be a surprise that modern conceptions of medieval children similarly lack much in the way of actual children’s voices. Children were as omnipresent in the medieval world as they are today. Even so, these children can be highly elusive, as they hide among and behind adults in stories, historical documents, graveyards, religious buildings, schools, and art works. If you ask someone today what medieval childhood might have been like, that person has most likely never thought about the question at all. If they have, then their idea about medieval childhood is probably still that of the popularization of Philippe Ariès’ L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime or, as it was translated into English, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life:7 that medieval people did not have a concept of childhood, so that as soon as a child could fend for itself, it was essentially considered an adult. If that is the case, though, there should be more evidence of children in medieval popular culture. For such a significant section of the medieval population to be almost entirely absent is unusual, to say the least, especially as children were integral to the functioning of medieval society, not only with their labor, but also as representatives of their family and culture. As with today’s modern society, adults are the ones that play the largest roles in the medieval sources, which makes sense, his speech at the March for our Lives saying, “First-time voters show up 18 percent of the time at midterm elections. Not anymore … you can hear the people in power shaking.” (In James Hale, “Read What David Hogg Said In His Moving March For Our Lives Speech,” Bustle, March 24, 2018 s, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Plon, 1960); Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, Robert Baldick, trans. (New York: Random House, 1962).

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as they were generally the patrons of the artists. Younger children and infants are discounted or voiceless, there is a great effort shown to properly train/ educate/restrain children between the ages of 6 or 7 and puberty, and teenagers have to fight to have their independent voices heard. Information about childhood from the time is framed by adults; memorials and literary texts are filtered through adult eyes in art and law and literature. The existing evidence of attention to children most often reflects the interests of the Church, of legal institutions, and/or of community networks. These institutions and networks worked hard to initiate children into the existing systems and society, or eliminate them if they became threats. Generally, violence against children was used most often to eliminate dynastic threats. There were very few medieval Katniss Everdeens or Emma Gonzalezes whose role it was to rise up and work against a system, whether internally or externally. Famous examples of medieval children often worked within a system to support it, even if not acknowledged at the time, such as the children who participated in the Children’s “Crusade” of 1212 or Jeanne d’Arc (1429–31), who supported an uncrowned French king at the end of the Hundred Year’s War. It is not often that the child’s voice itself is heard in medieval evidence. However, there are texts and ceremonies where children themselves are the ones who tell what it is like to be a child, and those are the moments that the contributors to this volume focus on. Whether children worked to support or overthrow a social network or institution, or indeed, what their actions were at all, was not a question for medieval scholars until fairly recently. In the last half of the twentieth century, if scholars paid attention to medieval childhood, they based their work on the foun s study. His evidence and his methodology were flawed, as most of his evidence came from his misunderstanding of art history. David Herlihy and Barbara Hanawalt began, in their work, to compile evidence against Ari s, but it was not until Hanawalt and Shulamith Shahar continued that work that they could argue definitively that “The Middle Ages did recognize stages of life that corresponded to childhood and adolescence.” It therefore took more than a generation, but scholarly consensus has clearly reached a point where there is broad agreement that childhood as a stage of life did indeed exist in the Middle Ages.

Barbara Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford University Press, 1995, rpr 2002), 5. David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Barbara Hanawalt, Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1990).

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More recently, scholars such as Nicholas Orme in Medieval Children and J. Allen Mitchell in Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child have encouraged thinking about medieval childhood as a definitive stage, one that is affected by education and material culture. Orme showed that, in medieval England, there was much that was developed for children such as toys and games, and also that pleasure reading, for the literate, was meant to develop a child’s character. Mitchell’s book concentrates specifically on material culture such as a miniature knight on horseback and the table to argue that material culture is part of the larger culture, and in the case of toys, and table manners, that even material culture is didactic; as he says, “a range of medieval ideas and practices register how humanity is articulated and reticulated in a universe of plants, animals, and a welter of other things.”10 Similar to modern culture, these scholars rely upon objects developed, for the most part, by adults, in order to ensure that children became proper adults. Other recent work, such as William MacLehose’s “A Tender Age”: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, and Carolyne Larrington’s Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature, also concentrate on the adult response to the problem of children in the time period. MacLehose discusses the perception of children as endangered and increasingly vulnerable or fragile, while emphasizing that there is a recognized state of childhood: “the child in these texts appears simultaneously as distinct from adults and as a magnification of the problems faced by all humans, adult and child: physical weakness, sinfulness, and ignorance. The fragility of the child reflects, underscores, and symbolizes the inherent insecurity of human existence.”11 Larrington emphasizes the horizontal ties of kinship between siblings, as opposed to the vertical ones of parent to child, and her study pays attention to all kinds of sibling relationships, but in the case of the literature that she is examining, most of these siblings are already adults, not children.12 The current volume, Kids those Days: Children in Medieval Culture, aims to take a more targeted look at medieval childhood than what has come before, by paying attention to the voice of the child him or herself instead of looking at how parents influence their children. In order to accomplish this goal, the work features articles on regions and sources from across Europe that have 10 J. Allen Mitchell, Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), xvii. Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (Yale University Press,



William F. MacLehose, “A Tender Age:” Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Columbia University Press, 2008), xii. Carolyne Larrington, Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (York Medieval Press, 2015).

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often been ignored, from Ireland to Scandinavia to Byzantium; most of the work on childhood has overwhelmingly been located in England and France, and while the volume does indeed include material from those locations, there is much that ranges further afield. The work is interdisciplinary, incorporating history and literature, art history and archaeology. The volume is arranged in three sections: Children in Medieval Religion; Children in Medieval Law and Justice; and Vulnerable Children. Following in the footsteps of scholars such as Nicholas Orme and Ronald Finucane, “Children in Medieval Religion” concentrates on the way children interacted with religious practices in locations such as England, Ireland, France and the Middle East.13 Sophia Germanidou investigates the level of agency of the child shown disrobing in the famous “Entry into Jerusalem” scene. Children who use their voices to exercise power, even if briefly or under the supervision of adults, are the focus of both Gavin Fort and Máire Johnson. Ruth Salter and Jenni Kuuliala look at two different sides of the same coin: both look at the way children sought divine assistance in order to remedy illness or other issues, with Salter investigating instances of the children’s own testimony, while Kuuliala looks at the way parents were invested in attempts to heal their children. “Children in Medieval Law and Justice” explores the legal systems of fosterage and guardianship and children as criminals and victims of crime in medieval Iceland, Ireland and England. Lahney Preston-Matto and Paul A. Broyles both investigate the legal and social conventions of practices such as fosterage and guardianship for children, whether those children have any say in the arrangements that are made for them, and what the benefits are for the children. Bridgette Slavin analyzes what the Anglo-Norman establishment actually considered as dangerous for children, and what laws they put into place to protect them. Melissa Raine looks at a mostly overlooked Middle English romance, Jack and his Stepdame, and follows Jack’s attempts to both find his own voice and establish justice for the wrongs he has received. Finally, there is an investigation into “Vulnerable Children” in the Middle Ages. Chapters here look at children in Ireland, England, and Scandinavia, from the early through to the late Middle Ages. Law codes, romances, archaeological evidence, and plays all provide information on the trials and tribulations of medieval childhood. Sarah Croix and Danielle Griego focus on dead children in the Middle Ages: Croix’s archaeological study illustrates that the transition from childhood to adolescence was paid attention to in mortuary practices in medieval Scandinavia, while Griego pays attention to the memo rials, brasses and chrisoms that were commissioned for children in medieval

Ronald Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents (Palgrave, 1997).

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England. Children represented in English literature are shown to be particularly helpless in Eve Salisbury’s chapter about Havelok’s sisters and Dan Kline’s exploration of the “Massacre of the Innocents” plays. Defenseless and abused children are the focus of Mary Valante’s article on early medieval Ireland. The transition from childhood to adulthood is one that is incredibly important to any culture in any time period, and the authors in this volume have uncovered many more ways in which children announced their presence and voiced their autonomy. The authors have sought out hidden medieval children, revealing how adults viewed and treated them, investigating the sentimental and non views on medieval childhood at the different stages in their lives, and above all rediscovering their lives and afterlives, given, as much as possible, in their own voices.

part 1 Children in Medieval Religion

chapter 1

The Disrobing Child in the Entry into Jerusalem Scene An Element of Realism or Symbolism in Byzantine Art? Sophia Germanidou The Entry into Jerusalem is an essential scene of the Twelve Great Feasts cycle, celebrated on Palm Sunday. It is of crucial significance for the progression of the divine drama; the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem takes on a salvific character, as it is a prefiguration of the victory over death, the liberation from the shackles of sin and idolatry. It was introduced into Christian icono­ graphy at a very early stage and it was developed to a religious scene replete with ordinary people and with details of everyday life, of the natural environ­ ment and of the architectural landscape.1 Moreover, an ensemble of contrast­ ing iconographic and literary patterns, such as the image of Christ the King riding a donkey as a reference to the heavenly throne, or the cheering crowd as a reference to the laudation of the angels in heavenly Jerusalem, have enriched the scene’s theological content.2 Also, because of the scene’s dense dogmatic 1 The literature on the Palm Sunday Feast and the iconographical development of the Entry into Jerusalems scene in Christian art can be summarised to the following works: Gabriel Millet, Recherches sur l’iconographie de l’Évangile aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles d’ après les monuments de Mistra, de la Macédoine et du Mont Athos (Paris: Fontemoing, 1916; repr. 1960), 280–284.Elisabetta Lucchesi-Palli, “Einzug in Jerusalem,” in Reallexikon zur Byzantinischen Kunst, eds Klaus Wessel and Martin Restle, Bd. ii (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1971), cols. 22–30. Erich Dinkler, Der Einzug in Jerusalem. Ikonographische Untersuchungen im Anschluß an ein bisher unbekanntes Sarkophagfragment. Mit einem epigraphischen Beitrag (Opladen: Westdt. Verl, 1970), 47–60. Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, v. 2 (London: Humphries, 1972), 18–23. Tania Velmans, “Observations sur l’emplacement et l’iconographie de l’entrée à Jerusalem dans quelques églises de Svanétie (Géorgie),” in Rayonnement Grec. Hommage à Charles Delvoye, eds Lydie Hadermann-Misguich et al. (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1982), 471–479. Panagiotis Vocotopoulos, “An Early Cretan Icon of the Entry into Jerusalem at Leucas,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 9 (1977–1979), ped. D:  309–323. Maria Vassilaki, “An Icon of the Entry into Jerusalem and a Question of Archetypes, Prototypes and Copies in Late and Post-Byzantine Icon ,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 17 (1993–1994), ped. D: 271–284. Cecily Hennessy, Images of Children in Byzantium (Surrey: Ashgate, 2008), 70–73. Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 68–74.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_003

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background and the intensely symbolic nature of the composition’s various elements, it has been extensively discussed in homilies3 and hymnology.4 The so-called “children of the Jews” are depicted glorifying Jesus, in various postures as secondary elements of the composition. They hold a special place in the scene’s iconography and dogmatic content,5 since they are mentioned in all four Gospel accounts (Mark 11:1–10, Luke 19:29–40, Matthew 21:1–9, 15–16, John 12:12–15) as well as in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus (Acta Pilati 1:3), in their descriptions of the reception of Christ. Therefore, their pres­ ence does not serve a merely decorative purpose, a graphic detail or an anec­ dotal episode; it has a theological background, with the help of yet another iconographic-literary contrast: despite their young age and their innocence, they have comprehended the salvific message of Christ’s victory over death, a message that adult Jews failed to believe in. Among the children usually included in the scene is a child who is taking off his cloak and laying it on the ground for Christ to walk on, remaining halfclothed or even entirely naked. In most cases the child is depicted slightly bent 3 Cyril of Alexandria, Ὑπομνήματα εἰς τό κατά Ἰωάννην Εὐαγγέλιον, PG 74, col. 80. Philip Edward Pusey, Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis evangelium, v. 2 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1872; repr. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1965), 306–308. John Chrysostom, Ὁμιλία ΙΒ΄, Εἰς τά Βαΐα, PG 61, cols. 717–718. Athanasius of Alexandria, Πορευομένου δὲ αὐτοῦ ὑπεστρώννυον τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν…, PG 28, cols. 1033–1048. Proclus of Constantinople, Ὁμιλία Θ΄, Εἰς τά Βαΐα, PG 65, cols. 771–777. Epiphanius of Cyprus, Ὁμιλία περί Βαΐων, pg 43, cols. 428–438, 501–505. Eulogius of Alexandria, Λόγος εἰς τά Βάια καί εἰς τον πῶλον, pg 86B, cols. 2913–2938. Methodius of Patara, Εἰς τά Βαΐα, PG 61, cols. 383–398. Andrew of Crete, Λόγος Θ΄: Εἰς τά Βαΐα, PG 97, cols. 985–1018. Riccardo Maisano, “Un inno inedito di S. Andrea di Creta per la domenica delle palme,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 6 (1970): 523–571. Cyril Mango, The Homilies of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople. English Translation, Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 153–154, 157 [Dumbarton Oaks Studies iii]. Theophanis Kerameus, Εἰς την Βαϊοφόρον ἑορτήν, pg 132, cols. 541–550. 4 J. Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, Hymne, IV, t. i (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962), 30–31 [Sources chrétiennes 128]. 5 References to the role of the children in the Entry into Jerusalem scene: Lydie HadermannMisguich, Kurbinovo: Les Fresques de Saint-Georges et la Peinture Byzantine du XIIe siècle, t. i (Brussels: Éditions de Byzantion, 1975), 137–142. Doula Mouriki, Tα ψηφιδωτά της Νέας Μονής Χίου [The Mosaics of Nea Moni on Chios], t. 1 (Athens: Commercial Bank of Greece, 1985), 194–195. Maria Aspra-Vardavaki and Melita Emmanouil, Η Μονή της Παντάνασσας στον Μυστρά. Οι τοιχογραφίες του 15ου αιώνα [The Monastery of Pantanassa in Mystras—The 15th Century Frescoes] (Athens: Grapheion Dēmosieumatōn tēs Akadēmias Athēnōn, 2005), 126–127. Nicholaos Siomkos, L’église Saint-Etienne à Kastoria. Etude des Différentes Phases du Décor Peint (Xe siècles) (Thessaloniki: KentroVyzantin nEreun n,2005), 192–193. On the increasing academic interest of children in medieval studies: Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Medievalists and the Study of Childhood,” Speculum 77, n.2 (2002), 440–460.

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forward—or less frequently upright—in the lower part of the composition, close to the legs of the beast of burden. Its posture and appearance vary slightly in its various depictions, but it always maintains its autonomy as a separate episode within the main action. The child’s gender is usually not visually speci­ fied, though we can validly assume it would have been a boy.6 The same applies to the child’s age, as sources do not distinguish between infants, toddlers and children; however, their physiological and anatomical characteristics suggest that these are young children.7 In the oldest, as far as we know, and most paradoxical depiction of this subject, on the northern wall of the Church of Archangel Michael/Taxiarch, also known as the Great Pigeon House or the Nicephorus Phokas church (964– 965), the disrobing child can be seen isolated at the top right-hand corner of the composition.8 He has a robust body, without any representation of anatomic details; he is depicted almost upright, in the process of removing his long robe, which gets tangled and covers his entire head. The figure’s positioning within the overall framework of the scene is significant, facing away from the action and the spec­ tator’s eye, hidden behind the crowd of Jews and behind the figure of another child perched on a tree. Its spatial isolation could be seen as an indication of the artist’s reticence and hesitation to include a subject that could potentially be too daring for his time, also provocative in its artistic-theological context.

6 The child is presented rather sexless—not uncommon in representations of young figures in Byzantine art. Hennessy, Images, 73. 7 Günter Prinzing, “Observations on the Legal Status of Children and the Stages of Childhood in Byzantium,” in Becoming Byzantine. Children and Childhood in Byzantium, ed. Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2009), 16–17; it is proposed to use the term toddler up to four years of age and from four to ten years the term child. More on the terms but within the frame of early Christian society: Cornelia Β. Horn and John W. Martens, “Let the Little Children Come to me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), for ages see mainly pages 6–7. From the aspect of bio-archaeology Chryssa Bourbou, “Hide and Seek: The Bioarchaeology of Byzantine Children,” in THEMELION, 24 papers in Honor of Professor Petros Themelis from his students and colleagues, ed. Elisabeth P. Sioumpara and Kyriakos Psaroudakis (Athens: Society of Messenian Archaeological Studies, 2013), 465–483. 8 Guillaume de Jerphanion, Une Nouvelle Province de l’art Byzantin: Les Églises Rupestres de Cappadoce (Paris: Geuthener, 1928), 12, 357, pl. 141, no. 2. Lynn Rodley, “The Pigeon House Church, Çavuşin,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 33 (1983): 301–339. Bibliography on the church is further available on the website: http://byzantium.arch.uoa.gr/kappadokia/ main.htm

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Despite its boldness, the subject of the disrobing child becomes widespread. The northern nave of the Capella Palatina (1154–1158) in Palermo, Sicily,9 depicts a boy bending slightly forward; there appears to have been an effort to illustrate the child’s anatomy, though it remains modest. The subject has been moved further down in the frame, but it remains central to the composition and it certainly does not go unnoticed. The child’s movement and posture, slightly bowed forward, displaying the naked pos­ terior and side view of his body, becomes the most common one. Disrobing children are often included in Entry into Jerusalem scenes in mural paintings of Palaiologan style, mostly found in churches at rural areas of the Byzantine state’s periphery. In the church of Saint George of Vardas, at Apolakkia, on the island of Rhodes (1289/90, fig. 1.1),10 in the church of Saint Nicholas of Agoriani (around 1300, fig. 1.2), in Laconia,11 in the church of Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Candlemas) in Meteora (1366/7),12 and in the church of Saint Paraskevi of Platsa, in Messinian Mani (1412),13 minuscule half-clothed children come together to form a small group, some of them scrambling, all removing their garments. Contrary to the spatial autonomy of the initial depic­ tion in Cappadocia, in these latter scenes the disrobing, almost naked children form a part of the main action, in the sense that they appear to take active part in the events taking place before them. By being centrally positioned and by increasing in number they now claim a position as an element of the scene, inviting the spectator’s eye to focus on them. 9

Otto Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1949– 1950), 25–58, fig. 12, pl. 20b. Viktor Lazarev, Storia della Pittura Bizantina (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), fig. 361. For the church in general: William Tronzo, “Byzantine Court Culture from the Point of View of Norman Sicily: The Case of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo,” in Byzantine Court Culture from 829–1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1997), 101–114. 10 Κonstantia Κephala, Οι τοιχογραφίες του 13ου αιώνα. Στις εκκλησίες της Ρόδου [Thirteenth Century Wall Paintings in the Churches of Rhodes] (Athens: Christianikē Archaiologikē Hetaireia, 2015), 185, fig. 97. 11 Μelita Emmanouil, “Οι τοιχογραφίες του Αγίου Νικολάου στην Αγόριανη Λακωνίας” [The Frescoes of Saint Nicholas at Agoriani, Laconia], Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 14 (1987–1988), per. D: 136–138, fig. 25. 12 Dimitrios Sophianos and Lazaros Deriziotis, Η Ιερά Μονή της Υπαπαντής των Μετεώρων [ ] (Athens, 2011), 100, fig. 39, 104, fig. 43. For the church see: G. Subotic, “Poceci Monaskog Zivotai Crkva Manastira Sretenja u Meteorima,” Zbornik za likovneumelnosti 2 (1966): 143–176. 13 Εleni Deliyianni-Dori, Οι τοιχογραφίες της Αγίας Παρασκευής στην Πλάτσα της Έξω Μάνης, in 6th Symposium of Byzantine and Post Byzantine Archaeology (Athens, 1986), 22–23. For the church in general: Chara Constantinidi, “Ο σταυρεπίστεγος ναός της Αγίας Παρασκευής στην Πλάτσα της Έξω Μάνης,” Peloponissiaka 16 (1985–86): 423–439.

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Figure 1.1

Church of St. George of Vardas, Rhodes. Ephorate of Antiquities of Dodecanese, Ministry of Culture and Sports/TAP.

Figure 1

Church of St. Nicholas, Laconia. Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia, Ministry of Sports and Culture/TAP, with thanks to Evangelia Eleutheriou and Yianna Katsougraki.

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Figure 1

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Church of St. John Chrysostom, Laconia. Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia, Ministry of Culture and Sports/TAP, with thanks to Evangelia Eleutheriou and Yianna Katsougraki.

It is less common to come across a more radical representation of the child’s nudity. In Laconia, in the churches of Saint John Chrysostom in Geraki (1300, fig. 1.3)14 and of the Taxiarchs in Laina, Goritsa (late 13th century, fig. 1.4),15 the boy is positioned in the lower part of the scene, almost at the feet of the don­ key. His nudity is emphatically depicted as it even appears to be deliberately revealing, since we can no longer see just the buttocks of the child; his genitals are also on display for everyone to see, thus revealing the child’s gender. The child is bent forward, in an effort to remove his garment, which appears to

14 Konstantinos Moutsopoulos and Dimitrios Dimitrokallis, Γεράκι, οι εκκλησίες του οικισμού (Thessaloniki, 1981), 38, 40, fig. 64. For the church in general: Maria Panayotidi, “Les Eglises de Geraki et de Monemvasie,” Corsi di Cultura Sull’arte Ravennate e Bizantina 22 (1975): 340–342. Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, “Tendenze Stilistiche della Pittura monumentale in Grecia durante il XIII Secolo,” Corso di Cultura Sull’ Arte Ravennate e Bizantina 31 (1984): 244. 15 Kalliopi Diamanti, Οι τοιχογραφίες του Αγίου Δημητρίου (1286) στις Κροκεές της Λακωνίας και το εργαστήριο του ανώνυμου ζωγράφου. Συμβολή στη μελέτη της πρώιμης παλαιολόγειας ζωγραφικής στη Λακωνία (Tripoli, 2012), pl. 47.

The Disrobing Child in the Entry into Jerusalem Scene

Figure 1

17

Church of the Taxiarchs, Laconia. Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia, Ministry of Culture and Sports/TAP, with thanks to Evangelia Eleutheriou and Yianna Katsougraki.

be tangled around his head. The movement is full of intensity, expressing the child’s anguished effort. This extreme depiction of nudity and the consequent specification of the child’s gender in the various illustrations of the disrobing child theme do not herald a chronological or iconographic development. At around the same period, from the thirteenth century onwards, we still find other typical repre­ sentations of the child involving schematically drawn bodies, briefly sketched, consisting only of an outline with no anatomical details. Such examples are found in the Old Monastery at Vrontamas (second stage of the mural paint­ ing: 1201),16 in the church of Saint Dimitrius in Krokees (1286, fig. 1.5),17 both in Laconia, in the church of Saint Sophia in Langada, in Messinian Mani (first half 16 Nicholaos Drandakis, Η ιστορική μονή της Παληομονάστηρο του Βρονταμά Λακωνίας (Athens, 1958), 10. Idem, “Το Παλιομονάστηρο του Βρονταμά,” Archaiologikon Deltion 53 (1988): Α΄: 180, pl. 90. Danai Charalambous and Eugenia Preva, Συντήρηση Ζωγραφικής Μνημείων— Χρονικόν (Sparti, 2005), 9, fig. 4. 17 Diamanti, Οι τοιχογραφίες του Αγίου Δημητρίου, 79–80, pl. 4, 9a.

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Figure 1

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Church of St. Dimitrius, Laconia. Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia, Ministry of Culture and Sports/TAP, with thanks to Evangelia Eleutheriou and Yianna Katsougraki.

of the fourteenth entury),18 and in the church of Transfiguration of Christ in Alagonia, in the Messinian Taygetos mountain (14th century).19 In the church of Saint Dimitrius in Makrychori, Euboea (1302, fig. 1.6), even though the child appears naked, his sex is barely discernible.20 In the church of Saint Athanasius of Mouzaki, in Kastoria, the half-naked child is pictured wearing dark-coloured stockings or shoes (1383/4),21 a detail that has been reproduced in a number of monuments in the broader surround­ ing area, such as the Panaghia on the island of Mali Grad in the Great Prespa 18 Chara Constantinidi, “Ο ναός της Αγίας Σοφίας στη Λαγκάδα της Έξω Μάνης,” Lakonikai Spoudai 6 (1982): 80–124. 19 Unpublished. 20 Melita Emmanouil, Οι τοιχογραφίες του Αγ. Δημητρίου στο Μακρυχώρι και της Κοιμήσεως της Θεοτόκου στον Οξύλιθο Ευβοίας [The Frescoes of Haghios Demetrios at Makrichori and of the Dormition of the Virgin at Oxylithos, Euboea] (Αthens: Archeion Euboikon Meleton, 1991), 63–64, pl. 14. 21 Stylianos Pelekanidis and Manolis Chatzidakis, Καστοριά [Kastoria] (Athens: Ekdot. Oikos, 1992), 111, fig. 4. Nicholaos Pazaras, Οι τοιχογραφίες του ναού του Αγίου Αθανασίου του Μουζάκη και η ένταξη τους στη μνημειακή ζωγραφική της Καστοριάς και της ευρύτερης περιοχής (Καστοριά, μείζων Μακεδονία, Β. Ήπειρος) [The Frescoes of the church of Saint Athanasius Mouzakis and their place in the context of monumental painting in Kastoria and the surround­ ing regions (Kastoria, Upper Macedonia, Nor. Ipiros] (Thessaloniki, 2013), 115–120, fig. 39 (unpublished PhD.).

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lake (1344/5) and in the church of Christ Zoodochos in Borje, in Korytsa (1390).22 In two churches of the Amari province in Crete, the church of Panaghia at Smiles (early fourteenth century) and the Panaghia of Meronas (early fifteenth century),23 the half-naked child appears diminutive and rather summarily sketched. In any case, the theme continues to spread throughout a broad geo­ graphical area in the post-Byzantine era. Examples are found in the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Lublin, Poland (1418),24 the church of Transfiguration of Christ in Veltsista, in Ioannina (1586),25 and the Panaghia of Apostolakis (lord) in Kastoria (seventeenth century),26 among others. It is worth noting that a naked boy of a similar figure and posture—though of an older age, maybe adolescent—can also be seen in representations of the Baptism, without, however, becoming as ubiquitous as the one in the Entry into Jerusalem scene. Examples are found mainly in manuscript miniatures, such as in the Lectionary of the Dionysiou monastery in Athos peninsula, cod. 587m, in two versions, f. 13v and 137r, representing John the Forerunner baptis­ ing (third quarter of the eleventh century),27 or the scene of the Baptism of Christ in the Homilies of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, also at the Dionysiou monastery, cod. 61, f. 77r (second half of eleventh century)28 and at cod. Par.

22 Idem, 120, fig. 274, 312.Vojislav Djurić, “Mali Grad—Saint Athanase à Kastoria—Borje”, Zograf 6 (1975): 31–49, fig. 16, 35. 23 Ioannis Spatharakis, Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete, Amari rovince, v. iii (Leiden: Alexandros Press, 2012), fig. 373. 24 Athanasios Semoglou, “Remarques sur Certains Archaïsmes Iconographiques dans les Peintures Murales Byzantinisantes de la Pologne au XVe Siècle,” Zograf 32 (2008): 15P1– 152, fig. 1. 25 Angheliki Stavropoulou-Makri, Les Peintures Murales de l’église de la Transfiguration à Veltsista (1568) en Epire et l’ atelier des Peintres Kondaris (Ioannina: Panepistēmio Iōanninōn, 2001), 54–56, fig. 16b. 26 Melina Paisidou, Οι τοιχογραφίες του 17ου αιώνα στους ναούς της Καστοριάς. Συμβολή στη μελέτη της μνημειακής ζωγραφικής της δυτικής Μακεδονίας (Athens, 2002), 77. 27 Stylianos Pelekanidis et al., Οἱ θησαυροί τοῦ Ἁγίου Ὄρους: εἰκονογραφημένα χειρόγραφα, παραστάσεις—ἐπίτιτλα—ἀρχικά γράμματα. Πρωτάτον, Μ. Διονυσίου, Μ. Κουτλουμουσίου, Μ. Ξηροποτάμου, Μ. Γρηγορίου [The Treasures of Mount Athos: Illuminated Manuscripts, Miniatures-headpieces-initial Letters. The Protaton and the Monasteries of Dionysiou, Koutloumousiou, Xeropotamou, and Gregoriou] v. i (Athens: EkdotikeAthenon, 1973), figs. 112, 198, 253. George Galavaris, Ζωγραφική βυζαντινών χειρογράφων (Αthens, 1995), 90, fig. 73. For the Lectionary of Dionysiou monastery: Christopher Walter, “The Date and Content of the Dionysiou Lectionary,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 13 (1985–1986): 181–190. Τsuji Masuda, Η εικονογράφηση του χειρογράφου αρ. 587μ της Μονής Διονυσίου στο Άγιον Όρος. Συμβολή στη μελέτη των βυζαντινών Ευαγγελισταρίων (Thessaloniki, 1990) [unpublished PhD], 62, fig. 9, pl. 5. 28 George Galavaris, The Illustrations of the Liturgical Homilies of Gregory Nazianzenus ton: Princeton Universoty Press, 1969), fig. 365 [Studies in Manuscript

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gr. 533, f. 146rand cod. Par. gr. 550, f. 213v, which illustrate the meeting between Christ and John the Forerunner.29 The detail appears less frequently in wall paintings; an example is to be found in the rather unique and semantically multi-layered Baptism fresco in the Old Cathedral of Veroia (ca. 1330).30 The iconographical association of the children in the scenes of the Entry into Jerusalem and the Baptism is particularly interesting as it possibly reflects a similar theological message.31 It has been argued that the closest iconographic parallel that could be used as a model for the depiction of naked children in Byzantine art, and especially the disrobing children of the Entry into Jerusalem, is the ancient figure of the young Eros (cupid),32 transubstantiated and transfigured into a wingless child in works of art inspired by mythological themes.33 Middle-Byzantine ivory

29 30

31 32 33

Illumination 6]. Pelekanidis et al., Οἱ θησαυροί, 110, fig. 112. Ιoannis Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 119–120. Galavaris, Homilies, pl. xliv, fig. 246, pl. xciii, fig. 423. Doula Mouriki, “Revival Themes with Elements of Daily Life in Two Palaiologan Frescoes Depicting the Baptism,” in Okeanos: Essays Presented to Ihor Ševčenko on his Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students—Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983): 458–488. Athanasios Papazotos, Η Βέροια και οι ναοί της (11ος–18ος αι.): ιστορική και αρχαιολογική σπουδή των μνημείων της πόλης (Αθήνα, 1994), pl. 14. Vasileios Katsaros, “Η παράσταση της Βάπτισης στην Παλαιά Μητρόπολη Βέροιας” [The representation of the Baptism in the Old Metropolis at Veroia], Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 27 (2006): 169–180, fig. 1. Doula Mouriki, “The Theme of the ‘Spinario’ in Byzantine Art,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 6 (1970–1972): 60, footnote 49. Emmanouil, Tοιχογραφίες του Αγ. Δημητρίου, 63, footnote 207. André Grabar, Christian Iconography. A Study of its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 34. Mouriki, “The Theme of the ‘Spinario,’ ” 64–65. Eadem, Revival Themes, 462, 465. The literature on the introduction of pagan-mythological themes, especially of cupids, in Byzantine art is extensive, see: Kurt Weitzmann, “The Survival of Mythological Representations in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and their Impact on Christian Iconography,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 43–68. Janet Huskinson, “Some Pagan Mythological Figures and their Significance in Early Christian Art,” Papers of British School at Rome 42 (1974): 68–97. Tania Velmans, “L’heritage Antique dans la Peinture Murale Byzantine à l’époque du Roi Milutin (1282–1321),” in L’art Byzantine au Début du XIVe Siècle: Symposium de Gračanica (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu, 1978), 39–51. Doula Mouriki, “The Mask Motif in the Wall Paintings of Mistra: Cultural Implications of a Classical Reature in Late Byzantine painting,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society (1980–1981): 307–338. Lydie Hadermann-Misguich, L’image Antique Byzantine et Moderne du Putto au Masque, in Rayonnement Grec: Hommage à Charles Delvoye, ed. Lydie Hadermann l. (Brussels: Editions de l’Universit de Bruxelles, 1982), 513–523. Henry Maguire, “The Profane Aesthetic in Βyzantine Art and Literature,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999): 189–205. Ivana Jevtic, The Return to ‘Antique’ in Palaeologan Art: Conservatism or Sign of a Revival?” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, vol. (Sofia: Bulgarian Historical Heritage Foundation, 2011), 650–652

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caskets (mainly dating from the tenth through eleventh centuries) provide such examples, also found on the incense burner / reliquary from the Treasure of Saint Mark in Venice (twelfth century),34 and in a manuscript miniature on f. 24r from the Cynegetics of Pseudo-Oppian (mid- to second half of the eleventh century).35 Naked children at play also feature as margin illumina­ tions in the Homilies of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, at cod. Par. gr. 550, f. 6v.36 It is tempting to assume that the figure of the disrobing child in the Entry into Jerusalem scene drew its inspiration from that of the cupid, sexless and ageless as depicted, known for his occasionally chthonic-funerary role37 and for his energetic participation in secondary episodes of a main event.38 However, besides the iconographical affinity with the figure of the young cupids, the figure of the disrobing child in the scene of the Entry into Jerusalem has an additional particularity: it is a daring subject introduced into a purely religious scene with a strongly dogmatic content. It is uncommon in Byzantine art to display naked bodies, including buttocks, let alone genitals. It is even more uncommon to see such displays in religious illustrations incorporated in religious art.39 The limited literature on the subject has underlined the ambiguous nature of any representation of nudity and the consequent varying

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35 36 37



also published in The Legacy of French Assumptionists for Byzantine Studies: A Critical Approach, ed. Ivana Jevtic and A. Vasilakeris [Archives de l’Orient 21], (Paris, forthcoming). Melita Emmanouil, Η Αρχαιότητα στηνζωγραφική των Παλαιολόγων: εικαστικοί τρό­ ποι, μοτίβα και εικονογραφικά θέματα [The Influence of Antiquity in Palaiologan Painting: Artistic Ways, Motifs and iconography] in The Reception of Antiquity in Byzantium, with Emphasis on the Palaiologan Era. Proceedings of International Conference (Sparta, 2012— Athens, 2014), 339–372. Renato Polacco, Il Cosiddetto Bruciaprofumi del Tesoro di San Marco a Venezia, in Ο Ιταλιώτης Ελληνισμός από τον Ζ΄ αι. στον 18ο αιώνα, Μνήμη Νίκου Παναγιωτάκη (Αθήνα, 2001), 319–336, fig. 21 [International Symposium 8-ihr/nhrf]. Slobodan Ćurčić and Evangelia Hadjitryphonos (eds), Architecture as Icon; Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 160–161. Ioannis Spatharakis, The Illustrations of the Cynegetica in Venice, Cod. Marc. gr. Z139 (Leiden: Alexandros Press, 2004), fig. 51. Galavaris, Homilies, fig. 404. Hennessy, Images,67, fig. 2.15. Roger Stuveras, Le Putto dans l’art Romain (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1969), 28, 33–49, 63. Claude Bérard, “Anodoi.” Essai sur l’imagerie des Passages Chtoniens (Rome: Inst. Suisse, 1974), 117–125. Janet Huskinson, Roman Children’s Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and its Docial Significance (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1996), 41–51. Eadem, “Disappearing Children? Children in Roman Funerary Art of the First to the Fourth Century AD,” in Hoping for Continuity. Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages l. (Rome: Inst. Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), 91–104. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 34. Hennessy, Images, 75–80. Βarbara Zeitler, “Ostentatio Genitalium: Displays of Nudity in Byzantium,” in Desire and Denial in Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 188–189.

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function, as an excuse for voyeurism and a manifestation of eroticism, as an apotropaïc element,40 as the result of a personal affinity for such (mythologi­ cal or Biblical) sensual themes,41 or as a synonym for sin or for evil.42 Therefore, any generalisation as to the semantics of nudity in Byzantine art is perilous. In the Entry into Jerusalem scene the ostentatious nudity of the children who participate in the reception of Christ is not described in, or imposed by, the relevant textual sources. Neither does it figure in most illustrations, espe­ cially those of an “academic” artistic milieu, which choose to feature children spreading their cloaks but remaining clothed in their robes. This implies that it might be an iconographical version aiming to express, underline and transmit a theological message interwoven with the scene’s overall symbolism. A more immediate parallel to the disrobing child is the figure of the so-called Thorn-puller, also known as Spinario; the boy pulling a thorn from his foot. It is an iconographic theme also originating in ancient art, which survived and was incorporated in the composition of the Entry into Jerusalem scene. Two inter­ esting and similar interpretations have it constructed as a symbol of the libera­ tion of man from the bonds of idolatry43 or those of sin, and of his subsequent expiation.44 A similar hypothesis may apply to the disrobing child, removing its cloak or robe in an impetuous movement. He could be disrobing himself of the old faith, or freeing himself from human passions, spreading his garments for Christ to ride over, on His way to fulfilling the divine economy, as an incar­ nation of the hope for the salvation of man. This symbolic change of morals is also implied by the allegoric ramifications that accompany the removal and spreading of the garments, according to references in relevant homilies.45 40 Albrecht Classen, “The Cultural Significance of Sexuality in the Middle Ages. A Secret Continuous Undercurrent or a Dominant Phenomenon of the Premodern World? Or: The Irrepressibility of Sex Yesterday and Today,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-historical and Literaryanthropological Theme, ed. Αlbrecht Classen (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2008), 18. 41 Henry Maguire, “Other Icons: The Classical Nude in Byzantine Bone and Ivory Carvings,” The Journal of the Walters Art Museum 62 (2004): 9–20. John Hanson, “Erotic Imagery on Byzantine Ivory Caskets, in Desire and Denial in Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 171–184. 42 Zeitler, “Ostentatio genitalium,” 192. 43 Mouriki, “The Theme of the ‘Spinario,’ ” 53–66. 44 Ivana Jevtić, “Sur le Symbolisme du Spinario dans l’iconographie de l’Entrée à Jerusalem. Deux Representations Inédites dans les Églises Serbes,” Cahiers Αrchéologiques 47 (1999): 123–124. 45 Examples: … Τίς ἡ τῶν ἱματίων τῶν παίδων ὑπόστρωσις; τί τοῦ παλαιοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔκδυσις; Ἡ τῆς Συναγωγῆς ἄσχημος γύμνωσις ὁμοῦ καὶ ἐρήμωσις. Τίνα τὰ θεολογοῦντα νήπια; Σύμβολα πάντως τοῦ πιστοῦ λαοῦ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας Χριστοῦ ἔγγονα … Epiphanius of Cyprus, Ὁμιλία περί Βαΐων, PG 43, col. 505, … Τοὺς χιτῶνας τῶν ψυχῶν θεοπρεπῶς ἐξαλλάξωμεν … Epiphanius of Cyprus, Ὁμιλία περί Βαΐων, PG 43, col. 428. Eulogius of Alexandria, Λόγος εἰς τά Βάια καί εἰς τον πῶλον

The Disrobing Child in the Entry into Jerusalem Scene

23

It is also possible to interpret the child’s nudity within this symbolic frame­ work. The dynamic of the human body changed after man was banished from Eden and forced to wear “garments of skin” (Genesis 3:21), by the subsequent transition to post-fall shame, to mindless passion and to the reality of matter and deterioration.46 The children, disrobing from their garments and remain­ ing naked, may be a symbol of the return to a pre-fall innocence and purity.47 They were not depicted nude for the sake of nudity; their nudity was but a convention, employed as an iconological means in order to transmit, by a pro­ cess of thought association, the salvific message to the faithful. This may be why even the most daring depictions of the child’s sex would not have been considered inappropriate for a place of worship, i.e. a church. These uncom­ mon variations of the disrobing child illustrate the theme’s theological content more effectively than other, more “academic” versions, in which the children remove their cloaks but remain clothed in their robes. Beyond the potentially symbolic role of the figure of the disrobing child in the scene of the Entry into Jerusalem, we must also examine whether, and to what extent, its presence and appearance were influenced by everyday life. It has already been acknowledged, in relevant literature, that it was common for young children to spread their garments during the triumphal receptions of generals or army leaders, thus possibly remaining half-naked.48 Similar pg 86B, col. 2913 …  Νοεῖς τῶν ἱματίων τον εὐσχήμονα βίον, τόν ἐπικοσμοοῦντα το ἧθος … ὑποστρωννύντες το σῶμα, το τῆς ψυχῆς ἱμάτιον. Theophanes Kerameus, Εἰς την Βαϊοφόρον ἑορτήν, pg 132, cols. 545, 548, …Τά ὑποστρωννύμενα ἱμάτια … τά ἡθικά εἶναι παιδεύματα. Athanasius of Alexandria, Πορευομένου δὲ αὐτοῦ ὑπεστρώννυον τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν…, PG 28, col. 1040. 46 Gregory of Nyssa, Περί ψυχῆς και ἀναστάσεως, pg 46, cols. 148C–149A. 47 Zeitler, “Ostentatiogenitalium,” 193, 196. Horn and Martens, Let the Children, 193, 273– 278. Compare the interpretation quoted from Origenes ὥστε παιδίου ἀγεύστου ἀφροδισίων καὶ ἀνεννοή του ἀνδρικῶν κινημάτων ἔχειν κατάστασιν … Origenes, Τῶν εἰς τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον ἐξηγητικῶν τόμος ιγʹ, PG13, cols 1134–1138: Erich Klosterman, Die Griechischen Christlchen Schriftsteller der Erstendrei Jahrhunderte, Origenes Zehnter Band, v. 1 (Leipzig: De Gruyter, 1935), chapter 16, line 11. 48 Cyril Mango, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963): 153–154, 157. André Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art Byzantine, 2nd edition (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1971), 234–235. Idem, Les Voies de le Creation en Iconographie Chrétienne (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 45–46. Ilias Antonopoulos, Προλεγόμενα για μια τυπολογία της παιδικής ηλικίας και της νεότητας στη βυζαντινή εικονογραφία, in Ιστορικότητα παιδικής ηλι­ κίας. Acts of International Conference, v. i, (Αθήνα 1984–1986), 274. Timothy Matthews, The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpetation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 23–53. Ernst Kantorowicz, “The King’s Advent and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina,” Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 212. Dagmar Stutzinger, Der Adventus des Kaisers und der Einzug Christi in Jerusalem Spätantike und Frühes Christentum. Katalogzur Ausstellungim Liebieghaus (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 284–307. Adventus: Studien zum Herrscherlichen Einzug in die Stadt, ed. Peter Johanek and Angelika Lampen (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), vii–xvi

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description is included in the Peregrinatio (Pilgrimage) or Itinerarium Egeriae of the nun Egeria (or Aetheria) at the end of the fourth century.49 Therefore, it appears to be an image that reflects the reality of the era; it is possible that it was incorporated into art, where it was also used as a means to communicate a complex theological message. To sum up, the figure of the disrobing child in the Entry into Jerusalem scene is an iconographic theme traced mainly back to Palaiologan painting. It enjoyed broad geographic distribution, with many examples found in areas of the southern Peloponnese (Messinia-Laconia). The theme knows small varia­ tions regarding the subject’s positioning within the overall composition, the child’s movement and attire. It is considered—as is generally the case when it comes to naked young children—to originate from the ancient figures of the cupids, adapted to suit the context of Christian art. It is likely a reflection of the conditions surrounding the reception of victorious leaders in cities; but, more importantly, it also assumes a strong theological content, similar to that of the Spinario, reinforced by the occasional representation of the child’s radi­ cal, and yet expiatory, nudity. In conclusion, the representation of the disrob­ ing children in the Entry into Jerusalem scene does not only serve a decorative purpose; it is also charged with a special symbolic significance. This “honorific” representation of these curious young protagonists50 is amplified by the fact that they are the only ones, from among the crowds attending the scene, who understood and believed the message of salvation brought forth by Christ as he rides in on the donkey, coming in stark contrast to the doubts and mistrust of the adults.51

Acknowledgments

The present study was first published as an article in the academic journal Porphyra 23(2015): 87–92 (issn 2240-5240). I would like to extend my thanks to the editor, Mr Nicola Bergamo, for allowing the re-publishing of the article (with certain minor changes and additions).

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Ηelene Petre, Journal de Voyage. Texte Latin, Introduction et Traduction (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1948) [Sources chrétiennes 21], 31: 3. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Τravels (London: spck, 1971). 50 For the tender relationship between Christ and children see Horn and Martens, Let the Children, 92–94, 235. See also footnote 2. 51 Epiphanius of Cyprus, Ὁμιλία περί Βαΐων, PG 43, col. 438. Eulogios of Alexandria, Λόγος εἰς τά Βάια καί εἰς τον πῶλον 86B, col. 2921.

The Disrobing Child in the Entry into Jerusalem Scene

Church of Saint Dimitrius, Euboea. Ephorate of Antiquities of Euboea, Ministry of Culture and Sports/TAP. From the personal archive of Alexandra Kostarelli.

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chapter 2

Boy Becoming Man

Liturgical Inversion in the Boy Bishop Ceremony in Medieval England Gavin Fort On December 28, sometime in the early 1490s, a young chorister, dressed as a bishop, gave a sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in which he quoted the Apostle Paul—“Be ye not chylderne in your wyttes; but from all synne and malice be ye chylderne in clennesse” (1 Cor. 14:20)—and continued to say that “alle manner of people and al maner of ages in clennesse of lyf ought to be pure as childerne.”1 This sermon was given at the celebration of the Holy Innocents, those young martyrs who were killed by Herod’s order to kill any boy, including the young Jesus, that might usurp his authority as king of the Jews (Matt. 2:16–18). On this day, as part of the triduum, or three days following Christmas, a chorister was installed as bishop and presided over the day’s divine offices while the bishop, canons, and other clergy occupied lower positions. Here, the church celebrated both childhood—the state of innocence— and children—the boy bishop and the young martyrs—as this boy’s sermon makes clear. For those adults hearing a boy dressed as a bishop remind them that Christian discipline requires a childlike approach to the pursuit of righteous living, especially as they all remembered the mass slaughter of innocent children, this was a striking elevation of childhood as a model for exemplary living embedded in a moment of liturgical inversion when an actual child, the boy bishop, presided. This liturgical use of children reinforces Carol Steedman’s argument that children are the “first metaphor for all people,” meaning that children often become a receptacle into which adults put all manner of meanings, including thoughts about the self.2 For her, childhood is a “form, an imaginative structure that allows the individual to make exploration of the self and gives the means to relate that understanding to larger social organizations.”3 In this way, 1 “In die Innocencium sermo pro Episcopo Puerorum,” in Two Sermons Preached by the Boy Bishop, ed. John Gough Nichols, 1–13, Camden Miscellany 7, esp. 5 Carol Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860–1931 (London: Virago, 1990), 259. Carol Steedman, Past Tenses: Essays on Writing, Autobiography, and History (Concord, Mass.: Paul and Co., 1992), 11.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_004

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a boy performing divine services as a bishop on the Feast of the Holy Innocents could become, for those who witnessed it, many things: from a metaphor of Christ’s warning that “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3), to a sign of the need for overthrowing social hierarchy. This was also an imaginative structure from which those listening could craft a sense of self as a child, and from which the church could build out from its own identity a doctrine of holy living. The boy bishop ceremony and its attendant features expressed the medieval church’s view of children and illustrates how childhood could be molded and shaped for a variety of purposes. Scholars have long been interested not only in the role of children in liturgical settings but also in the boy bishop ceremony itself.4 Two early studies focused on the ceremony’s dramatic elements as forerunners for later church plays.5 Some have examined the celebration of the Holy Innocents separate from the boy bishop ceremony.6 Others have focused on its connection to Christmastide revelries like the Feast of Fools.7 A few scholars, however, have sought to rehabilitate the image of the boy bishop from its association with social misrule in order to reveal a source of sincere religious devotion.8 Even so, many have attempted to achieve this revision by looking only at the three 4 Dora H. Robertson and Christopher Wordsworth, “Salisbury Choristers: Their Endowments, Boy-Bishops, Music Teachers and Headmasters, with the History of the Organ,” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine (1938): 201–231; Dora H. Robertson, Sarum Close: A History of the Life and Education of the Cathedral Choristers for 700 Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1938); and Susan Boynton and Eric N. Rice, ed., Young Choristers: 650–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008). 5 E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vol. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), here 1:336–371 and 2:282–289; and Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vol. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), here 1:104–110 and 2:102–124. 6 Susan Boynton, “Performative Exegesis in the Fleury Interfectio puerorum,” Viator 29 (1998): 39–64; and Paul A. Hayward, “Suffering and Innocence in Latin Sermons for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, c. 400–800,” in The Church and Childhood: Papers Read at the 1993 Summer Meeting and the 1994 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood, 67–80 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994). 7 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 8 The most outspoken on this theme are: Richard L. DeMolen, “Pueri Christi Imitatio: The Festival of the Boy Bishop in Tudor England,” Moreana 40 (1975): 17–29; Michael Milway, “Boy Bishops in Early Modern Europe,” in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, ed. Clifford Davidson, 87–97 (New York: ams Press, 2005); and Eve Salisbury, “ ‘Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child’: Proverbial Speech Acts, Boy Bishop Sermons, and Pedagogical Violence,” in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon Donavin, Cary J. Nederman, and Richard Utz, 141–155 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004).

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extant sermons delivered by the boy bishop in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.9 Much less well known is how the liturgy employed children—both the boy bishop and the choristers—to perform doctrine and enflame devotion. Comparing differences in the ceremony between England and its continental versions, and between the ceremony and its nearby, and more wellknown, cousin, the Feast of Fools helps to isolate the specifically liturgical and English role of the boy bishop ceremony. At the same time, the role of misrule or, more accurately, inversion, in the ceremony needs to be addressed. A concise history of the feasts of St. Nicholas (December 6) and the Holy Innocents (December 28) will demonstrate that these were the most common days to celebrate the boy bishop ceremony. Additionally, a comparison with continental and extra-liturgical examples will show the range of the boy bishop ceremony across Europe. The ceremony from Salisbury, specifically, reveals how the liturgy used children to reveal the specifically Christian approach to inversion. In a series of escalating dramas during Vespers on the eve of the Feast of Holy Innocents, continuing to Vespers on the feast day itself, the boy choristers and the boy bishop take on multiple roles in order to represent the centrality of these inversions in the Christian narrative. A sustained focus on the liturgical aspect of the boy bishop ceremony foregrounds the specifically religious nature of the boy bishop inversion, particularly the celebration as a performance. Indeed, the connection between liturgy and performance, including this ceremony, has been documented in many places.10 Performance in this context means the act of turning something immaterial—in this case, the spiritual doctrines of childlikeness and the remembrance of the Holy Innocents—into something material—in this case, a complex drama.11 Thinking about performance in this way reveals a crucial distinction between childhood and children, between something immaterial and something material. As Robin Bernstein has shown, because there is a difference between childhood—“abstract and disembodied”—and 9 Charles H. Evelyn-White, “The Boy Bishop (Episcopus Puerorum) of Medieval England, Parts I and II,” The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 11 (1905): 30–48 and 231–256; Neil Mackenzie, “Boy into Bishop,” History Today 37 (1987): 10–16; and Shulamith Shahar, “The Boy Bishop’s Feast: A Case-Study in Church Attitudes towards Children in the High and Late Middle Ages,” in The Church and Childhood: Papers Read at the 1993 Summer Meeting and the 1994 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood, 243–260 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994). 10 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage; Young, Drama of the Medieval Church; and Thomas P. Campbell, “Liturgical Drama and Community Discourse,” in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and atter, 619–644 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001). See Mary Thomas Crane, “What was Performance?” Criticism 43.2 (2002): 169–187.

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children—“tangible and fleshy”—it is possible for both children and adults to perform both childhood and adulthood in various ways. For example, children’s bodies often stand in as effigies or surrogates for adult themes, or vice versa, and the performance of this mismatch generates a range of meanings.12 To focus on children and their bodies is to extend a focus on the use of objects in performance. Jonathan Gil Harris has noted that material objects themselves have multitemporality: “That is, the ways in which we physically and imaginatively rework matter to produce diverse organizations of time.”13 Children and their bodies, as both effigies and material objects in the boy bishop performance, manifest this multitemporality by representing a range of biblical characters, both young and old. The liturgy of the boy bishop ceremony, therefore, was a performance of inversion, indeed multiple inversions: the boy was made not only bishop but also the Christ child, and the choristers were made Holy Innocents and the martyrs in Revelation praising God. These were multifarious, and chronologically divergent, movements showing the pliability of the choristers in the liturgical setting to represent both those older and younger. As Bernstein might say, the choristers were effigies that could represent both children and adults. As Harris might say, the choristers were objects through which a diverse organization of time was physically and imaginatively produced. In fact, these movements only makes sense when those present, other clergy or laity—the audience, in other words—noticed the disjunction between the youth of the choristers and the child or adult characters that they embodied during the services.14 Thus, the theatricality of the choristers’ performance during the boy bishop ceremony was consistent with medieval ideas about adolescence as an intermediary and transitionary state between childhood and adulthood.15 12 Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 22–24. 13 Jonathan Gil Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 12–13. 14 Susan Boynton and Eric N. Rice, “Introduction: Performance and Premodern Childhood,” in Young Choristers, 1–18, esp. 14: “Choristers performed most often in the daily high Mass and Vespers, services in which lay worshippers were often in attendance at cathedrals and collegiate churches.” The main boy bishop ceremony happened at Vespers on St. John’s day (December 27), so it is likely, especially at a large cathedral like Salisbury, that the laity were in attendance. 15 Shahar, “The Boy Bishop’s Feast,” 249; and Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1990), 27–31. Most agreed on three stages of childhood: infantia (birth to seven), pueritia (seven to 12, for girls, or 14, for boys), and adolescentia (12 or 14 to anywhere from 21 to 35; “there was no uniform age of maturity in the Middle Ages,” Shahar, ibid.

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Choristers in the boy bishop ceremony would have been between seven and late-teens.16 The combination of these many inversions allowed the church not only to dramatically represent the Christian virtues of inversion, and the warnings associated with age and power, but also movingly assert its love for the “least of these,” here represented as innocent children. Through the liturgy, the church demonstrated its interest in educating children, training them to become future adult leaders, by performing this inversion on the day that it also remembered the sacrifice of children for the cause of Christ. The boy bishop was but one example of festal misrule during the Christmas season. On the feast of St. Stephen the martyr (December 26), the deacons usurped a higher station, and on the feast of St. John the Evangelist (December 27), the priests did so. The wildest feast of the season was on January 1, the Feast of the Circumcision, at which the subdeacons assumed the positions of power. Because of the subdeacons’ proclivity toward wanton behavior (perhaps because of their age or station), this day came to be known as the Feast of the Asses or the Feast of Fools. Medieval liturgies for this feast are rare because the church eventually suppressed it. It is interesting to note that only the boys and the subdeacons’ feasts are mentioned in any detail in the source material; it would seem that the deacons and priests were far more likely to behave decorously during their acts of misrule than the younger members of the community. The church’s problem with the Feast of Fools, and with the boy bishop to some extent, was not necessarily the liturgical inversion but the consequent feasting and rioting. In addition to being selected as the boy bishop on Holy Innocents’ Day or as the Lord of Misrule on Circumcision, the dominus festi was expected to host a feast for the local clergy and townspeople. For example, in 1396 the York boy bishop gave a sumptuous feast that included ale, wine, 16

Boynton and Rice, “Introduction,” in Young Choristers, 9: “Most churches recruited boys around the age of seven or eight…. Upon admission, a boy was generally signed over to the church without possibility of release for a period of up to ten years.” Although boys in collegiate settings (not monastic) could be released earlier for lay careers, choristers were responsible for complex chants and singing without the aid of adult supervision. Thus, it is likely that the boy bishop was an older chorister, perhaps 14 or older, and that the other choristers were sufficiently old enough to conduct the ceremony by themselves or young enough to follow along with the other boys. According to Katherine Zieman, Singing the New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 122, choristers would have known how to sing Latin before they knew what the words meant, which is what she calls “extragrammatical literacy.” Although it is likely that that the older boys would have been literate in Latin, those who could not understand what was being said would not have been hindered in the perfor mance of the Latin liturgy.

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bread, veal, ducks, chickens, fruit, honey, and other delicacies.17 After they ate their fill, the boy bishop and his attendants visited local castles, abbeys, and manors so that he could receive money and gifts (for the keeping!) from the nobility. In Bristol, in a unique instance, the boy bishop visited the mayor after the day’s services and blessed him as he played dice prior to the feast.18 Still, all this feasting often led to unwelcome behavior. Perhaps the most unfortunate event associated with the boy bishop’s visitation occurred in December 1367, in Paris, when the night’s feasting resulted in the death of the boy bishop.19 Consequently, the boy bishop at Salisbury was never allowed to partake in these festivities, although he and the other choristers still managed to maintain a rowdy disposition as evidenced by successive statutes in 1319 and 1448 seeking to maintain order during any public processions.20 Examples of revelries associated with the Feast of Fools abound and, in many ways, exceeded those linked with the boy bishop.21 Still, for all their similarities, the two feasts were often erroneously conflated in various condemnations. While the boy bishop ceremony was far older than its disorderly cousin, it did not take long for abuses to creep in to both feasts.22 By the early thirteenth century, church leaders like Innocent iii reacted against both with similar language.23 If the festal disruptions surrounding the boy bishop had any connection with the Feast of the Fools, most scholars agree that this was only the case in France, where the Feast of Fools flourished—although it was later repressed in the fifteenth century and eventually suppressed in the sixteenth century.24 In England, the liturgical and religious aspects of the boy bishop were retained while the festal aspects were significantly limited, if they 17 Robertson, Sarum Close, 84, includes the whole list including each individual cost. 18 David Harris Sacks, “Celebrating Authority in Bristol, 1475–1640,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman, 187–223 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), esp. 199; and Charles Phythian-Adams, Local History and Folklore: A New Framework (London: Bedford Square Press, 1975), 29. 19 Neil Mackenzie, The Medieval Boy Bishops (Kibworth: Matador, 2012), 1–5. 20 1319: Roger of Mortival, bishop of Salisbury, Sarum Statutes, c. 45: De statu choristarum, in Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, ed. Christopher Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), 58–59. 1448: Robertson and Wordsworth, “Salisbury Choristers,” 210–212. Interestingly, this statute seeks to separate the boys from the canons when they walk home from the feast in order to mitigate any instigating violence by the older clergy. 21 On the differences between the boy bishop and the Feast of Fools, see Mackenzie, The Medieval Boy Bishops, 98–106. On the Feast of Fools itself, see Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 22 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:338; and Mackenzie, “Boy Into Bishop,” 11. 23 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:341. 24 Evelyn-White, “The Boy Bishop,” 37; and Hutton, Stations of the Sun

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were allowed to continue at all. For example, the early fourteenth-century bishop of Exeter, John Grandisson, specifically separated the two feasts and purposefully retained only the liturgical aspect of the boy bishop.25 One way to explain the curtailment of social folly but the permissiveness of liturgical inversion in England is to argue that church authorities wanted to allow folly and discord only within ecclesiastical boundaries. Margot Fassler makes this argument regarding the Danielis ludus, a Feast of Fools play, whose “goals are to suppress certain aspects of well-established popular traditions by bringing them into the church and containing them within larger liturgical and exegetical traditions.”26 Another way to explain the existence of misrule in the liturgy of the boy bishop—that is, the inversion of boy becoming bishop—is to see the church not as trying to contain these popular traditions within itself, but rather as purposefully promoting inversion because it played a central role in the narrative of Christianity. In this perspective, the church transformed misrule, and its social revelry, into liturgical inversion that could enflame spiritual devotion and theological understanding. This may be a minor modification of the frame of reference, but it is a significant reorientation because it acknowledges that the church did not just purposefully order disorder as a way to contain social misrule but rather highlighted its own inversions—the first shall be last (Matt. 20:16); blessed are the poor (Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20); the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve (Matt. 20:28); if a grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24); and so forth—as desirable behaviors. For the boy bishop ceremony, the prophetic line from Isaiah 11:6, “And a little child shall lead them,” demonstrated the inversion of age and how children could take on adult roles. Various modern theories of premodern popular culture have attempted to delimit the functional aspects of societal misbehavior. In the context of early modern Europe, Peter Burke employed (and then softened) the “safety valve” theory in which elites permitted unruly popular festivals in order to release pent-up, lower-class resentment.27 The great literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, in his reading of the carnivalesque in the writing of Rabelais, identified the 25 Martin R. Dudley, “Natalis Innocentum: The Holy Innocents in Liturgy and Drama,” in The Church and Childhood: Papers Read at the 1993 Summer Meeting and the 1994 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Diana Wood, 233–242 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), esp. 238. 26 Margot Fassler, “The Feast of Fools and Danielis Ludus: Popular Tradition in a Medieval Cathedral Play,” in Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, ed. Thomas Forrest Kelly, 65–99 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. 6 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 201–203.

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reversal of hierarchic levels through the “renewal of clothes and of the social image” as an indispensable part of folk festivals, which could be applied to, and nicely summarizes, the sociological perspective of the boy bishop.28 Nonetheless, a recent work on social and ritual misrule is more instructive for this study. Christopher Humphrey’s insistence on using “misrule” instead of “carnival” or “carnivalesque” demands a reevaluation of how historians view the evidence. Against those who have described what the carnivalesque can accomplish (through “safety valves,” costuming, or even violence), Humphrey argues that although misrule “certainly makes use of inversion, this does not necessarily mean that it was being employed in a controversial or dissident way.”29 Instead, misrule, in this case, is a broader category that includes the ways in which society experiences moments of social inversion, as simple enjoyment without the necessary political overtones. In fact, as Humphrey quotes Umberto Eco, misrule often “reminds us of the existence of the rule.”30 Further, because misrule is limited in space and time, instead of freeing one from the boundaries of hierarchy and repression it actually reinforces the ideas of compulsion and order. Thus, one can only participate in misrule through a kind of ironic distance; that is, always keeping in mind that the status or act of inversion is illusory and never generates long-term change—misrule is never revolution. In these ways, Humphrey wants to move away from using the binaries of subversion and containment in order to examine compromise, negotiation, exchange, accommodation, give and take.31 This recent approach to misrule not only encourages a reexamination of the social function of the boy bishop’s frivolities and their eventual suppression, but also provides the basis for understanding inversion in a specifically liturgical context. In this way, the church’s use of misrule is not a containment of social disorder, but a promotion of endogenous inversions. The boy bishop ceremony and the Feast of Fools were clearly distinct, especially when considering the dominant mode of misrule-as-inversion. Indeed, the boy bishop ceremony had its own history. The celebration of children on particular feast days was already a social practice in the fourth and fifth centuries.32 Giving the choristers the opportunity to be in charge of the 28 29 30 31 32

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: m.i.t. Press, 1965), 81. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 180–181, cites Stephen Bourbon and Natalie Zemon Davis on this as well. Christopher Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 27–28. Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival, 33. Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival, 58. Hutton, Rise and Fall

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ceremonies on Holy Innocents’ Day was only appropriate given the nature of the feast, and there is evidence that this particular feast was observed in Christian circles as early as the fourth century.33 The earliest mention of the boy bishop was recorded in 911 when King Conrad of Germany wanted to disturb the boys at the monastery of St. Gall during their annual service by rolling apples down the aisle—although the boys did not chase the apples.34 Once the bodily remains of St. Nicholas, the patron of children and education, were translated from Myra (Asia Minor) to Bari, Italy, in 1087, the practice of associating the choristers with a month-long honor—that is, from St. Nicholas’s Day (December 6) to Holy Innocents (December 28)—traveled west with his body.35 The first connection in England between St. Nicholas’s Day and the lead chorister who directed the divine offices on Holy Innocents’ Day appeared sometime before 1219 at the cathedral of Old Sarum, in England.36 Here, the boy bishop was elected or appointed by his peers on the former (December 6) and reigned until the close of the latter (December 28). The practice quickly took root as a ring has been found in Salisbury for use in the Festival of Boys in 1222, and a statute remains from York in 1220.37 As mentioned, the boy bishop tradition, while popular on the continent, flourished in England and has been recorded in every medieval English cathedral after 1220 that left an archive. The practice also existed outside cathedral and collegiate church settings. By the end of the thirteenth century, it was widely adopted in many parish churches.38 There is evidence that the practice received royal approval and participation as well. Edward i, in 1300, gave forty shillings to the boy bishop and his choristers who sang for him on St. Nicholas Eve near Newcastle. In 1317, Edward ii found the service in use in smaller parish churches and gave money

33 Robertson, Sarum Close, 79. Although Hayward, “Suffering and Innocence in Latin Sermons for the Feast of the Holy Innocents,” 67 n. 3; and Dudley, “Natalis Innocentum,” 235, argue for a sixth-century dating. 34 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:338; Mackenzie, “Boy into Bishop,” 11. 35 Robertson, Sarum Close, 80; Mackenzie, “Boy into Bishop,” 11. The evidence from the east is slightly earlier, as a synod in Constantinople in the late ninth century condemned the lay impersonation of bishops, and in the tenth century there was evidence of a boy selected as “pseudo-bishop”; see Evelyn-White, “The Boy Bishop,” 36. W. Carew Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore of the British Isles (New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1965), 1:69, traces the history to a Greek church where the ceremony required an Episcopus Choristarum only. 36 Robertson, Sarum Close, 81. 37 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:352; Hutton, Rise and Fall, 53. 38 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage

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to a boy bishop from St. Mary’s Church in Nottingham. In 1386, two boy bishops were active near Cambridge.39 Variations of the ceremony existed across Europe. In thirteenth-century Padua, the boy bishop, dressed in cope and mitre, visited the house of the bishop in order to receive his blessing, then various jesting ensued while all proceeded to drink wine. During the daily offices the following day, the boy bishop finally assumed the position of bishop in the church. After Prime, following the reading of the epistle, the reader threw a spear into the midst of the people and the clergy began to reenact the Flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:13–15), complete with leading an ass around the church, the festum asinae. Finally, that night the boy bishop and all the clergy met for a grand feast after which the young bishop mounted a horse and visited the local monasteries and lords.40 There were many local variants in France that differed from the English ceremony. In Rouen, as in many continental locations, the baculus or staff of the bishop was handed over at the very moment during the Magnificat when the choristers sang the Deposuit: “[God] has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate” (Luke 1:52). The words of Mary were here adapted to display the actual deposition of a mighty figure from his episcopal seat and the exaltation of a lowly choirboy. Perhaps more than any other liturgical service, this ceremonial inversion expressed Christ’s own words of inversion: “So shall the last be first and the first last” (Matt. 20:16). The boy bishop ceremony in Bayeux added an additional element. During Vespers on Holy Innocents’ Day at the close of the boy bishop’s reign, as the clergy and boys processed from the altar of St. Nicholas (since they did not have an altar for the Holy Innocents) to the choir, the boy bishop handed his staff down the line of boys until it reached the boy who would be boy bishop the following year. This suggests that even though the next election took place more than eleven months away—on December 6—the choristers had already decided who would hold that office. It is also interesting that each boy is given a chance to hold the bishop’s staff for a brief moment before handing it on, which must have inspired each boy to work diligently toward that goal.41 The role of the boy bishop was not limited to the liturgy as he often participated in various Christmastime dramas. Space allows only one, but unique, 39 Hutton, Rise and Fall, 53–54; Hutton, Stations of the Sun, 102; Robertson, Sarum Close, 40, 84. 40 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, 1:106–109, includes the Latin text and brief commentary on the Paduan ceremony. 41 For other continental examples, see Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:345–348; J. P. W. Crawford, “A Note on the Boy Bishop in Spain,” Romantic Review 12 (1921): 146–154; and Mackenzie, The Medieval Boy Bishops

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example: the Christmas Play from Benediktbeuern found in the Carmina Burana.42 In the prologue of the play, various prophecies concerning the Incarnation are announced by various figures from the Old Testament and pagan Rome. After hearing these predictions, Archisynagogus rises up and loudly rejects them. At this point the boy bishop interjects and assures the chief Jew that Augustine will shortly convince him otherwise, which the bishop of Hippo then does. On the one hand, this is a strange place to find the boy bishop. Indeed, Young thinks it odd that the boy bishop has strayed so far from his misrule on Holy Innocents’ Day to appear somber and credible in this play. Yet, on the other hand, this should not seem so strange. The boy bishop had already been elected on December 6, which means that he was also known throughout the local community during the month. Further, if Augustine represented proper ecclesiastical doctrine in his sharp contraposition to the misunderstandings of the Archisynagogus, then the boy bishop represented episcopal authority and the continued role of the bishop as the guardian against heresy. In this way, the boy bishop’s belief in Augustine’s ability to argue for the truth of the Incarnation is a model for the Christian community to put their trust in the church, her doctors, and her shepherds. At least in this instance, the boy bishop was not engaging in ritual misrule in the play, but was stepping outside the rather flexible boundaries of liturgy as a dramatic representation of the local bishop. With the boy bishop clearly differentiated from its surrounding feasts, from other variants, and from its extra-liturgical elements, the phenomenon must be examined in the place where it flourished most, England, and in its dominant mode, liturgy. While there is evidence for this custom at other major cathedrals around the country, most notably in Exeter, “the prerogative instance of the custom is in the church of Salisbury.”43 The evidence for the boy bishop is found in the liturgies of the daily offices rather than the Mass. While the boy bishop probably led Mass during his tenure, he could not consecrate the elements—his role was representational, up to a point. The main source is the Processionale, which outlined not only the prayers, songs, and readings, but also detailed the participants in each service, listing their clothing, bodily gestures, and spatial orientation within the cathedral environment. As Terence Bailey explains, the Sarum Processionale “remains the only extant 42

Text and commentary on the Benediktbeuern Christmas play is found in Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, 2:172–196. Although the boy bishop does not appear in them, Young also mentions plays dealing with the slaughter of the Holy Innocents (2:102–124) and Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1:352. Wordsworth, in Ceremonies, 52–57, includes the Exeter variants in the footnotes, but they do not substantially alter the Sarum liturgy.

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fully-rubricated processional of the Middle Ages.”44 Compiled around 1440, this document captures the medieval tradition of the Sarum Use in its fullest display.45 While only Holy Innocents (December 28) made chronological sense in the narrative of Christmastide, the existence of three major feasts during the Octave of Christmas—St. Stephen and St. John the Evangelist, being the other two—posed a significant challenge: the celebration of one feast inside the octave of another feast. In addition, Christmas was a festal season that followed the penitential season of Advent, yet St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents (not to mention St. Thomas, December 29) were martyrs that deserved to be remembered in a solemn manner. In order to solve this problem, the Salisbury liturgy included a procession to follow the second Vespers service on the eve of the particular saint’s day. So, for example, after Vespers on the feast of St. John, the monastic or collegiate community would process to the altar of the Holy Innocents, say the collects and sing the antiphons for the child martyrs, and continue with Compline as usual. In addition, because each of these days demanded an octave (already within the Octave of Christmas), all the collects of each of the three days were said on every day—a kind of liturgical form of overlapping concentric circles.46 The boy bishop ceremony occurred between Vespers and Compline anticipating the following feast day. Although the boy bishop existed in various forms from the tenth century onward, this use of the boy bishop in the evening processional before Holy Innocents’ Day dates to thirteenth century.47 After Vespers on the feast of St. John the Evangelist (December 27), following the memorial of St. Stephen (December 26), the clergy and boys, already dressed in each other’s clothing, process to the altar of the Holy Innocents or (as that altar did not exist in Salisbury) to the altar of the Holy Trinity

44 Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), x. 45 Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, ed. Christopher Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), xvii. Because the earlier fifteenth-century manuscript was missing, Wordsworth used the manuscript from 1508 and a printed edition from 1555 that were based on the earlier manuscript. These extant services are published in Ceremonies, 52–57; and partially trans. in Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2:282–287; and in Mackenzie, The Medieval Boy Bishops, 20–27. 46 See “Kalendar” in The Sarum Missal, trans. Frederick E. Warren, part 1 (London: Alexander Moring Ltd., 1911), 1, 12; and The Hours of Prayer: From Lauds to Compline Compiled from the Sarum Breviary (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1949), 110–114 [hereafter Sarum Breviary]. 47 Bailey, Processions, 71. Processions to the altars of various saints had been practiced since the early Middle Ages, ibid.

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and All Saints, which in this cathedral was called Salve.48 According to the Processionale, this altar occupied the furthest east location in the apse, even further east and behind the high altar.49 Coming from the choir area, and skirting the high altar, the procession would have had to pass both the porch and altar of St. Stephen—a fitting procession given these post-nativity celebrations. At this point the liturgical rubric states: “Solus Episcopus Innocencium, si assit, Christum Puerum, verum et eternum Pontificem designans incipiat.” [Let the Bishop of the Innocents alone, if one is present (designating the Christ child, the true and eternal Bishop), begin.]50 The boy bishop then chants a responsory based on Revelation 14:4: “Centum quadraginta quattuor millia qui empti sunt de terra: hii sunt qui cum mulieribus non sunt coinquinati, virgines enim permanserunt. Ideo regnant cum Deo et Agno, et Agnus Dei cum illis.” [The hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth: these are they who were not defiled with women, for they remained virgins. Therefore, they reign with God and the Lamb, and the Lamb of God with them.]51 Three boys respond with the rest of the verse: “Hii empti sunt ex omnibus, primicie Deo et Agno, et in ore eorum non est inventum mendacium.” [These were redeemed from all men, the first-fruits to God and the Lamb, and in their mouths no lie was found.]52 Then all the boys sing the Sedentem, a verse linking the 144,000 and all those who died without sin, with the Holy Innocents and, because they are singing it, the choristers themselves. As the boys melismatically hold the final “e” in each line, sometimes with as many as fifteen notes (such embellishment was customary for solemn feasts), others respond with the refrain: “Ideo regnant.” [Therefore, they reign.]53 While this is sung, the boy bishop censes the altar and the image of the Holy Trinity. The sequence for Mass the following day, no doubt sung by the choristers, echoes a few of these themes: “Let the children sing high melodies, / The Innocents’ triumphant lay, / Whom Christ, the holy child, did bear to heaven today.”54 Not only are the choristers singing this, as the Holy Innocents might have done, 48 Ceremonies and Processions, 52; Sarum Breviary, 110. 49 Ceremonies and Processions, a diagram of the church is located between pages 72 and 73. This altar is labelled as “6.” 50 Ceremonies, 52. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 51 Ceremonies, 52. 52 Ceremonies, 52. 53 Ceremonies, 52–53. The musical notation is found in The Sarum Rite: In die sancti Johannis apostoli, ed. William Renwick (Hamilton: The Gregorian Institute of Canada, 2008), 404. The Gregorian Institute has also digitized all of the music associated with the Sarum Rite at www.sarum-chant.ca , trans. Warren, 111.

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Diagram of St. Mary’s Cathedral Church, Salisbury. Christopher Wordsworth, “Ceremonies and Processions,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901. Fold out image b/w 72–73

there is also an image of Christ as a child—embodied in their presence as the boy bishop—carrying the slain innocent children to their eternal home. This symbolism is beautiful and complex. Not only is the boy bishop representing the bishop, but he is also the Christ child—not Christ-the-man, but the infant because of whom the innocent babes were murdered. His label as the Bishop of the Innocents (Episcopus Innocencium) in the rubric is conspicuous here given that he is called in all other places the Bishop of the Boys (Episcopus Puerorum). This is an image of the innocent leading the innocent, Christ leading the Holy Innocents, and a linguistic linking of the deaths of Christ and these children—that is, both died as innocent, though condemned for a crime they did not commit, and their deaths brought benefit to others. For many at the time, these connections were quite plain. In the late twelfth century, John Beleth explained in his Rationale divinorum officinorum that boys were fitting participants in the feast of the Holy Innocents “quia innocentes pro Christo

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occisi sunt.” [because the innocents were killed for Christ.]55 And Jacob de Voragine, following the seventh-century etymologist Isidore of Seville, would later make clear in his popular Golden Legend that their innocence meant that they did not harm anyone, just as “innocent” derives from in- + nocere, not to harm.56 Thus, the Holy Innocents and Christ, and the choristers and boy bishop, all are united by their innocence. Further, the boy bishop as the Christ child, being called here the “true and eternal Bishop,” ventriloquizes John’s eschatological description of the virginal first-fruits, the 144,000, who continually praise God and Christ in heaven along with the four living creatures, who are alluded to in the Sedentem. Thus, the choristers are simultaneously the Holy Innocents (from the past) and those who honor God in heaven at the foot of his throne (in the future), all while they sing before the altar (in the present). This multitemporal connection is made clear in one of the antiphons for Lauds the following day: “Beneath the heavenly altar’s ray / With Martyr palms and crowns ye play.”57 The image of the boy bishop/Christ child censing the altar, while the choristers/Holy Innocents/144,000 praise God, dramatically fuses all these elements. One cannot fail to notice the complex field of representation in this performative moment. In particular, this evidence suggests that some scholars miss the point when they argue that the significance of the boy bishop lies in his childlike humility and innocence.58 While it is true that the boy bishop is a youth, the whole purpose of his youthfulness is not merely to represent childlike qualities but to represent, with his choristers, the Christ child and the children of the Holy Innocents themselves. As Bernstein predicts, there is a separation here between childhood and children—between the ideals of youth and innocence, and the bodily, and sometimes macabre, representation of children. The choristers in their puerile and adolescent bodies are fungible effigies that are molded into various shapes through the liturgical medium. That the focus here is on children, and not childhood, is made clear in the boy bishop’s subsequent prayer: “Deus, cuius hodierna die preconium innocentes martires non loquendo sed moriendo confessi sunt: omnia in nobis vitiorum 55 John Beleth, Rationale divinorum officiorum, c. 70, in Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. Herbert Douteil, cccm 41A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 130–132. This rationale is given in a list of explaining why each party takes on the roles for each post-Christmas feast: … et pueri in ipso festo Innocentium, quia innocentes pro Christo occisi sunt. 56 Jacob de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 56–59. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1.125, 220. 57 Sarum Breviary Mackenzie, “Boy into Bishop,” 11.

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mala mortifica, ut fidem tuam, quam lingua nostra loquitur, eciam moribus vita fateatur.” [O God, whose innocent martyrs on this day confessed their praise not by speaking but by dying, mortify in us all the evils of sin so that your faith, which our tongues utter, may be confessed also in our lives and in our ways.]59 While the surface meaning is a didactic appropriation of childlike qualities—to praise God as children do—the force of the prayer centers on the vicarious embodiment of those particular children who praised God by dying rather than merely through words. The implication of which is not merely an imitation of the purity of childhood, but rather the reproduction, in the hearers’ own lives, of these mortal acts of children. By comparison, the secret prayer during Mass the following day is much less clear about this difference between childhood and children: “Be present, O Lord, at the consecration of these gifts on the feast of the Innocents, and grant that as we venerate their infancy dedicated to you, so we may be able to imitate their guilelessness [sinceritatem].”60 This prayer is an appeal to imitate innocence, and this makes sense because the boy bishop probably did not say this prayer as his role in the Mass itself was often curtailed. Rather, this prayer is what adults pray when they think about childhood: imitate certain characteristics. But when children embody the surrogate roles of younger children or adults and then reflect back onto childhood, the imitation of characteristics transforms into an imitation of children and their fleshly acts. After this initial celebration at the easternmost altar, the clergy, leading their young bishop, process back to the choir stalls singing a song to the Virgin Mary. The procession enters the western side of the choir from the nave in reverse order so that the bishop, priests, and deacons are in front followed by the subdeacons, choristers, and boy bishop. Then all the boys occupy both sides of the choir stalls at the highest level, and from this moment until after the procession following Vespers on the next day no cleric may occupy a higher level, under any circumstance. Now the boys are called “canons” in their various ministries, and the canons take over the roles of thurifer, book bearer, and candle bearer. Finally, the boy bishop assumes the bishop’s seat at the southeast corner of the choir and recites a prayer asking God for Mary’s continual aid.61 Now fully invested, the new bishop elaborately blesses both the clergy and the people. The distinct separation of these two groups in the liturgical rubric suggests that many in the community likely attended this ceremony. Whether 59 Ceremonies, 53. 60 Sarum Missal, trans. Warren, 112. The Latin is found in: The Sarum Missal edited from Three Early Manuscripts, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), 32. 61 Ceremonies

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they went to see the bishop humbled or the boy exalted, it was common for the laity to attend Vespers at cathedrals and collegiate churches, probably especially during a festal season like Christmas, and their presence is routinely acknowledged.62 After the boy bishop takes his seat, the cross bearer (crucifer), now a canon sitting near the bishop but in the lower stalls, approaches the boy bishop, receives his staff, and begins the antiphon, Princeps ecclesie: “Princeps ecclesie, pastor ovilis, cunctam plebem tuam benedicere digneris.” [Prince of the church, shepherd of the fold, may you deign to bless all your people.] Here, the cross bearer turns toward the people (populum) and continues: “Cum mansuetudine et caritate, humilitate [sc. humiliate] vos ad benediccionem.” [With gentleness and charity, humble yourselves to receive the blessing.] He then hands the staff back to the boy bishop.63 The boy bishop’s blessing that follows is the final, and intricately theatrical, moment of his role in this Vespers service. It begins as an antiphonal sequence that is often found as a bishop’s blessing during Mass, but here it is imbued with the boy bishop’s specific bodily gestures. While facing the altar, the boy bishop makes the sign of the cross on his forehead, saying, “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” to which the choir responds, “Who made heaven and earth.” The boy bishop then makes the sign of the cross on his chest, saying, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” to which the choir responds, “From this time for evermore.” Then follows the blessing itself. The boy bishop turns toward the choir, raises both arms, and says, “I sign you with the sign of the cross.” He then turns toward the people in the nave, and says, “Let it be our protection.” When he turns back toward the altar, the boy bishop says, “He who has purchased and redeemed us …,” and as he completes this sentence, he places his hand on his chest and says softly as if to himself, “… with the price of his flesh.” To which all say, “Amen.”64 62 Boynton and Rice, “Introduction,” in Young Choristers, 14. 63 Ceremonies, 54. Although most of the English evidence follows the pattern of Salisbury, there is a fascinating example from some East Anglian churches where a hole in the roof of the nave suggests that “angels” holding the bishop’s staff and clothing would have been lowered over the boy bishop in order to invest him with his heavenly office, see The East Anglian, n.s. 1, ed. Charles H. Evelyn-White (London: George Redway, 1886), 169–172. There was apparently Spanish precedent for this practice, Mackenzie, Boy into Bishop, 11. 64 Ceremonies, 54–55: Tunc Episcopus Puerorum, primo signando se in fronte, dicat, hoc modo incipiens: Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini: Chorus respondeat sic: Qui fecit celum et terram. Item Episcopus, signando se in pectore, dicat sic: Sit nomen Domini benedic tum: Chorus respondeat: Ex hoc nunc, et usque in seculum. Deinde Episcopus Puerorum, conversus ad clerum [sc. chorum], elevet brachium suum, et dicat hanc benediccionem: Crucis signo vos consigno: Hic covertate se ad populum, sic dicendo: Nostra sit tuicio. Deinde convertat se ad altare, dicens: Qui nos emit et redemit. Postea ad seipsum reversus ponat

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While the first part of the service sought to representationally link the boy bishop and the choristers with various other actors—the Christ child, the Holy Innocents, the 144,000 in heaven—this second part of the service focuses on the boy bishop qua bishop. The elaborate turning and touching of his body are unique here. While the boy bishop conducts this same blessing during Compline that night and during Lauds the following day, neither blessing includes these elements.65 Further, none of the liturgies for the services following Christmas, at which the deacons, priests, and subdeacons lead the services, include a similar blessing. In fact, this is the only instance for the entire year where the rubric states that the celebrant should sign his head and chest and raise his arms; priests and bishops are not instructed to perform the blessing in this manner. Further, the only other instance of this blessing, albeit sans gestures, done by someone other than the boy bishop occurs during the liturgy for the installation of the bishop of Salisbury just before the new bishop is clothed with his pontifical robes.66 By having the boy bishop give a blessing in the manner of a new bishop of Salisbury, the Sarum liturgy suggests that the boy bishop is a bishop of the highest order. He is the representation of episcopal authority and his blessing carries the weight of spiritual as well as jurisdictional power. That there is a connection with episcopal authority is not surprising; he is the Episcopus Puerorum after all. Rather, the boy bishop’s bodily gestures, unique to him in this moment, communicate a specific representation of a boy as a bishop blessing others. Here again there is a separation of childhood and its immaterial qualities from children and their material bodies. The performance of this liturgy reveals how a boy’s body discloses the meaning of the blessing. Not only is his head and chest covered with the “name of the Lord,” which is then given to the people with his outstretched arms through the sign of the cross as their protection, but his own body is joined with Christ’s flesh as the medium through which humanity was saved. The shielding power of God is now mapped onto the body of the boy bishop through whom God’s blessing flows. Here, the boy bishop becomes Christ-the-man and leaves Christ-the-child behind. He is no longer the infant for whom the Holy Innocents were slain, but manum suam super pectus suum dicendo: sue carnis precio. Chorus respondeat, ut sequitur, Amen. I do not fully understand the phrase ad seipsum reversus except in the sense given, that the boy bishop, having turned to every other party, now turns to himself by speaking to himself. 65 Ceremonies, 56. The rubric here for Lauds on Holy Innocents’ Day says that the blessing should follow how it was done during Compline the night before, i.e., without these gestures. 66 Ceremonies

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is instead the adult who “takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). This final transformation shows the pliability of children in the liturgy as they could become both younger and older, both innocent and powerful. The following day, Holy Innocents’ Day, the boy bishop leads all the divine offices and blesses everyone as he did in Compline the night before. Then, undoing in reverse order the events of the previous night, after Vespers the cross bearer takes the bishop’s staff from the boy bishop and gives it back to the bishop while he sings the same antiphon, Princeps ecclesie. These are the only two uses of this antiphon during the year.67 Now that the boy bishop ceremony is completed, the clergy and choristers process to the altar of St. Thomas on the north side of the west transept. This “dethroning” ceremony is never discussed in the scholarship on the boy bishop, but it is significant. Not only does the boy bishop’s reign have a defined time limit, but the power of the boy bishop is visibly given back to the bishop from whence it came. While some may consider this to be a moment of authoritarian control exercised by the powerful over the weak in vivid display, this terminus of the boy bishop also fulfills a spiritually significant purpose—the eventual humbling of all in authority, whether by scandal or death. In addition, this restoration of the bishop is significant given that the following feast day belongs to St. Thomas Becket. Thus, not only does the community witness the celebration of the Holy Innocents through the actions of the boy bishop and other choristers, they also witness their bishop “enthroned” on the eve of the most famous bishop-martyr’s feast day. Just as the boy bishop and choristers (as the Holy Innocents, Christ, etc.) worship the Holy Trinity and All Saints before the easternmost altar—which, according to the rubric, should be the altar of the Holy Innocents—so the bishop (as Thomas Becket) praises God before the altar of St. Thomas. It is interesting in this context to note that in England the boy bishop was never enthroned during the Deposuit as he was on the continent. Given the elaborate rubric at Salisbury, one could claim that the English did not need this part of the ceremony. The focus here was more on an accurate and moving depiction of the Feast of the Holy Innocents and the boy bishop’s embodiment of episcopal and Christological authority, not on the ritual inversion of power. This reasoning makes sense when we recall that, especially in France, the boy bishop and the Feast of Fools were similarly rowdy. In the continental climate, then, where the boy bishop possessed stronger associations with rioting, the Deposuit ceremony would have seemed equally powerful. But in England, where the unruly elements of the boy bishop and the Feast of Fools 67 Ceremonies

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were heavily curtailed, the liturgical connection to the Holy Innocents and the boy bishop himself could be more easily displayed. This article has reevaluated the boy bishop ceremony through the lens of liturgy. First, it has shown that the choristers’ ceremony should be disassociated from its riotous neighbor, the Feast of Fools. While the two feasts shared certain undisciplined moments (e.g., large feasts, unruly visitations, and general merriment), the boy bishop ceremony in England was sufficiently separated from these disorderly aspects. Second, a brief history of the Feast of the Holy Innocents has displayed a marked connection between that annual celebration and the boy bishop ceremony. While the two feasts did not grow up together, their relationship in the medieval period was undoubtedly intentional. Two further distinctions separated the boy bishop in England from continental and dramatic examples, which revealed that this particular liturgical ceremony in Salisbury was both unique to England yet emblematic for the country. Finally, a close examination of the liturgy at Salisbury reveals that the inversion of the boy bishop ceremony primarily served a devotional function through theatrical representation. That is, the boy bishop together with his choristers represented the narrative of the Holy Innocents, both past (their murder) and future (their continual praise of God as martyrs), including the role of the Christ child. These multiple and poly-chronological inversions—boy bishop becoming Christ child but also Christ-the-bishop; choristers becoming Holy the drama of the feast day as a meditation on children in Christian history. The boy bishop’s intricate, somatic blessing further demonstrated the spiritual purpose of his own inversion as the laity, clergy, choristers, and even the bishop himself witnessed this young man take on the episcopal role of protecting his flock. Clearly, if these inversions also enabled outlets for laughter, jesting, and misrule, these were secondary (and tolerated) consequences. This liturgical evidence also reveals how the medieval English church viewed and made use of children. That the church recognized a distinct stage of childhood for these choristers is without question. The liturgy of the boy bishop ceremony demonstrates, rather, that while the church desired to remember the sacrifices of the Holy Innocents and imitate their childish purity, it achieved this through a performance of children’s bodies. The power of the ceremony rested on the visual display of children taking on various roles in order to convey the didactic meaning of the feast day. It was not enough for the laity and clergy to be encouraged to be pure or clean, as the boy bishop’s sermon from 1490 instructed. Rather, the laity and clergy witnessed the power of this purity as the choristers became the Holy Innocents and the spotless martyrs praising God in heaven, and a lowly chorister became their shepherd

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on whose body their spiritual maintenance depended. These bodies, as objects in a theatrical and multitemporal display, performed inversions embodied within the Christian tradition. Thus, the boy bishop ceremony was not simply about childhood and its incorporeal traits, but rather about children and their ability to perform the duties of Christian living in exemplary fashion.

Acknowledgments

I thank Dyan Elliott and Barbara Newman for their careful reading and com menting on this article. All errors and omissions are my own.

chapter 3

Apocryphal Youth

The Childhood of the Irish Saint Máire Johnson The saints of Europe’s medieval hagiography, regardless of their regional tradition, generally possess portraits that observe the model of Jesus Christ provided in the four canonical Gospels, a pattern referred to as imitatio Christi. The kernel of this concept, which Pope Gregory i (r. 590–604) described in his highly-influential Dialogues of the late sixth century, is that a virtuous life that faithfully emulates the humility, charity, and deeds of the Savior constitutes the true essence of holiness.1 The saints of the Lives, therefore, tend to follow in Jesus’ footsteps both in their simple and in their miraculous actions; they sojourn in the wilderness, turn water into wine or ale, bless the faithful, heal the sick and injured, and even raise the dead. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John focus primarily on Jesus’ activities as an adult, and offer very little information about his childhood and adolescence. Where, then, did a writer of saintly biographies in the Middle Ages turn for examples of these formative years? The obvious solution, and one certainly followed in Ireland’s hagiographical genre, was to presume that what Jesus did as an adult, he must also have done as a child.2 Thus saints like Brigit of Kildare, Patrick of Armagh, and Ciarán 1 Gregory’s opinions have been thoroughly examined by William D. McCready, among others, in Signs of Sanctity: Miracles in the Thought of Gregory the Great (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989); see particularly pages 65–71. On the date, consult p. 2. Ann Elizabeth Kuzdale’s doctoral dissertation, “The Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great in the Literary and Religious Culture of Seventh- and Eighth-Century Europe” (University of Toronto, 1995), is a broad and useful survey of the text and influence of the Dialogues in the early Middle Ages. 2 Many of the Latin vitae and vernacular bethada (sg. bethu, betha) of Ireland exist in multiple manuscripts; where an anecdote is repeated, the additional relevant texts and chapters will be provided in square brackets, in rough chronological order, in the footnotes with the first reference; with the exception of the lengthy dossiers of Brigit of Kildare and Patrick of Armagh, subsequent references will be given in the text in the format (chapter, editor, page) or (chapter, editor, volume: page). When significant to the analysis, the date of a text will appear in the footnotes. From this point forward, references to the vitae signifies only the Latin works, to the bethada indicates only vernacular or macaronic works, and Lives refers to both. All translations from Latin are my own unless specifically indicated otherwise; transla tions from Old or Middle Irish rely more heavily on the work of prior scholars. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_005

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of Clonmacnoise turn water into ale or honey while still minors, according to the water-into-wine miracle Jesus performed at Cana in John 2:1–11.3 Similarly Saint Brigit, among other sanctified children, multiplies food, while nearly every Irish saint cures the sick from infancy forward including—for just a couple of cases—Saints Patrick, Finán of Kinnitty, and Dagán of Inishkeen.4 Naturally, many Irish saints also perform the ultimate Christological act of resurrection both as children and as adults, as seen in the vitae of Saints Patrick and Abbán of Moyarney.5 Where Ireland’s medieval hagiographers wished to remain within the standard scriptures but the New Testament proved insufficient, they also commonly employed Old Testament paradigms, especially that of Moses bringing forth water in Exod. 17:6 and Num. 20:11, to frame their

3 Vita I S. Brigitae 2.11, ed. and trans. Karina Hochegger, “Untersuchungen zu den ältesten Vitae Sanctae Brigidae” (M.Phil., University of Vienna, 2009), 104; for English rather than German translation, see “Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae: Background and Historical Value” 13, ed. and trans. Seán Connolly, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (jrsai) 119 (1989), 16 [Bethu Brigte 8, ed. and trans. Donncha Ó hAodha (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (dias), 1978), 2, 21; Betha Bhrigdi ll 1236–43, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890), 37–185]. Vita IV S. Patricii 14, ed. Ludwig Bieler, Four Latin Lives of St. Patrick: Colgan’s Vita Secunda, Quarta, Tertia, and Quinta (Dublin: dias, 1971), 60, trans. F. J. Byrne and Pádraig Francis, “Two Lives of Saint Patrick: Vita Secunda and Vita Quarta,” jrsai 124 (1994), 26 [Bethu Phátraic ll 167– 172, ed. Kathleen Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic: The Tripartite Life of Patrick I, Text and Sources (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1939), 8, also ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, The Tripartite Life of Patrick, with Other Documents Relating to the Saint, Part I (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1887; repr. Stuttgart: Klaus Reprint, Ltd., 1965), 14–15; Betha Patraic ll 108–112, Stokes, Lismore, 4, 152]. Vita S. Ciarani Abbatis Cluanensis 3, ed. W. W. Heist, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae ex Codice olim Salmanticensi nunc Bruxellensi (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), 78–9 [Vita S. Ciarani Abbatis de Cluain mic Nois 2, ed. Charles Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae ii (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1910; repr. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 201]. These and the subsequent cases mentioned in this paragraph are only a tiny handful of such examples in the medieval Lives of Ireland’s saints. 4 Vita S. Brigitae Cogitosi 3.4, Hochegger, 20, 22; an English translation is available in “Cogitosus’ Life of Saint Brigit: Content and Value” 1.3–1.7, ed. and trans. Seán Connolly and Jean-Michel Picard, jrsai 117 (1987), 13–14 [Vita I S Brigitae 2.12, 2.14, Hochegger, 106, 108; “Vita Prima” 14, 16, Connolly, 16–17; Bethu Brigte 7, 10, 12, Ó hAodha, 2–4, 21–2; Betha Bhrigdi ll 1250–1259, 1266–74, 1274–1305, Lismore, 37–9, 185–7]. Vita II / Vita IV S. Patricii 7, Bieler, 55–6, Byrne and Francis, 23–4 [Bethu Phátraic ll 134–144, Mulchrone, 7 and Stokes, 12, 13; Betha Patraic ll 86–90, Lismore, 3, 151]. Vita S. Finani Abbatis de Cenn Etigh 2, Heist, 153 [also ch. 2, Plummer, ii: 87]. Vita S. Dagaei mic Cairill Abbatis de Inis Cain Dego 3, Heist, 389. 5 Vita II / Vita IV S. Patricii 10, Bieler, 59; Byrne and Francis, 25 [Bethu Phátraic ll 159–66, Mulchrone, 8 and Stokes, 14–15; Betha Patraic ll 102–7, Lismore, 4, 152]. Vita S. Abbani Abbatis de Mag Arnaide et Cell Abbain 4, Heist, 258 [Vita S. Abbani Abbatis de Mag Arnaide 7, Plummer, ii

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portraits of youthful holiness. This tactic is visible in the vitae of Saints Finnian of Clonard, Molaisse of Leighlin, and Féchín of Fore.6 The textual evidence of Ireland’s Middle Ages, however, also includes an impressive array of scriptural stories not numbered among the standard canon, that is, of apocrypha; many elements of these narratives were preserved nowhere else.7 The Irish not only translated older non-canonical works but also composed a number of their own, both in Latin and in the vernacular, expanding the corpus still further.8 The Church in early Ireland used the abundant apocryphal material “on a scale [that] can only be described as considerable,” according to David Dumville; as producers of “the single largest body of evidence” from the period, the island’s hagiographers certainly did so too.9 Though the Lives possess parallels from Old Testament-related accounts like the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah and the excised fourteenth chapter of the Book of Daniel, known as Bel and the Dragon, the basis of their complex vision of imitatio Christi draws primarily from narratives that expand upon the life of Jesus himself, with particular inspiration drawn from texts like the Protevangelium Jacobi (ProtJac), Infancy Gospel of Thomas (InfGosp), Gospel of Ps.-Matthew (PsMatt), and Transitus Mariae (TransMar).10 These works explicitly address aspects of the conception, infancy, and childhood of Jesus, as well as the 6 Vita S. Finniani Abbatis de Cluain Iraird 3, Heist, 96–7; Vita S. Lasriani seu Molaisse Abbatis de Lethglenn 4, Heist, 341; and Vita S. Fechini Abbatis de Fauoria 5, Plummer, ii: 77. Orthographical variations in Latin or in the vernacular are original to the sources themselves. 7 David N. Dumville, “Biblical Apocrypha and the Early Irish: A Preliminary Investigation,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (pria) 73C (1973), 299, 377. 8 Dumville, “Biblical Apocrypha,” 308. Also Martin McNamara, The Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin: dias, 1975), 1. 9 Dumville, “Biblical Apocrypha,” 300; for the second quotation see Charles Doherty, “The Irish Hagiographer: Resources, Aims, Results,” in The Writer as Witness: Literature as Evidence, ed. Tom Dunne (Cork: Cork Univeristy Press, 1987), 10. 10 See, e.g., Máire Johnson, “Apocryphal Sanctity in the Lives of Irish Saints,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium (phcc) 29 (2009): 91–114 for additional study. The place of the apocrypha in the Lives is also a theme in Johnson, “ ‘Vengeance is Mine’: Saintly Retribution in Medieval Ireland,” in Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion, and Feud, ed. Paul Hyams and Susanna Throop (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 5–50; “Medicine and Miracle: Law Enforcement in the Lives of Irish Saints,” in Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. Wendy J. Turner and Sara M. B “In the Bursting of an Eye: Blinding and Blindness in Medieval Ireland’s Hagiography,” Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, ed. Kelly DeVries and Larissa Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 448–70. It also forms a component in “Snark and the Saint: The Art of the Irish Curse,” in Words that Tear the Flesh: Essays on Sarcasm in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Cultures, ed. Alan Baragona and Elizabeth Rambo (Boston: Walter DeGruyter, Inc., 2018), 63–84.

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nature of his divinity, providing abundant details to supplement the canonical Bible in framing the minority of Ireland’s holy men and women. The resulting portrait reveals the young subjects of the Lives as selected to receive God’s grace almost from the beginning; the miracles associated with Irish saints in their apocryphal youth thus signify an already-extant election rather than one earned solely through pious devotion and virtuous living. The use of the apocrypha to supplement portrayals of Irish imitatio Christi begins before the saints are even in utero, as some of the soon-to-be-expectant mothers of these holy infants experience celestial visitations that demonstrate both the sanctity of the future saints and the purity of their mothers. The night that Saint Maedóc of Ferns is conceived, his mother dreams that a moon descends from heaven and enters her mouth, while his father dreams that it is a star.11 Saint Buite of Monasterboice’s conception is also indicated by the fall of a star into his mother’s mouth.12 Similar visions also occur after conception, such as the “flammam ignis” [flame of fire] that Saint Finnian of Clonard’s mother experiences as entering her mouth and the “globus igneus” [fiery globe] from heaven that settles in the lap of Saint Mochuda’s pregnant mum.13 Although none of these hagiographical conception tales claims outright that their subject saints were immaculately conceived, they draw from a similar desire to demonstrate maternal purity; as Jane Cartwright observes regarding similar miraculous origins in the Lives of Welsh saints, these stories clear the saints’ mothers of any potential contamination by carnal desire or sexual pleasure.14 At the same time, the “purity of the future saint” is also

11 Vita S. Aedani sive Maedoc Episcopi ex Codice Cottoniano 1, Plummer, ii: 295 [Vita S. Aedani seu Maedoc Episcopi Fernensis 1, Heist, 234; Vita S. Maedoc Episcopi de Ferna 1, Plummer, I: 141]. The Cottonian text, usually referred to as Vespasian, was preserved in the British Library and likely dates to the twelfth century. The chronology of the other variants has yet to be reliably determined. See Pádraig Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), 432–3. This compendium not only summarizes the contents and contexts of the saints’ Lives and legends, it also provides considerable and highly useful references to scholarship concerning their dating. 12 Vita S. Boecii Episcopi de Mainistir Buite 1, Plummer, i: 87. This text must postdate the 1142 establishment of the community at Monasterboice, but the date is not otherwise certain; Ó Riain, Dictionary, 132. 13 Vita S. Finniani Abbatis de Cluain Iraird 1, Heist, 96; Vita S. Carthachi seu Mochuda Episcopi Lismorensis 1, Heist, 334. The vita of Finnian probably dates around 1200, while that of Mochuda appears to be somewhat earlier; Ó Riain, Dictionary, 471–2. 14 “Dead Virgins: Feminine Sanctity in Medieval Wales,” Medium Aevum 71, vol. 1 (2002),

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“enhance[d].”15 This stainlessness is underlined by narrative parallels to the Virgin Mary in the Protevangelium Jacobi and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, both of which arrived in Ireland around 700 ce.16 In both texts, Jesus’ birth occurs as a brilliant, blinding light that gradually withdraws, leaving an infant suckling at Mary’s breast.17 Portraits of the conception of Irish holy figures as generated through the ingestion of heavenly light, along with the gestational visions of saints’ mothers, emphasize the role of the spark of divine grace in their nativities. They also paint each saint’s mother as a new Mary, a sinless vessel through whom the sanctified child will enter the human world. If the saint is born from a pure woman aligned with the mother of Christ, then the saint is aligned with her son, tying the unborn infants to Jesus in imitatio Christi. The same apocryphal story also inspires the hagiographical birth narratives of several Irish saints. Though most saints follow the canonical model and arrive with minimal detail provided about their mothers’ labor, the Lives of three saints report that their mothers deliver them completely without pain, echoing the light-borne appearance of Jesus in ProtJac and InfGosp. In the betha of Colmán mac Lúacháin, Colmán’s mother not only delivers her sanctified son free of the usual pangs, but also enjoys an entire pregnancy without the weariness, sickness, or discomfort often experienced by mothers-to-be.18 Saint Declán’s birth causes no difficulty for his mother “pro sanctitate infantis in utero latentis” [due to the sanctity of the infant lying in (her) womb].”19 Saint 15 16

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Jane Tibbets Schulenberg, Forgetful of their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society ca. 500–1100 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 222. Martin McNamara, “Apocryphal Infancy Narratives: European and Irish Transmission,” in Irland und Europa im früheren Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung, ed. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), 132. ProtJac appears to have reached Ireland as a part of the I Compilation of infancy narratives, which provide the basis for the two main later variants found in Leabhar Breac (Dublin, ria ms 23.P.16) and the Liber Flavus Fergusiorum (Dublin, ria ms 23.O.48a–b) of the first half of the 1400s. ProtJac also appears in the poems of Blathmac son of Cú Brettan in the 700s ce. See Dumville, “Biblical Apocrypha,” 303–4. ProtJac 19:2, ed. J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 64; InfGosp 73:3, ed. Martin McNamara et al., Apocrypha Hiberniae I: Evangelia Infantiae (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 244–5, 320. It is likely some inspiration for the hagiographical narrative also comes from the canonical John 12:46, in which Jesus declares his arrival among humanity as “lux in mundum” [light into the world]. Subsequent references to these works will be given in the text in the format (text chapter, page) or (text chapter, editor, page) as relevant. Betha Colmáin meic Lúacháin 10, ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1911), 10–11. This text appears to be of the later twelfth century; Ó Riain, Dictionary, 197. Subsequent references will appear in the text in the format (chapter, editor, page). Vita S. Declani Episcopi de Ard Mor 3, Plummer, ii: 35–6. Ó Riain considers that the vita as extant probably dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century; see Dictionary

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Moling’s nativity is even more extraordinary, as he seems to coalesce between his mother’s hands after an angel signs her with the cross.20 These stories correspond to the prose InfGosp as it survives in Leabhar Breac (lb) and Liber Flavus Fergusiorum (lff), two fifteenth-century Irish manuscripts, as well as to the ProtJac. In InfGosp (lb), Mary experiences no pain in birthing Jesus, and the text describes the Savior’s arrival as being like light passing through glass. This narrative emphasizes that the Virgin remains immaculate and intact just as light can cross glass without shattering or damaging it; it also underlines the divine essence of her child, an essence that descends onto and into her but does not come from her.21 The birth of Jesus is also effortless in ProtJac and in the lff version of InfGosp. In both, Jesus arrives not as an infant but as a brilliant light that gradually assumes the shape of a baby boy and begins to nurse, a scene very close to that of the vita of Saint Moling.22 The Irish saints drawn in Christ’s image through the vehicle of these apocrypha, like Jesus himself, pass into and through their mothers without violating the purity of their maternal bodies; the mothers, in turn, become types of Mary, reinforcing their own unsullied status, their bodies as vessels of soon-to-beborn saints, and the already-extant holiness of their children. These sanctified infants, in imitatio Christi, thus possess the favor of divine grace long before they can perform any act of piety or humility. The labor and childbirth experienced by the mothers of Ireland’s saints see apocryphal inspiration in another fashion. When Saint Colmán Élo’s straining mother braces herself by grasping a branch of dry wood, the branch becomes green, puts down roots, and grows into a large tree.23 Saint Senán’s mother also 20 Vita S. Dairchelli seu Moling Episcopi in Tech Moling 1, ed. Heist, 353–4 [Vita S. Moling Episcopi de Tech Moling 1, ed. Plummer, II: 190]. On the date consult Ó Riain, Dictionary, 488, where he suggests it is from the later 1100s or thereabouts. This vision of Saint Moling’s birth is starkly distinct from the traumatic, snow-swept tale of the saint’s fourteenth-century Genemain ocus Betha 2.6–2.9, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, The Birth and Life of St. Moling (London: Harrison and Sons, 1907), 8–13. 21 Ch. 75:4, McNamara, 320. The comparison between the birth of Christ and the shining of light through glass originates in a fifth-century North African sermon erroneously attributed to Bishop Augustine of Hippo. While the sermon itself was not widely known, the image it used was adopted into two subsequent sermons of the late sixth and early seventh centuries, one of which became very popular in Ireland. See Andrew Breeze, “The Blessed Virgin and the Sunbeam through Glass,” Celtica 23 (1999), 19–29. 22 ProtJac 19:2, Elliott, 64; InfGosp (lff) 74:1–2, McNamara, 244–5. An excerpted translation of InfGosp (lff) is also available in Máire Herbert and Martin McNamara, eds., Irish Biblical Apocrypha: Selected Texts in Translation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989); see §§15– 16, pages 31–2. 23 Vita S. Colmani Abbatis de Land Elo 1, Heist, 209 [Plummer, i: 258]. This vita likely dates to the twelfth century, but is held by several scholars to have a core that goes back as far as the 800s; Ó , 203–4.

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holds a stake, a rowan that sprouts flowers and leaves.24 The Old Testament account of Aaron’s rod taking root and budding as an almond tree in Num. 17:8 likely provides some foundation, but there is also a popular apocryphon known as “The Wonders of the Night of Nativity.” In this brief text, all vines ripened and produced mature grapes, the palm trees were in full flower, and all fields in Judah were filled with nectar-bearing blossoms and sweet fruit—entirely out of season—the night that Jesus was born.25 The similarity of miracle between the nativities of Jesus, Colmán Élo, and Senán once again ties Ireland’s holy infants to an apocryphal image of imitatio Christi. Ireland’s saints inevitably receive the sacrament of baptism, usually as infants. For their hagiographers, this powerful and essential Christian rite provides another opportunity to draw on apocryphal exempla in order to frame their sanctified subjects in the pattern of Jesus himself. The priest who baptizes Saint Patrick, a holy man described as blind from birth, finds himself without a baptismal font. He puts the infant Patrick on the ground and signs both Patrick and the ground under him with the cross, whereupon a spring wells up under the tiny child. When the priest washes his face in this water, which has been sanctified both by the cross and by the boy saint, he receives his sight and the ability to read and uses both to complete Patrick’s baptism.26 The tale of Saint Comgall of Bangor’s baptism makes the link between saint and sight even clearer; the blind priest in this case does not wash his face in the baptismal water until after Comgall has been immersed in it and the ritual is complete, and the moment the liquid touches the priest’s face he regains his vision.27 For two saints, this narrative actually occurs before the saints are even born. When a man who has been blind his entire life bathes in water in which Saint Molaisse of Leighlin’s pregnant mother has washed herself, he instantly

24 Betha Shenain meic Geirrgin ll 1884–9, Lismore, 57, 204. This vernacular work may date to sometime in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century; Ó Riain, Dictionary, 557–9. The Book of Lismore, of the mid-1400s, survives in three manuscripts: Chatsworth, Book of Lismore, folios 41ra1–84ra9 (facsimile pagination); Dublin, ria ms 57, 47 (formerly 23.K.5); and Dublin, ria MS 478,474 (formerly 23.H.6). Ó Riain, Dictionary, 558. 25  §§2, 3, 12, Herbert and McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha, 33. 26 Vita II / Vita IV S. Patricii 3, Bieler, 52; Byrne and Francis, 21 [Bethu Phátraic ll 89–100, Mulchrone, 5 and Stokes, 8–9; Betha Patraic ll 57–65, Lismore, 2, 150–151, in which text the priest uses the infant saint’s hand to make the sign of the cross]. The Vita II and Vita IV are closely related texts that appear to draw from the macaronic Bethu Phátraic; the Latin pair likely date to the eleventh or twelfth century while the Bethu is of the ninth century. The Lismore Betha may be of the late 1300s or early 1400s. Ó Riain, Dictionary, 529. 27 Vita S. Comgalli Abbatis Bennchorensis 2, Heist, 332 [Vita S. Comgalli Abbatis de Bennchor 6, Plummer, ii: 5]. Ó Riain places both works to the 1100s; Dictionary

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receives the gift of his vision.28 The tale is even more complex in the vita of Saint Mochoemóg. When Mochoemóg is still in utero, another saint, Fachtna, is made blind “aliquot eventu” [by some event] the hagiographer opts not to explain. When Fachtna prays for a physician able to heal him, an angel tells him that the only cure is to wash his eyes and face in breastmilk from Saint Mochoemóg’s pregnant mother. Even though she is not yet lactating, when Fachtna tells her to milk her breasts in the name of the Trinity and in recognition of her infant son’s holiness, she is able to do so; Fachtna then washes his eyes and instantaneously his blindness is undone.29 All of these narratives, each in their own way, parallel a story in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Here, the soldier who pierces the crucified Christ’s side with a spear and causes the flow of blood and water in John 19:34 is given the name of Longinus, and is described as blind in one eye. When Christ’s blood runs down his spear and onto his hand, Longinus rubs the blood in his visionless eye and instantly receives his sight, whereupon he accepts the Gospel message.30 This correspondence once again aligns Irish saints with Jesus, drawing direct ties between the waters that bathe or the milk meant to nourish holy Irish infants and the blood of the crucified Christ. Longinus’s story and its appearance in Ireland’s hagiography demonstrate not only the saving grace immanent in both saint and Savior in an apocryphal conceptualization of imitatio Christi, but also the power of baptism to bestow that grace—figured as both a metaphorical and a literal light, perceived by those newly cured of blindness—upon those who receive it. The use of the apocrypha as inspiration for the stories of the minority of Ireland’s saints is not restricted to their gestation, birth, and infancy. Irish saints continue to follow the pattern of imitatio Christi as children moving

28 Ch. 2, Heist, 340. 29 Vita S. Mochoemog Abbatis de Liath Mochoemog 4, Plummer, ii: 165–6. The text is likely of the twelfth century; see Ó Riain, Dictionary, 460. 30 Life of Longinus 55–8, ed. and trans. James Carney, The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan together with the Irish Gospel of Thomas and a Poem of the Virgin Mary (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1964), 20–21; see also the translation of Ann Dooley, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in Ireland,” in The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe, ed. Zbiniew Izydorczyk (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts, 1997), 366–8; pages 381–3 also offer discussion and translation of other Irish versions of Longinus’s story, including that found in lff, in which Longinus begins the story blind in both eyes rather than only one. For another translation of the lff narrative, see Gospel of Nicodemus x.1, Herbert and McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha, 69. The text of Longinus’s Life was known to the Irish by the early 700s, in which era the above Blathmac translated and incorporated it into his poems.

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in accordance with various apocryphal examples from the Savior’s life. Saint Molua, as a little boy, exhales such a pleasing odor that the priest who wakens him from his nap is fully satiated and subsists solely on the bread and wine of Communion (“corpus et sanguinem Christi” [body and blood of Christ]) thereafter.31 This fulfilling breath is also found in the InfGosp (lb) and in InfGosp (lff), in which Christ’s birth is attended by an aroma of luxurious sweetness and spice that satisfies “noble souls” (saeranma) forever.32 In this hagiographical narrative, then, Saint Molua’s wondrous breath bears the same curative power and divinely-bestowed grace as does the person of the baby Jesus. This young Irish saint again follows an apocryphal road to the goal of imitatio Christi. Saint Molua is linked to the apocryphal vision of Jesus in yet another way. According to his vita, Molua’s father develops a terrible sickness in his foot severe enough that the appendage must be amputated. The saint, still a boy, is saddened to see his father’s foot separated from his body, so he puts it back where it belongs. It adheres (conglutinus est) immediately, returning the saint’s father to physical integrity.33 This curious tale parallels the Infancy Gospel of Thomas—but not, it appears, the main InfGosp texts most widely represented in medieval Ireland. In the Greek and Latin variants, the child Jesus heals an individual who accidentally splits his own foot with an axe; the Greek A text describes the wounded person as a man who merely, if deeply, cuts the sole of his foot, while in InfGosp (Greek B) the man severs his sole completely.34 The victim of the Latin InfGosp, however, is not a man, as in Molua’s vita, but a youth.35 Not only, then, does this narrative correspondence reiterate the hagiographical modeling of an Irish saint on a non-canonical Christological 31 Vita Prior S. Lugidi seu Moluae Abbatis de Cluain Ferta Molua 5, Heist, 132[VitaS. Moluae Abbatis de Cluain Ferta Moluae 6, Plummer, ii:  207–8]. The vita of Molua as a whole is probably of the twelfth century as extant, though the Vita Prior may possess a core that extends back to roughly 800 ce; see Ó Riain, Dictionary, 491. This narrative may also be linked to stories in which youthful saints cure disorders of speech or sight by exhaling on the affected individuals, as in, e.g., Vita Prior S. Lugidi seu Moluae 12, Heist, 133 [Vita S. Moluae 12, Plummer, ii: 209] or Betha Colmáin meic Lúacháin 16, Meyer, 18. 32 InfGosp (lb)/InfGosp (lff) 73:3, McNamara, 242–5, 318–21. See also “Infancy Gospel” 15–16, Herbert and McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha, 31–2, and Liber de Infantia Salvatoris 73, Elliott, 110.) 33 Ch. 9, Heist, 133; Plummer, ii: 208. 34 InfGosp (Grk A) 10, Elliott, 78; InfGosp (Grk B) 9, Elliott, 82. Future references to these sources will be given in the text according to the format of (variant chapter, page). 35 InfGosp (Lat) 8, ed. and trans. ames, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1924; repr. Berkeley: The Apocryphile Press, 2004), 63. Future references to this text will be given in the text according to the format of (variant chapter, page).

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paradigm, but it also may witness the presence in early Ireland of a variant InfGosp that is not widely attested. Saint Molaisse of Leighlin’s vita provides another instance of the same text—and thus the same kind of imitatio Christi. As a little boy, Molaisse saves his foster-mother’s life when she is bitten on her hand by a venomous serpent. The sanctified lad makes the sign of the cross on her wound, and she is straightaway cured.36 In the Greek A and Latin versions of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, James the brother of Jesus is bitten; the young Christ breathes upon the bite and heals both the wound and the pain it causes, saving his brother’s life.37 This episode may also have inspired hagiographical stories of youthful saints—including Molua and Colmán mac Lúacháin—who cure muteness or blindness with their exhalations.38 Once again, young Irish saints are figured in imitatio Christi according to apocryphal example, and may also reveal an InfGosp text not generally well-represented in early Ireland. Clearly non-canonical scriptures offered considerable inspiration for the curative episodes of medieval Irish saints during their minority, but depictions of apocryphal imitatio Christi also concern the punitive consequences that befall those who challenge the identity of these children as sanctified. The woman tending Saint Colmán Élo, for instance, “ira repentina movebatur adversus sanctum puerum” [motivated by sudden anger against the holy boy], hits Colmán with the bonds used to hobble cows. Though she does perform penance to Colmán’s foster-father, the next day the hand with which she struck the sainted lad convulses and then simply drops off of her wrist; its location and the act of divine vengeance that severed it are then marked with a stone.39 In a similar narrative, Saint MacNisse of Connor’s foster-mother, aggravated that the boy fell asleep and let the calves get to their dams to nurse, strikes MacNisse. Her hand falls off immediately (statim), but is subsequently reintegrated to its wrist when MacNisse offers prayers on her behalf.40 These punishments closely follow the example of the Protevangelium Jacobi and Gospel of Ps.-Matthew, the latter of which is compiled from ProtJac and

36 Ch. 2, Heist, 340. The vita of Molaisse of Leighlin appears to be from the 1100s. Ó Riain, Dictionary 486. 37 InfGosp (Grk A) 16, Elliott, 79; InfGosp (Lat) 14, James, 65. This anecdote does not appear in the Greek B text. 38 See footnote 31 above. 39 Ch. 2, Heist, 209–10; Plummer, i Vita S. MacNissei Episcopi Connorensis 2, ed. Heist, 404. Riain describes this text only as “late.” , 419.

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InfGosp.41 Here, one of the Virgin Mary’s midwives, Salome, cannot accept that Mary remains intact after giving birth to Jesus, and she inserts her finger to test Mary’s condition. Upon discovering that Mary remains whole, Salome declares that her disbelief has tempted God, whereupon her guilty hand, enveloped with an intense sensation of burning, falls away from her body. Her subsequent worship of and prayer to the infant Christ restores her to physical integrity.42 The Transitus Mariae, an account of Mary’s death and funerary rites known in Ireland in the 700s, when it was translated into the vernacular, also parallels the hagiographical anecdote.43 In TransMar, a Jew who tries to knock Mary’s body off of its bier loses his hands because they stick to the bier and separate from his arms. He is later healed when he professes belief in Mary’s virginity and her son’s identity as Christ.44 A related Marian episode from TransMar provides additional material to hagiographical instances of punishment for attempts to harm Irish saints. Brigands who plan to kill Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise while the boy is out tending his parents’ cattle, for example, are struck blind and paralyzed in place until they perform penance. At that point, the lad Ciarán releases them from their immobility and cures them completely.45 In TransMar, Jews who attempt to kill the Apostles at Mary’s funeral are also struck blind and paralyzed in their hands and feet. Those who later declare belief in Jesus as the son of God receive merciful recovery of their mobility and faculties.46 These instances use the apocrypha to draw the sainted youngsters of Ireland’s Lives closer to imitatio Christi through his holy mother, a pattern already seen in the saints’ nativity stories. Jesus’ origins in the Immaculate Conception and, in texts like PsMatt, his arrival in a painless birth (or even as a coalescence of light as in ProtJac, InfGosp (lb) or InfGosp (lff)), testify both to Mary’s sinlessness and to Jesus’ divine nature as Christ. A challenge to Mary’s postpartum virginity, such as that of Salome’s examination of Mary’s physical integrity or the post-mortem assaults upon her body, is an attack upon Jesus’ identity as the anointed of God, and thus a denial that Jesus is the savior foretold and fulfilled according to the Bible. Attempts upon the lives of the 41 McNamara, Apocrypha, 6; also J. C. Marsh-Edwards, “Our Debt to the Apocryphal Infancy Gospels,” The Irish Ecclesiastical Record 105 (1966), 366. 42 ProtJac 20, Elliott, 65; PsMatt 13, Elliott, 93–4. 43 McNamara, Apocrypha, 9. 44 TransMar 39–44, Herbert and McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha, 128. Subsequent references to this apocryphon will be cited in the text according to the format (chapter, editors, pages). TransMar contains several such anti-Jewish anecdotes. 45 Ch. 7, Heist, 79; Plummer, I: 202. 46 8, 45–6, Herbert and McNamara, 128–9.

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Apostles likewise are attempts upon their teacher, Jesus, and upon the Gospel message they all carry. When this textual outline is brought into the Lives of Irish saints, any assailant of a saint’s person, regardless of that saint’s age, also effectively rejects the divine grace that accords the holy individual a status as sanctified. These uses of Marian-based anecdota, therefore, continue to fill in the details of an apocryphal portrait of Irish imitatio Christi. The portrait comes into even sharper focus with the narrative declarations that the physical penalties for these acts—whether targeting Mary and the apostles in the apocrypha, or the Irish saints of the Lives—are all rescinded with miraculous healing once the perpetrators acknowledge Jesus’ divine identity or, by extension, the immanent grace of sanctity in the persons of Ireland’s saints. The exempla discussed here offer only a tiny slice of the full image of apocryphal holiness in the Lives of Ireland’s sanctified men and women. As studies like those of St. John D. Seymour, Aideen O’Leary, and Máire Herbert (among others) show, the non-canonical works known to Ireland’s medieval hagiographers persist in a variety of ways throughout the genre.47 Indeed, these same hagiographers do not seem to have perceived much distinction between canonical and non-canonical, and instead considered the holiness of the texts’ subjects sufficient justification to use their material regardless of any official ecclesiastical view. Where apocryphal works are woven into the stories of saints during their childhoods, the result may parallel a saint to an Old Testament prophet or a New Testament apostle, but the predominant correspondence brings the young saint into alignment with the Savior. This paradigm of imitatio Christi, however, is not really about saints displaying the type of humility and piety shown by Jesus, a pattern already provided by canonical Scripture. In these apocryphally-inspired visions of sanctity, the saint is recognized as blessed by God’s grace from at least the moment of conception, and onward, rather than earning that holy status through a devoted, perfect Christian life. The miracles through which the childhood of the Irish saint follows the steps of imitatio Christ thus designate an already-existing Seymour, “Notes;” O’Leary, “An Irish Apocryphal Apostle: Muirch ’s Portrayal of Saint Patrick,” Harvard Theological Review 89 no. 3 ( 996), 287–301; Herbert, “An Infancy Narrative of Saint Ciar n,” 14 (1994), 1–8. See also M ire Johnson, “Apocryphal Sanctity.”

chapter 4

Minors and the Miraculous

The Cure-Seeking Experiences of Children in Twelfth-Century English Hagiography Ruth J. Salter Bartholomew of Creake had a little daughter who was “forti febrium estu teneretur” [held in the burning heat of fever]; this was a cause of distress to the girl’s mother, “egrotanti filie mater condolens.”1 In an attempt to find a remedy, the girl’s mother made a candle, with a vow to offer it to the shrine of William of Norwich in return for her daughter’s health. No sooner had she begun making this candle, then her daughter’s fever abated. The woman then had the candle offered to the tomb of William and, as recorded in the miracula, the girl never suffered from a fever again.2 Hagiographical collections of posthumous miracles, miracula, can provide fascinating insights into the lives of the individuals who sought divine aid through saintly intercession, owing to the personal details which many reports include. The above account, found in Thomas of Monmouth’s Vita et Passione S. Willelmi Martyris Norwicensis (hereafter Willelmi), produced c. 1150–1172, is no different.3 In fact, where miracula particularly excel is in shedding light on the experiences of ill health and cure-seeking of those in society who are often otherwise absent within medieval written records. The value that miracula have in providing an insight into socio-medical aspects of 1 Vita et Passione S. Willelmi Martyris Norwicensis [Willelmi].3.xxv, in Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich, ed. and trans. Augustus Jessop and Montague R. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896). It should be noted that Miri Rubin has recently published a new edition of the hagiography, in translation, see: Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Passion of St William of Norwich, trans. Miri Rubin (London: Penguin, 2014). In both editions the account numbering is, for the most part, the same. Therefore, as the Jessop and James edition also includes the Latin, it will be referred to here for the Latin, while Rubin’s edition will be used for the translated text. Any accounts where the numbering differs between the two will be clearly signposted. 2 Willelmi.3.xxv. 3 It should be noted that both published editions of William’s hagiography have been published under translated titles, as referred to above. For the purposes of clarity however Willelmi miracula referred to, will be referenced by an abbreviated form of the Latin title so as to clearly mark them out.

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history, and thus in revealing contemporary understandings of, and interactions with, the cults of saints, has been recognised by those working in this field for some time.4 Indeed, the particular benefit of using miracula to consider medieval childhood, children’s health, and familial dynamics was established by Ronald C. Finucane in his ground-breaking monograph The Rescue of the Innocents.5 In this work, Finucane took a longue-durée and pan-European approach to the subject in order to consider differences in practices between saints’ cults in southern and northern Europe but he paid particular attention to continental European cults from the thirteenth century onwards.6 More recently, the field has been added to through the work of Jenni Kuuliala, who also contributes to this current volume; her focus on disability in canonization proceedings from late-medieval Europe has shed light on children’s health and familial dynamics at this time.7 While previous studies have successfully proved the benefits of researching cult practices and hagiographical records, there is more to be done to understand the experiences of the cure-seekers recorded within the miracula so as to better comprehend their perceptions of ill health and cure, and of the miraculous cure-seeking process. Considering this aspect from the perspective of the “minors”—the children and youths—recorded in the miracula can be particularly beneficial in building a stronger sense of the place of younger individuals within familial and societal contexts, and in relation to health and healthcare.8 4 Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London: J. M. Dent, 1977); Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le Miracle dans la France Médiévale (XIe– XIIe siécle) (Paris: Cerf, 1985); André Vauchez, trans. Jean Birrell, Sainthood in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215, revised edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). More recently Simon Yarrow and Rachel Koopmans have produced works which continue to develop the study of saints’ cults and miracles, see: Simon Yarrow, Saints and their Communities: Miracles Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Rachel Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 5 Ronald C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997). 6 Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 1–15. 7 Jenni Kuuliala, “The Infirm Child between Parental Worry and Divine Powers,” 87–106. For previous research by Kuuliala on this topic see: “Disability and Social Integration: Constructions of Childhood Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonisation Processes,” PhD Thesis, University of Tampere, 2013; Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages. Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Can onization Processes, Studies in the History of Daily (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). It should be noted that here the term “minor” is used in its broadest sense to refer to children and youths, younger individuals who, whilst growing in possible independence with age,

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Building on Finucane’s methodology by taking an in-depth and multianalytic approach to the accounts relating to the healing of young cure-seekers provides a fascinating and multi-faceted result, thus allowing for increased understanding of child health and healthcare in the Middle Ages. To open this initial dialogue into children’s experiences of holy healthcare, and consequently begin developing a better picture of these individuals’ cure-seeking experiences, certain key questions must be raised. Firstly, how can younger cure-seekers be identified, and how present are they, within the miracula? Secondly, what types of afflictions did the minors suffer from and, like the daughter of Bartholomew of Creake, were many young cure-seekers supported in the cure-seeking process? Lastly, what might children experience on their journeys to the cult centres, and what might a young cure-seeker experience within the sacred space of the saint’s cult-centre and, potentially, in their interactions with the saints themselves? To answer these questions a multimethodological approach will be taken, involving textual, linguistic, and statistical methods of analysis, to reveal the presence of this highly elusive, yet highly present, group within medieval society. Furthermore, in considering the minors in the miracula it will be possible to gain further insight and raise further questions about both this method of healthcare not just for younger cure-seekers but for contemporary society. The current focus will also shift, geographically and chronologically, from those of Finucane and Kuuliala. Here, attention will be focused on England and seven twelfth-century saints’ cults and their associated miracula. Focusing on one century and one geographic area will act as a focused lens through which to initially raise these questions. In addition to Willelmi these miracula are: Miracula S. Swithuni (hereafter Swithuni); Eadmer of Canterbury’s Miracula S. Dunstani (hereafter Dunstani); Liber Eliensis (hereafter Eliensis); Geoffrey of Burton’s Vita [et Miracula] S. Moduenne Virginis (hereafter Moduenne); Vita et Miracula S. Æbbe Virginis (hereafter Æbbe); and Miracula S. Jacobi (hereafter Jacobi).9 Particular attention will be paid were still recognised as “other” to adults and thus, for example, were still recognised as being under the guardianship of their parents. 9 The six other miracula analysed here are, in order of reference and chronology: Miracula S. Swithuni (hereafter Swithuni) in ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge, The AngloSaxon Minsters of Winchester: The Cult of St. Swithun, Winchester Studies 4.ii (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2003), 642–97; Eadmer of Canterbury, Miracula S. Dunstani (hereafter Dunstani) in ed. and trans. Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 160–211; History of the Isle of Ely, from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth (hereafter ), trans. Janet Fairweather (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005); Geoffrey of Burton, Life and Miracles of St Modwenna, (hereafter ) ed. and trans. Robert Bartlett (Oxford: Oxford University

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to minors, such as the daughter of Bartholomew of Creak, who successfully sought the assistance of William of Norwich. Not only is William’s miracula the largest of the seven collections but at only 12 years old when he was, supposedly, martyred by the Jewish community in Norwich, William was himself a minor. Before consideration can be given to experiences of cure-seeking children, attention must be given to how minors can be identified within the miracula. Finucane and Shulamith Shahar have both argued that medieval adults recognised childhood and that childhood, and children, were seen to be “different”: a point which often led to disbelief of what children said and an acceptance of the playful and active nature of children.10 Similarly youths, especially boys, were often seen as reckless in play with peers. This stereotype is reflected in St Modwenna’s miracula in an account of an “iuuenis” [youth] called Godric who accidentally swallowed a brooch whilst showing-off to “duas iuuenculas” [two girls].11 This attitude to youth also reflects the transitional nature of that agegroup and the transformative nature of puberty. There remains an element of child-like playfulness but there are the beginnings of more adult interests too: such as interests in the opposite sex. Godric’s misadventures in attempting to get the attention of, and perhaps impress, the two “iuuenculas” provides a good example of this. Certain characteristics of juvenility are also reflected in humoural theory, as noted originally in the classical Hippocratic Corpus and later by medieval authors such as Bede. In Bede’s De temporum ratione, like the earlier Hippocratic Regimen, a four-stage process for the “Ages of Man” is shown to correlate with the four humours.12 With regards to minors, Bede commented Press, 2002); Vita et Miracula S. Æbbe Virginis (hereafter Æbbe) in ed. and trans. Robert Bartlett, The Miracles of Saint Æbbe of Coldingham and Saint Margaret of Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–67; and Miracula S. Jacobi (hereafter Jacobi) in Brian Kemp, “The Miracles of the Hand of St James: Translated with and Introduction,” Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 65 (1970): 1–19. The Latin title for St James’ miracula comes from the title recorded the sole surviving manuscript copy of the miracula, dated to the early thirteenth century, now Gloucester, Gloucester Cathedral Library ms 1, fols.171v–175v. 10 Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 10; Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1990), 3. 11 Moduenne.48. Translating “iuuenculas” highlights an issue with the terminology relating to childhood and children as there is no specific term for female youths, as indicated by “iuuenculas” in this account. Therefore, in his translation of Moduenne, Bartlett refers to the two as “two girls” although the Latin implies a more specific recognition of their age, and, importantly, that they are of a similar age to Godric. 12 Bede, The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 100–1; and Hippocrates. Regimen I. xxxii–iv Hippocrates, Regimen i in Hippocrates, Heracleitus, Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humours. Aphorisms. Regimen 1

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that blood was most present in childhood, resulting in cheerfulness, tenderheartedness, and laughter; red bile was most prominent in youth and could cause leanness, boldness, and irritability.13 Considering that children and youths were recognised as “other” it is no surprise that minors should be marked out in hagiography by specific terminology reflecting their status. Moreover, a range of expressions were employed by hagiographers to identify the different age stages of childhood and youth. The Latin terminology used within the miracula indicates that a wide age-range of minors were assisted by the saints: Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Latin terminology used in first instance to denote the age of minors within Willelmi

Latin terminology used to imply age

Young cure-seekers Male

filius/filia puer/puella parvulus/parvula (adj.) decennem [aged 10] iuvenis/iuvena septennem [aged 7] virgo infantus/infanta octennis [aged 8] puellulus/puellula unclear Total

Female

Total

7 5 1 2 2 1 0 1 0 0 0

3 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 1 1 1

10 5 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

19

11

30

Dreams. Heracleitus: On the Universe, trans. William H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library 150 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1931), 223–95. For further discussion of age and the various medieval theories on the Ages of Man, see: Jonathan A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988); and Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). For an archaeological perspective see: Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014). 13 Bede, The Reckoning of Time

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The language of childhood was capable then, as it is now, of being fluid in its usage, yet specific terminology associated with childhood is present in the miracula.14 Moreover, while there are few accounts in which the specific age of minors is recorded within Willelmi, the variety of terminology highlights an obvious understanding of age range across childhood by use of language such as infantus [infant] and iuuennis [youth]. While most of the terminological forms found in Willelmi need little further discussion, attention does need to be paid to the term filius/filia [son/daughter]. What is particularly interesting about this choice of wording is that identity is recognised through the cure-seeker’s relationship to a parental, and often paternal, figure. Rather than being identified by age, or age category, the children in these accounts are identified by their dependency on their parents. In most accounts of this nature the narrative strongly implies that the cureseeker is still a minor, but Willelmi does includes two accounts in which the filius appears to be an adult. Lewin, who suffers from a long-term illness, is initially referred to as “homo” [a man] and later as “filius” when in relation to his father and his active role in cure-seeking.15 There is another unnamed individual, possessed by a demon, recorded as the son of Richard and Silvrun of Needham, however as the strength of seven men is barely enough to restrain him it appears likely that this individual was full-grown.16 Despite the potential that these two individuals are older, the use of “filius” in both cases suggests that Richard’s son and Lewin are still under the care and protection of their parents. However, as these two cure-seekers are possibly adults they have been excluded from this current analysis. A comment must also be made regarding the one account recorded as “unclear” on the above table. This account involves Hugelina of Rockland, for whom no age-specific terminology is recorded, who was brought to William’s shrine by her father. That Hugelina is one of four individuals recorded in this chapter, and that the other three are minors, suggests a purposeful grouping of four accounts of child-related miracles.17 Alternatively, Hugelina could be an unmarried adult woman still under the protection of her

14 Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 6. In discussing medieval recognitions of age, and different stages of minority, it is worth noting the counterargument of Schultz, who disagrees with constrictive categorisation of ages, which he sees as “a modern obsession,” see: James A. Schultz, The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 41. 15 Willelmi.2.iv. 16 Willelmi.5.xiii. 17 Willelmi

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father, thus stressing the connection between female identity, sexual maturity, and age.18 Interestingly, compared to the other six hagiographers, Thomas of Monmouth particularly appears to favour this terminology of dependency. This choice of phrasing appears less precise, yet this is an outcome of Thomas of Monmouth’s desire to record the more specific personal details for each cure-seeker. This can be observed in the fact that 36% of minors in Willelmi are named. Comparatively, named children equate to just under a quarter of cure-seekers if all seven miracula are analysed together. Thomas of Monmouth focuses on naming not just the child, but also, even preferably, the parents; as can be seen in the naming of Bartholomew of Creak and elsewhere, such as in the case of the ill son of Gurwan the tanner.19 Naming the minor, or their parents, and thus clearly identifying the successfully cured individual, was clearly favoured by Thomas of Monmouth. One reason for this could be that, as William’s cult was still in its infancy, being able to establish specific beneficiaries of the boy-martyr’s intercession added strength to the claims of his sanctity: Like an innocent lamb led to the slaughter… So the glorious boy and martyr of Christ, William, dying in this world… was crowned with the blood of glorious martyrdom and achieved the kingdom of eternal glory, alive for eternity… And his body works wonders gloriously on earth by the omnipotence of divine mercy.20 So concludes the account of William’s death on 22nd March 1144, with Thomas of Monmouth keenly emphasising William’s piety and purity, and his childlike innocence and naivety. The saint’s young age thus adds to the horrific account of his supposed torture and death, and the signs of his early piety adding to the justification for his perceived saintliness.21 Indeed, whilst he was never officially canonized, William’s death was rapidly followed by the development of 18

For further reading on the connections between sexual identity and maturity, life stage, and the female body see: Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 450–1500 (London: Phoenix Giants, 1996), 93; and Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 24–30. For more on marriage see: Leyser, Medieval Women, 106–9; Phillips, Medieval Maidens, 27; and Orme, Medieval Children, 334–7. 19 Willelmi.3.xxv, 4.ii. As an aside, Thomas of Monmouth emphasises his desire to confirm details of the miraculous for himself in the final account of Willelmi, this sees him journeying to Canterbury to confirm details concerning the cure-seeker’s journey, see: Willelmi.7.xix. 20 Willelmi.1.v. 21 Willelmi.1.i

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a popular cult and one which the monastic community at Norwich, although hesitant at first, grew to support.22 It only took just over a month between the discovery of William’s body in Thorpe Wood (25th March) and the initial translation of the body to the monk’s cemetery at Norwich Cathedral Priory (24th April): the latter quickly succeeded by William’s production of miraculous healings.23 Considering William’s own young age at the time of his death, on the cusp between childhood and puberty, the question must be raised as to whether there was a belief that William would be more likely to favour cure-seekers of a similar age. Does Willelmi imply that younger cure-seekers, and their parents, sought out William as a “pediatric saint?” Certainly, within the seven-book hagiography for William, just over a third of the 83 cure-seekers recorded can be categorised as minors: Table 4.2.24 That the presence of young cure-seekers is notable in all seven miracula indicates recognition on the part of the hagiographer, but also from those who came to the shrine of that saint, that there was an importance in the saint’s abilities to cure children. However, William was clearly not the only saint for whom the healing of younger cure-seekers was seen to be an important trait. Within six of the seven miracula approximately a third of cure-seeking accounts relate to minors: only Swithuni and Moduenne contain lower percentages. Indeed, in the case of St Æbbe, a little-known early English saint whose cult-centre was located in the Scottish Borders at Coldingham, the percentage is higher still.25 However, it should be noted that the case of Æbbe is somewhat unique in the fact that the miracula also records a higher percentage of female cure-seekers.26 The latter is possibly a result of Coldingham Priory being a 22 Thomas of Monmouth indicates that the monastic community were at first hesitant to recognise the saintly merits of William, see: Willelmi.1.xviii–xix, 2.i–ii. For further discussion on the cult of St William of Norwich see: Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, 122–68. 23 Willelmi. 2.iv, 2.vi, 2.vii. These three accounts are: Lewin’s recovery from a long-standing illness, Willelmi.2.iv; Bothilda’s rescue from a fifteen-day labour, Willelmi.2.vi; and a virgin from Dunwich’s escape from a violent incubus who was possessing her, Willelmi.2.vii. 24 Thomas of Monmouth also records three accounts in which the subject of the account was not healed. Two of these are clear-cut accounts of saintly punishment, see: Willelmi.3.xii, 4.ix. The third account is more ambiguous as it involves a saintly punishment, of William’s uncle Godwin, but not of the female subject who appears to remain uncured of her ill health at the close of the account, see: Willelmi.5.v. 25 St Æbbe and her cult centre at Coldingham are relatively understudied, for an overview of the twelfth-century cult see: Ruth J. Salter, “Experiencing Miracula: Cure-Seekers, Cure-Seeking and Cure-Giving in Twelfth-Century English Hagiography,” PhD Thesis, University of Reading, 2015, 37–42. 26 Of the 42 cure seekers bbe’s miracula 24 are female and 18 are male.

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Minors and the Miraculous Table 4.2 The presence of minors within the seven miracula

Saint and cult centre

Miracula

Cured Young individuals cure-seekers %

St Swithun, Winchester Cathedral St Dunstan, Canterbury Cathedral St Æthelthryth, Ely Cathedral St Modwenna, Burton Abbey William, Norwich Cathedral St Æbbe, Coldingham Priory St James, Reading Abbey Total

Anon., Miracula S. Swithuni [Swithuni], c. 1100

50

10

20%

Eadmer of Canterbury, Miracula S. Dunstani [Dunstani], c. 1115

21

6

29%

Anon., Liber Eliensis [Eliensis], c. 1130–80 Geoffrey of Burton, Vita [et Miracula] S. Moduenne Virginis [Moduenne], c. 1135–50 Thomas of Monmouth, Vita et Passione S. Willelmi Martyris Norwicensis [Willelmi], c. 1150–70 Anon., Vita et Miracula S. Æbbe Virginis [Æbbe], c. 1190

26

8

31%

13

2

15%

83

30

36%

42

20

48%

Anon., Miracula S. Jacobi [ Jacobi], c. 1190–1200

24

7

29%

259

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daughter-house of Durham where, in the twelfth-century, women’s access was being curtailed.27 That female access to the shrine of St Cuthbert (in Durham Cathedral) was being limited, and there appears to have been a move to redirect them to Æbbe’s shrine, could also have impacted on the number of younger cure-seekers, both female minors and those who came to the shrine 27 For further discussion of St Cuthbert’s supposed dislike of women see: Victoria Tudor, “The Cult of St Cuthbert on the Twelfth Century: The Evidence of Reginald of Durham,” in Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe eds, St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), 447–67.

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with their mothers, potentially explaining the high percentage of minors in Æbbe’s miracula.28 The notable rarity of such accounts in Moduenne is also curious. Of the seven cult centres focused upon here, Burton Abbey was undoubtedly a smaller institution and certainly not on par with the great cathedral priories in terms of either wealth or status. Likewise, the appeal of St Modwenna’s cult was predominantly locally-focused. Of the thirteen cure-seekers recorded in the posthumous miracles of her hagiography, the majority came from within a twenty-mile radius. Only one individual is specifically recorded as coming from further afield, this being a French penitent.29 Yet, why Modwenna’s miracula records only two examples of younger cure-seekers is not entirely clear. While it could be due to the limited, localised, focus of the cult, it could also be that Geoffrey of Burton chose only to record a select number of accounts which he felt best represented the cult. Indeed, not every miracula included accounts of cure-seeking children: no cases of minors are recorded in Eadmer of Canterbury’s Miracula S. Oswaldi for example.30 Admittedly, this is an exceptionally small collection of posthumous miracles, but the lack of even one account relating to a young cure-seeker could suggest that not every saint was seen to be so attentive to minors; and, it is possible the Modwenna was viewed similarly. Nevertheless, William was not alone in being a saint whose shrine, and hagiographer, wished to stress the saintly merits of being able to cure minors as part of their broader appeal. The ability to offer miraculous medicine to minors was thus part of William’s “universal appeal,” as it was at many local, or even national, saints’ shrines.31 The universality of the appeal of saints like William can also be seen in the range of afflictions which they were credited with curing: Table 4.3.

28 Æbbe contains three accounts in which mothers bring their children to the shrine, Æbbe.4.viii, 4.xxix, 4.xxxv; and two accounts where both mother and father assist the minor, Æbbe.4.i, 4.iv. 29 Moduenne.51. 30 Eadmer of Canterbury, Miracula S. Oswaldi in ed. and trans. Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 290–323. 31 It should be noted that not all cults were as “universal” in their appeal, and that cureseekers from varying social status were cured of varying ailments. These have been discussed by Finucane in Miracles and Pilgrims, 130–51. Ben Nilson has also considered high Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 117–21.

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Minors and the Miraculous Table 4.3 The variety of ailments suffered by minors within Willelmi

Type of ailment (in order of frequency)

Young Cure-Seekers Male

illness paralyzed mental health speech impediment tumor/swelling/growth weakness eye affliction, and ear and speech impediments injury/accident lower body complaint paralyzed and speech impediment weakness, eye affliction, and ear and speech impediments Total

Female Total

6 4 1 2 1 2 0 1 1 0 1

3 3 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

9 7 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

19

11

30

Despite the broad range of afflictions, certain ailments appear more prolific, and that the category of “illnesses”—a category which also includes sicknesses and fevers—should account for almost a third of young cure-seekers is striking.32 That children were vulnerable to illness and that parents should be concerned over an ailment that was potentially life-threatening, and time-sensitive in requiring cure, assists in explaining the high presence of such accounts within Willelmi. Strikingly however, when compared to the six other miracula, William appears particularly attentive to this. Only Æbbe and Jacobi, at one apiece, include similar cases of remedying illness in young cureseekers.33 However, while William was clearly perceived as capable of curing childhood illnesses, Willelmi provides no accounts of minors cured of blindness, of which there are ten accounts across the other six miracula.34 William does successfully cure one blind, mute and deaf child, and another who suffers 32

The terms of illness in Willelmi are as follows: “egrotabat” (3.ix); “febrium” (3.xxv); “egrotauit” (4.ii); “languentem incommode” (4.iv); “febrium” (5.iv); “languore grauissimo” (5.vi); “maxima depressum ualitudine” (5.xviii); “egrotauerat” (6.ii); and “languore languentem” (7.v). 33 Æbbe.4.xxxi; and Jacobi.6. 34 Swithuni.15, 20, 47, 55; Dunstani.6, 11; Eliensis.1.xlvi, 3.lx, 3.cxviii; and Æbbe

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from those three sensory disabilities and weakness of the body, but the lack of eye afflictions is intriguing.35 Indeed, that there are only three such accounts in the entirety of Willelmi implies that this was not an affliction that William was seen to specialize in.36 Conversely, the high number of sickness cases not just for minors but across Willelmi as a whole, at a total of 29 accounts (33%), does suggest that William might have been recognized for his abilities in curing such afflictions. The greater number of illnesses might also correlate to both the topographical and urbanite setting of Norwich, and thus William’s shrine. Not only was Norwich one of the largest contemporary urban populations, but the low-lying, somewhat marshy, nature of East Anglia might also not be entirely conducive to avoiding illness.37 Indeed, Carole Rawcliffe has suggested that Willelmi’s account of an ill monk named Richard appears to indicate a potentially malarial infection.38 It is possible, therefore, that conditions in Norwich and north East Anglia were more conducive to sicknesses and fevers, thus resulting in greater focus on William’s ability to cure such afflictions.

35 Willelmi.5.xvii, 7.ix. 36 Willelmi.4.ii, 4.xi, 6.viii. 37 Tim Pestell provides a concise analysis of the topography of East Anglia in Landscapes of Monastic Foundation, see: Tim Pestell, Landscapes of Monastic Foundation: The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia, c.650–1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 11–16. For additional reading on the landscapes of medieval Norwich and medieval East Anglia see: Brian Ayers, “The Urban Landscape,” in Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson eds., Medieval Norwich (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2004), 1–28; Brian Ayers, “Understanding the Urban Environment: Archaeological approaches to medieval Norwich,” in Christopher Harper-Bill, ed., Medieval East Anglia (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), 68–82; Roberta Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 18–40; and Tom Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character and the ‘North Sea World,’ ” in David Bates and Robert Liddiard eds., East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 44–62. Finucane also addresses the issues of poor hygiene on children’s health (which would have been especially problematic in urban settlements) and highlights that infection could be bacterial, viral or parasitic, see: Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 61, 88. 38 Willelmi.3.xii; Carole Rawcliffe, “ ‘On the Threshold of Eternity’: Care for the Sick in East Anglian Monasteries” in Christopher Harper-Bill, Carole Rawcliffe and Richard G. Wilson eds., East Anglia’s History: Studies in Honour of Norman Scarfe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), 41–72, 41–2. Rawcliffe also provides a longue-durée discussion of sickness and health in medieval Norwich in Medieval Norwich, see: Carole Rawcliffe, “Sickness and Health,” in Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson eds., Medieval Norwich (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2004), 301–24. For an archaeological perspective on child mortality and the differences between urban and rural landscapes see: Mary Lewis, Urbanisation and Child Health in Medieval and Post-Medieval England: An assessment of the morbidity and mortality of non-adult skeletons from the cemeteries of two urban and two rural sites in England 850–1859), British Archaeological Reports 339 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2002), 4–12.

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While statistical analysis offers new perspectives on patterns and trends within miracula, it is important to balance this with a more nuanced study of the accounts themselves so as to succeed in understanding these young cureseekers’ experiences of ill health and miraculous cure: In Norwich, a certain boy, the son of Aluric, of the monks’ tailor’s workshop, fell ill with a grave and horrible swelling of the throat and jaws, so that he offered those who saw him a miserable sight. And since the nature of the illness excluded any hope of future cure, he came to the tomb of the glorious martyr led by his mother. When we saw him we were deeply moved by so bitter an illness that we gave him to drink the scrapings off the tomb slab mingled with holy water… Immediately on ingesting the drink, the sick boy felt the lessening of his pain and in a short while he was cured of the tumour and retained no mark of the swelling anywhere on his body.39 Particularly notable within the account of Aluric’s son, is the emphasis put on his physical appearance. That his appearance is altered, both by the swelling and then by the cure, is indicative of the boy’s ill health and recovery. Indeed, it is the boy’s appearance that elicits sympathy from observers, including Thomas of Monmouth himself who states he was “compassi summus” [“deeply moved”].40 Although not stated directly within the account, it would be reasonable to presume that the boy would have been aware of the reaction his disfigurement evoked, and this would have surely impacted upon his experience of ill health. Did the communal response to the swelling, even if sympathetic rather than repulsed, add to the sense of hopelessness in finding a cure? No mention is made in the account of seeking the assistance of earthly medicines, but Thomas of Monmouth does state that no hope was placed in finding a remedy.41 It is interesting then that the miraculous cure should be achieved through the physical act of drinking a saintly concoction of holy water and “rasumque de sepulcri lapide puluerem” [scrapings off the tomb slab], somewhat akin perhaps to taking a temporal medical draught.42 However, when “virgo” Matilda of Swafield had suffered for some time from a swelling in her right breast, “intollerabili dextere mamille dolore afficiebatur ac tumore,” from which “molestie nouem foraminibus et mamilla sanies 39 Willelmi.3.xxxii. 40 Willelmi.3.xxxii. 41 “morbi qualitas spem salutis prosus excluderet” [the nature of the illness excluded any hope of future cure], Willelmi.3.xxxii. 42 Willelmi

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usquequaque profluebat plurima” [a great deal of bloody matter flowed constantly from nine apertures]:43 she took a large piece of wax and vowed it to Saint William, and she spread it around the suffering breast. This done, an amazing thing happened. As we have learned from the account of her father, the pain abated the moment the wax was removed from the breast; calm followed, the swelling totally subsided and the bloody matter oozing out of the apertures… began to diminish. Her parents were delighted at so speedy a gift to their daughter and immediately led her to Norwich to Saint William.44 On her arrival, Matilda prayed and offered the wax candle at the shrine, but she also placed her bare breast on the tomb in order to stop the last of the fluids being excreted from her breast.45 Touching the afflicted body part to the stone had the immediate impact of curing the remainder of her affliction and she returned home.46 However, this return home was only undertaken after the miraculous cure was reported, and the duty of reporting this was clearly either undertaken by her father, Rathe, or at least with the benefit of his testimony, as it is her father’s witnessing of the cure which Thomas of Monmouth specifically records.47 While the curative processes experienced by Aluric’s son and Matilda of Swafield differ in method, both involve making a physical connection between the minor’s sick body and the tomb. Further consideration of curative methods is worth attention, but so too is the other key similarity between the cure of Aluric’s son and Matilda. Not only do both minors tangibly interact with William’s shrine, but there is notable parental presence in both accounts. Furthermore, in both instances parental figures play an active role in the cure-seeking experience. As such, Aluric’s wife, and Matilda’s parents, also undertake the cure process alongside their offspring: a role which can involve partaking in the spiritual element, the vows and prayers, or in the more physically challenging element of journeying to the shrine with, or on behalf of, the afflicted child. Not only do the parental figures in miracula often appear distraught in response to their children’s suffering, but so too do parental figures often .6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin]. .6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin]. .6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin]. .6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin]. .6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin].

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Table 4.4 Analysis of the person(s) recorded as supporting young cure-seekers in Willelmia

Person(s) who supported the cure-seeker

Young cure-seekers Male (%)

Female (%)

Total (%)

Parental Supports Both parents Father only Mother only Non-parental or non-familial support No support mentioned

13 (68%) 5 (26%) 6 (32%) 2 (11%) 4 (21%) 2 (11%)

6 (55%) 1 (9%). 1 (9%) 4 (36%) 2 (18%) 3 (27%)

19 (63%) 6 (20%) 7 (23%) 6 (20%) 6 (20%) 5 (17%)

Total

19

11

30

a The percentage shown here is calculated by column to analyse the division in the forms of support available by gender, and in total. It should be noted that in the case of the young female cure seekers the total percentage equates to 99% as a result of rounding to whole percentages; doing this does not alter the overall trends which the analysis reveals and aids clarity.

provide support in, and sometimes take on the prominent role of, seeking out saintly assistance. Acknowledging this aspect of the parent-child relationship, Finucane commented that miracula reveal “unmistakable evidence of love for ill or disabled children, which seems to supersede any economic considerations.”48 That parents were not only compassionate but also keenly involved in the process of cure-seeking is notable in the previous examples from Willelmi. However, while parents played a key role, and are a feature of many miracles involving minors, statistical analysis of the Willelmi accounts reveals that young cure-seekers were supported in a variety of ways: Table 4.4. Whilst evident that parents played an important role in cure-seeking, with parental participation involved in just under two-thirds of cases, there were others who undertook their cure-seeking either with non-parental support or, seemingly, without any support at all. Non-parental support was often provided by friends. The son of Ranulph, a knight from Haughley, had suffered from “caduco morbo” [epilepsy] for many years before he was brought to the shrine by his friends, he then prayed and made an offering before being cured.49 That the remedy had been a long-term 48 Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 61. 49 Willelmi.6.vii.

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success was testified to by a messenger sent by the boy’s mother.50 Accounts of peer support, unsurprisingly, are often recorded in relation to adolescent cureseekers. An “iuuenis” was “suorum humeris aduehitur” [carried in the arms] of his friends to the tomb of St Dunstan in the hope of finding a cure for his paralysis, a curvature of the spine he had suffered from for eleven years, and the mutism he had since birth.51 An “adolescens” [adolescent] who had been begging for alms before being taken in by Durand, the former Sheriff of Hampshire, (d. c. 1100/1101) was cured of his paralysis by St Swithun after having been taken to Winchester “amicorum consilio et auxilio” [with the advice and assistance of friends].52 Similarly, “iuuenis” Schet, the son of Eilmer, who was originally from Haddiscoe, had been working in Great Yarmouth as a “piscatorii” [fisherman] when he was afflicted with a paralysis “per multos dies” [for many days].53 He was brought to William’s shrine and, having been cured, returned home the same day. Although linguistically it is unclear who brought Schet to Norwich, as nothing more indicative than “adductus” is used in the account, the context implies that Schet was brought from Great Yarmouth, rather than Haddiscoe, and thus by friends or colleagues rather than his parents.54 Schet’s account is also interesting for the fact that it provides a rare example, within miracula at least, of pre-adult employment.55 Whilst there are a few instances in which children are recorded as having been partaking in household chores when their affliction struck, such as being out in the fields with livestock or fetching water, few miracle narratives record minors who appear to be in paid employment.56 Indeed, of the sources considered here, only one other account makes mention of a lay minor in employment in the case of an “adolescens” who sold “acuum” [needles] and was cured of the paralysis in his knees by St Æbbe.57 50 51 52 53 54 55

Willelmi.6.vii. Dunstani.5. Swithuni.56. Willelmi.7.ii. Willelmi.7.ii. For further discussion of childhood employment see: Francine Michaud, “From Apprentice to Waged-Earner: Child Labour before and after the Black Death” in Joel T. Rosenthal ed., Essays on Medieval Childhood: Responses to Recent Debates (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), 73–90, 85–8; and Orme, Medieval Children, 305–21. 56 Willelmi.5iii and Jacobi.8 both record minors who were herding or watching livestock when they were struck with their affliction; Æbbe.4.vii likewise relates to an individual who, while cured later in life, became mute aged seven after spending three nights outside while tending to her father’s flock; and Eliensis.3.cxviii records the miraculous recovery of a girl who fell head-first into a well whilst collecting water. 57 Æbbe.4.xxxvi. It is worth noting that acus can refer to either needles or pins. In his translation of the miracles Bartlett refers to the adolescent specifically as a needle-seller

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Another notable feature of Schet’s account, and in fact of many accounts recorded in Willelmi, is the attention paid by Thomas of Monmouth to recording the place of residence for the cure-seeker, and thus, indirectly, the distances travelled to reach William’s shrine. Thomas of Monmouth’s attention to detail here is beneficial as understanding how far younger cure-seekers might venture in search of a cure can assist in further understanding their experiences of the cure-seeking process: Table 4.5. Table 4.5 Analysis of the distances travelled, and the places of residence recorded for young cure-seekers in Willelmi

Distance travelled and places of residence

Young cure-seekers

Less than 5 miles Norwich 5–25 miles (Great) Yarmouth Hadeston, Bunwell Haughley Helgheton, Loddon Hundred Postwick Repps (near Cromer) Swafield Taverham Thornage Tudenham 25–50 miles Dunwich Grimeston, nr. Lynn North Creake Wortham

10 10 10 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 5 1 1 2 1

Lincoln No details, or no journey

decision has been followed here. It should also be noted that Dunstani.19 contains and account of a young man, thelweard, who is a monk at Canterbury Cathedral Priory.

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Considering Thomas of Monmouth’s attention to detail, it is not surprising that places of residence are recorded for 87% of the minors within Willelmi. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the greater number of young cure-seekers lived within a 25-mile radius of Norwich. Interestingly, while more detailed in recording the precise locations, Willelmi follows broader patterns of cureseeking, for both minors and adults. Predominantly, cure-seekers first petition their local saint for assistance and only if this fails to result in the desired outcome might the cure-seeker widen their search. That cure-seekers first sought the assistance of the saint at their local shrine is understandable both in terms of devotional loyalties and practical choices.58 While the spiritual aspect of this decision should not be overlooked, it must also be understood that practicality and locality would also impact upon the initial decisions regarding which saint to petition first. Such decisions would have been no different for younger cure-seekers, or the parents of younger cure-seekers. Those who did look further afield for assistance, either after finding no resolution at their local shrine or driven by a saintly vision to seek out a particular cult centre, would likely have only undertaken such journeys after due consideration.59 Evidence of hesitation, especially over longer journeys, that might be felt by the prospective cure-seeker—and, indeed, those who might accompany them—is a rare find in the miracula even if such a response would be understandable. However, one unusual example of a more cautious cure-seeker can be found in Jacobi. Ysembela, a “puella” and “Johannis piscatoris filia” [daughter of John the fisherman], saw St James in a vision but was unwilling to follow the saint’s instructions to travel to Reading Abbey.60 In replying to the apostolic St James, Ysembela states: “I have not seen Reading, nor do I know your monastery. And how can I go there when I am crippled and weak, ignorant of the way and penniless? No, I shall not go nor will I tire myself out any more to no purpose.”61 The account continues: The apostle insisted again and again, urging her to go to Reading and declaring that she would be healed there and nowhere else. But she rejected his advice and refused to believe his promises, seeing fit to argue with the apostle and to maintain that she would not go to Reading… she 58 Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 35. 59 For further discussion of pilgrimage in medieval England see: Diana Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000). For additional reading on pilgrimage also see: Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, 39–55; and Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (London: Faber and Faber, 2002). 60 Jacobi.20. 61 Jacobi

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saw this vision many times and omitted to do what she was told… after some time she went home completely destitute of all hope. And when her stepmother saw her, she was filled with spiteful hate and indignation, and said “Aha, you went away a cripple and, look, you have come back a cripple. Go away from me,” she said, “and crawl where you will, for you shall certainly not stay under my roof.” Full of shame, then, and wracked by a double pain, she turned aside to the home of one of her aunts. She was taken in there and, when she had told her aunt what she had heard, seen and endured, she came finally to the vision she had seen of St James. When she heard this, her aunt exclaimed, “Quick! Hurry as fast as you can and make haste to Reading. Take the only coin I have and when you get to Reading buy yourself a candle with it.” And so the girl left those parts on her journey to Reading and arrived there seven weeks later.62 Ysembela’s comments to St James are unique within the seven miracula considered here; nowhere else is there any implication that a cure-seeker, child or adult, might have reservations about travelling beyond their known environments. Yet, the concerns raised by Ysembela are not unreasonable. Taking into account that she is also a vulnerable individual—young and physically impaired, with no money, and unsure of the route to Reading—her wariness over travelling beyond her local area resonates all the more. Interestingly then, despite urging her multiple times to go to Reading, it is not St James’ insistence, but rather the treatment she faces at home that consequently leads to Ysembela’s decision to travel to Reading. Despite the initial reference to her father, Ysembela’s account is void of any active paternal participation. That fishermen travelled away for work has already been noted in the case of Schet, and it is possible that John was absent owing to similar circumstances.63 The account instead focuses on Ysembela’s two maternal figures, her “nouerca” [step-mother] and her “amita” [paternal aunt].64 No mention is made of Ysembela’s mother or any maternal relatives, nor of other siblings or step-siblings, thus the broader family dynamics remain frustratingly illusive. What is evident, however, is that Ysembela’s stepmother is not an embodiment of maternal affection and clearly saw the impaired Ysembela as a burden. The specifics of Ysembela’s mistreatment are not elaborated upon, but it is clear that if Ysembela is unable to be a functioning 62 Jacobi.20. 63 Willelmi.7.ii. 64 Jacobi.20. The language used quite clearly implies a paternal aunt, or more broadly pater nal female relative, as opposed to a matertera [maternal aunt].

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member of the household then she is not welcome to remain in her stepmother’s household.65 Ysembela’s aunt, on the other hand, is supportive and not only takes her in but provides her with the donation of her only coin so that Ysembela’s journey to Reading Abbey can be undertaken. However, Ysembela’s aunt does more than financially aid her niece’s cure-seeking experience; just as importantly, she educates her in the importance of following saintly instructions, and therefore in showing due respect to God and his saints. As confirmation of this lesson Ysembela is rewarded with her much-desired cure on reaching Reading Abbey.66 Ysemebla’s journey, at approximately 92 miles, was longer than those of many young cure-seekers recorded in Willelmi. But even a short distance in search of a cure held potential dangers. Cure-seeking minors were particularly vulnerable, and this might prove another reason why so many were accompanied by parents. Those who visited William were also undoubtedly aware of the supposed events leading up to the young martyr’s death, and that he had reportedly been led astray by those who wished to cause him harm.67 However, it was not just other people that could be a risk, road and weather conditions could also prove problematic, especially when travelling further afield in less known parts of the country.68 Similarly, spending prolonged periods of time outdoors, and particularly sleeping in the open, was seen as potentially harmful. Ysembela became paralysed in the left side of her body after sleeping in the open air one summer night.69 A youth from Helgheton, while watching sheep, was tormented by a viper in his intestines; the snake having entered his mouth after he fell asleep.70 Travel itself could also pose threats: St Swithun healed one “pueris” who broke an arm and a leg, and was close to death, after a fall from a horse; and St James assisted an “adolescente” who broke his arm while travelling to Ireland with Prince John in 1185.71 In the case of the adolescent travelling with Prince John, the hagiographer records that he is unsure what caused the initial break in the boy’s arm, but he is in no doubt as to why the arm became broken for 65 Jacobi.20. 66 Jacobi.20. 67 Willelmi.1.iii–1.iv. For further consideration of the dangers which could face travellers, both on the road and in towns, see: Andrew McCall, The Medieval Underworld (New York: Dorset Press, 1979), 32–5, 88–9, 97–9, 152–3. 68 For an overview of travel with cure-seeker’s and their experiences in mind see: Salter, “Experiencing Miracula,” 137–83. 69 Jacobi.20. 70 Willelmi.5.iii. 71 Swithuni Jacobi.22.

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a second time when it is revealed that a vow to visit St James’ shrine was not fulfilled following the initial cure.72 Perhaps one of the greatest impacts on the journey to the shrine however, was whether or not the cure-seeker was accompanied on this journey. Active support from parents, other relatives, friends or even strangers, would undoubtedly have played a part in the cure-seeking experience; as would having made the journey alone. Supporters, such as Schet’s friends, not only provided physical assistance—such as guiding the blind or carrying the disabled—but could also provide companionship and maintain morale. As an aside, while support was more frequently provided by known figures there are occasional hagiographical references to support being given by strangers. In one account from St Swithun’s miracula, a boy of ten from the Isle of Wight was blinded in one eye, and exiled from the island, after being found guilty of theft.73 Separated from his community, the boy joined a group of pilgrims who were heading to Winchester for Swithun’s feast day.74 On arriving at Winchester, the boy entered the church with his companions not, the hagiographer stresses, with any hope of cure, or in fact any thought of cure. Rather, the boy accompanied the pilgrims “quin potius occasione tantum itineris et quilibet sibi insueta uidenti opentu (ut se habet humana curiositas)” [for the sake of the journey alone and with the aim of seeing things unfamiliar to him (as is the way with human curiosity)].75 The reason provided for this boy’s decision to accompany the pilgrims, and thus his inadvertent miraculous cure, also sheds a fascinating light on the experiences of, or perceived benefits to, the opportunities made available by the journey to the shrines of the saints.76 Of course, when the journey was undertaken with so specific a reason as those who sought out miraculous cures, it would be foolhardy to suggest that an “adventurous spirit” played much of a role in the journey, and the religious aspect of such pilgrimages cannot be overlooked. Nevertheless, travelling beyond the parish allowed an individual the chance to experience new environments.77 These new experiences need not have been illicit, in fact 72 Jacobi.22. For further, and focused, discussion on childhood accidents see: Orme, Medieval Children, 98–100; and Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 104–49. 73 Swithuni.55. 74 Swithuni.55. 75 Swithuni.55. 76 Swithuni.55. 77 Jonathan Sumption, for example, argues that pilgrimage offered an individual the chance to get away from the monotony and scrutiny of parish life. While Sumption’s attention is particularly focused upon longer, pan-European pilgrimages, any journey to the shrine had the potential to offer similar respite from day-to-day life, see: Sumption, Pilgrimage

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visiting the great cathedral churches which housed the shrines of saints, like William, was in itself an experience and would have added to the individual’s awareness and understanding of their faith. As could also be inferred from parental participation in the cure-seeking process, undertaking a journey of this nature for a younger cure-seeker could also provide a lesson in piety as well as there being a hope of this resulting in the desired miraculous cure. Although it is difficult to know exactly what the saints’ shrines of twelfthcentury England would have looked like these were undoubtedly places of some standing and grandeur.78 This is particularly so for those shrines which were situated in the more affluent churches, such as those of the cathedral priories. The physical appearance of these spaces acting both to stimulate and direct the devotions of their visitors, including the cure-seekers. Indeed, the miracula indicate that cure-seekers’ presence at the shrines of the saints was expected and accepted. In fact, the majority of individuals recorded in miracula happened to be present within the church, and often at the saint’s shrine, at the time of their cure. This pattern is no different when it comes to younger cure-seekers: Table 4.6. While saints had the ability to bring about cure anywhere, their shrines acted as focal points for their cults and thus, understandably, were considered to be the epicentre for that saint’s continued presence in the temporal world. The practice at shrines like William’s of offering draughts of holy water is also indicative of the desire for closeness and connection. In the case of William, as noted above, this drink included scrapings from the stone of his tomb; at Reading Abbey, this was the water which had washed the hand of the apostolic relic; and, perhaps most famously, at Canterbury from the late twelfth century, holy water was combined with Becket’s blood.79 These infusions of holy 78

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John Crook has discussed these spaces in his recent monograph English Medieval Shrines; particularly beneficial for the twelfth century are the chapters “English Saints and the ‘New Englishmen: Anglo-Saxon shrines and relics after the Norman Conquest,” and “Into the Twelfth Century: From Tomb to Shrine,” see: John Crook, English Medieval Shrines (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 107–32, 133–69. Ben Nilson also provides an in-depth discussion into the practices of medieval saints’ shrines in Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England; particularly relevant are the chapters “The Architectural Setting,” “Pilgrims and the Shrine,” and “Cathedral and Shrine,” see: Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England, 63–91, 92–121, 122–43. For example, William of Canterbury records that Hugh Brustins was cured from a possession on drinking Becket’s blood mixed with holy water; whilst Benedict of Peterborough records that seven-year Hermer recovered his mind after drinking holy water that had been infused with Becket’s hair shirt. See: William of Canterbury, Miracula Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis.3.xlviii, in James Craigie Robertson ed., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationary

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Minors and the Miraculous Table 4.6 Locations of minors at the time of their miraculous healing within Willelmi

Location in which the miraculous cure occurs, and ailment healed

Young cure seekers Female

Total

At the shrine eye affliction, and ear and speech impediments injury/accident lower body complaint mental health paralyzed paralyzed and speech impediment speech impediment tumor/swelling/growth weakness weakness, eye affliction, and ear and speech impediments At home tumor/swelling/growth Total

water and saintly relics not only made for portable contact-style relics, but also retained the cure-giving properties of the saints themselves. Lady Mabel of Bec even took a small part of William’s tomb away with her to use as a homebased remedy whenever herself or her sons suffered from ill health.80 Lady Mabel’s actions thus appear to be precautionary and pre-emptive with regards to ensuring the continued health of her children. That Lady Mabel is able to take part of the tomb’s slab away undoubtedly says something about her social standing, as does the fact she was a benefactor of the Norwich Priory. Yet, in her desire to be able to provide a cure for her children at home, Lady Mabel Office, 1875–85), i (1875), 136–546; and Benedict of Peterborough, Miracula Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis.4.xix, in ed. James Craigie Robertson, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1875– 85), ii (1876), 23–298. 80 Willelmi.3.xi.

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is no different to many other parents who were recorded as conveying such thaumaturgical waters from the shrine to a child too weak to leave home.81 The difference between Lady Mabel and, for example, the daughter of Edward Haver cured of her fever by the water of St James, is that the majority only procured such a treatment when it was required.82 Such practices also reveal both another aspect of the perceived relationship between the saints and healthcare and the manner in which parents might use commutable saintly aids for the benefit of their offspring. Lady Mabel’s taking of a broken piece of tombstone, and its continued efficacy, suggest potential wider patterns of holy healthcare within the home; and there were likely many similar instances of success stories which were not then reported back to the shrine itself.83 Despite the benefits of saintly waters, the saint’s shrine was inarguably the preferred location for cure-seekers. Those minors not cured at William’s shrine were all cured within their homes, and the reason for this is made evident from the text of Willelmi; these individuals were in no fit position to travel to, or be taken to, the shrine prior to their recovery.84 That the majority of those cured at home were suffering from some form of illness also supports this in that, whilst a long-term debility could impact on mobility and quality of life, it was illness which could be more pressing in terms of time and in terms of the impact it had upon the young body. Of the three children in Willelmi said to be close to death as a result of their illness, two were cured at home though the process of making a vow.85 The third child, who is “ad mortem usque peruenit” [on the verge of death], is the “paruula filia” [little daughter] of Reginald of Warenne.86 Thomas of Monmouth emphasises the girl’s mortality further, commenting that “minimo uita eius dependebat filo” [her life hung by the merest thread].87 Considering the apparent condition of their daughter it is perhaps surprising that Reginald’s wife advises that the girl be carried to William’s tomb, where she is successfully cured. But perhaps, due to the severity of her illness, and the fear that it would be fatal, Reginald and his wife were willing to risk the journey to the shrine. Parental grief and desperation is clearly present 81 Willelmi.3.xi [eds. Jessop and James], 135, n.1. Also see Willelmi.3.xi [trans. Rubin], 231, n. 31. 82 Willelmi.3.xi; and, Jacobi.6. 83 Benedicta Ward argued that a great number of perceived miracle cures were probably never officially recorded at the shrines if they occurred at a distance from the cult center, see: Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 35. 84 Willelmi.3.ix, 3.xxv, 4.ii, 5.xviii, 6.xvi [eds. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin], 7.v. 85 Willelmi.3.xi, 7.v. 86 Willelmi.6.ii. 87 Willelmi

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within this case as it was in the aforementioned account of Gurwann and his wife; thus, emphasising a wider societal awareness of the high potential for death during childhood.88 The account of Reginald’s daughter also aids in highlighting the variety of methods cure-seekers might employ in order to petition the saints. In this account, and in general throughout Willelmi, William is a passive saint in that he rarely appears to, or interacts with, his cure-seekers. Focus is instead on cure-seekers’ vows to visit the shrine, the offering of candles to the shrine, drinking holy water infused with the tomb-shrine, and touching of the tombshrine. In the account of Reginald’s daughter, it is the latter which proves the catalyst for cure; although this is aided by the giving of an “oblatione” [offering]; a similar method to that used by Matilda of Swafield.89 Although not uncommon for the miracula to portray saints as passive figures, who act indirectly in their intercessions, on occasions cure-seekers, including children and youths, experienced interaction not just with the saintly spaces but also with the saints themselves. Not only did saints appear to potential cure-seekers to instruct them to visit their shrines, as St James does to Ysembela, but the saints are also recorded as appearing to the cureseeker at the time of their cure.90 While some appearances are still relatively passive—the cure-seeker merely seeing the saint, or perhaps following them to the altar—there are accounts of saints actively participating in the curative process. St Modwenna, whose posthumous accounts only contain two cases on minors, cures a man of his swellings after he shows them to her.91 William only actively participates in two accounts, both relating to adult cure-seekers; on both occasions moving his hand, or making the sign of the cross, over the afflicted area.92 St Dunstan, likewise, does not appear to any of his younger cure-seekers but he does appear to a man returning home from Canterbury, and apologises to the man for his absence from the cathedral.93 In terms of minors interacting with the saints, St Æthelthryth, in the Liber Eliensis, cured an “iuuenis alienigena” [a foreign youth] called Richard from his insanity, by wrapping his head in her robes and signing him with the cross.94 St Æbbe actively participated in a number of cures to bring about speech, including: pulling on the tongue of one girl; pulling the lips of another girl; 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Willelmi.4.ii; and Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 149–51. Willelmi.6.ii, 6.xvi [ed. Jessop and James] / 6.xvii [trans. Rubin]. Jacobi.20. Moduenne.50. Willelmi.3.xv, 5.xx. Dunstani.10. Eliensis

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and placing her fingers in the mouth of a third girl of almost twelve years.95 Æbbe also appeared alongside St Margaret of Scotland to co-cure a girl with a paralyzed hand.96 The “puella” cured as a result of Æbbe pulling her tongue reported her miraculous cure to the monks of Coldingham Priory, explaining that when Æbbe pulled her tongue there was a cracking sound “quasi nodum aliquem rupisset in collo” [as if some knot in the throat had been broken].97 Despite the crack of the tongue, there is no mention of any pain; the sound merely acts as an aural indicator of the cure. Likewise, the fact that the girl recounted her experience herself is reflective of her recovered speech.98 This physical, visible, change in the cure-seekers appearance is thus key not only for the mute girl but for all cure-seekers. For minors, however, and particularly those of a very young age, this outward return to a healthy body is all the more important not only in terms of their personal recognition of cure, but also for external, particularly parental, awareness. Similar circumstances can be seen in the aforementioned account of Aluric’s son, whose swollen face made him “miserabilem … aspectum” [a miserable sight], but after whose cure there was no sign of the former affliction.99 With the miraculous transformation of the sick body into a healthy one, all cure-seekers’ experiences are comparable regardless of their affliction. With minors, however, the cure is shown to impact more than just the afflicted child. In a sense, the cure of the child is also a cure for the parents as it brings the end to their experiences of their offspring’s ill health too.100 Fathers, mothers, and other supporters such as Ysembela’s amita, can also share in the jubilation of the minors’ return to good health, just as they shared in the cure-seekers’ suffering and partook in the cure-seeking experience. That miraculous healing was often not just an experience undertaken by the minor is perhaps one of the clearest messages to come out of this study of the twelfth-century miracula. In fact, that it is the voice of the parent, as much as 95 96 97 98

Æbbe.4.x, 4.xxiv, 4.xxxv. Æbbe.4.xiii. Æbbe.4.x. Æbbe.4.x. The hagiographer specifically records “sicut eius relacione cognouimus” [as we learned from this girl’s own account] thus indicating that it was the girl herself who reported her miraculous cure. 99 Willelmi.3.xxxii. 100 An example of the impact of a child’s long-term ill health on a parent has been discussed by Finucane in relation to a mother-daughter duo, Cecilia and Beatrice, from Marseilles, Rescue of the Innocents, 56–7. The impact of the successful procurement of a miraculous cure on the parents is also discussed in Kuuliala’s article within this volume, see: “The Infirm Child between Parental Worry and Divine Powers”, 99–101.

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the child, which can be seen beyond the monastic recording is notable. Equally notable is the level of support and compassion for the young cure-seekers not only from those who helped bring about the minor’s miraculous cure, but from those who witnessed the suffering child too, as with Thomas of Monmouth’s own witnessing of the swelling suffered by Aluric’s son. That parents, however, felt the suffering of the minors the most keenly is understandable. The minor might be the primary subject of the miraculous cure, but it is possible to see the cure-seeker’s family and friends, and particularly mothers and fathers, as being secondary beneficiaries of the saint’s divine aid. But what of the minors themselves? That these seven miracula contain a number of accounts relating to cure-seekers who can be identified as pre-adult, and that these reports account for a notable percentage of the cure-seekers recorded, emphasises the importance given to the need for the saints to have the ability to cure the young. Indeed, despite his own young age, William was no more a pediatric specialist than many of his other saintly contemporaries. Rather, what was important for these cults, which were predominantly supported by local devotees, was that they offered a universal appeal. Regardless of social standing, gender, affiliation, or age, saints, like William of Norwich, were perceived to be able to assist; all that was required from the saint’s “patient” was that they showed due piety and respect. Of course, this does not mean that all who petitioned the saints for assistance were cured, or that all who believed themselves miraculously cured would have reported this officially at the shrine. However, importantly, what the miracula indicate is that such practices were undertaken by contemporary societies, and that belief in the intercessory healing powers of the saints was an avenue of healthcare open to all of society, including children and youths. Moreover, linguistic analysis makes clear that the saints could cure the youngest infantus through to the almostadult iuuenis, further emphasising their universality and broad social appeal. The understood importance of the shrine, and of creating a connection with the saint, is also important to recognise. That this was as important for minors seeking cures was emphasised through a statistical analysis of Willelmi; over 80% of young cure-seekers were cured at the tomb-shrine of the boymartyr. What is more, a visit to the shrine necessarily required a journey to be undertaken by the cure-seeker, even if this was unlikely to be greater than a 25-mile journey to the nearest suitable shrine. That young cure-seekers under took such journeys, often prior to their cure, should not be overlooked, nor too should the possible difficulties of such journeys be underestimated. Even short distances would have been challenging and longer journeys, as revealed

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through Ysembela’s response to St James, were unlikely to be undertaken lightly or without due consideration. That further attention on the experiences of the minors in twelfth-century miracula would prove fruitful is something which this current discussion has made evident. That high-medieval hagiographical narratives, such as those in the seven miracula considered here, have as great a potential to reveal evidence of the lives and the healthcare experiences of children as the later medieval materials studied by Finucane is clear. Further study into such can only benefit both fields of socio-medical history, and the history of childhood. However, and importantly, these miraculous accounts, particularly those which are detailed such as that of Bartholomew of Creake’s daughter or Ysembela, also act as a reminder of the fact that through studies of this nature an insight is gained into the lives and experiences of individual children who experienced ill health and believed themselves to have experienced a miraculous cure. That many such young individuals are otherwise absent or silent within other con temporary records stresses even more the importance of using miracula to reveal something of their lives and experiences.

chapter 5

The Infirm Child between Parental Worry and Divine Powers Jenni Kuuliala The veneration of saints was one of the key characteristics of medieval lived religion. Saints acted as intercessors between humans and God, and the most visible manifestation of their power were miracles God performed through their merits.1 Following in the footsteps of Christ and his apostles, throughout time a vast majority of recorded miracles have been cures, and their proportion grew even more towards the end of the medieval period.2 Recording saints’ miracles in various sources and formats has continued until this day, but the late medieval period saw the development of a very particular hagiographic source type: the canonization process. Before the thirteenth century, the control of saints’ cults had been in the hands of local bishops, although the Holy See had canonized some saints already at the turn of the millennium. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the popes started to wish to gain more control over the veneration of saints, which led to the development of the inquisitio in partibus.3 During canonization inquests, dozens or even 1 For lived religion, see Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Raisa Maria Toivo, “Religion as an Experience,” in Lived Religion and the Long Reformation in Northern Europe c. 1300–1700 ed. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Raisa Maria Toivo (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–20. 2 For the proportions of different types of miracles, see André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988 [1981]), 547, and also Christian Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag: Formen des Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (12.–15. Jahrhundert) (Helsinki: shs, 1994), 188–189; Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe. Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c.1100–1400 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 130–131; Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale (XIe–XIIe siècle) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1985), 256. On Biblical miracles as models for the later ones, see Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995 [1977]), 49–50; Michael Goodich, Miracles and Wonders. The Development of the Concept of Miracle, 1150–1350, Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 8–12; Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Theory, Record and Event 1000–1215 (London: Scholar Press, 1982), For the development of the process, see Roberto Paciocco, Canonizzazioni e culto dei santi nella christianitas (1198–1302) (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 2006), 55–134; Vauchez, sainteté, 15–162. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_007

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hundreds of people were interrogated about the life, merits, and miracles of the putative saint, according to a strict set of rules, and later on, the records were evaluated in the curia. The primary task of the commissioners interrogating the witnesses was to find out what really had happened; in the case of alleged miracles to find proof whether the miracle in question was genuine. Therefore, they were interested in the opinions, views, and everyday experience of the miraculées and those who had witnessed a miraculous event.4 The protocols of canonization interrogations have proven to be a treasure mine for the social historian of the Middle Ages, utilized for the history of lived religion, illness, dis/ability and healing, and family history.5 They are juridical texts and an extremely rare medieval source type recording the conceptions and statements of the so-called “common people.” As they do not document the actual experience or words of the witnesses but transfer them through the practicalities of the process, they also provide a way to analyze and question the ways these experiences were investigated, recorded, and used for a legal procedure examining sainthood and the miraculous.6 4 On proving miracles, see e.g. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders. The practicalities of canonization inquests have been analyzed in the article compilation Gábor Klaniczay, ed., Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2004). See also Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Christian Krötzl, “Approaching Twelfth– Fifteenth-Century Miracles,” in Miracles in Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions and Methodologies, ed. Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 1–39, on the different parties of a canonization inquest. 5 For, miracle narratives as a source, see Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Jenni Kuuliala, and Iona McCleery, eds, A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2021) and for the historiography of canonization processes, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, “Recent Trends in the Study of Medieval Canonizations,” History Compass 8/9 (2010): 1083–1092. Canonization processes have been used as a source for social history for example in Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims; Ronald C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents. Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Michael Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century. Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life. The Evidence of Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes, Studies in the History of Daily Life, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, “Masculinity and Lived Religion in Late Medieval Sweden,” Scandinavian Journal of History 38 (2013): 223–44; Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag; Jenni Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration in the Middle Ages. Constructions of Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016); Jenni Kuuliala, “Disability and Religious Practices in Late Medieval Prussia: Infirmity and the Miraculous in the Canonization Process of St Dorothea of Montau (1404–1406),” in Lived Religion in the Baltic Sea Region during the Long Reformation, ed. Sari Katajala Peltomaa and Raisa Maria Toivo (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 46–74. It has been concluded that the language of the accounts belonged to the notaries, writing for other civil servants, but the message delivered was that of the witnesses. Laura A. Smoller, “Miracle, Memory, and Meaning in the Canonization of Vincent Ferrer, 1453–54,” Speculum 73 (1998): 429–454.

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Children’s position in these sources is twofold. On one hand, they have always appeared as miracle beneficiaries frequently,7 albeit usually less often than adults and in varying proportions depending on the process in question. Therefore, it is obvious that saints’ help was actively searched for when a child was in mortal danger or suffered from a prolonged illness or impairment.8 On the other hand, child beneficiaries’ own role in the course of events and in the inquiry appears rather subdued. According to the Canon Law, girls and boys under the age of fourteen did not have the capacity to take an oath and therefore they were not competent witnesses.9 Although there is a relatively small number of miracle cases where the beneficiary was cured when younger than fourteen and testified in an inquest when older,10 in a vast majority of cases there is no testimony of the child beneficiary, even though the rule of the Canon Law was occasionally broken, as will be discussed below. The ones giving witness accounts of miraculous cures of those younger than fourteen were most commonly their parents. Consequently, canonization inquests investigated and analyzed these miracles precisely through parental views, experiences, and sentiments. It can even be argued that a healing miracle done to a child was done if not completely at least partially to parents, whose grief, fear, and anguish it healed.11

7 For examples in miracles recorded at shrines, see Ruth Salter’s chapter “Minors and the Miraculous: The Cure-Seeking Experiences of Children in Twelfth-Century English Hagiography” in this volume. 8 In some protocols, resuscitations of children are more common than cures of children’s long-term ailments. Such miracles were dramatic events and easier to investigate due to the attention they gained; similarly, they were the strongest manifestations of the saint’s power. These cures have been analyzed especially in Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents and Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life. 9 C. 4 q. 2 c. 13; Christian Krötzl, “Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher. Zu Gestaltung und Ablauf der Zeugeneinvernahmen bei spätmittelalterlichen Kanonisationsprozessen,” Hagiographica, 5 (1998): 119–40, at 122; Thomas Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht. Das Kanonisationserfahren im europäischen Spätmittelaltern (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), 65. 10 As a rare example of this, the canonization protocols of St. Nicholas of Tolentino from 1325 include a deposition given by frater Iacobus, presbyter. He was already fifty years of age when testifying about a cure that had happened eighteen years earlier. Back then, he had been miraculously healed of badly swollen testicles, which had troubled him since the age of seven. Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. Nicola Occhioni, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 74 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1984), 508–509. 11 Diana Webb, “Friends of the Family: Some Miracles for Children by Italian Friars,” in The Church and Childhood, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 183–195; Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration

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Proving and examining a miraculous cure of an infirm child12 will be the topic of this essay. Under what conditions could a miraculous cure of an infirm child be examined and proven? Is it possible (and with which preconditions) to approach the question of the child’s lived experience? How was this experience be examined, modified, and used in the process of investigating sainthood and the genuineness of a miracle? How does the child’s experience of infirmity, including long-term illnesses and impairments, relate to that of his or her parent’s experience?13 The main focus in this article will be the canonization protocols from inquests held in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, conducted in various regions of southern, central, and northern Europe. The primary purpose of a miracle investigation during a canonization inquest was to find out whether the alleged miracle really was a miracle and not a hoax performed by humans or demons,14 or something brought about by mundane means such as medicine. When investigating healing miracles, the commissioners needed to find proof for the authenticity of the condition in question as well as for the miraculous nature of the cure. During the interrogations, they followed the articles, a list of propositions related to the saintly candidate’s life and miracles collected by the promotor of the case, and largely setting which particular miracles were investigated. They interrogated the witnesses to each of these miracles following the so-called formula interrogatorii, which Pope Gregory ix first set out when opening the inquiry of St Elizabeth

12

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14

The word “child” will be used to denote beneficiaries younger than fourteen. This definition is not without problems, as different things were expected from a thirteen-year-old than from an infant, and some children in their early teens were, for example, already working away from home. The beneficiaries discussed in this chapter are, however, all “children” in a sense that they were still residing in their parental homes. The term “infirmity” is preferred in this context. The medieval definitions of “illness” and “impairment” were vague, and no umbrella term such as “disability” existed. The word infirmitas is the most common Latin term attached to various conditions in the canonization documents. See also Jenni Kuuliala, Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Krötzl, “Introduction: Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” in Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Social and Cultural Approaches to Health, Weakness and Care, ed. Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015), 1–14. For the vagueness of definitions of medieval disability, see Hans-Werner Goetz, “Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit in frühen Mittelalter,” in Homo debilis. Behinderte—Kranke—Versehrte in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, ed. Cordula Nolte (Affalterbach: Didymos-Verlag, 2009), 21–55; Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration, 32–48; Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 4–5. On the threat of demons and magicians performing miracles, see Goodich, Miracles and Wonders

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of Hungary in 1232, and which continued being used in later processes.15 In some of them, this questionnaire has been preserved. It shows the continuing and growing interest in detail, including questions about the witness and/or miracle beneficiary’s background, how the witness knew about the miracle, when it had occurred, who had been present, where it had happened, who had made the votum, what words had been used, and among whom the miracle was known. As for the condition to be cured, it was asked if the witness knew the person beforehand, how long the infirmity had lasted, and how long the witness had seen the beneficiary in a healthy state.16 Obviously, the nature of the infirmity was also asked about, but it was usually included already in the corresponding article. Combined with the established pattern of a miracle narrative, this leads to a structure where each miracle testimony highlights the physical symptoms of the infirmity in question, as well as the events leading to the miracle.17 In this regard, children’s cures do not differ from those of adults. In proving the genuineness of the cured infirmity, its physical symptoms played a major role but in the case of children, these were primarily interpreted and formulated by their parents. Unlike in the modern discourse of disability, this did not mean pathologization.18 Various labels or diagnoses 15 The text, known as testes legitimii, was later added to every bull opening a canonization process. Gábor Klaniczay, “Proving Sanctity in the Canonization Processes (Saint Elizabeth and Saint Margaret of Hungary),” in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux, Collection de l’École française de Rome 340, ed. Gábor Klaniczay (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2004), 117–148, at 123–124; Vauchez, La sainteté, 58–59; Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, 538–539. 16 One of the preserved questionnaires is recorded in the canonization dossiers of Philip of Bourges, recorded in 1265–1266: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter bav), ms Vat. lat. 4019, fols 9r–v. St. Thomas Cantilupe’s canonization process from 1307 also includes an extensive questionnaire, which contains questions about whether the person stayed healthy after the miracle, and whether herbs, incantations, or demonic intervention were used to obtain the cure. bav, ms Vat. lat. 4015, fols 4v–5r. 17 For the narrative pattern, see e.g. Stanko Andrić, Miracles of St. John Capistran (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 228–238; Gábor Klaniczay, “Miracoli di punizione e maleficia,” in Miracoli. Dai segni alla storia, ed. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Marilena Modica (Rome: Viella, 2000), 109–136. For the pattern and proving mobility impairments in canonization inquests, see Jenni Kuuliala, “Proving Misfortune, Proving Sainthood. Reconstructing Physical Impairment in Fourteenth-Century Miracle Testimonies,” in Miracles in Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions and Methodologies, ed. Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 197–226. 18 The so-called “medical model of disability” was born as the consequence of the medi calization and institutionalization of various human conditions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It considers bodily impairments and the individual to be the “problem” needing cure and rehabilitation, or “normalization.” Together with the birth of the disability rights movement, a new, “social model of disability” was introduced in the

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such as contractus (“crippled”), caecitas (“blindness”), or more precise ones such as hernia or cancer, were used to denote children’s infirmities, but their physical and functional consequences were the primary ways to prove them.19 Thus, the testimonies repeat statements about the beneficiary’s inability to walk or use their hands, inability to find their way and the need for a guide, twisted limbs and swollen bodies, and their agony and the need to lie in bed due to various illnesses. Consequently, the healing of the same consequences marked the miracle. It has been suggested that the emphasis on such symptoms and manifestations instead of precise diagnoses was partially a result of the lack of medical knowledge20—after all, witnesses were only asked questions which they were thought to know the answers to.21 At any event, these physical symptoms were also among the primary factors in the lived experience of the beneficiaries and their families and communities, and provable due to their visibility. Therefore, in the depositions the experience was turned and re-formulated into evidence according to the hagiographic conventions and legal requirements. These descriptions are similar from process to process and follow the conventions of the genre—after all, sticking to the established pattern gave more credibility to a miracle testimony.22 Parents, and especially mothers, had the first-hand information of these symptoms and in the case of children’s cure, their word was valued most.23

19 20 21 22 23

late twentieth century. According to it, the attitudes and restrictions of a society disable a person with impairment; therefore society is the problem, not the individual. See e.g. Simi Linton, Claiming Disability. Knowledge and Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 11–12. For the medical model, see also Edward Wheatley, “Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the Foundation of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts,” Disability Studies Quarterly 22 (2002): 194–212, at 196. For criticism of the social model, see e.g. B. Hughes and K. Paterson, “The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: Towards a Sociology of Impairment,” Disability and Society, 12/3 (1997): 325–340. This is typical of all hagiographic material. See Sigal, L’homme et le miracle, 228, 239–241 and also Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 158–161. Sigal, L’homme et le miracle, 248; Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 86–87. Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, 39. See Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 4–5; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, 25, 54. In other matters men’s testimony was usually valued more than women’s, but in matters related to children and family, women often were the primary witnesses. Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, 29–30, 34–35; Paolo Golinelli, “Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials. The Choice of Witnesses,” in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux bor Klaniczay (Rome: Fran aise de Rome, 2004), 165–180, at 170–171.

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The cases where the rule of the Canon Law about under-aged witnesses was ignored, or which otherwise record the testimonies of child beneficiaries, are most fruitful for the current topic, since they provide a point of comparison with adult family and community members’ testimonies. Most often, the descriptions of symptoms do not differ significantly between depositions. For instance, in the southern French process of St. Louis of Toulouse (1274–97), conducted in Marseille in 1308,24 a nine-year-old girl Beatrix de Sancta Cruce testified about her own cure of a badly disabling condition together with her mother, a neighbor, and a woman they had met during pilgrimage to St. Louis’s shrine. The first three of them testified in similar manner about Beatrix’s inability to eat or drink by herself, or walk on her own feet.25 Despite the similarities between the testimonies, the fact that Cecilia gave a testimony, and did it as the first witness to her miracle despite being underage already proves that the commissioners of the inquest valued it and, consequently, the girl’s own memory and experience. As another type of an example, in the 1331 Breton hearing of St. Yves of Tréguier, a 40-year-old woman called Katherina, the wife of Johannis le Gaven, testified about her childhood disability, describing how she kept one arm involuntarily on top of the other, hands and tibias joined, and one foot on top of the other in the way of a cross. Three other witnesses to the miracle, who had known her personally, gave a very similar description of her condition.26 Here the witness’s own view of the type of her condition is very similar to the other witnesses. She is, however, the first witness to her case, which marks her testimony as the most important one. Given that she was an adult when testifying, this is not exceptional but expectable. Instead, her case is an illuminating example of the communal memory of an infirmity and how it relates to the varying typicalities of individual processes. References to someone’s body resembling a cross are common in St. Yves’s hearing, but not elsewhere.27 24 On the process, see Margaret R. Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation in the Fourteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1929); Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 52–54. 25 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O.F.M. Analecta Franciscana, Tom. VII, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventura (Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1951), 162–164. 26 “Processus de vita et miraculis Sancti Yvonis,” in Monuments originaux de l’histoire de Saint Yves, ed. A. de La Borderie, J. Daniel, R. P. Perquis and D. Tempier (Saint-Brieuc: Imprimerie L. Prud’homme, 1887), 1–299, at 236: “et brachia habebat et tenebat unum supra aliud involuta et juncta, et manus clausas subtus patulas sive essellas, et tibias junctas, et pedes unum supra alium quasi ad modum crucis”; 238, 242, 243. 27 For further discussion, see Kuuliala “Proving Misfortune.” There are some testimonies in medieval canonization hearings which describe the saint herself being fixed in a cross like position when contemplating Christ’s suffering, one example being the

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Exactly why this is so is impossible to deduce: it may be caused by the preferences of the cult promoters, the notaries, or something more profound to the region. The similarities between testimonies to individual miracles were, however, important for proving a miracle true. Regardless of the canonization process in question, when the records were evaluated in the curia, uniformity in describing an infirmity and the miracle was important, since big differences between testimonies to the same miracle could be considered a hindrance. It has also been suggested that the procurators, who prepared the witnesses, may have coaxed them to give matching statements.28 The notaries writing the statements down also had a big influence on the choice of words. Most likely, however, similar wordings between testimonies to one miracle are primarily a result of a communally shared memory, formatted to fit the pattern of a miracle, that influenced the way an infirmity was reconstructed. Since giving a miracle testimony always meant reporting a memory of an experience, often years after the actual event like in Katherina’s case, the communal reminiscing of the events shaped also the miraculée’s recollection, making their testimonies compatible with those of other witnesses.29 This also holds true for adult beneficiaries and does not belittle the importance of the testimonies of those cured of childhood infirmities: that they were interrogated in the first place means that their experience and view was valued. Yet, even in Katherina’s case there are certain aspects concerning the pilgrimage that distinguish her own testimony from those of others, which will be discussed below. Combined with the requirements of uniformity in proving a miracle, the impact of collective memory is an illuminating example of the methodological challenges regarding the study of historical experience. People carry conceptions from their cultural background and socialization that shape what they have gone through and influence the way an occurrence is turned into a reasoned, coherent experience.30 Especially when the miracle beneficiary mid-fifteenth-century inquest of St. Frances of Rome: I Processi inediti per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (Santa Francesca Romana) 1440–1453, Studi e testi 120, ed. Placido Tommaso Lugano (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1945), 18–20. For the importance of contemplating Christ’s suffering, see e.g. Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream. Pain in Late Medieval Culture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), esp. 25–30. It is possible that something similar was behind the references to cross in St. Yves’s process, but there is no clear evidence of this. 28 Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 81–82 and Louis Carlous-Barré, “Consultant sur le IIe Miracle de Saint Louis,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes, 117 (1959): 52–72, esp. 59–60. 29 For the significance of memory for the study of canonization testimonies, see Smoller, “Miracle, Memory, and Meaning.” 30 The classic study on this is Reinhart Koselleck, “ ‘Erfahrungsraum’ und ‘Erfartungsho rizont’—Zwei Historische Kategorien,” in Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur

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was a small child, the community’s version of the events undoubtedly influenced the memory of childhood occurrences significantly, and helped finding explanation or sense for a traumatic experience for both children and their parents.31 The memory of an experience once lived thus became viewed through the communally and culturally established pattern of a miracle narrative, enhanced by the canonization inquest itself. How much these conceptions and the possibility of a miraculous cure shaped the lived experience before any miracle took place can only be speculated. There are, however, some examples where the child beneficiary’s deposition highlights slightly different aspects than those of others; these cases can be read as examples of what Michael Goodich writes about the importance of deviations to the miracle pattern for historical analysis.32 One such example was recorded in the canonization hearing of the Giambonite hermit John Buoni, held in Cesena and Mantua in 1251–1254, concerning the cure of an eight-yearold boy Amadorinus. The depositions were given by Amadorinus himself, by his uncle who had the position of a father, and two brothers. Amadorinus was cured of a condition described as cancer or fistulae. During the three years the infirmity lasted, the boy was in the care of physicians, and all witnesses testified how they said that they would need to cut off the leg. Amadorinus is the only one whose witness accounts mentions that after a visit to the hermit, he was able to walk again, which he could not do earlier.33 If not an omission of the notary, this inconsistency raises the question of whether the danger of amputation, a feared and dangerous operation, was so strong a memory that the other witnesses felt his returning ability to walk on his leg a minor consequence of the miracle. Concerning a different type of infirmity, Rixenda de Fayensa, the daughter of a miles, testified in St. Louis of Toulouse’s inquest about her miraculously cured deafness, which she acquired as an infant when her wet-nurse dropped Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1979), 349–375. 31 For reminiscing, trauma, and the miraculous, see David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 196–198; Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, 271–274; Gábor Klaniczay, “Speaking about Miracles: Oral Testimony and Written Record in Medieval Canonization Trials,” in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe, ed. Anna Adamska and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 365–95; Smoller, “Miracle, Memory, and Meaning,” 433. 32 Michael Goodich, “Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. Social History and Medieval Miracles,” in Signs, Wonders, Miracles. Representations of Divine Power in the Life of Church, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), 135–156, at 143–144. 33 Processus Apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur vel a Catholicis Scribtoribus celebrantur (hereafter ), ed. by Soci des Bollandistes, vols. 1–68 (Brussels and Antwerp: Soci des Bollandistes, 1863–1887), Oct. , 825–826.

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her. Rixenda’s two brothers simply called her “deaf” (surda), while her father explained that she could not hear, but that the deafness grew in her when she got older.34 Rixenda’s own testimony about her deafness is much more elaborate, and she described in detail how she heard the word “deaf” being used, how the deafness increased, and how she heard a constant buzzing in her ears.35 Deafness and muteness could be proven in other manners too; the cases are relatively few, but “not understanding” or using signs when communicating were common ways to do so.36 Yet here it is fairly evident that with a disability like deafness, whether partial or complete, the experience of it was easier to investigate in detail when interrogating the beneficiary, and special emphasis was therefore given to the views of the girl herself. Despite Rixenda’s young age when acquiring her disability, nothing in the recorded witness statement hints at the commissioners having any doubt about the veracity of her experienced deafness, since no dubious or clarifying questions were recorded. Why are there, then, differences between individual testimonies to some miracles while in some cases the descriptions of infirmity are strikingly univocal? The differences could of course be ignored simply as coincidences or deliberate omissions in the process of summarizing the oral witness account. At the same time, parchment was expensive and the process of recording testimonies laborious, not to mention the requirement that the witnesses had to agree with the written version of their testimony. Therefore, nothing was documented without a purpose. In the case of Amadorinus, it is possible that the beneficiary’s bigger emphasis on physical disability simply derived from the memory it had left as a significant factor in the experience of impairment. In another example, from the hearing of St Clare of Montefalco (1318–1319), a twenty-yearold youth called Ceptus Sperançe di Montefalco, cured of congenitally twisted 34 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 154: “perceperunt ipse pater et mater sua quod dicta filia nichil audiebat, et quod, ea crescente, surditas eciam cescebat in ea.” 35 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 153: “vocabat eam surdam, et hoc bene recordatur quod aliquo tempore audivit illud verbum a matre et ab aliis de domo patris sui, set non intelligebat quod volebat dicere; et eius etate crescente crescebat in ea surditas et eius obturbabatur auditus ex utraque parte tam a sinistra quam a dextra, ita quod videbatur sibi quod quasi examen apum et bundimentum in eius auribus continuo resonabant, ut dixit.” 36 See e.g. Il Processo di canonizzazione di Bernardino da Siena (1445–1450), ed. Letizia Pellegrini, Analecta Franciscana, xvi. Nova series, Documenta et studia 4 (Grottaferrata: Frati editori di Quaracchi, 2009), 83–87, 196–97, for testimonies concerning the cure of a deaf-mute youth. The onlookers had wanted to test if his deafness and the alleged mirac ulous cure at St. Bernardino of Siena’s shrine had been genuine. They knew it was so because the boy communicated with “nods and signs.”

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feet ten years earlier, reported in his testimony that he had been “unable to walk” (impotens ad ambulandum), whereas other witnesses described him using crutches.37 Although this discrepancy may just be in the choice of words, it is probable that for Ceptus himself, the difficulty in walking was such a strong memory of his cured impairment that he worded it in a different manner. In this particular case, the beneficiary’s account is again the most detailed one, and the commissioners of St. Clare’s process made several clarifying questions. The seeming differences in the way his physical disability was described does not seem to have bothered the commissioners, however. Albeit sporadic, these examples mostly show the fluidity of definitions behind the seemingly uniform way miracle testimonies have in defining various impairments. Since we are mostly lacking written statements of these cases’ evaluation in the papal curia, it is impossible to say whether such minor discrepancies were considered an issue later on. That is unlikely, however. In a rare example of a curial phase of the process concerning a miracle of St. Louis ix of France, cardinal Pietro Colonna reasoned that small differences in the descriptions of an infirmity could be attributed to lapses in the witnesses’ memory.38 The lived experience of infirmity strongly intermingles with the need there was to prove its incurability. For example, Ceptus Sperançe testified how his mother used to take him to baths to cure him but with no results. Such statements were common ways to prove the incurability by means of humans. The verdict of medical professionals and occasionally the communal consensus about it were the key elements, but the avoidance of dangerous or painful medical operations was also among the merits of a saint, like in the case of Amadorinus.39 Undoubtedly, fear of grave medical operations, as well as unsuccessful medical treatments, were also among the key elements in the

37 Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. Enrico Menestò (Florence and Perugia: La Nuova Italia, 1984), 308–309, 348–349, 376, 427. 38 Carolus-Barré, “Consultation sur le IIe Miracle de Saint Louis,” 59–60. 39 Medical men could refuse treating a child due to their young age as well. See e.g. Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, 307, for the deposition of a physician refusing to treat a six-month-old infant with hernia, because it would have required a cut. For physicians in canonization processes, see Didier Lett, “Judicium medicine and judicium sanctitatis: Medical Doctors in the Canonization Process of Nicolas of Tolentino (1325)— Experts Subject to the Inquisitorial Logic,” in Popes, Saints, and Crusades: Approaches to Church and Belief in the Middle Ages, ed. Kirsi Salonen and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 153–170; Joseph Ziegler, “Practitioners and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries,” Social History of Medicine 12 (1999): 191–225. For other ways of proving incur ability, Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration, 193–199.

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beneficiaries’ and their families’ memory,40 albeit heavily depending on the geographic location in a sense that Southern European testimonies record the medical presence much more frequently than the North European ones.41 Getting a glimpse of the child beneficiary’s own view of these operations is, however, rare; in addition to parents, the physicians are the ones whose view of the treatments is pronounced. This was considered more essential for the investigation, as physicians’ role was to give scientific background for the cases and the medical professionals’ role in legal cases rose in importance during the late Middle Ages.42 Parents, on the other hand, were held responsible for finding treatments to their children.43 In a majority of cases, the infirm child was thus recorded as an object of parents and physicians’ curing attempts, and mostly viewed as such in the course of the investigation. One example of how the “medical experience” could be filtered through the parental view comes from the testimonies about the cure of Petrus Salvardi, a ten-year-old boy from Nîmes in St. Louis of Toulouse’s hearing. Petrus had dropsy, which made him swollen and hardly able to walk.44 His mother Alaracia’s testimony was the first one recorded, and therefore considered the most important. In her search for a cure, she entrusted her son to the care of a “good and skilled physician” (bonum et peritum medicum), who tried to cure him for three months. After this Alaracia took Petrus to Montpellier, a medical hub of the time.45 For four months, Petrus was in the care of a physician, but he kept going worse. The physician then made him some kind of medicine (beuragium), but the mother, who had already seen many useless medicines 40

This pertains to different kinds of infirmities but seems to have been especially urgent with infirmities causing different types of swellings. See e.g. Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis 1–4. Fasciculus IV, Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Neapoli, ed. M.-H. Laurent (Saint-Maximin: Revue Thomiste, 1911), 482–483, for a case where the parents of an infant with swollen testicles did not want the physicians to make incisions and prayed for the help of St Thomas Aquinas, as well as Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, 365–366 for a similar case. Medical operations were given varying emphasis, however. In St. Louis of Toulouse’s hearing, for example, a girl called Xanctia was unable to move due to the aftermath of St. Anthony’s Fire. She and her parents reported her residing in a hospital but no details of any treatments are included in the depositions. Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 173–176. 41 Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, 5, 95–96. 42 Ziegler, “Practitioners and Saints,” esp. 214 ff. 43 Louis Haas, Renaissance Man and His Children. Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence, 1300–1600 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 162. 44 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 184–186. 45 The family was of a relatively high social standing. One of the physicians they hired was the Pope’s medicus Iohannes Provincialis: Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici

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administered to her son, prayed to St. Louis, that if her son did not drink that medicine but was still healed, she would take him to Louis’s shrine with a votive gift. Only at this point, the son’s own role comes forward. According to the deposition, the following night Petrus woke up and said: “Ah, domina, do you know that I do not feel as much pain as I felt before and am used to feeling; on the contrary, it seems to me that the pain is much alleviated, and the tumor has grown somewhat smaller.”46 The boy was gradually cured so that all symptoms vanished without any medicine, of which the mother greatly rejoiced. Petrus himself gave a deposition as well; at the time he was already a man of twenty years. Still his statement is very short, mainly stating that he remembers his infirmity well. Here the mother’s experience and agency in looking for medical help, as well as her emotions, were the key factors. As is usual, she was the one asking for a special grace from the saint,47 and, consequently, the main recipient of his grace. Exactly why this is the case when Beatrix and Rixenda, interrogated in the same hearing, were the most important witnesses, is not known. At least this shows that even among one single canonization process, there are irregularities in how much weight was given to the personal experience of a beneficiary cured of a childhood infirmity. The testimonies about miraculous cures were also testimonies of emotions. The reported feelings were interlinked with the various phases of a miracle, and the witnesses knew how to present their emotions to the commissioners in order to give proof for their case and to formulate it according to the expected pattern.48 As is the case with physical symptoms, emotions were also among the defining experiences of the parties involved, to the point that in many instances it is impossible to distinguish an emotion or a sentiment from other descriptions of the miraculous event. As shown by the case of Alaracia and her son Petrus, in children’s miraculous cures the focus is usually

46 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 184: “Ha, Domina, sciatis quod ego non sencio tantum dolorem sicut senciebam heri et consuevi sentire, immo videtur mihi quod multum fuerit mitigatus dolor, et tumor eciam aliqualiter diminutus.” 47 See Didier Lett, L’enfant des miracles. Enfance et société au Moyen Âge (XIIe–XIIIe siècle), Collection historique (Paris: Aubier, 1997), 190–192. 48 Here it is worth pointing out that “emotions” is a modern term never referred to in can onization documents, and all in all, the sentiments or emotions mentioned in them are not directly translatable into modern languages due to the varying meanings they have in different culture. This does not, however, diminish their significance in this context. See e.g. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 3–4 and Nicole Archambeau, “Tempted to Kill. Miraculous Consolation for a Mother after the Death of her Infant Daughter,” in and Health, 1200–1700, ed. Elena Carrera (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 47–66, at 48–49.

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on parental emotions. Their grief and tears, essential in invoking the saint,49 secured a successful plea.50 In some, rare instances, their other sentiments were interwoven into the narratives. During the past decade, scholars of medieval disability have shown that chronic conditions were not necessarily a reason for marginalization, shame, or being considered a burden, although that naturally depended a lot on the individual’s community and socio-economic status.51 However, occasionally the testimonies refer to sentiments such as disgust or shame; they usually pertain to facial disfigurement, deafness, or very severely deforming conditions. The mildest remarks of this kind describe a child’s condition “horrible,” like the mother of a boy with a tumor on his neck did in St. Clare of Montefalco’s hearing.52 Sometimes these sentiments were given a reason, like in testimonies about girls with facial disfigurement, who were considered impossible to marry off.53 In general, these kinds of emotions 49 See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, 88, for the importance of devotional tears in the veneration of saints. 50 Statements of them were significantly pronounced when the child was in mortal danger. See e.g. Processus Apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono, aass Oct ix, 858–859, for the testimony of the grandmother of a noble boy ill with “mortal fever,” who testified that she and the child’s parents dolebant ad mortem because the child was very dear to them, whence the grandmother was moved in her heart to plea for the saint’s help. The boy’s mother explained the grandmother’s role by having been disposed by grief. Tender feelings were presented as the reason for making a vow also in the deposition of Francescha, the stepgrandmother of a girl with epilepsy: Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, 311: “propter amorem quem portabat ad dictam Bionducctiam, quod erat et est filia cuiusdam filie viri sui ipsius testis, devovit dictam Biondutiam Deo et beate Clare” [because of the love she felt for said Bionductia, who was and is the daughter of the daughter of the husband of the witness, she vowed said Biondutia to God and blessed Clare]. 51 The ill treatment of the disabled has been a long-lasting topos. For the historiography of medieval disability till 2000’s, see Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 11–20. 52 Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, 369: “ipsa habet unum filium […] que patiebatur tumorem seu scrofolas in gucture, et erat ex hoc orribilis ad videndum.” 53 Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, 480–481: “Unde ipsa, multum plorans dolens ne vir eam vilificaret et nollet eam recipere in uxorem […] devovit eam Deo et beate Clare predicte” [And she, crying a lot and grieving that a man would make little value of her and not want to receive her as a wife […] she made a vow for her to God and blessed Clare]; similar worries may have been behind the statement about a girl named Ceccha in Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, 236: “Et dicti fratres iverunt ad dictam dominam et confortaverunt eam dicendo: Quare stas ita tristis et ploras ita fortiter? Et illa respondit dicens: Quia medici volunt incidere in gutture filiam meam; remanebit ita cicatrix ita quod erit vituperati” [And said brothers went to said lady and consoled her saying: Why are you so sad and cry so strongly? And she responded saying: Because physicians want to cut in to the throat of my daughter: therefore a scar will remain so that she will be reproached.] The most outspoken case I have found is in the canonization pro tocols of St. Thomas Aquinas. It concerns a girl with scrofula, whose fianc rejected her

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or reactions served the purpose of highlighting the severity of the situation, but almost entirely from the perspective of the parents or other family members.54 This derives, at least partly, from the parental responsibilities. As already mentioned, they were the ones supposed to find a cure for their children,55 and they were responsible for their future. Shame and honor, on the other hand, depended on one’s ability to live according to cultural norms,56 and when a child’s infirmity prevented it, the embarrassment and worry fell on his or her parents.57 Similarly, it is possible to deduce how the most excessive reports of parents’ weariness when their child was severely disabled for a long time stemmed from the everyday trouble and worry.58 because of the illness. Her marriage to the very same man after the miracle is presented as evidence of the cure in the depositions. Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, 340–343. 54 As an example of this, the elder brother of the deaf girl Rixenda said that everyone in the household was ashamed of her deafness. Although not stated in the testimonies, it is presumable that this also relates to the social expectations the family had for the girl, who was the daughter of a nobleman. Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 154–155. The case is discussed more thoroughly in Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration, 114–115, 295–296. 55 In miracles, mothers were more commonly the ones making a vow for their children, which is explainable by their having the primary nurturing roles. Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Of Good and Ill Repute”: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 164–165; Lett, L’enfant des miracles, 141; Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, pp. 99–100. There was a difference, however, in a sense that the fathers in Scandinavian miracles had a more pronounced nurturing role than their Italian counterparts. See Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, esp. 115–20; Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, “Parental Roles in the Canonisation Processes of Saint Nicola of Tolentino and Saint Thomas Cantilupe,” in Hoping for Continuity. Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Katariina Mustakallio, Jussi Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio, and Ville Vuolanto (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), 145–155; Katajala-Peltomaa, “Masculinity and Lived Religion in Late Medieval Sweden,” passim. 56 See Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, 1–3. 57 In the testimonies of adult beneficiaries referring to shame or other such feelings, deafness, disfigurement, or the need to beg arise. See e.g. John Buoni’s canonization protocols for the testimony of a woman whose husband was blind for two years and had to beg because of it. She stated that this made him ashamed. Another man in the same inquiry, dominus Bonvicinus, testified that he was ashamed of his deafness, and domina Bonaventura suffered from an illness that made her face contort, shake, and look foolish. She reported having been ashamed of her condition. Processus Apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono, aass Oct ix, 821, 874, 878. 58 As an example, a man called Riccardus Berardi testified in the 1306 inquest into Peter of Morrone’s sanctity about his daughter’s cure of a very severe, congenital disability. According to his testimony, witnessing his daughter living such tormented life and considering his own loss and weariness, he set off to meet the living saint. Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sulmona Monumenta Coelestiniana: Quellen

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How these children experienced their situation, let alone the expectations— or the lack of them—for their future, is not revealed and in a majority of cases, seems to have been unimportant for the commissioners. The depositions of even those child beneficiaries whose parents’ testimonies express sentiments of shame or weariness do not report their response to the situation, nor are they any more descriptive when it comes to the beneficiaries’ sentiments. These references are perhaps too few overall to make far-reaching conclusions, but it seems that the commissioners did not consider the beneficiary’s emotions related to concerns about their future essential—again, presumably since they were not the ones primarily responsible for it. There are, however, very sporadic cases, which hint at children feeling some responsibility towards their parents at the time of infirmity. Katherina le Gaven spent quite some time at St. Yves of Tréguier’s shrine in vain. When returning home uncured she exclaimed “humbly and with affection and devotion,” asking the saint how she could return to her mother still not healed.59 Here the worded emotion is attached to her final, successful plea, but the reason her lack of cure arose it is presented as a lack of miracle for the mother. In a same manner, an Italian girl Verderosa asked St. Ambrose of Massa to cure her ailing arm, because “my mother loves you a lot and has offended you in no manner.”60 Here the child, even when presenting her own devotion to the saint, justified her plea with the mother’s sentiments, but this was by no means a norm. In some other testimonies telling about children’s interaction with the saint there are references to their more general personal sentiments. Some child beneficiaries asked their parents to make a petition to a particular saint, while some took the initiative into their own hands, which also demonstrates their zur Geschichte des Papstes Coelestin V, ed. Franz Xaver Seppelt, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte 19 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1921), 211–331, at 309: “et in isto statu remansit per decem annos uitam penatam ducens, unde dictus testis uidens sic suam filiam tormentari et considerans dampna et tedia que tolerabat in domo propter dictam filiam suam, accessit ad dictum fratrem Petrum patrem sanctum.” In the same hearing, Benedictus Thomasii de Sulmona testified about his son’s long-term paralysis, saying how the boy was “made detestable” for him due to the incurability of his condition and how he wished for his death. Ibid., 262: “factus est ipsi testi dictus filius suus abhominabilis adeo, quod pocius mortem quam uitam eius desiderabat.” 59 “Processus de vita et miraculis Sancti Yvonis,” 221: “respiciens versus civitatem et dictam ecclesiam Trecorensem, ubi corpus ipsius sancti Yvonis requiescit, dixit humiliter, affectuose et devote, quantum potuit, in britannico, per hunc modum: “O sancte Yvo, quomodo ita ibo infirma ad videndum matrem meam? O sancte Yvo, habeam per vos liberacionem meam.” 60 Processus canonizacionis b. Ambrosii Massani, in aass Nov. iv, 571–886, at 605: “Sancte Ambrosi, libera me ne medici unquam offendant me, quia mater mea multum te dilexit et in nullo te offendit

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religious socialization and the importance given to it.61 One of the most striking cases in this regard comes from the process of John Buoni and portrays a girl named Bengeven with severe fistulas in her arm, which she called “horrible” and impossible to heal by the assistance of physicians. When she was around eight years old she heard about the virtues of the hermit and pleaded to her mother that she wanted to make a vow and a pilgrimage. The girl’s own testimony gives an impression that she made the pilgrimage alone, while the mother’s mentions that they hit the road together.62 Again, this small difference did not seem to bother the commissioners; it was more important to know who made the vow and that the pilgrimage was made. Nevertheless, the girl’s testimony emphasizes her own agency and devotion, which she—and possibly the notary and commissioners—considered important. Sometimes a child’s sentiment or emotion regarding her own infirmity was recorded as the major cause for a parental invocation and as a defining factor of the experience; most often this sentiment was pain. A girl called Ganthelma was around fifteen years old when she testified about her cure of a grave, debilitating pain and inflammation that had lasted for one and half years. Ganthelma related that her mother was moved to invoke St. Louis of Toulouse for her after she pleaded her to do so with “many tears and pain” (multis lacrimis et dolore).63 Here the girl’s sentiments mix with the wish for a miracle and the mother’s actions. The Latin word for “pain,” dolor, can indeed signify both a physical symptom and a more spiritual sentiment; as a rule these two cannot be separated.64 Canonization testimonies tend to report pain as a symptom of infirmity quite irregularly. With some conditions such as urinary stones, 61 See e.g. Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sulmona, 256–257, for the testimony of a youth who had been cured of an ailing eye by the merits of Peter of Morrone at the age of fourteen. Hearing about the hermit’s miracles, he had asked that his father would send him to the holy man. For miracles and socialization, see Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, “Learning by Doing: Pilgrimages as a Means of Socialisation in the Late Middle Ages,” in Agents and Objects. Children in Pre-Modern Europe. ed. Katariina Mustakallio and Jussi Hanska (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2015), 133–146. Canonization protocols and other miracle collections include cases where a child makes a vow for their infirm sibling or parent, or assists them on a pilgrimage. These cases were a result of a crisis in a family and can be seen to mark the end of childhood. Lett, L’enfant des miracles, 119–120. 62 Processus Apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono, aass Oct ix, 811–812. 63 Processus Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici, 224–225. 64 For pain as a physical and mental sentiment, see Na’ama Cohen-Hanegbi, “Pain as Emotion: The Role of Emotional Pain in Fifteenth-Century Italian Medicine and Confession,” in Knowledge and Pain, ed. Esther Cohen, Leona Toker, Manuela Consonni, and ror (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2012), 63–82.

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fistulas, or gutta it often appears as the primary symptom, causing functional hindrances, but with a majority of infirmities, its role is subdued.65 I have shown elsewhere that in miracles healing children’s physical impairments, the sentiment of pain, especially when referring to a (physical) symptom, was reported more often when the beneficiary was among the witnesses.66 This is essential also for the question of the relevance of a child beneficiary’s experience for proving a case. Although (physical) pain was presumably considered hard to prove, the beneficiary’s testimony gave it more weight. Furthermore, it is only logical that a sentiment so personal was something the beneficiaries themselves were eager to report. Similar topoi and narrative structures were used of pain experienced in childhood and in adulthood, including night-time as the moment when pain was at its worst and loud cries of pain. A young woman Alicia de Lonesdale testified about her severe childhood injury and resulting disability in St. Thomas Cantilupe’s hearing in 1308, recalling that the night following her accident the pain in her leg troubled her a lot.67 A woman gave a deposition in the hearing of St. Yves of Tréguier that the gutta she had acquired in her early teens burdened her so that she could hardly sleep, nor could those near her, because of her cries of pain,68 and a boy reported in Peter of Morrone’s hearing that he did not stop crying loudly because of the intolerable pain.69 65 See Bianca Frohne and Jenni Kuuliala, “The Trauma of Pain in Later Medieval Miracle Accounts,” in Trauma in Medieval Society, ed. Wendy Turner and Christina Lee (Leiden: Brill 2018), 215–236. 66 Kuuliala, Childhood Disability and Social Integration, 266–267. 67 bav, ms Vat. lat. 4015, fol. 66v: “et continue dictus pes magis aggravabant, demum cum esset iuxta fontem ecclesie sancti Clementis Dacorum prope Londinium fuit plus solito aggravata ex dolore dicti pedis, quia per dicta foramina exiuerunt aliqua ossa corrupta et putrefacta” [and the said leg tormented her continuously more, so that when she was near the spring of St Clement Danes near London she was more customarily vexed by the pain of the said leg, because from the said fissure some rotten and putrefied bones were discharged]. Later on, Alicia’s condition became a sort of a paralysis, and according to her testimony, she did not feel pain any longer but was unable to walk. Alicia and her father spent ten years begging in London before her cure. 68 “Processus de vita et miraculis Sancti Yvonis,” 245: “et adeo ipsam quasi continue gravabat dicta gutta quod vix dormire poterat, nec eciam assistentes, propter clamores et planctus quos faciebat dicta testis.” 69 Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sulmona, 291: “continue ipse testis clamare non cessabat propter dolores intolerabiles quos sustinebat.” Excessive pain behavior was usually more emphasized in narratives about women but in the case of the miraculous, the difference is not very pronounced. For gender and pain behavior, see Esther The Modulated Scream. Pain in Late Medieval Culture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 100–101.

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The infrequency of references to children’s pain cannot be taken to denote that people would have been insensitive towards it, but the main question is its role as evidence. Presumably, in the period between the miracle and the canonization inquest, child beneficiaries, who were socialized into the various cultural connotations of pain, learned to modify and adjust the narrative of their memory accordingly. They were clearly aware that reporting such reactions gave weight to their case, and most likely the excessiveness of their pain made it worth recording down. It is, however, worth pointing out that we can never know other people’s bodies, although we often tend to make analogies to our own bodies and expect them to give us knowledge about those of others.70 Furthermore, when it comes to the Middle Ages, the study of human body is a study of what was written about it.71 This is evident in the canonization testimonies about pain as well. When it comes to the experience of pain, it is impossible to break through the written record to study the actual experience of pain or even how individual people felt about it. Medieval society had a twofold attitude towards pain, which was valorized especially in the lives of Christ, martyrs, and saints, but which people sought to alleviate with the means available.72 In this context, a reference to a child beneficiary’s pain shows its importance for the witnesses’ memory about the experience and its significance for the cult of saints and the role of the miraculous in the healthcare. In the context of the miraculous, the primary role of pain was, however, to prove a saint’s power. In the discussion above, the unfortunate consequences and the negative experiences of childhood infirmity have been emphasized, especially the limits in functional abilities, fear of medical operations, as well as physical and emotional suffering. Although with conditions causing severe functional or social hindrances or pain those were undoubtedly a significant part of all parties’ experience and memory, they are not the whole picture. Miracle narratives of all sorts had to underscore these negative consequences in order to highlight the saint’s power, and the suffering of the miraculées, and in the case of children their parents, was used and recorded as evidence in the depositions. Since the ideas of the miraculous were internalized in all levels of the society, the aspects which were highlighted in the narrative pattern undoubtedly influenced the ways child beneficiaries reminisced their experience after 70

Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin, “Introduction,” in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 1–15, at 7. 71 Derek G. Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 127. 72 The Modulated Scream, 32–35, 50, 87–103.

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the miracle. At the same time, the commissioners of canonization inquests had differing preferences, and how much weight an individual childhood experience was given varies. It is, however, important to point out that also families were different, and not every chronic infirmity miraculously cured was a severe one. The lived experience of ill and impaired children and their families varied greatly, depending on the type of the child’s condition, the family’s social position, and the personal preferences and views of the family. Perhaps the most illustrative example of the multifacetedness of the phenomenon are the testimonies about the cure of Marseillean boy Iacobus Deodatus’ congenitally twisted feet in St. Louis of Toulouse’s inquest. After hearing a sermon on the saint’s virtues, Iacobus’s mother prayed to him and later told the boy to say Ave Maria in his honor, which resulted in the cure. The mother made her plea with lots of tears, and many of the seven witnesses to the case described the boy’s walking problems and incurability; his former wet-nurse even stated that she often wanted to quit her job. However, the testimonies also reveal that Iacobus played with other children, took part in discussing the petition to St. Louis, and received education from a local notary.73 We do not have Iacobus’s own testimony of the events due to his untimely death, but the testimonies to his miraculous cure show that even when there appears to have been quite an ordinary life behind the notaries’ report, the miracle itself was eventually proven and defined through misfortune and parental devotion. 73 Processus canonizationis

udovici ep. Tolosani, 176–180.

part 2 Children in Medieval Law and Justice

chapter 6

“I Would Like to Make It Up to You by Fostering Your Son” Fosterage and Fixing Relations in Medieval Iceland Lahney Preston-Matto Fosterage is ubiquitous in medieval literary texts, particularly early ones, but it is also rarely discussed in much detail. The world of the texts simply assumes that readers knew what fosterage was and how it worked, and the authors of medieval texts did not spend much time exploring the specifics of fosterage relationships, either between foster parents and children, or between foster siblings, except to acknowledge the titles. Nevertheless, fosterage was widely practiced in medieval northern Europe, although it seems to have been a stronger practice in Scandinavia and Celtic lands such as Ireland and Scotland.1 1 See Jenny Jochens, “Fosterage,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), 296–7; and “Old Norse Motherhood” in Medieval Mothering, ed. J. C. Parsons and B. Wheeler (New York: Routledge, 1996), 201–22, esp. 206–9; Anna Hansen, “Fosterage and Dependency in Medieval Iceland and its Significance in Gísla Saga,” in Northern World: Youth and Age in the Medieval North, ed. Shannon Lewis-Simpson (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008), 73–86; Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), esp. 247–9; Jesse Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), esp. 171–172; Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), esp. 197–198; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), esp. ch. 5; Laws of Early Iceland Grágás I, ed. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980), 151, 155; Laws of Early Iceland Grágás II, ed. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2000), 46–47; Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), 86–91; Brónagh Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” in The Empty Throne: Childhood and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. R. Davis and T. Dunne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), and also available via eprints.gla.ac.uk, 2–32 at 10–15; Thomas Charles O’Donnell, The Affect of Fosterage in Medieval Ireland, PhD dissertation, University College London, 2016; Katharine Anderson, “Urth noe e tat: The Question of Fosterage in High Medieval Wales,” North American Journal of Welsh Studies, 4,1 (Winter 2004): 1–11; L. B. Smith, “Fosterage, Adoption and God-Parenthood: Ritual and Fictive Kinship in Medieval Wales,” The Welsh History Review 16,1 (1992): 1–35; and T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), esp. 78–82. For arguments about fosterage pre-dating medi eval Europe, see Raimund Karl, “Master and Apprentice, Knight and Squire: Education in the

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In many instances, there was a close kinship connection between the natal family of the child and the foster family: Jan Bremmer argues specifically for an avuncular relationship, in which a woman’s son would be fostered by her brother.2 Early Irish law made a distinction between fosterage for affection and fosterage for a fee, with fosterage for affection usually occurring within a close kinship group.3 But not all fosterage contracts involved direct familial connections. One of the goals of fosterage was education, so sometimes the child was fostered with a family who could provide that education. And there were, of course, political reasons to foster children: Katharine Anderson notes that in Wales, when fosterage did occur—and it seems not to have been as prevalent in Wales as it was in Scotland or Ireland—it helped to reinforce political relationships and keep them in a certain fixed position to one another, especially if the son of a higher status king or noble was fostered with a lower status retainer. William Ian Miller has made the same argument for medieval Iceland with regard to enforcing relative social status among participants.4 When scholars focus on fosterage, the reinforcement of political status between the foster family and the natal family is often the primary focus: Peter Parkes wrote a series of articles about fosterage, and makes the distinction between what he calls patronal and cliental fosterage. These are both contractual fosterage relationships: in patronal fosterage, the foster-parent is higher status, and has the ability to provide “sponsorship reciprocities” whereas in cliental fosterage, the natal parent is higher status, and is thus the one to provide “sponsorship reciprocities.”5 Parkes notes that cliental fosterage is a kind of allegiance fosterage, and is often carried out with children who must be wet-nursed and brought up from infancy, whereas patronal fosterage is instead “Celtic” Iron Age,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 24, 3 (2005): 255–71; and “Neighbourhood, Hospitality, Fosterage and Contracts: Late Hallstatt and early La Tène complex social interaction north of the Alps,” available at academia.edu, 1–20. For the way fosterage relationships continued into the early modern period, see Fiona Fitzsimons, “Fosterage and Gossiprid in Late Medieval Ireland: Some New Evidence,” in Gaelic Ireland, c. 1250–c. 1650. Land, Lordship and Settlement, ed. P. J. Duffy et. al. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 138–49. 2 Jan Bremmer, “Avunculate and Fosterage,” Journal of Indo-European Studies 4 (1976): 65–78. 3 Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law,” 11. 4 Miller, Bloodtaking, 122–4; Byock, Feud, 245–8. 5 Peter Parkes, “Fostering Fealty: A Comparative Analysis of Tributary Allegiances of Adoptive Kinship,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 4 (October 2003): 741–82 at 743–4. See especially 753–6 for discussion of Scandinavian and Celtic fosterage. See also Peter Parkes, “Celtic Fosterage: Adoptive Kinship and Clientage in Northwest Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, 2 (April 2006): 359–95; and Peter Parkes, “Fosterage, Kinship and Legend: When Milk was Thicker than Blood?,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 004): 587–615, esp. 598–604 for a discussion of Irish and Icelandic fosterage.

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alliance fosterage, and generally occurs after the child has already been weaned, more usually at the age of seven or so.6 While these classifications are indeed useful, in Parkes’ analysis the accrued benefits to both foster-parent and child are elided and the public nature of the child’s actions is overlooked.7 Generally, the extant legal statutes about children tend to reinforce the contractual nature of fosterage, and to emphasize ways of compensating parties when the relationship goes awry, or when something untoward happens. This is usually by way of a fine, and the severity of the fine depends upon the breach of the contract.8 However, severe consequences are not what we tend to see in the literature, especially with regard to the children. There, children are treasured: in most of the Irish saints’ lives, for example, saints bring children back to life and then foster them. It is rare to see a child in the sagas whose death is not compensated for, and for the most part, child characters are protected— even annoying children like Grettir, who causes his father no end of trouble with a variety of livestock. In most cases, if children are depicted as misbehaving, it is because they do not know any better, at which point they are shown the error of their ways and expected to learn their lesson, which, for the most part, they do. Child characters are often used as exempla of proper correction and behavior; even more, their behavior frequently goes above and beyond what might normally be expected of them. This might be even more true for foster children: the public nature of learning their lessons also has benefits for their foster parents as it solidifies and perhaps escalates their social worth to raise a socially responsible child by modeling appropriate behavior. While not a subject heretofore of intense scrutiny, secular fosterage relationships play an important part in Icelandic sagas, and this article argues that, while fosterage benefitted all involved parties, fosterage as a social institution is most beneficial to foster parents, specifically foster fathers. Additionally, fosterage relationships were used to “fix” relationships in two senses: foster children (but usually sons) helped to repair or improve relationships between foster families and the fostered child’s natal families, often by helping to alleviate the 6 Ibid. 743–4. 7 Parkes also identifies secular fosterage with cliental fosterage and monastic fosterage with patronal fosterage (“Celtic Fosterage,” 371) but O’Donnell argues that Parkes may be exaggerating the distinction between secular and monastic fosterage because “the religious use of fosterage does not adhere to a coherent model.” The Affect of Fosterage, 218. For a discussion of ecclesiastical fosterage, see Lahney Preston-Matto, “Are You My Brother?: Medieval Irish Ecclesiastical Fosterage,” in Church and Settlement in Ireland: Landscape, Life, Legacy, ed. Matthew Stout and James Lyttleton (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018), 86–100, and “Saints and Fosterage in Medieval Ireland: A Sanctified Social Practice,” Eolas 5 (2012): 62–78. 8 Kelly, A Guide, 86–91; Laws of Early Iceland Grágás I, 151, 155; Laws of Early Iceland Grágás II,

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loss of another family member; and fosterage helped to “fix” or maintain the social status of both the foster child and the natal family. This “fixing” of social status was partially accomplished by the semi-public nature of the fosterage arrangement; the child’s behavior reflected the foster-parents’ ability to teach the child in an acceptable way. The Icelandic sagas have multiple examples of both foster parents and children learning how they should behave through public social interactions. Laxdæla Saga tells the story of the people of Laxardal, in the west of Iceland, and is one of the most famous of the family sagas. This saga is intriguing not only because of its vast sweep in territory, time and family connections, but also because of its literary parallels to texts such as Volsunga Saga, especially in its thirst for vengeance on the part of its main female characters, in both cases named Gudrun. There are strong fosterage relationships in at least three of the seven generations that are covered by the saga but by far the most important fosterage relationship begins with Hoskuld Kollsson. Hoskuld buys a slave while he is in Norway, and brings her back to Iceland with him. Melkorka the slave, who turns out to be the daughter of the king of Ireland, has a son by Hoskuld named Olaf. This means that Olaf is both a prince and the son of a slave, positions which are rather incommensurable socially. He was raised by his mother in one of Hoskuld’s households where they would not have to cross paths with Hoskuld’s wife Jorunn. When Olaf is seven—the traditional age of fostering—Thord Goddi offers to foster him in exchange for Hoskuld’s protection. Thord has upset his wife Vigdis so badly that she has divorced him and claimed half the property, which is when Thord turns to Hoskuld for assistance. Thord, a notable cheapskate, but somewhat desperate, offers: “I will gladly place you in charge of all my wealth. What’s more, I’m offering to foster your son, Olaf, and make him my sole heir after my death, as I have no heirs in this country and I would rather the wealth went to him than for Vigdis’s kinsmen to get their paws on it.”9 Although Melkorka does not find this fosterage arrangement socially high status enough, Olaf is given to Thord to raise as his foster son. In this instance, the fosterage relationship is entered into in order to gain material support for all three parties: Olaf inherits Thord’s entire property when he dies, when he would otherwise have to take a much smaller share of Hoskuld’s property as 9 “The Saga of the People of Laxardal,” trans. Keneva Kunz, in The Sagas of Icelanders (New York: Penguin, 2001), 276–421 at 296. The original Icelandic is “Eigi skal nú þat þó, því at ek vil gjarna, at þú takir handsǫlum á ǫllu fénu. Síðan vil ek bjóða Óláfi, syni þínum, til fóstrs ok gefa honum allt fé eptir minn dag, því at ek á engan erfingja hér á landi, ok hygg ek, at þá sé betr komit fét, heldr en frændr Vigdísar skelli hrǫmmum yfir.” (37) Laxdæla Saga, Einar Ó Sveinsson, ed. Hi slenzka Fornritaf lag, Reykjav k, 1934.

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an illegitimate son; Thord secures Hoskuld’s support in his disagreement with his ex-wife’s family, which Hoskuld goes on to settle advantageously for him; and Hoskuld manages to increase his own reputation by successfully settling someone else’s dispute while also winning an independent inheritance for his son. In fact, the reader is told, “Thord Goddi’s situation was much better after Olaf became his foster-son.”10 Jesse Byock analyzes this moment in the saga as one that primarily revolves around the goði and bóndi relationship and argues that “the bóndi [Thord] has from the start a strong legal case, but it is the chieftain [Hoskuld] who profits.”11 But by offering Hoskuld something he cannot otherwise expect—a full inheritance for his illegitimate son—Thord is the one who secures his own and Olaf’s future because he knows that Hoskuld will help him keep his land. While Hoskuld may profit in terms of reputation, both Thord and Olaf secure financial futures and affectionate relationships that otherwise would have been missing. In this instance, then, fosterage contracts are entered into in order to calm disputes, secure financial futures, and maintain or increase social standing. While the goði-bóndi contract is the basis for this negotiation, as is the handsal agreement that Thord makes with Hoskuld to turn over his property to Olaf, the third and equally important legal pact is the fosterage arrangement between Thord and Olaf, which Byock overlooks in his discussion. Later in the saga, when he’s a grown man, Olaf offers to foster one of his half-brother Thorleik’s sons, Bolli, with an even more bald appraisal of what it means to foster a child: Brother, as you well know, we have shown each other little affection in the past. I wish we could do better in the future. I know you resented my accepting the gifts from our father on his deathbed and if you still feel yourself hard done by, I would like to make it up to you by fostering your son, as he who raises the child of another is always considered as the lesser of the two.12

10

Ibid., 297. The original Icelandic is “Miklu var ráð Þórðar goda betra, síðan Óláfr kom til hans.” (39) 11 Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 180. See also Byock, Medieval Iceland, 170–173. 12 “The Saga of the People of Laxardal,” 320–1. The original Icelandic is: “Svá er, frændi, sem þér er kunnigt, at með okkr hefir verit ekki mart; nú vilda ek til þess mæla, at vit betraðim frændsemi okkra; veit ek, at þér mislíkar, er ek tók við gripum þeim, er faðir minn gaf mér á deyjanda degi; nú ef þú þykkisk af þessu vanhaldinn, þá vil ek þat vinna til heils hugar þíns, at fóstra son þ r, er strar barn.” (75)

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Here, the social and political terms of fostering are acknowledged clearly by the author, in the most candid statement about fosterage that appears in any medieval literature. Olaf wants to repair his relationship with his half-brother Thorleik, who resents him because, even though illegitimate, Olaf was still their father’s favorite, and received special tokens of Hoskuld’s affection on his deathbed. Olaf has also organized his father’s funeral feast without consulting with his half-brothers Thorleik and Bard. Olaf offers to make reparation for all this by affixing himself to a lower social status than Thorleik, who is more sensitive about Olaf’s prominence than Bard. This is something that Thorleik has been concerned about, as Olaf is more successful in most ways than he is; Olaf’s offer, then, is a generous one in that he is willing to lose social standing in order to win the affections of his brother and nephew. As with Thord’s offer to foster Olaf, there is the understanding that Olaf’s offer will calm tensions between the rival siblings. So while this fosterage relationship is about peace-keeping between the brothers, it is also concerned with Olaf’s status, and even though he is offering specifically to lower his status, his fostering of Bolli actually increases Olaf’s status. This is especially true after Thorleik goes on to make a series of questionable decisions about insulting his uncle, who has helped him retain his horses, inviting wizards to live on his property and then asking the wizards to harm his uncle. Olaf takes responsibility for sorting out the entire situation, and then requests that Thorleik return to being a merchant, and leave Iceland for good. Thorleik agrees, and Olaf is left as the undisputed strongest member of the family, despite his illegitimacy; additionally, he has gained another foster-son. Perhaps as a way of demonstrating that Olaf is not without major influence, immediately after Olaf offers to foster Bolli, Olaf is himself approached by Bersi the Dueller, who “came to Olaf and offered to foster his son Halldor. Olaf accepted the offer and Bersi took Halldor, who was a year old at the time, home with him.”13 This fosterage situation is not offered in order to soothe tensions or offer financial security, but it would help Bersi secure political support from Olaf, who is his goði. It also highlights that Olaf is a man of high standing whom others want to ally themselves with, and subordinate themselves to. Halldor goes on to be the leader of Olaf’s sons after his death, mostly at the instigation of his mother Thorgerd. Bolli Thorleiksson is therefore brought up with his foster brother cousin, Kjartan Olafsson. They are the firmest of friends, until they are not, because Gudrun Osvifsdottir comes between them. Bolli goes on to become Ibid. The original Icelandic is: “Hann ferr strs. fr, ok ferr Halld

honum. Hann var

ri, syni hans, til vetrgamall.” (76)

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Gudrun’s third husband, even though she and Kjartan are a better match. After her second husband is killed through sorcery, Gudrun receives an offer to foster her son Thord Thordarsson. At this time Snorri the Godi lived at Helgafell. He was Osvif’s kinsman and friend and a source of great support to both him and Gudrun. When he visited them Gudrun told him of her dilemma and he promised to help her in the way he thought best. To give Gudrun some consolation he offered to foster her son, which she accepted; she agreed to follow his advice.14 The offer to foster Thord here is done in order to support Gudrun, which is not unusual in light of the motivations for fostering that we have seen elsewhere in this saga. What is unusual is that the offer of fosterage is clearly linked with consolation: Snorri knows that fostering Thord will help Gudrun after the loss of her husband, not just financially, but also emotionally, because it will give Thord a father figure. Snorri’s offer to take in Thord as one of his own and teach him increases his own status as well because his generosity is apparent; it also maintains his ties with Gudrun and her family, which is a large one, due to the fact that she marries four times. While Snorri offers to foster Thord in order to alleviate some of Gudrun’s concerns, the fosterage also serves him in keeping Gudrun and her family—including her large clutch of brothers—obligated to him through constructed kinship ties. Snorri is not of lower status than Gudrun or her father; in fact, he is probably hoping to gain more support as a goði by allying himself with the Osvifssons. In many ways, Gudrun’s third marriage to Bolli in Laxdæla Saga is itself a consolation for Gudrun’s loss of Kjartan: Gudrun and Kjartan would have been a much better match, but because of a misunderstanding and then escalating insults, there is animosity between them. Gudrun marries Bolli, but is not happy about it; her anger toward Kjartan, Bolli’s foster-brother, eventually drives her to convince Bolli that he must kill Kjartan. Bolli is not easily persuaded, and repeatedly tries to avoid Gudrun’s incitements and insults. When he eventually succumbs to her wishes and kills Kjartan, it sets into motion his own death by his foster-brothers the Olafssons, followed by Gudrun’s reprisals 14

Ibid., 336–7. The original Icelandic is: “Í þenna tíma bjó Snorri goði at Helgafelli. Hann var frændi Ósvífrs ok vinr; áttu þau Guðrún þar mikit traust. Þangat fór Snorri goði at heimboði. Þá tjáði Guðrún þetta vandkvæði fyrir Snorra, en hann kvazk mundu veita þeim at málum, þá er honum sýndisk, en bauð Guðrúnu barnfóstr til hugganar við etta n ok kvazk hans forsj ta mundu.” (100)

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against them twelve years later. In the immediate aftermath of Kjartan’s murder, “Thorstein Kuggason offered to foster Kjartan’s son Asgeir, as consolation for [Kjartan’s wife] Hrefna, who returned north with her brothers.”15 Thorstein Kuggason is married to Olaf’s granddaughter Thorfinna, and thus Asgeir is being brought up by his cousin and her husband, staying with his father’s family instead of his mother’s. In this instance, again, the offer of fosterage is a way to console someone who has been bereaved. It is also a way for Thorstein to acknowledge Kjartan’s status, even posthumously; Thorstein raises the grandson of the local goði and gains prestige thereby. A similar situation occurs near the end of the saga, after Gudrun has incited her son Bolli and some others to avenge his father Bolli’s death twelve years prior. When a settlement has been reached with the Olafssons, Bolli decides that he wants to go abroad. His mother Gudrun offers to foster his daughter (her granddaughter) Herdis, who “was one year old when she went to Helgafell.”16 Gudrun may be offering to submit to her son’s authority, as she knows that she was not entirely right in pressing so many people to avenge Bolli’s death. But by fostering her granddaughter—the only mention in the saga of a girl who is fostered—she also keeps Herdis close to her, instead of her daughter-in-law Thordis’ family. She also hosts Thordis while Bolli is gone. Perhaps more importantly at the end of the saga, Christianity becomes more prevalent, and the reader is informed that Gudrun becomes very religious, and Herdis spends a great deal of time in the church with Gudrun, praying. Herdis’s grandson married the granddaughter of a bishop, and one of her great-grandsons became the abbot at Helgafell, where Gudrun lived. So while Gudrun’s fostering of Herdis may denote a conscious choice to lower her status, Gudrun also ensures that her family stays together, that her choices in religious matters get transferred to another generation, and that her own reputation increases because of the fostering. Of course, the murder of Kjartan by Bolli is one that should never have occurred in the first place, which is why it is one of the central events of the saga. Bolli is more than reluctant to kill his foster-brother, because he knows that he owes allegiance both to Kjartan and to Olaf, his foster-father. It is not until he is incited by both his wife and her brothers, the Osvifssons, that he is persuaded to attend their ambush of Kjartan, and when Kjartan valiantly defends himself against the attack and remains unscathed, Bolli must be 15

“The Saga of the People of Laxardal,” 374. The original Icelandic is: “Þorsteinn Kuggason bauð Ásgeiri, syni Kjartans, til fóstrs til hugganar við Hrefnu; en Hrefna fór norðr með brœðrum sínum ok var mjǫk harmþrungin …” (158) 16 Ibid., 411. The original Icelandic is: “Þau Bolli ok Þórdís attu eina dóttur; sú hét Herdís; þeiri mey bauð Guðrún til fóstrs. Hon var þá vetrgǫ r til Helgafells.” (212)

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convinced by not only Gudrun’s brother Ospak, but Kjartan himself, to join the fray. Kjartan asks “why did you leave home, kinsman Bolli, if you intended only to stand and watch?”17 But when Bolli finally decides to join the fight, Kjartan says: “An evil deed this is, that you’re about to do, kinsman, so much is certain. But I’d rather receive my death at your hands than cause yours.” With that Kjartan threw down his weapons and refused to defend himself further. He was only very slightly injured, although exhausted from fighting. Bolli made no response to Kjartan’s words, but dealt him a death blow, then took up his body and held him in his arms when he died.18 Bolli regretted the deed immediately and declared himself the slayer.19 Throughout this scene, it is clear that Bolli knows that what he is doing is wrong. And yet he allows himself to be convinced to do something that goes on to cause his own death as well as the death of many others. Byock argues that this is an example of Kjartan acting immoderately,20 and while that is true, this is also an example of fosterage gone wrong because the relationship should have been strong enough to withstand anything, even the goading of the woman with whom both men were in love. The public feud between the three parties ensures that Kjartan first, then Bolli, and later their entire families, will pay the price for their abandonment of their responsibilities to one another. So far, these examples of fosterage highlight some of the reasons that foster parents choose to take on children who are not their own: to repair a relationship that is having difficulty; to reinforce or reinscribe the foster-parent’s social status; and to help reconcile an adult to a spouse’s loss. And, while fosterage brings benefits to all parties, it is not as clear as it might be that these relationships reinforce political or social status relative to foster- and natal parents; whereas, as Olaf makes clear, foster-fathers are supposed to be lower in status 17

Ibid., 371. The original Icelandic is: “ ‘Bolli frændi, hví fórtu heiman, ef þú vildir hyrr standa hjá?’ ” (153) 18 For examples of one foster-brother reluctantly killing another and then holding him while he dies, there is also Cú Chulainn killing Fer Diad (who also has to be convinced to fight) in Thomas Kinsella, The Táin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 168–205. 19 Op. cit., 372. The original Icelandic is: “ ‘ Víst ætlar þú nú, frændi, níðingsverk at gera, en miklu þykki mér betra at þiggja banaorð af þér, frændi, en veita þér þat.’ Síðan kastaði Kjartan vápnum ok vildi þá eigi verja sik, en þó var hann lítt sárr, en ákafliga vígmóðr. Engi veitti Bolli svǫr máli Kjartans, en þó veitti hann honum banasár. Bolli settisk þegar undir herðar honum, ok andaðisk Kjartan í knjám Bolla; iðraðisk Bolli þegar verksins ok lýsti vígi á hendr sér.” (154) 20 Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 200 and Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga

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than the natal parents of the child, in the instances explored so far, the status of the foster-father does not seem to be negatively affected; if anything, it often seems that their status increases. Vatnsdæla Saga has two main examples of fosterage, both of which discuss the benefits of the relationship for the foster-father. The first is between the foster-brothers Ingimund Thorsteinsson and Grim Ingjaldsson. The saga has set Thorstein up as a very successful Viking, and a man of great status, who “declared that he would not seek the title of earl, because his kinsmen were untitled,” by which it is made clear that he could have been an earl had he desired.21 His friend, Ingjald, is not as high status as Thorstein is, but since they are good friends, they offer joint feasts in the fall when they return from raiding. At one of these feasts, Ingjald catches sight of Ingimund, and says “You are a lucky-looking boy, and because of my friendship with your father, I want to invite you to my home and foster you in the best way I can.”22 Thorstein agrees to this and Ingimund goes home with Ingjald, where he is introduced to his foster-brothers Grim and Hromund. This seems a traditional set up where the lower status Ingjald offers to foster the higher status Thorstein’s son, in order to maintain their relationship on the same political levels, while also providing further support to Ingimund in the form of foster-brothers. Grim becomes Ingimund’s raiding partner when they are grown, but there is also a clear discussion of what is due to children, whether fostered or natal, when Ingimund asks Thorstein for his first raiding ship: You have secured a good fostering for me, but now I would like you to give me a ship; I want to go raiding this summer just like my ancestral kinsmen. I am now of an age when I can do this successfully, and I want the two of us to pay for this journey and not my foster-father, though I know that I can have anything I want from him.23

21

“The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal,” trans. Andrew Wawn in The Sagas of Icelanders (New York: Penguin, 2001), 189–269, at 197. 22 Ibid., 198. The original Icelandic is: “ ‘Hamingjusamligr sveinn ertu, ok fyrir vináttu okkar fǫður þíns þá vile ok bjóða þér heim til mín til slíks fóstrs sem ek kann at veita þér bezt.’ ” Vatnsdæla Saga, Einar Ól. Sveinsson, gen. ed. Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, Reykjavik, 1939. (18) 23 Ibid. The original Icelandic is: “Gott fóstr hefir þú mér fengit, en nú vil ek, at þú fáir mér skip, ok vil ek herja í sumar eptir hætti inna fyrri frænda minna; em ek nú svá aldrs kominn, at ek má vel slíkt starfa, ok vil ek kosta til þessar ferðar sjálfr ok þú minn, en veit ek, at ek m hafa af honum sl kt er ek vil.” (18)

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When Thorstein agrees to this request, Ingimund reports to his foster-father Ingjald, who responds: “I will get another ship for Grim, and the two of you can set out together.”24 Ingjald’s decision to provide a boat for his own son may have a slight competitive edge to it—anything that Thorstein can afford for his son, Ingjald can also afford for his own—but Ingimund’s insistence that his own father provide a ship for him alleviates the necessity for Ingjald to split a ship between his own son and his foster-son. The second example of fosterage in the saga occurs when Ingimund’s son Thorir, a berserker, fosters his grandnephew Thorkel Scratcher. Thorir never married, and Thorkel Scratcher was an illegitimate child that his father Thorgrim Hallormsson, son of Thorir and Thorstein’s sister Thordis, had with a slave named Nereid. Thorgrim exposed the infant upon its birth at his wife’s insistence. Thorir is in control of the goðorð for the sons of Ingimund, as his property was divided among his many sons when he died. In a conversation with his brother Thorstein, Thorir admits “a berserk fury always comes over me when I would least wish it to, and I wish, brother, that you could do something about this.”25 Thorstein implies that he might be able to help, but asks what Thorir is willing to do in order to be rid of the berserker fury, and requests the goðorð as payment for getting rid of Thorir’s berserker fury, to which Thorir gratefully agrees. They then jumped on their horses and rode to the place where they knew that the child was hidden; Thorir’s slave had found it at Karnsa. They saw that its face had been covered, and that the child was pawing at it, and was by then almost at the point of death. They took the child and hurried home to Thorir, and he brought up the boy, and he was duly called Thorkel Scratcher; and a berserk fit never again came over Thorir. And it was in this way Thorstein acquired the goðorð.26 The fosterage of Thorkel Scratcher, then, accomplishes at least three things that are mutually beneficial to all three parties involved: Thorstein, by arranging 24

Ibid. The original Icelandic is: “ ‘Þat er gott tillag, en ek skal fá Grímí annat skip, ok skulu þit fara báðir samt með forsjá ok athygli …’ ” (18) 25 Ibid., 247. The Icelandic reads: “fyrir þat, at á mik kemr berserksgangr jafnan, þá er ek vilda sízt, ok vilda ek, bróðir, at þú gerðir at.” (97) 26 Ibid., 248. The Icelandic reads: “Siðan stigu þeir á hesta sína ok fóru þangat til, er þeir vissu, at barnit var fólgit ok þræll Þóris hafði fundit við Kárnsá, ok sá þeir, at breitt hafði verit yfir andlitit ok kraflaði fyrir nǫsunum, ok var þá komit at bana. Þeir tóku barnit ok fluttu heim til Þóris, ok hann fœddi upp sveininn, ok var kallaðr Þorkell krafla; en ber serksgangr kom aldri s ri; komsk sv orsteinn at go inu.” (98)

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the fosterage, gets the goðorð that he wants for his sons; Thorir rids himself of his berserker fury and also gains a child, someone to inherit his wealth; and Thorkel is rescued from certain death and accorded social status when raised by his great-uncle. Thorkel Scratcher goes on to prove himself to his biological father Thorgrim who eventually acknowledges him as his son, thus legitimizing him. Thorkel Scratcher winds up being the final protagonist of the saga, overcoming all the setbacks of his illegitimate birth, by inheriting the goðorð his foster-father gave away and accepting Christianity. So the fosterage of Thorkel Scratcher is one that is beneficial to all parties, but is certainly most beneficial to Thorir and Thorkel: Thorir was in danger of losing his livelihood because of the berserker rage that comes on him, while Thorkel surely would not have survived without Thorir’s fosterage. Thorstein simply would have maintained what he had if he had not arranged the fostering. Of the fostered children investigated so far—Olaf Peacock, Bolli Thorleiksson, Halldor Olafsson, Thord Thordsson, Asgeir Kjartansson, Herdis Bollisdottir, Ingimund Thorsteinsson and Thorkel Scratcher—more than one half are illegitimate children or children who are fostered to compensate for a dead or absent parent. Fosterage was a way to keep children alive and within society in situations where they otherwise could have been irreparably lost. It is often these fostered children who go on to be the late-stage protagonists of the various sagas, overcoming overwhelming odds to be inordinately successful within a society that otherwise would have overlooked them entirely. Both Fishwick and Parks and Caldwell highlight in their articles that fosterage is a problematic institution, in that it illustrates the weakness of society in general. Fishwick argues that foster-children wind up playing a destructive role in sagas by triggering feud situations because of the tension between the strong affection in but legal weakness of fosterage bonds.27 Parks and Caldwell note that fosterage relationships in Njal’s Saga tend to emphasize the social fabric’s inherent weakness, and that, as an institution, its goals are more ably handled with a wholesale replacement of fosterage with “the conception of universal consanguinity under [the Christian] God.”28 As seen in the examples that have been discussed here, however, while the institution of fosterage may have its weaknesses, it is also lifesaving and affirming, and benefits almost all parties, although the foster-father is often the one who benefits most. 27 28

Stephanie Fishwick, “Unnatural Affections: Problems with Fosterage in the Íslendigasögur,” in Quaestio Insularis: Selected Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic 11 (2010): 21–35 at 24–25. Annette Parks and Larry W. Caldwell, “The Burning of Njal as a Failure of Fosterage,” Nordisk tidsskrift for litteraturforskning 2 (2002): 150–160 at 158.

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There are also cases where children remain in their natal home and are fostered with a family servant, such as Egil’s foster mother Thorgerd in Egil’s Saga and Hallgerd’s foster father Thjostolf in Njal’s Saga. In Gísla saga Súrssonar, however, there are children who do not belong to the family who are described as belonging to the household anyway. Thorkel decides to stop farming with his brother Gisli and to move to his brother-in-law Thorgrim’s farm instead. Gisli tries to convince him not to move, but to no avail. When they split their property, “Thorkel chose the goods while Gisli had the land. They also divided the dependents—two children, a boy named Geirmund and a girl named Gudrid. The girl went with Gisli and the boy with Thorkel.”29 At the end of the saga, it is said that Geirmund and Gudrid are the children of a man named Ingjald, but this is the only information given about him.30 Gudrid, though, throughout the rest of the saga, is considered the foster-daughter of Gisli and Aud his wife, and they raise her to be an independent woman, who winds up marrying well in Norway and having many children. It is almost implied that Gudrid is a slave, since she is a dependent who is not related to anyone in the household, and since she is separated from her brother in the division of the household. She is then, however, raised as a foster-daughter to Gisli, to whom she brings a good reputation. Anna Hansen believes that Geirmund, who became Thorkel’s foster son, actually retained his loyalty to Gisli, based on the role that Geirmund plays in a back-and-forth exchange between Gisli, Thorgrim, and Thorkel, which ends with Gisli murdering Thorgrim.31 In this case, Thorkel also winds up benefitting from Geirmund’s loyalty, as he is then able to take over Thorgrim’s establishment after his death. Finally, is there the opportunity for autonomy within the fosterage bond on the child’s part? So far, the examples illustrated foster parents choosing foster children, and the foster children have had little if anything to say about those choices, even if they might not be in their best interest. The children have no autonomy. There is one example, however, of a child choosing to participate in a fosterage relationship that is offered to him. This is the well-known episode in Njal’s Saga when Njal offers to foster Hoskuld Thrainsson after Njal’s son 29



“Gisli Sursson’s Saga,” trans. Martin S. Regal in The Sagas of Icelanders (New York: Penguin, 2001), 500–57 at 511. The Icelandic reads: “Svá lauk, at Gísli skipti, en Þorkell kaus lausafé, en Gísli hefir land. Þeir skiptu ok ómegð; þat váru born tvau; hét sveinninn Geirmundr, en Guðríðr mærin, ok var hon með Gísla, en Geirmundr með Þorkatli.” “Gísla Saga Súrssonar,” Vestfirðinga Sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þorolfsson and Guðni Jonsson. Hið Íslenzka Fornritafé Reykjav k 1943, 3–118. (35) Ibid, 556. Anna Hansen, “Fosterage and Dependency,” 85. Hansen also makes the argument that the children are not in a fosterage relationship at this point, but a guardianship one.

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Skarphedin has killed Thrain. Hoskuld is already in a fosterage situation, with Njal’s daughter Thorgerd and her husband Ketil of Mork, who was Thrain’s brother; Hoskuld is therefore being taken care of by his father’s family, as might be expected. Njal’s offer is therefore somewhat unusual: he goes to visit the boy and asks him to accept a gold ring, which Hoskuld does. Njal then asks if he knows how his father was killed and Hoskuld says that he knows that Thrain was killed by Skarphedin, but that his death was fully compensated. Then Njal says: “ ‘Now I want to offer to make you my foster-son, if you are willing.’ He said he would accept both this kindness and any other that Njal should do. It was settled that Hoskuld went home with Njal and Njal raised him as his foster-son. He did everything he could for him and loved him very much.”32 Njal loves him so much that he goes to the extraordinary effort of establishing the Fifth Court so that Hoskuld can gain a goðorð, and when Hoskuld is later murdered on the slenderest of pretexts by his foster-brothers, Njal says that he is “so deeply touched with grief that I would rather have lost two of my sons, as long as Hoskuld were still alive.”33 Parks and Caldwell, as well as others, discuss Hoskuld as a surrogate or ideological heir to Njal, as opposed to his own sons, who are not known for their circumspection.34 This makes the circumstance of his fosterage that much more remarkable: to be removed from one satisfactory fosterage situation with a family member, to another fosterage situation with no blood relative, of his own choice, makes Hoskuld’s fosterage unique. To highlight this, Njal also fosters two other children: his grandson Thord Karisson, who is killed with Njal in the burning; and Thorhall Asgrimsson, who “had learned the law from Njal so well that he was one of the three greatest lawyers in Iceland.”35 Thorhall and Hoskuld benefitted enormously from their fosterage relationship with Njal, who makes one famous throughout the land and creates a goðorð for the other. But neither Thorhall nor Thord were allowed to choose whether or not they would be fostered; in this regard, Hoskuld is unusual, and there may be some implicit criticism of young people who make their own choices, as those choices often wind up with negative results. For instance, there are several examples of young adults choosing to create bonds of brotherhood, which are also called fosterage relationships. And, while these relationships have benefits for the foster brothers, like the ones between foster parents and their foster children, they also tend to set the scene for the unhealthy and often deadly demise of the relationship. In Vatnsdæla 32 Njal’s Saga, trans. Robert Cook, (NY: Penguin Books, 1997), 162. 33 Parks and Caldwell, “The Burning of Njal,” 156. Njal’s Saga, 187.

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Saga, the foster-brothers Ingimund and Grim—a relationship decided by their fathers—go on to be successful raiders over several summer seasons. At one point they meet another raider named Saemund. Ingimund and Grim are still raiders, and join forces with Saemund. Eventually, as this part of the saga takes place in Norway before the emigration to Iceland, they run into King Harald Tangle-hair. Ingimund decides to offer his support to Harald, but Saemund refuses. Ingimund says to him, “You can see, foster-brother, that the king’s strength is great, and you may judge whether things will go better for those who stand by him, or with those who are set against him.”36 This is unusual in that there has been no formal agreement between the parents of Saemund and Ingimund about a fosterage relationship; indeed, they are both considered grown men at this point as they are both pursuing independent raids. And yet they mutually agree to a closer relationship than that of simply friendship, so that Ingimund calls Saemund his foster-brother.37 This is most likely an example of agency on the part of Ingimund, as there has been no description of a formal relationship being established, but it should also be noted that this foster-relationship causes Ingimund’s death. Once Saemund and Ingimund settle in Iceland (after Ingimund saves Saemund from Harald and becomes the progenitor of the Vatnsdal people) Saemund keeps trying to offload his disreputable kinsmen on Ingimund, until one of them, Hrolleif, kills him. This autonomous foster-brotherhood is also translated as blood-brotherhood or sworn-brotherhood. In both Gísla saga Súrssonar and Fóstbræðra saga, there are examples of men swearing oaths to one another, and the oaths involve setting up a long strip of sod under which the men must stand. The descriptions vary slightly, as one demands three strips of sod, and the other only one, but the version in Fóstbræðra saga also demands an exchange of blood: Thorgeir Hávarsson was (as we have seen) the cousin of Thorgils Arason. Thorgeir and Thormód [Bersisson] both grew up in the Ice Firth district, and there soon arose friendship between them; because in many respects they were similar to each other in disposition. Therefore they swore oaths to one another that whichever lived longer was to avenge the death of the other and in confirmation thereof they went under three strips of sod. The ceremony was performed in this wise that three long pieces of sod 36 “The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal,” 201. The Icelandic reads: “Sjá máttu, fóstbróðir, at mikill er afli konungs eða hvárt þeim gegnir betr, er með honum eru, eða hinum, er í mót honum standa…” (23). 37 See the eighth chapter, paragraph 4 of the Icelandic text at: http://sagadb.org/vatnsdaela_ saga.is

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were cut so that their ends were fast to the ground and the loops raised up so that the men could walk through under them. By this ceremony, Thormód and Thorgeir confirmed their oaths.38 Here, although Thormód and Thorgeir are in subsequent chapters still described as youths, they have clearly created a relationship with one another. And yet Thormód and Thorgeir are not called foster-brothers at the ceremony; it is not until a few paragraphs later, when their behavior is being complained about to their fathers, that the two are called foster-brothers in the original Icelandic, and this relationship is what the saga is named after.39 Similarly, in Gísla saga Súrssonar, Gisli, his brother Thorkel, their sister Thordis’s husband Thorgrim the Priest, and Gisli’s wife’s brother Vestein begin to make oaths to one another: [Gisli said] “We four will make our bond of friendship even stronger than before by pledging our sworn brotherhood.”40 This seemed good counsel to them, so they walked out to Eyrarhvolsoddi and scored out a long strip of turf, making sure that both ends were still attached to the ground. Then they propped up the arch of raised turf with a damascened spear so long-shafted that a man could stretch out his arm 38 “The Sworn Brothers’ Saga,” in The Sagas of Kormák and The Sworn Brothers, trans. Lee M. Hollander (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), 75–176 at 85–6. The Icelandic text reads: “Þorgeirr Hávarsson var systrungr Þorgils Arasonar. Þorgeirr ok Þormóðr óxu upp í Ísafirði, ok var snimmendis vingan með þeim, því at þeir váru í mǫrgu skapglíkir. Snimmendis sagði þeim svá hugr um, sem síðar bar raun á, at þeir myndi vápnbitnir verða, því at þeir váru ráðnir til at láta sinn hlut hvergi eða undir leggja, við hverja men sem þeir ætti málum at skipta. Meir hugðu þeir jafnan at fremð þessa heims lífs en at dýrð annars heims fagnaðar. Því tóku þeir þat ráð með fastmælum, at sá þeira skyldi hefna annars, er lengr lifði. En þó at þá væri menn kristnir kallaðir, þá var þó í þann tíð ung krisni ok mjǫk vangǫr, svá at margir gneistar heiðninnar váru þó þá eptir ok í óvenju lagðir. Hafði sú siðvenja verit hǫfð frægra manna, þeira er þat lǫgmál settu sín í milli, at sá skyldi annars hefna, er lengr lifði, þá skyldu þeir ganga undir þrjú jarðarmen, ok var þat eiðr þeira. Sá leikr var á þá lund, at rísta skyldi þrjár torfur ór jǫrðu langar; þeira endar skyldu allir fastir í jǫrðu ok heimta upp lykkjurnar, svá at menn mætti ganga undir. Þann leik frǫmðu þeir Þormóðr ok Þorgeirr í sínum fastmælum. Þormóðr var nǫkkuru ellri, en þó var Þorgeirr sterkari.” “Fóstbrœðra Saga,” Vestfirðinga Sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þorolfsson and Guðni Jonsson. Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, Reykjavík 1943, 121–276. 124–5. 39 Although Hollander translated fóstbræðr as “sworn-brothers” or svaribræðr in his translation, the saga text calls them fóstbræðr. See the second chapter, paragraph 8 of the Icelandic text at: http://sagadb.org/fostbraedra_saga.is. 40 Again, in the Icelandic text, this is fóstbræðalag. See the sixth chapter, paragraph 10 of the Icelandic text at: http://sagadb.org/gisla_saga_surssonar.is

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and touch the rivets. All four of them had to go under it, Thorgrim, Gisli, Thorkel and Vestein. Then they drew blood and let it drip down on to the soil beneath the turf strip and stirred it together—the soil and the blood. Then they all fell to their knees and swore an oath that each would avenge the other as if they were brothers, and they called on all the gods as their witnesses.41 While this type of ceremony is clearly different from what happens with children, this is a way of allowing young adults to make their own fosterage relationships: choosing your family, as it were. In this particular case, of course, Thorkel and Gisli are already brothers, and both Thorgrim and Vestein are their brothers-in-law, but Thorgrim and Vestein have no familial connection to one another. Thorgrim refuses to complete the ceremony, though, insisting that he will have enough to do binding himself to Thorkel and Gisli without adding Vestein. At this insult to Vestein, Gisli refuses to swear an oath to Thorgrim. When Vestein is later murdered in one of the greatest murder mysteries in Icelandic literature, none of the other three avenge him, as it is implied that Thorkel and Thorgrim are the murderers (because Vestein has been having an affair with Thorkel’s wife Asgerd) and Gisli owes him no obligations. And again, this type of self-selected brotherhood is perhaps being criticized, as none of the brothers benefits from it, and most of them wind up being killed by the end of the saga. Ultimately, the institution of fosterage is one that offers many benefits to the concerned parties, even while it also tends to cause difficulties for the child who is fostered, particularly if the fosterage takes place for overt political reasons. While the foster-father is supposed to be seen as lesser in social status than the natal father of the fostered child, the foster-father is often the one who benefits most obviously from the fosterage relationship: if not in material ways, then in affective, emotional ones, often gaining a foster-son who is more like him than his own sons. There is possibly a link here between emotion and 41 “Gisli Sursson’s Saga,” 506. The Icelandic reads: “ ‘En vǫrumsk vér, at eigi verði hann sannspár; enda sé ek gott ráð til þessa, at vér bindim várt vinfengi með meirum fastmælum en áðr, ok sverjumsk í fóstbrœðralag fjórir.’ En þeim sýnisk þetta ráðligt. Ganga nú út í Eyrarhválsodda ok rísta þar upp ór jǫrðu jarðarmen, svá at báðir endar váru fastir í jǫrðu, ok settu þar undir málaspjót, þat er maðr mátti taka hendi sinni til geirnagla. Þeir skyldu þar fjórir undir ganga, Þorgrímr, Gísli, Þorkell ok Vésteinn. Ok nú vekja þeir sér blóð ok láta renna saman dreyra sinn í þeiri moldu, er upp var skorin undan jarð ra saman allt, moldina ok bl it; en s an fellu eir allir kn ok sverja ann ei , at hverr skal annars hefna sem br ur sins, ok nefna ll go vitni.” (22–3).

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autonomy: those children or young adults who choose their own fosterage relationships often love their foster-fathers or foster brothers, but to such an extreme that their deaths are caused by those same people. Even when adults make the decisions for the children, however, they are not always thinking in the child’s best interest, but in their own as adults, which means that children, often, are the ones who are made to suffer for decisions and situations over which they had little to no control.

chapter 7

Childhood in the Common Law Courts of Medieval Ireland Bridgette Slavin The report of a jail delivery for Roscrea in County Tipperary,1 documented in the Calendar of Justiciary Rolls of Ireland for the year 1295, states: “Cristiana Obrey and Adam her son, charged with larceny. Guilty. To be hung. No chattels. Because Adam is under age, therefore for the King’s soul he is remitted.”2 This entry is striking and provokes a number of questions. How old was Adam if he was “under age” and not liable for thievery? Did anyone speak in his defense before a jury? What happened to him after the execution of his mother? What were the circumstances that led to Christina Obrey’s crime? The records are silent on these specifics. The justiciary rolls do, however, provide answers to other, related, questions concerning childhood in medieval Ireland that may illuminate the experience of Adam Obrey, particularly the legal culpability of juveniles and the protection of children against violent offenders. The Justiciary Rolls record the common and royal pleas presented to the English crown’s itinerant court overseen by the chief governor of Ireland and his assistants in the areas of the island ruled by the King of England, known as the Lordship of Ireland. In 1922, a fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin destroyed all but a few of the rolls. The remaining extant material, calendared in English by the Public Records Office of Ireland, dates between 1295–1314 and encompasses the extent of research for this study. Despite the small number of surviving Justiciary Rolls and the limited period of time they offer for study, these records provide insight into the lives of people, including children, dwelling in the Lordship of late thirteenth and early fourteenth century Ireland. Informative as these documents are, they do not deliver a complete view of law in medieval Ireland. Two forms of legal jurisdiction co-existed in medieval Ireland beginning in the late twelfth century: traditional Irish law and 1 “Jail (‘gaol’) delivery” refers to the emptying of a jail by the trial of prisoners detained therein when the circuit court was in session. 2 Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls, or Proceedings in the Court of the Justiciar of Ireland Preserved in the Public Record Office of Ireland, ed. James Mills (Dublin: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1905), Vol. 1: 13; henceforth cjri

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the Common Law of Anglo-Norman England, administered in the Lordship of Ireland and the legal system under which Christina and Adam Obrey were tried. Traditional Irish, later known as Brehon, law continued to be the custom in politically, socially, and culturally Gaelic areas outside the influence of Dublin-based English governance until the early sixteenth century.3 Irish legal texts present maxims and principles of criminal and civil law, but unlike common law sources, with the exception of a handful of cases described in the annals, no case law exists in medieval Irish legal records. Common Law arrived in Ireland after the initial Cambro-Norman invasion of the Kingdom of Leinster in 1169, instigated by the former King of Leinster, Dairmait Mac Murchada. Mac Murchada sought to regain his title and recruited the Earl of Pembroke, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, more famously known as Strongbow, among other lesser nobles to assist him. After successfully regaining his kingship, Mac Murchada rewarded Strongbow for his support with the hand of his daughter, Aoife. Mac Murchada died not long after, in 1171, and Strongbow claimed the title of King of Leinster. Although Henry ii, King of England (1154–1189) and overlord to Strongbow, had given permission to Mac Murchada to enlist aid from his subjects, he was not happy with this particular turn of events. Suspicious of his vassal’s new claim to the throne of a neighboring territory, Henry ii set sail for Ireland in 1171. There he not only successfully obtained homage from Strongbow, but also the fealty of a number of Irish kings who likely saw Henry II’s feudal overlordship as a means to curtail the expansion of Strongbow’s authority. Consequently, Henry ii added “Lord of Ireland” to his titles. As a ruler Henry ii sought to consolidate his royal power and introduced a series of legal reforms within his empire, which included land in France as well as England. Beginning in 1163 Henry ii turned his attention to restructuring the royal courts in England and enforced a more central ized system of justice which in time directly affected jurisprudence across other areas within his substantial holdings, including the Lordship of Ireland. This legal system became known as “Common Law” as it was, ideally, shared “in common” by all under his rule. After Strongbow’s death in 1176, Henry passed his rights as Lord of Ireland to his youngest son John, who later became the King of England in 1199. The enforcement of English law under Henry may not have extended beyond Leinster; however, in 1210 John issued a charter Kenneth Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1972), 48; Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005), 254. initiated legal reform in Normandy prior to this, in 1159. Graeme J. White, Restoration and Reform 1153–1165: Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 190, 203, 215.

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requiring Irish courts to adhere to English Common Law and custom.5 While Lord of Ireland in theory, the kings of England only held jurisdiction over the portion of the island known as the Lordship until Henry viii declared himself King of Ireland in 1541.6 The boundaries of the Lordship of Ireland shifted over time, but were divided between counties (or shires) that were directly under royal control, such as Dublin, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Waterford, Tipperary, and Louth and liberties, which were granted by the king but exercised a degree of autonomy. By the beginning of Edward I’s reign in 1272 seven liberties existed in addition to the counties under the king’s control. These liberties included Trim, Kells, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Ulster. With the expansion of the Lordship, English kings sought to reclaim the liberties to royal control, particularly Edward I, whose reign, which lasted until 1307, overlaps a portion of the period under examination.7 Regarding judicial administration, the lords of the liberties oversaw justice within their allotted territory apart from the four crown pleas of arson, rape, treasure trove (treasure that anyone finds) and forestall (buying goods ahead of time to resell at a higher price).8 Although both legal systems co-existed in high and late medieval Ireland, Common Law differed in theory and practice from early Irish law. English Common Law was more centralized in procedure and enforcement. Defendants accused of a crime in the Lordship would be tried before a jury when the local Eyre, or itinerant judicial court overseen by a royal justiciar, was in session. Legal decisions were informed by precedent; in other words, by the verdicts of similar cases in the past. If a jury found the defendant guilty of criminal activity, he or she could face capital punishment, but more likely would pay a fine to the crown or local authority. The accused could also spend time in jail, overseen by the shire reeve (or sheriff) while waiting to appear before the court.9 In contrast, early Irish law emphasized statutes created by brithemain (s.n. brithem), or judges. Early Irish legal texts consist of legal principles committed to vellum in the seventh and eighth centuries combined with glossing and 5 For further information, see Geoffrey J. Hand, English Law in Ireland: 1290–1324 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 2; Paul Brand, “Ireland and the Literature of the Early Common Law,” Irish Jurist 16, no.1 (Summer 1981), 95–113. 6 Act 33 H. viii Beth Hartland, “The Liberties of Ireland in the Reign of Edward I,” in the Medieval British Isles, ed. Michael Prestwich (Martlesham: Boydell Press, 2008), 200–216. The Lord of Trim received greater franchise over his liberty and was permitted jurisprudence over even the four crown pleas. Hartland, “The Liberties of Ireland,” 202. For a general overview of the Justiciar’s Court and General Eyre in Ireland, see Hand, Law in Ireland, 40–88, 104–112.

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commentaries of later medieval scholars. These documents represent a legal system based on practices passed down orally in previous centuries. Early Irish society was hierarchical and the legal material greatly emphasizes status. Both criminal and civil law reflect the non-egalitarian nature of social order and decentralized methods of enforcement. One or more brithemain adjudicated legal cases and received a legal fee of about one twelfth of the cost of the case for their arbitration.10 If deemed guilty, the accused paid a fine based on the victim’s honor-price, known as lóg n-enech (“the price of his face”), to the victim or his or her family, rather than to a centralized authority.11 Indeed, the Irish legal system limited royal involvement and kings were not held above the law.12 Early Irish criminal justice was self-enforced and regulated through an elaborate system involving suretyship (one person taking responsibility for another’s actions), pledging (an oral oath), and distraint (the seizure of property until penalties are satisfied) rather than through the king or his administrators.13 Scholars of medieval Ireland are fortunate to have Bronagh Ní Chonaill’s detailed analysis of childhood in traditional Irish law.14 The sentencing of Adam Obrey in the Irish Justiciary Rolls exposes the fact that more information remains to be analyzed regarding the legal recognition of childhood in medieval Ireland, particularly in the areas outside of the purview of traditional Irish law. These court records reveal the judicial response to juvenile delinquency in the Lordship of Ireland. In addition to the treatment of crimes committed by the young, the Justiciary Rolls also provide insight on the legal treatment of violent crimes committed against children, including homicide and rape. Extant late thirteenth and early fourteenth century Anglo-Norman court records support the argument that medieval law recognized phases of childhood and desired to legally protect children within the cultural constructs of the period. 10 cih Vol. 1: 24.22; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 53. Kelly discusses a legal text on procedure in Early Irish law, Cóic Conara Fugill (“The Five Path of Judgment”), which lists eight stages of a law case and presents a formal court setting that includes a king, bishop. Chief poet, historians, overkings, and hostages in addition to the litigants, sureties, and witnesses. Because there are no records of legal cases, it is not clear to what extant early Irish courts reflected this level of detail; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 190–98. 11 Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 8. 12 For example, see Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 18. 13 Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 22, 164–82. 14 Bronagh Ní Chonaill examines childhood through an analysis of Corpus Iuris Hibernici in “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” in The Empty Throne: Childhood and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. R. Davis and T. Dunne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),

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Scholarship on childhood has moved away from an evolutionary approach set forth by academics in the 1960s and 70s led by Philip Ariès, who questioned the very recognition of childhood in the Middle Ages and argued that parents did not emotionally connect as deeply with their children as did parents in later periods.15 More recent research demonstrates that people in the Middle Ages did recognize stages of childhood and adolescent development: infantia (from birth to the age of seven); pueritia (from seven to fourteen years of age); and adolescentia (fourteen through majority). These stages varied slightly over time and in different places. For example, the age of majority varied and adolescentia could differ between genders. In England males entitled to land by military tenure could enter their estates at the age of twenty-one. Females could do the same at sixteen, if they were single, and fourteen if married. Non-military tenures, on the other hand, could be obtained as early as fourteen or fifteen.16 Scholars now seek to identify distinguishing features of children’s culture according to social status, gender, and region.17 Medieval children and young people experienced their own culture in terms of language, behavior and activities. The stages of childhood recognized in medieval Europe, if not the same names, can also be found in ancient and late antique Roman civilization. Roman culture and law perceived childhood as a gradual process that was without consistent, clearly defined age limitations. A child ended the phase of infantia at seven years of age and thereby entered puberty, or impubes. Impubes ended at twelve for girls, the age at which they could marry. For boys, puberty ended approximately at the age of fourteen.18 Ville Vuolanto points out that the actual age of the boy was less important than his family’s social standing and local traditions surrounding majority. For example, the city of Rome awarded majority to a youth with a ceremony in which he received the toga virilis. Individual circumstances determined the age at which this took place, which could range between thirteen and nineteen years. Although no 15 For example, see Philip Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Random House, 1962). 16 Peter Fleming, Family Household in Medieval England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 59–60. 17 For example, see Barbara Hanawalt, “Medievalists and the Study of Childhood,” Speculum 77 (2002): 404–460; Nicholas Orme, “The Culture of Children in Medieval England,” Past & Present 148 (1995): 44–88. 18 The sixth century legislation of Justinian officially established fourteen as the age of majority for boys: Codex Iustinianus 5.60.3; Ville Vuolanto, “Child and Parent in Roman Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, ed. P. J. Du Plessis, C. Ando, and uori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 487–97, at 489.

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longer considered an impubes, a youth did not receive full economic independence until the age of twenty-five.19 With regard to monitoring juvenile delinquency, Roman legislation upheld patria potestas, which placed disciplinary power over children and all dependents in the hands of the father. The ultimate expression of power under patria potestas was vitae nequisque, or the father’s right to determine the life or death over his children and other members of the household, whether the people in it were related to the paterfamilias or not. A child reached full legal capacity upon entering puberty. According to early Roman legal sources, a child under the age of puberty could face severe punishment, such as being flogged, for certain crimes. For example, Lex Duodecim Tabularum (The Twelve Tables), created c. 451–449 bce, states that the punishment for a child under the age of puberty who was accused of cutting another person’s crops or stealing could be whipped. Such cases were examined on an individual basis and determined by the praetor.20 The levity of punishment for children below the age of puberty relaxed over time. Emperor Justinian’s (r. 527–565) sixth century Digesta states that a person under the age of puberty was incapable of committing a crime.21 At this stage of life, discipline for delinquency was under the jurisdiction of the father.22 The Digesta continues, however, to declare that an impubes was able to commit theft and should face punishment if the child in question understood the nature of his or her action.23 Thus, certain criminal cases against children between the ages of seven and puberty were examined on an individual basis thereby leaving open the possibility of a gentler sentence. Widespread interest in Roman law, particularly Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, grew in the eleventh century. This revival of Roman law developed from the rise of universities across Europe, particularly the University of Bologna, which gained a reputation as the premiere institution for legal study by the end of the twelfth century. Thomas Becket, the twelfth-century Archbishop of Canterbury and famed friend-turned-foe of Henry ii of England, studied at the University of Bologna early in his career.24 Roman law, and particularly 19 Ville Vuolanto, “Child and Parent in Roman Law,” 489, 495. 20 Lex Duodecim Tabularum 8.9 and 8.14; Allan Chester Johnson, Paul Robinson ColemanNorton, Frank Card Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes: Translation, with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index, ed. C. Pharr (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), 11. 21 Digesta 47.2.23; The Digest of Justinian, trans. and ed. A. Watson, 4 vols (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985): Vol. 4, 257. 22 Book Nine of the Codex Iustinianus, compiled between 529–534 supports the power of parents over their children. 23 Digesta 47.2.23; The Digest of Justinian Vol. 4, 257. Thomas J. McSweeney and le K. Spike, “The Significance of the Corpus Juris Civilis: Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of Roman Law,” William and Mary Law School

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Justinian’s Corpus, influenced many legal institutions across medieval Europe and similarities exist regarding the legal rights of children. In the early medieval period some children under the age of seven faced charges, however these were generally pardoned.25 By the fourteenth century most children under seven were simply excused from prosecution, while children between the ages of seven and fourteen were judged on an individual basis; the judicators took into account the child’s maturity, ability to distinguish right from wrong, as well as the severity of the crime. Generally, medieval children were treated as adults in legal matters by the age of fourteen.26 Boys could make a legal testament by the age of fourteen; girls by twelve.27 While medieval Gaelic Ireland lacks records of case law, early Irish law texts provide evidence of the legal rights and obligations of children that echo this wider medieval legal phenomenon. Generally, early Irish criminal law focused on restitution through compensation more so than physical punishment for adults and showed a limited concern with the internal affairs of the family.28 However, childhood crime is one area in which medieval Irish law depended upon parental prerogative, particularly of the father or male guardian. Liability for a child’s offence fell upon the father or foster-father if the child was in fosterage. Some early Irish law texts arrange legal material in sevens, or a heptad. One such heptad, Heptad 34, identifies seven fathers who were not liable for their child’s crime, including a king, bishop, poet, and hermit. In such instances, the victim likely did not receive restitution. Under certain circumstances, such as a child with a mentally-ill father, other kin members provided the payment of the child’s fine.29 Early Irish law considered three factors when a child committed a crime: the age of the child, the nature of the crime, and the number of previously committed offences. Parents were advised to use physical chastisement for crimes committed by children up to the age of seven. For criminal behavior between the ages of seven and twelve, the legal material suggests that parents or guardians use physical chastisement in addition to a withdrawal of food. Twelve appears to have been a turning point in the legal culpability of a child. Between twelve and seventeen, Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications 1736 (2015): 20–29, at 23. 25 Arnold Binder, Gilbert Geis, and Dickson D. Bruce Jr., Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural and Legal Perspectives, 3rd ed. (Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Co., 2001), 198–99. 26 Binder, Geis, and Bruce, Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural and Legal Perspectives, 199. 27 Fleming, Family Household in Medieval England, 60. 28 Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law Vol. 1: 31.6–8; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 83.

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adolescents made restitution for criminal activity by either restoring the stolen item, paying either a portion of a fine or the full amount.30 In this way, young offenders were introduced to the legal culpability of adulthood. Their penalties either matched or mimicked the adult world.31 As Ní Chonaill has pointed out, this less severe induction into mature criminal liability recognizes phases of childhood development.32 Children who repeated the same offence faced heavier penalties. The type of crime also impacted the severity of punishment. The felonies of theft and assault required stricter penalties for a fewer number of offences.33 Children under the age of fourteen had no legal responsibility and no right to seek legal action on their own. Common Law trial records presented in the Irish Justiciary Rolls also establish the consideration of the accused child’s age and the number of previous offences when mitigating a sentence. A sample survey of trial records suggests that children only appeared as perpetrators in Ireland’s Common Law courts for the felony of theft. As seen in the entry concerning Christina Obrey and her son, Adam, the rolls demonstrate a degree of mercy towards under age children. Not only was Adam saved from capital punishment, he was pardoned altogether. Similarly, in 1313, Laurence La Roche, identified as a boy in the records, was accused of stealing a hog and a lamb alongside one Roger OConyk. The jury recognized that Laurence was present at the burglary, but not responsible. The jury attributed his lack of guilt to his young age, as they acquitted him on account of his “tender age.”34 The rolls indicate that Laurence was in dubious company and too young to logically choose otherwise; however, examples exist of children stealing on their own. In Cork during the year 1295, a jury acquitted Will, the son of Ranulf de Parys, of the charge of burglary because he was both underage and poor.35 Although the rolls do not provide the specific ages of Adam Obrey, Laurence La Roche, and Will de Parys, further accounts identify an age at which children were held liable for theft. In 1313 William Corbaly was charged with stealing two heifers, each worth half a mark. The jury claimed that William was thirteen years old at the time of the theft, therefore he must be held culpable. They also took into account that he had no previous convictions. As a result, William was admitted by grace to pay twenty shillings.36 At 30 cih Vol. 2: 439.33–34; Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” 15. 31 Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 83; Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” 15–17. 32 Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” 16–17. 33 Ní Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” 16. 34 cjri, Vol. 3: 300. 35 cjri, Vol. 1: 67. 36 cjri Vol. 3: 287.

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fifteen, Walter, the son of David de Rupe, had to pay one mark for stealing a male goat worth twelve pence in 1312.37 Even though the rolls identify these youths as minors, they were still expected to pay a fine that was more than the worth of the stolen item. These fines are comparable to those of adult men found guilty of theft who were allowed to pay a fine instead of hang.38 The entries for Adam Obrey and Will de Parys, both of whom were “under age,” do not provide detailed information about the nature of the stolen items; however, the remaining entries clearly show that these boys were involved in the theft of animals, particularly cows, sheep, and goats. Furthermore, the entry concerning Christina and Adam Obrey is significant in two ways. First, it demonstrates that women were accused of and executed for theft, though I did not come across any reference that specifically identified a female child or adolescent for thievery.39 Secondly, we learn that children, generally under age, were on occasion caught in the act of theft with an adult. These children were acquitted, which correlates with medieval legal attitudes towards small children in general. Proceedings recorded in the Justiciary Rolls suggest that boys at least thirteen years old were considered legally liable for criminal activity, which matches both medieval European and Gaelic Irish legal standards. Adolescents between the ages of twelve and seventeen in customary Irish law were often only expected to pay a portion of the fine or return the item stolen, whereas the above examples from the Common Law Justiciary Rolls suggest that boys from at least the age of thirteen were not necessarily spared the full weight of the adult fine. Children appear more often in the court records as victims. Adult and legal interest in protecting the young from violence can be found in both the Irish and English legal systems of medieval Ireland. Early Irish law protected children by requiring a heavy fine from those who wronged or hurt the young. The Church’s influence on safeguarding the young is directly evident in the increased level of compensation for individuals under the age of seven and the creation of new religious rules to increase the level of protection for children. From baptism to the age of seven a child, no matter his or her social class, had the same high honor-price as a cleric.40 From the age a seven a child’s honorprice became half that of the father or guardian.41 In the late seventh century 37 cjri, Vol. 3: 261. 38 See for example, cjri, Vol. 3: 176. 39 There are examples of daughters stealing from their fathers, although ages are not provided. For instance, in 1295, Alice, the daughter of Geoffrey le Lunt, was hanged for stealing money from her father and a coat from another man; cjri Vol. 1: 23. Vol. 6: 2288.1–2; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 83. Vol. 3: 779.7, Vol. 2: 439.28–9; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 84.

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Adomnán, abbot of Iona, tried to further protect children from violence with a list of religious regulations. Known as Cáin Adamnáin in Old Irish, the text was more widely referred to as Lex Innocentium [Law of Innocents].42 The title Lex Innocentium reflects the humanitarian emphasis of Cáin Adamnáin, which focuses primarily on the protection of women, but also safeguards clerics, youths and Church property.43 The term cáin has two meanings: primarily, it refers to “regulation”; secondly, to “punishment (by fine or otherwise) for breach of regulation.”44 Such laws were promulgated in Ireland in the eighth century and, to a lesser degree, in the ninth.45 While religious houses promoted these regulations, they were heavily influenced by secular legal language and maxims, and often, though not always, enacted by a king on a provincial level or throughout all of Ireland by an assembly of kings (rígdál).46 Saint Adomnán promulgated Cáin Adamnáin in 697 ce on the centennial of the death of Saint Columba, Iona’s founding saint. The Annals record the re-enactment of Cáin Adamnáin only once, in 727 ce.47 The scarcity of references to Cáin Adamnáin suggest the possibility that it was not widely used or for any great length of time. It is, however, worth examining due to its detail and humanitarian intention in protecting children. Cáin Adamnáin is particularly interesting in relation to children and homicide as it raises the legal value of vulnerable members of society by increasing the fines for murder. The text particularly stresses the protection of women, 42 Although not a penitential, Cáin Adamnáin is an Old Irish text of religious regulations directed at offences against women, children and clerics. The text dates to the ninth century but contains material from the late seventh or early eighth century; see: Kuno Meyer, ed. and trans., Cáin Adamnáin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 246 (ca). For a more recent translation, see: Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, “The Law of Adomnán: a Translation,” in Adomnán at Birr, AD 697: Essays in Commemoration of the Law of the Innocents, ed. Thomas O’Loughlin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 53–71. 43 Colin Smith and James Gallen argue for Cáin Adamnáin’s place in the history of international humanitarian law in “Cáin Adamnáin and the Law of War,” Journal of the History of International Law 16 (2014): 63–81. 44 eDIL s.v. cáin: http://edil.qub.ac.uk/search?q=cain&search_in=headword (accessed 28 November 2016); Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, “Birr and the Law of the Innocents,” in Adomnán at Birr, ed. O’Loughlin, 13–32 at 20. 45 With the exception of the Laws of Adomnán, Patrick (Cáin Phátraic) and Sunday (Cáin Domnaig), many of the cánai were enacted at a local level. For example, according to the Annals of Ulster, the Law of Patrick was enforced in 737, 767, 783, 799, 806, 811, 823 and 836. Provincial cánai listed in au include: the Law of Ciarán: 744, 788 and 814; the Law of Comán: 772 and 793; and the Law of Colum Cille (Columba): 753, 757 and 778. 46 Ní Dhonnchadha, “Birr and the Law of the Innocents,” 22–27. 47 The Annals of Ulster 727.5; the Annals of the Four Masters refer to Caencomhrac, the Abbot and Bishop of Doire Chalgaigh, as the “steward of Adamn n’s Law” in 727, suggesting that the law was in use at this time.

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but Adamnán also included regulations to safeguard the young. For example, any person who participated in—or idly stood by and allowed—the slaying of a clerical student or youth paid eight cumala and underwent eight years of penance, thereby increasing the value of a child above that of a free man.48 The standard fine for the murder of an adult free man in early Irish law was seven cumala. A cumal was a unit of value that equaled three milking cows, or three ounces of silver. The monastic familia of Iona received a superlevy of one-eighth for the murder of every cleric or youth.49 The fine for the homicide went to the chief of the child’s kinsman and the dues towards the burial or tomb.50 As Julianna Grigg argues, “Rather than appropriating the prerogatives of Irish traditional law, these fines were in effect a tax added to personal injury cases that were dealt with under the Cáin.”51 Thus, Cáin Adamnáin altered the status of vulnerable members of society by adjusting the compensatory punishment required for homicide in certain instances. These alterations to traditional law had a twofold effect: in addition to addressing the humanitarian interests of Cáin Adamnáin by making the murder of defenseless members of society more expensive and, therefore, more inhibiting, it also offered a financial benefit to the Ionan familia. Traditional murder cases required compensation offered directly to the victim’s family, unless enforcement was necessary, which required an enforcer’s fine.52 Although a unique addition to standard procedure in secular law, acquiring wealth by adding taxes to pre-existing fines should not be interpreted as the sole purpose of Cáin Adamnáin. Financial gain is certainly a bonus, and even an incentive; however, the humanitarian interests are clearly the focus of the text. The Justiciary Rolls of Ireland also offer evidence of violent crimes against children, including homicide, rape, and injury. While child homicide appears in the trial records, it was certainly not a commonly recorded felony. In Dublin, in 1313, Richard of Exeter, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, charged John Rus with killing his own son, John Rus (Jr.), by throwing him to the ground in punishment. Richard of Exeter required John Rus Sr. the distraint, or seizure, of his moveable goods until he paid a fine of ten marks.53 Unlike Irish law, these fines were paid to the crown or local authority, not the victim’s relatives. While this account demonstrates the physical abuse of children, it is the only example 48 49 50 51

ca §35.24–27. The regulation reduces the fine for inadvertence and ignorance. ca §44.28–29. ca §40. Julianna Grigg, “Aspects of the Cáin: Adomnán’s Lex Innocentium,” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 1 (2005): 41–50 at 45. 52 Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 125. 53 cjri Vol. 3: 220.

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thus far identified in the court records to discuss familial discipline. This does not, of course, indicate that child abuse did not occur; rather it supports the argument that the disciplining of children was a family-related concern unless, at least in this instance, the abuse led to the death of a child. It is therefore clear that while parents and guardians were allowed and even expected to physically chastise the children in their care, they were also legally culpable if this punishment went too far. As unsavory as his behavior appears, although John Rus killed his son by violent force, it is possible that he did not intend to do so. The Justiciary Rolls also contain evidence of the attempted murder of a youth. In 1295, Thomas, son of John de Tyntagel, accused John, son of Henry de Mith, of trying to drown him near the city of Cork. Thomas claimed he was carrying a legal plea against Margery, John’s sister, when John de Mith, who was acting on the orders of his father Henry, fell upon Thomas and tried to kill him in a nearby body of water. Henry de Mith denied that he urged his son to drown Thomas, and the jury acquitted him of this charge. They were less convinced of his son John de Mith, however, and argued that he did in fact try to drown Thomas out of malice. As a result John went to prison from whence he paid a fine. Because Thomas was under age, the jury exonerated him for making a false claim against Henry de Mith.54 The jury’s acquittal of Thomas due to his youth suggests the belief that children of a certain age, which is not clarified in the trail report, were liable to exaggeration or in some way rationally incapable of providing an accurate accusation. Even though the adjudicators pardoned Thomas for his accusation against an adult, he was still considered old enough to bring the case forward to the court on his own account, and not through an adult. It is unfortunate that this entry does not provide the age of John de Mith, who attacked young Thomas and was sent to prison, because the entry sounds very much like a fight between two young men, one of whom is not quite of age to be considered legally culpable, yet, the other is. While possibly an isolated account in the records, this entry clearly indicates that youths were not excluded from the intent to murder with malice. Indeed, in 1295 Richard, son of Will de Cantolup, a sergeant of the king, stood trial in Ardfert, County Kerry for allowing his pigs to eat a child. The judicial record indicates that witnesses alleged the victim to be his own son. Similar to John Rus, who killed his son through punishment, Richard de Cantolup did not receive capital punishment for this crime, rather he paid a fine (of 20 marks, though he was convicted of other crimes as well).55 English coroners’ 54 cjri, Vol. 1: 27. 55 Richard de Cantolup was also accused of murder, aiding felons, taking bribes and preying on the poor; cjri Vol. 1: 23–4.

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registers indicate that pigs were a common source of danger; entering homes, overturning cradles, biting babies and young children. It is impossible to know with certainty whether Richard was simply unable to save the child from the pigs, or whether he intentionally planned on the child’s death. The records suggest that he tried to cover up the incident by refusing to allow the pigs to be examined by the coroner as evidence. The clerk’s addition that the child was rumored to be Richard’s own son certainly lends credence to the fact that the jury certainly felt that this was a factor of intent in the child’s death.56 While the extant Justiciary Rolls do not reveal much by way of intentional child abuse or homicide, whether by a family member or other adult, the court records document concern over the death of unborn infants due to violence against their pregnant mothers. For example, in Cork, 1311, in the midst of a burglary, during which he stole four shillings worth of goods, John Kyltavenan beat and maltreated Johanna de Rupe, the pregnant wife of the home’s owner. Johanna lost the unborn baby boy she was carrying. The charges against John Kyltavenan included robbery and the violence against Johanna, which led to the death of her unborn child, however; the entry also states that “John Kyltevenan is guilty of the said charges and of several other misdeeds.”57 In addition to his other crimes, it is likely that Johanna’s beating and resulting miscarriage influenced the jury’s decision, because although John Kyltavenan’s theft did not amount to much financially, the jury convicted him to hang. Causing a miscarriage through violence did qualify for punishment in at least one other case. In Dublin, 1305, Brother Robert Scallard, a monk from the house of Saint Mary’s in Dublin, stood accused of beating Cecilia, wife of Richard the Miller, which resulted in the miscarriage of her unborn son. He denied the charges, though the jury found him guilty. The record does not indicate whether there was evidence against Robert or if the jury simply did not believe him. He was not without support, however, as the Abbot of Saint Mary’s and the Archbishop’s lawyer interceded on Brother Robert’s behalf, stating that he should be delivered to the church for justice. Nevertheless, the jury required him to pay an initial fine of five marks until he could find pledges for additional fines.58 Not all accusations of violent miscarriages resulted in penalties. In 1311, Thomas le Raggede was charged with beating a woman while stealing butter from her. She miscarried the baby, whose sex is not provided in the records, as 56 Mary Valante, “Abandoned, Overworked, Abused: The Dark Side of Childhood in Early Medieval Ireland,” this volume, 318 notes several texts that describe children being injured or killed by pigs in early medieval Ireland. 57 The legal entry states that “John Kyltevenan is guilty of the said charges and of several other misdeeds. Therefore let him be hanged,” cjri, Vol. 3: 193. 58 cjri Vol. 2: 478.

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a result of the physical attack. The jury believed Thomas’ claim that he did not beat the woman; however, they required him to pay a fine of twenty shillings for other crimes.59 The men charged in each of these cases did not direct violence specifically at the unborn children; rather pregnant women were beaten during the execution of another crime. Each man committed more than one crime, but the miscarriages did affect the sentencing in two of the three cases. Women also miscarried infants as a result of physical attacks endured or witnessed during altercations primarily aimed at men. In the early fourteenth century a feud arose between the families of Ricard Taloun and John de Lyuett, which resulted in violence and homicide. In the midst of one of these occurrences in 1305, a male relative of Ricard Taloun beat John de Lyuett’s sister-inlaw in Balyhalyuan (Ballyhalle, Co. Kilkenny) leading to her miscarriage of a male baby. The court records, as far as I am aware, do not reveal the outcome of this case. According to the Common Plea Rolls for Dublin, in the spring of 1307 both parties agreed to an interim peace and to pardon each other, with the exception of the violent attacks, including the miscarriage, while they awaited arbitration by Richard de Burgh, the Earl of Ulster, and Edmund Butler, the Chief Butler of Ireland. Edmund Butler was Chief Justiciar alongside John Wogan in Ireland for the year of 1305, which is when the violent attack took place. It seems that Taloun and Lyuett wanted his judgment on the case as a result. The previous four examples have focused on miscarriages due to violent attacks. These assaults were directly against women, the byproduct of violent encounters of men or assaults committed in the heat of another crime. The following account provides more information surrounding the atmosphere, emotional state of the mother, and the sex of the child. In 1305 Peter son of James de Burmyngham sought recompense from Hugh Morys, mayor of Drogheda, for retaining and attacking his men while making their way to Scotland on behalf of the king. Peter complained about the premature delivery and subsequent loss of an unborn son and the illness of his lover as a result of the violence in Drogheda. The entry offers detail about the loss of the child, stating that Peter’s female companion, Ele, “seeing these people dead, took such a fright that she brought forth a male infant six weeks before his time, by which the infant died. And from that day till now she has never had health.”60 The record emphasizes the sex and estimated age of the unborn child, the fact that the child was born alive and subsequently died, as well as the psychological stress that caused Ele’s premature labor, the loss of the baby, and her lingering 59 cjri, Vol. 3: 216. 60 cjri, Vol. 2

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poor health after delivery. Such detail suggests Peter’s emotional response to the trauma of losing a child and anxiety about the well-being of his lover. Despite the evidence of concern, when Peter and the accused met at the court in Dublin, he paid 20 shillings to the king for license to withdraw his suit. There is no clear evidence to clarify his change of heart. These five cases involving violence and miscarriages provide valuable information regarding both the offender and victim’s gender. The accused in all five lawsuits were men. Of the five suits, four involved the beating of a pregnant woman that resulted in miscarriage; the last related to the premature birth of a child due to the psychological duress of witnessing violence. At least four of the five premature births referred to happened late enough in the pregnancy that the infant’s sex could be identified, all being male. None of these accounts clearly relate to domestic violence; rather the men who inflicted the violence appear to be strangers or not related to the pregnant women. Although women were attacked in four of the five cases, all but one of these instances—that relating to Brother Robert Scallard—happened in conjunction with another criminal offense, such as robbery. The voice of the female victim is not heard in any of the accounts. Though few in number, the evidence of shows concern over the loss of an unborn child, particularly that of a son, through violence against women or in conjunction with other crimes. Justice solely for a violent miscarriage, nevertheless, was neither sought nor achieved. Brother Robert paid a fine and John Kyltavenan was executed for the death of an unborn child in conjunction with robbery. The accused in the three other cases were pardoned of the crime or the records remain silent on a verdict. Nevertheless, while the instances of reporting and penalties for killing a child in the womb are few, they exist with more frequency in the extant Irish Justiciary Rolls than do the intentional killing of children suggesting the value placed on the lives of children, even before they were born. The Justiciary Rolls also contain legal cases related to the accidental death of children, which sometimes required no legal penalty. These entries provide more facets about the domestic life of young children. Children in the Middle Ages befell accidents for many of the same reasons they do today, as Nicolas Orme points out: “childish curiosity and the existence of hazards, harmless to adults yet potentially lethal to children.”61 Children playing, sitting, or lying near a hearth, with or without something set to boil on it, sometimes led to disastrous circumstances regardless of adult intention or supervision. For example, in 1297 Elena, whose age is not provided but is identified in the 61 Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,

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rolls as a “young child,” fell into a pot of hot malt and died from her burns. The records claim that this case was judged as a mischance, with no one held accountable.62 Yet, juries required fines for the accidental death of children elsewhere. Four-year old Robert, son of Thomas, fell into a pan of hot hydromel (mead) and died from his wounds while playing at the house of one Thomas, son of David. The jury required a fine of eight pence, the value of the pan.63 Similarly, David le Blund, a boy of six, died from burns received from a boiling pot of water that spilled on him as he sat near the fire in the house of Richard Cod; once again, the jury required a fine equal to the value of the pot.64 Animals proved to be a liability as well. A horse struck a pot of hot water, which overturned onto and killed three-year old John, son of Nicholas, who was playing near the fire in the house of Margeria Hamound. The jury pointed out that the horse and pan “ought to be forfeited to the King as deodands,” but settled on a fine for their value instead.65 Similarly, in 1314 Gregory Ó Torran was driving a cart on a road down a hill and saw a small boy, Nicholas Langloue, directly in his path. Nicholas followed his mother to a moor along this road. Gregory called out to the mother to move the boy out of the way, but the cattle leading the cart were going too fast and crushed the child before his mother could reach him. The jury considered the tragedy an accident and the exonerated Gregory, though he paid a fine equivalent to the value of the cattle, as they were deemed responsible for Nicholas’ death. Because Gregory fled the scene of the accident the jury held him accountable for this by demanding he hand over his chattel.66 The records do not clarify if these children died due to negligence or not, nor do they give us a sense of how many children perished in such accidents. In all likelihood some children suffered accidents who came from loving, caring homes, while others died due to neglect, just as they do today. These accounts do indicate that the adults in whose care a child was at the time of the accidental death often paid a fine equivalent to the cause of death—such as a pot or an animal—but were not held personally accountable or required to compensate the victim’s family directly. Fire and hot liquid were particularly dangerous as seen in the accidental deaths of Elena, David and Robert, who were all six years of age or less. Hot malt was used to make beer or mead. Boiled water could be used either for cooking or cleaning. Young children played near or perhaps 62 63 64 65 66

cjri, Vol. 1: 168. cjri, Vol. 3: 293. cjri, Vol. 3: 293. cjri, Vol. 3: 292. cjri Vol. 3: 319.

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even tried to help with the domestic chores of the adults around them. Some children, like four-year old Robert, lived in close proximity to animals, which may have been kept inside with the family for protection and warmth during certain times of the year. The entry about young Nicholas, who was killed by the wheels of a cart, states that he followed his mother while she was on an errand, suggesting the possibility that she was not aware that he was nearby. Was he following her out of curiosity? Out of a desire to be near her? Did she tell him to follow her? The record is not clear as to their intentions, but it is clear that Nicolas died in proximity to his mother. Each of these children perished accidentally within a domestic setting. The minimal fines, if there were any, issued by members of the jury for the accidental death of children suggests that they perceived these circumstances to be a tragedy for all involved, both children and adults. Another disturbingly violent crime against children that appears in the Justiciary Rolls is rape. This specific subject is more challenging to compare to extant medieval Irish law as the age of the victim does not appear as a factor in the punishment for rape as far as I am aware. Traditional Irish law identified two types of rape: forcor, forced rape, and sleth, which refers to other circumstances when a woman might have non-consensual intercourse, such as while she is intoxicated.67 The convicted rapist paid the full honor-price of the victim’s male superior (father, husband, son, or guardian). The rapist paid half the body-fine if the victim was a concubine and was responsible for raising the child if the victim became pregnant.68 The last example clearly suggests that the victim was old enough for menses. This does not rule out a girl in the stages of pueritia or adolescentia, but it precludes children identified as infantia. Another striking point is that the victim herself or himself does not receive the honor-price, rather a male superior receives his own full honor-price, suggesting that the crime was considered to be against him and not the victim. This is not unique to medieval Irish legal tradition. Scholarship on rape in medieval England and Venice, for example, shows that offenders were lightly punished, if at all in court records; the exception being cases concerning the elderly and children.69 Similar trends appear in the Common Law court records in Ireland. As the Irish Justiciary Rolls reflect English Common Law it is useful to understand how rape was treated 67 cih Vol. 6: 2198.1–2; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 135. 68 cih Vol. 1: 20.29; Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, 135. 69 See hillips, “Written on the Body: Reading Rape from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Women and the Law, ed. No l James Menuge (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000), 125–44 at 127; Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 90.

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in contemporary legal records in England. Kim Phillips has identified three phases relating to the image of the female body in English legal rape narratives from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The first phase emphasizes the bleeding body by highlighting violence, torn clothing, and blood. The second, beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, shifts attention to the deflowered body. Rape trials from this period reveal that the rape of virgins demands a higher penalty, particularly the removal of eyes and testicles, than the rape of other women. By the late thirteenth century, the issue of consent and an emphasis on abduction appear in the records, heralding the third phase.70 The focus on abduction and consent are linked to royal statues on rape and ravishment that were introduced in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Westminster i, issued in 1275 declared: And the king prohibits that no one ravish, nor take away by force [nul ne ravie ne prenge a force], any maiden within age, neither by her own consent not without; nor any wife or maiden of full age, nor any other woman, against her will; and if any do, at his suit that will sue within forty days, the king shall do common right; and if none commence his suit within forty days the king shall sue.71 Westminster i allowed women or their families a period of forty days to make an appeal against an offender. If no official suit was made, the king had the authority to step in and sue. Ten years later, with the issue of Westminster ii, the king could initiate the suit, including if the woman offered her consent after the rape: It is provided, that if a man from henceforth ravishes [ravist] a woman, married, maid, or other, where she did not consent either before nor after, he shall have judgment of life and member. And likewise where a man ravishes [ravist] a woman, married, lady, damsel, or other, with force, although she consent after, he shall have such judgment as before is said, if he be attained at the king’s suit, and there the king shall have the suit.72

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Phillips, “Written on the Body,” 128–38. Westminster I, c. 13, 1275; The Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders et al., 12 vols (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1810–1828, rpt. 1963), Vol. 1: 29, c. 13; Phillips, “Written on the Body,” 136. 72 Westminster ii, c. 34, 1285; Luders, et al., The Statutes of the Realm Vol. 2: 87, c. 13; Phillips, “Written on the Body,” 136.

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With the conflation of rape and abduction, legal records generally turned their attention away from the bleeding and deflowered body to the absent body.73 In doing so, the focus of the trial records was not on the victim herself, but on the male relative, usually her father or husband, who made the complaint and was considered to be the individual legally wronged. Phillips convincingly ties this emphasis on the male voice and absent female to the growing interests and power of the nobility with the rise of parliament. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, rape was suppressed as an act of violence against the king. By the late thirteenth century, the lords gained in influence. Evidence of their power appears in legal rape narratives as the records emphasize that the male guardian of raped victim was aggrieved as opposed to the violence suffered by the victim.74 As justiciary rolls from only the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries remain for Ireland, it is impossible to directly compare the Irish records to the English between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Some commonalities exist, however, that are noteworthy. Phillips’ argument for the conflation of rape and abduction bears evidence in the Irish material. The survey sample for this project contains thirteen trial records for the felony of rape or accusations of abduction. Two particular difficulties present themselves in examining the records. First, a number of cases in the rolls identify women who have been abducted; however, as the same word is often used at times to indicate both abduction and rape (rapuit or raptus), it is difficult to determine whether instances concerning abduction also indicate sexual assault of another person (all instances here being women) without their consent. The second complication relates to determining the victim’s age, which remains absent in the examined records with the exception of Eva de London, whom the trial record describes as “a tender maiden of eleven years.”75 The rolls often identify women through her connection to a male who is legally responsible for them, such as a husband, father, or guardian. In addition to Eva’s case, four other trials classify the alleged victim as a “daughter.” As “daughter” could also (but not exclusively) identify a woman’s status as single, it is not clear if these four females were children, teenagers or adults. Nevertheless, these four “daughters” have been included in this discussion. They may not have been children, but they could have been unwed young women in their teenage years. Eight rape narratives identified in this survey clearly refer to adult victims. Of these eight trials, only two offenders received penalties; both sentences required a fine. The other six accused men were either acquitted (4) or 73 Phillips, “Written on the Body,” 137. 74 Phillips, “Written on the Body,” 141–42. 75 cjri, Vol. 3

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outlawed (2). In contrast, three of the four cases (there are five rapes included in these four cases) involving children or “daughters” (who may have been young women) required some form of penalty. At least one man was acquitted of the charge of rape. In 1313, a jury found Geoffrey, son of Thomas Russel, innocent of the charge that he “forcibly carried off Annot, the daughter of Thomas Baker, against her will.”76 On the other hand, a conviction for rape could have lethal consequences for the accused. In 1305 William, son of Adam Lam, did not deny that he “forcibly carried off (rapuit)” Johanna, daughter of Walter Alayn. Although William did not refute the abduction of Johanna, he denied accusations of robbery, keeping felonious company and engaging in other misdeeds. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to hang. It is possible that the abduction and implied rape of Johanna influenced the jury’s decision; however, it is more likely that William’s sentence of execution lay in his history as a thief and multiple offender in addition to the rape. Two other rape trials, both of which exclude reference to any other felonies, required a fine and restitution to the victims and their families. A clear example of this is evident in the trial of eleven-year old Eva de London. In 1310, Richard Tyrel of Castle Knock abducted and raped Eva de London. The trial record emphasizes Eva’s vulnerability and virginity by referring to her as “a tender maiden” who Tyrel had carnal knowledge of “without her consent and will.”77 Richard did not deny the allegation against him and put “himself upon the grace of the King and of the court” while he waited in jail.78 Richard de Burgh, the earl of Ulster, and his son John, advocated for Richard, who after deliberation was allowed to pay the king a fine of 100 marks to be pardoned of the rape accusation and make restitution to Eva for the assault. Recompense was settled through the arranged marriage of Eva to the heir of Thomas Skybras when she and her affianced came of age. The records state that Eva was satisfied by this arrangement as she would make a profit by the marriage.79 In 1308, Richard de Burgh and his son also advocated in a rape trial; however, in this instance they were assignees of John de Fresingfeld and his wife Johanna, who received 100 marks in compensation for the rape of their daughters Phillippa and Elizabeth.80 It is not clear from the extant records whether all offenders who were granted a pardon from the king were required to compensate the young victim or the victim’s family. An incomplete account from 1313 issues 76 77 78 79 80

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the pardoning of Ricard son of John, Ricard Manuuesysyn, and Henry Tyrel for the abduction (raptu) of Eglentina, the daughter of a man named Henry.81 While a pardon is suggestive of an admission of guilt, no reference is made in this entry that the two Ricards and Henry must compensate Eglentina or her father for the felony as in the cases of Eva de London and Phillippa and Elizabeth de Fresingfeld. Thus, the penalty for the rape of a child or young woman could be incredibly high, including fines paid to the crown, compensation to the victim or the victim’s family, or even execution. The compensation awarded to Eva and the parents of Phillippa and Elizabeth measures closer to early Irish legal penalties for rape as fines were also directed to the parents. The distinct difference remains between the two legal systems. In the areas of Ireland under English rule, offenders paid a fine to the crown as well as the family or victim. Adults during the Middle Ages, as today, were not always able to protect their children from harm. Children, alongside their parents or guardians, could be victims at the hands of adults engaged in a felony, particularly burglary. For example, John Hobbe tied up William Kaermerdyn’s son, Will, and his nephew, John, and threatened to decapitate them while stealing animals, food and domestic items from William’s home around Cork in 1297. The ages of the younger William and his cousin John are not provided in the records. However, the fact that the burglary happened while they were present at the elder William Kaermerdyn’s home and not property identified as their own, strongly suggests that they were either children or adolescents responsible for the care of the animals while the elder Kaermerdyn was away. This is, of course, impossible to know with any certainty, yet the mention of the threat to the lives of the elder William’s son and nephew suggests the emotional distress of this event on the family and emphasizes the potential violent nature of the accused. John Hobbe did not appear in court to defend himself and the written record ends with a note to the sheriffs of counties Cork and Limerick to apprehend him.82 Similarly, in Waterford 1307 burglars placed Carwill Othehyt, along with his wife and children, in two chests in their Waterford home to allow the thieves to get about their business. Despite the drama of event, the children were unhurt and the accused acquitted.83 Some children were not just restrained during a burglary, but were physically attacked. In 1311 contention between Elena, the wife of Laurence Milletoun, and Matilda Baroun led to the physical harm of a child. Elena, accompanied by four men, broke into 81 cjri, Vol. 2: 469. The edition of the manuscript does not provide Henry’s surname. 82 cjri, Vol. 1: 92. 83 cjri, Vol. 2

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the house of Matilda Baroun and beat Matilda and her son. The attackers were accused of stealing items from Matilda as well; however, the jury acquitted them of the theft, but sentenced them to jail to await judgment for forcibly entering Matilda’s home.84 Although the court records do not mention their specific ages, these accounts allude to young children at home with their parents, mostly likely at night. Matilda’s son was with her when she was attacked and Carwill Othethyt’s children were at home with him and his wife when his house was burgled. These youngsters suffered alongside their parents. Will and John Kaermerdyn were possibly tending the family flocks when they were threatened. Clearly, neither the children could protect themselves, nor could their parents safeguard them in their own home. To conclude, evidence from the Calendar of Justiciary Rolls demonstrates that the Common Law practiced in the parts of Ireland under English jurisdiction aligned with general legal practices relating to children in western Europe from the twelfth century onwards. Through the rolls, we learn that children participated in theft. Children considered under age were pardoned from this crime, whether they were caught in the company of an adult, or on their own. Boys thirteen and older were liable for robbery and had to pay fines comparable to those of an adult. These young offenders tended to steal animals, especially cows, sheep, and goats. While young children were exempt from legal responsibility, adults were not held accountable if a small child died through an accident while in their care. Although parents were encouraged to physically discipline their children, extreme violence against children and child homicide was not totally overlooked. Individuals who killed a child either through intent or as a result of physical abuse were held accountable through the payment of a fine and even death. In terms of childhood culture, late thirteenth and early fourteenth century court records show that young children played in or close to home, particularly around the hearth, or engaged in chores such as tending animals. As young boys grew into their teens we see more frequent reference to adult activities, such as violent fights and theft. The exploration of childhood through the legal sources of medieval Ireland remains incomplete. Future research will offer farther reaching answers, including questions regarding status, gender, and ethnicity, as well as issues surrounding wardship and inheritance. Further comparative analysis, both with Anglo-Norman records in Ireland and contemporary legal sources in England, will greatly expand upon the information presented in this narrowly-focused study. 84 cjri, Vol. 3

chapter 8

Puerile Justice

The Voice of a Boy in Jack and His Stepdame Melissa Raine Voices occupy a prominent place in human expressivity.1 Vocal intonations and timbres create complex, nuanced and emotionally charged meanings that are further enhanced by their interactions with facial expressions, gestures and postures. The resonance of a voice offers a unique but ephemeral projection of the embodied self into the world, its meanings further inflected by the environment. Voices also convey the cherished mode of communication commonly referred to as language, the aspect of voice most closely associated with symbolic authority. In written form, the relationship of language to the embodied voice can seem tenuous. The physicality of voiced language is explicit in drama through the corporeal presence of an actor, but when human voices are represented in written narratives, they also draw upon the complex embodied and symbolic significance expressed by a voice that belongs to a body. Voices are also responsive to the relationship of speaker to listener, perhaps exceptionally so when they belong to children, whose ability to express themselves is closely dependent upon the security provided to them by their caregivers. The contexts in which children’s voices are heard, the range of meanings those voices express, and the value accorded them by the listener provide insights into the cultural frameworks within which their lives are lived. The dynamism and nuance of medieval children’s voices are lost to us, and few cultural artefacts relating to their utterances survive, presenting historically oriented scholarship with a methodological challenge; what kind of access to these ephemeral voices from the past is now possible, and why might recovering these voices matter? While fictional voices are no substitute for those of living children, they often draw upon the social, emotional and ethical pre cepts that also informed understandings of living children’s voices. Literary children’s voices thus offer valuable perspectives on the cultural values and prohibitions associated with children’s voices beyond the texts themselves.

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (project number CE110001011).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_010

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Jack and His Stepdame provides a compelling opportunity for exploring the relationship of fictional and living children’s voices. Jack is perhaps the first happy child hero in an English literary narrative, and, through his resourcefulness and self-determination, resembles modern ideals of a child protagonist more readily than do children in other Middle English texts.2 While Jack is a humorous piece of entertainment shaped by generic expectations, this narrative’s momentum is generated by a child’s inability to articulate the mistreatment meted out by his stepmother and her accomplice the friar.3 Help arrives in the form of magical intervention, supplying Jack with the tools to punish his adversaries and reclaim his rightful place in his father’s household, but it is not a random gift to a passive recipient. This interpolation turns the vulnerability associated with being a child into strength, overturning conventional relationships by comically endowing Jack’s “childish” mode of being in the world with agency over adults.4 A key measure of his success is the development of an effective voice. Mark Johnston has argued that a central characteristic of 2 Whether Jack is a hero for children deserves further consideration. For discussions of what might constitute medieval children’s literature, see Gillian Adams, “Medieval Children’s Literature: Its Possibility and Actuality,” Children’s Literature 26 (1998): 1–24; Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), especially page 277 for a discussion of Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Brogyntyn ms ii.1 (olim Porkington 10), a manuscript that includes this text. 3 Jack and His Stepdame’s status as a fabliau or comic tale has been prominent in its limited critical reception. Melissa Furrow argues that “fabliau” is an inaccurate designation; “Middle English Fabliaux and Modern Myth,” elh 56, no. 1 (1989): 1–18. Ben Parsons is content with “fabliau” but argues for marked differences between French and English versions of the genre; “The English Fabliau in the 15th and 16th Centuries,” Literature Compass 10, no. 7 (2013): 544–58. Peter Goodall argues that Jack and His Stepdame violates some fabliau conventions, most notably in its use of magic; “An Outline History of the English Fabliau after Chaucer,” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 58, no. 1 (November 1, 1982): 5–23, at 10. Mark Truesdale, however, includes Jack in a group of English comic tales where magic “simultaneously brings about the restoration of medieval social orthodoxy (rather than challenging the status quo), ultimately working as conservative correction to contain figures who had previously been socially disruptive and righting an already disrupted society;” “Carnivalesque Magic in Late-Medieval Comic Tales: ‘I Have Dauncid in the Devillis Name,’ ” unpublished paper. Some folkloric elements have also been identified; see William Bernard McCarthy, Cheryl Oxford, and Joseph Daniel Sobol, eds., Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), xiv. 4 On the significance of understanding childhood through relationships, see Daniel T. Kline, “ ‘That Child May Doon to Fadres Reverence’: Children and Childhood in Middle English Literature,” in The Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to Contemporary Adrienne E. Gavin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 24.

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medieval ethical and courtesy literature is that it “recognizes language as a basis of social order, and regards speech as a behavior capable of promoting social or political advancement.”5 A popular literary example of such logic at work in the negotiation of a father-son relationship occurs in the Seven Sages of Rome tradition. Its framing narrative features a son, the prince, threatened by his stepmother, who cannot initially speak directly in his own defense to his father, the emperor; injudicious articulation of a shameful reality is potentially more damaging than dishonorable actions to honorable social relations.6 The vulgar humor of Jack might appear to represent the antithesis of the fetishized emphasis on education and rhetoric in the Seven Sages tradition, but they share the movement of a youthful son-protagonist from silence that conceals a violation of social order to respectful, empowered dialogue with a father who is also the highest authority in the text, in Jack’s case a goodman, the head of a well to do but non-gentle household. In both Jack and the Seven Sages framing narrative, speech that would shame the father has no legitimacy, even when true, no matter how high the stakes, so profoundly substantial are the words spoken between men. Not yet being men themselves, the entitlement of these sons to participate in this world of powerful speech involves careful demonstration of their worthiness, which resides in evidence that they will become men (implicitly, their fathers) who will uphold those values in the future, in order to gain access to protection in the present. The manuscripts that include Jack have been associated with yeomen and mercantile owners, and it sometimes appears alongside other narratives featuring non-gentle male characters who trouble the established order.7 Some of 5 Mark D. Johnston, “The Treatment of Speech in Medieval Ethical and Courtesy Literature,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 4, no. 1 (1986): 21–49, at 44; see also 31. 6 Jill Whitelock notes the connection of the Seven Sages tradition to “the broad motif of ‘the deprived boy winning back his heritage’ ” common to many Middle English romances, a description appropriate also to Jack. Jill Whitelock, ed., The Seven Sages of Rome (Midland Version), Early English Text Society os 324 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), xvi. 7 Jack and His Stepdame is found in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Brogyntyn ms ii.1; Oxford, Balliol College ms 354; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library ms Ee.iv.35; Oxford, Bodleian Library ms Rawlinson C. 86 as well as the later London, British Library Additional ms 27,879 (Percy’s Folio). Thomas Ohlgren, identifying the “mercantile interests” of cul Ee.iv.35 (“Richard Call’s Book”), says of Jack and His Stepdame, “The King and the Barker” and “Robin Hood and the Potter,” “a common denominator in all three stories is that the male protagonists are depicted as fiercely proud, independent, resourceful yeo men merchants, who are not intimidated by social superiors or by those who would threaten or oppress them;” Thomas H. Ohlgren and Lister M. Matheson, “Richard Call, the Pastons and the Manuscript Context of Robin Hood and the Potter (Cambridge University Library

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these texts are described by Stephen Knight as “untraditional medieval literature,” a category aligned with “new social forces which had no central commitment to the world of court or church [that] were recognized and developed as new forms of cultural self-analysis.8 Within this grouping, “innovative personnel emerge in uncertain relationships and with unclear status, both ethical and social, so that something like a coalition of new foci and voices is to be seen in English literature in the new sub-genres of popular romance, fabliau, outlaw narrative and the ‘king and subject’ ballad.”9 The innovative, highly ethically charged status of Jack as a boy, an emergent yeoman male with dangerous subversive powers whose status is, precisely, threatened and uncertain, places this narrative within the contours of the trend that Knight identifies. If the central relationship in the Seven Sages of Rome is that of a father-king and son-prince, the emancipation of a yeoman-child in Jack grapples with a greater range of identifications for the younger male and the forces impacting his trajectory towards his inheritance of his father’s position. Besides being repeatedly associated with littleness (and, by implication, with physical vulnerability),10 Jack  Ee. 4.35.1), with an Appendix on Dialect Analysis,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 45, no. 1 (2009): 210–33. Brogyntyn ii.1 includes Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, another text that challenges concepts of gentility. Janine Rogers describes the “merchant masculinity” that she finds characterizing the contents of London grocer Richard Hill’s book; “Courtesy Books, Comedy, and the Merchant Masculinity of Oxford Balliol College MS 354,” Medieval Forum 1 (2002), http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume%201/Rogers. html; Rawlinson C. 86, according to Julia Boffey and Carol M. Meale, “typif[ies …] the preoccupations and interests of a large section of the urban, middle-class reading and buying public,” a description that does not include gender, but emphasizes that manuscript contents relate closely to trends and recurrent interests associated with a certain socio-economic readership; “Selecting the Text: Rawlinson C. 86 and Some Other Books for London Readers,” in Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebrating the Publication of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, ed. Felicity Riddy and Angus McIntosh (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), 143–69. 8 Stephen Knight, “Untraditional Medieval Literature: Romance, Fabliaux, Robin Hood and King and Subject Ballad,” in Medieval English Literature, ed. Beatrice Fannon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 60. 9 Ibid. 10 Jack is a little boy in lines 47, 73, 112, 212, and 376, and describes himself as “lyght” in line 226. He declares that he will eat only a little of his poor meal when working as a shepherd (59), and that he will be happy with the gift of a pipe, no matter how little (104); Melissa M. Furrow, ed., Ten Bourdes (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan Univ, 2013). Her edition is based on Rawlinson C. 86, which forms the basis of this reading of the narrative. All quotations are from this edition. He is also often described as “little” in the other mss, but not necessarily in the same lines. Significant variants in the other three earliest manuscripts, as recorded in her earlier edition, Melissa M. Furrow, ed., Ten Fifteenth Comic Poems (New York: Garland Pub., 1985), will be noted where relevant.

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is a son (and stepson), a child, a “propre lad,” and a “hasty hyne,” an eager, implicitly productive householder (11–12).11 As a proper lad, Jack embodies inherently commendable properties associated with male youth,12 and more than just a servant, hyne points towards his participation in the household as a community where co-operation promotes prosperity; however, the term most frequently deployed to describe Jack is “boy.” E. J. Dobson follows the semantic development of “boy” from its etymological origins in the Old French past participle embouillé, meaning “to fetter,”13 pointing out that until the fifteenth century, it was either pejorative or denoted lower-class status of males of any age, and “never means ‘male child’ before 1400.”14 Strikingly, Jack is one of the three earliest texts to use “boy” in the modern sense of “male child,” and it does so thirty times.15 Dobson does not comment on this situation, where the new, one could say unfettered, meaning of “boy” is emphatically asserted precisely in the context of a crisis in this male child’s relationship with his household. At the time when “boy” is transcending the sense of property and servitude associated with its origins, the resulting capacity for agency in Jack produces willing subordination, as he uses his powers to uphold his place in the existing hierarchy. As an example of Knight’s untraditional literature engaged in cultural self analysis, the compulsion to establish a stable identity for the new category of boy in this text may be a response to socio-economic instability in fifteenthcentury father-son relationships identified by Christopher Dyer: [B]y the 1430s all over the country families lost some of their significance in the transfer of land. Inheritance declined because many families lacked sons. This reflects both the high rate of mortality in epidemics of plague and other diseases, and the ease with which those who survived could find land away from their father’s holding or their home village, and so did not have to wait to inherit.… Individuals, motivated by self interest, 11

There is significant variation in lines 11–12; see Furrow, Ten Fifteenth-Century Comic Poems, 96. Only in Rawlinson C. 86 is Jack hasty, but all variants describe Jack in positive terms. 12 The Middle English Dictionary cites this line as an example of meaning 4 (a) of propre, “A term of approbation, indicating that a person or thing is as he or it should be; commendable, goodly, excellent;—also iron.” The force of “iron.” may be applicable here, but as with the modern mischievous associations of “proper lad,” approbation is still present. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED34957/ track?counter=2&search_id=51416 accessed 22/9/2018. 13 E. J. Dobson, “The Etymology and Meaning of Boy,” Medium Aevum 9 (1940): 121–54, at 124. 14 Ibid., 145. 15

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relied on the land market rather than family connections to build up their holdings. Sons did not help their fathers as was once the case.16 The historical problem of uncertain filial loyalty provides a compelling circumstance for thinking through this literary negotiation of the value of a father-son relationship and its preoccupation with the loyalty of the younger male. Although the magic offers a very literal boost to Jack’s impact on his surroundings, it does so in combination with his innate boyhood, revealing extra-ordinary forms of knowledge and skill expressed in correspondingly unusual forms, all employed to secure his father’s entitlement in order for Jack effectively to protect himself. Jack upholds the fundamental association of honorable speech with harmonious social order, but the vocal strategies deployed in this narrative, comprised of varieties of discourse and speech act as well as extra-linguistic forms of voice, represent challenges outside the purview of such discourse that must be dealt with. The vocal strategies in Jack exceed what Mladen Dolar describes as the “most common use” of voice; that is, “the voice which functions as the bearer of an utterance, the support of a word, a sentence, a discourse, any kind of expression” in their prosecution of Jack’s interests.17 The opportunity for confirming the commitment of the young male to the values of yeomanly authority is provided by Jack’s stereotypically disruptive stepmother. The antifeminism of Jack and His Stepdame accords generally with that found in fabliaux,18 but the Seven Sages tradition is also known for its antifeminism.19 While the stepmothers’ fates differ, both women are ultimately deprived of eloquence, in the case of Jack through a suitably non-gentle inflection. While the father is the undisputed head of household, the management of food provision is the responsibility of the goodwife. Jack’s disenfranchisement 16 Christopher Dyer, An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 48–49. 17 Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge: mit Press, 2006), 14. For medieval understandings of voice, see Irit Ruth Kleiman on the centrality of Aristotle and Augustine, although she does not elaborate on the status of children’s voices; “Editor’s Introduction,” in Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe, ed. Irit Ruth Kleiman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1–9. 18 See E. Jane Burns, “A Close Look at Female Orifices in Farce and Fabliau,” in Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature, New Cultural Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 31–70, although she does not discuss this text. For a more general discussion of farting in medieval literature that includes husband and wife relationships as well as correlations between farting and blowing instruments, see Valerie J. Allen, “Broken Air,” Exemplaria 16, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 305–22. 19 Whitelock, ed., The Seven Sages of Rome (Midland Version)

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is initially registered dually by inadequate food intake and by the lack of vocal outlet through which to expose his maltreatment. Her punitive withholding of alimentation represents a perversion of her maternal role and compromises all of the roles assigned to Jack: Hys fader loved hym well; And his moder never a dele— I tell you as I think. All she thought lost, by the rode, Of all that ever did hym good Of mete or of drynk. Nott half inough therof he had And yett forsoth it was right bad, Yett she thought it lost. Therfor evill mott she fare, For ofte she did hym moch care As farforth as she durst. (12–24) The table is the symbolic hub of the household; what the inhabitants eat, where they sit, and how they conduct themselves are all expressive of their connection to each other. Meals offer an important locus for the display and performance of idealised father-son relationships in late medieval England. In romance and conduct texts, a son serving a father (particularly carving) is a powerful metaphor for strong bonds and successful upbringing.20 The focus on mealtime conduct in advice literature also emphasizes the strong association of the table with the nurturing of children.21 The mouth is an important 20

21

In the General Prologue, Chaucer’s Squire, the son of the Knight in the Canterbury Tales, carves before his father at the table; see The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) line 100. See also Bevis of Hampton, where the Emperor of Almayn (who has murdered Bevis’ father) accidentally slays his own son with his carving knife while engaged in serving his father (3097–3102). In response, “Bevis lough and hadde gode game” (3116); Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury, eds., Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston (Kalamazoo, MI.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1999). This idiom, which occurs twice in Jack (discussed below), appears to have a broader relationship with taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Although usually associated with high-status households, the large numbers of conduct texts aimed at children and found in manuscripts associated with lower gentry readerships suggest that it was an ideal shared by other groups as well. Jonathan Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain Poet (Woodbridge, Suffolk:

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symbolic site for a male child; through it, appropriate food, expressive of care and promoting growth is taken in, and appropriate language, which is integral to respectful male relationships, emanates from it. Jack’s poor alimentation therefore threatens his standing on several fronts simultaneously; it devalues his status as a hasty hyne; it deprives him of the sustenance required for literal growth; it represents a failure in the care to which he is entitled from his parents, all of which threaten his future inheritance of his father’s role. To speak out would disrupt a network of interrelated social, economic and affective features upon which the smooth running of the goodman’s household depends; the narrative offers no acceptable way for a child to wield such power, and implicitly, no way for Jack to criticize his father’s failure to detect injustice under his own roof. Conduct texts repeatedly describe the ways in which children should behave and respond verbally when an adult speaks to them, emphasising respectful comportment.22 Repeated warnings against “jangling” [chattering] suggest that children’s indulgence in this valueless mode of discourse displeased their social superiors.23 Immoderate laughter is also proscribed.24 Such guidance was not only directed at children of higher social D. S. Brewer, 1985), 70–73; Meridee Bailey discusses specific examples of courtesy texts in lower-gentry and mercantile contexts in Chapter 2, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, C. 1400–1600 (Woodbridge, UK: York Medieval Press, 2012). 22 See “The Babees Book” (1 lines 78–91) in The Babees Book, Aristotle’s A B C, Urbanitatis, Stans Puer ad Mensam, The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, the Bokes of Nurture of Hugh Rhodes and John Russell, Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, The Booke of Demeanor, The Boke of Curtasye, Seager’s Schoole of Vertue, &c. &c. with Some French and Latin Poems on Like Subjects, and some Forewords on Education in Early England ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society os 32 (London: Trübner, 1868). See also “Stans puer ad mensam;” lines 6–14 in ms Harley 2251 instruct the boy on how to stand while he is spoken to; the same lines in ms Lambeth 853 instruct the boy while he speaks (ibid., 26, 27). Both ver sions offer further instruction on how to comport himself when anyone speaks to him anywhere (ibid., lines 15–17). “The Babees Book” gives this summation of expectations of a child’s response to an adult’s address: Whenne yee Answere or speke, yee shulle be purveyde What yee shalle say / speke eke thing fructuous; On esy wyse latte they Resone be sayde In wordes gentylle and also compendious, For many words ben rihte Tedious To ylke wyseman that shalle yeve audience; Thaym to eschewe therfore doo diligence (ibid., 3, lines 71–7). “Symon’s ‘Lesson of Wysedome for all Maner Chyldryn’ ” also cautions against using too many words (ibid., 400 line 48). Warnings against jangling occur in “The Babees Book” at line 94 and line 186, and also “Symon’s ‘Lesson of Wysedome for all Maner Chyldryn’ ” (ibid., 400, line 48). “The Babees Book” (ibid., 4, line 94).

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standing; The Boke of Curtasye, for instance, offers itself to any male wishing to learn about courtesy, “Yf thow be gentylmon, 3omon, or knaue” (ibid., 299, line 3).25 Whether a goodman or a king, the head of the household’s authority must be reflected in the conduct of his subordinates, in this text limiting the modes of legitimate discourse available to Jack. When his stepmother petitions for Jack’s removal from the house, his father, stressing his youth, compromises by sending his son into “the feld” to guard the animals during the day (25–45). Daniel Punday argues that in narrative, “space is animated above all by character movement—real as well as well as imagined,26 and “always imagined through the filter of the culture’s way of thinking about the body’s abilities,”27 concluding that “narrative space must be understood in terms of the types of movement that it allows.”28 Jack’s quasi-expulsion from the household propels him into a contrastingly open and socially undefined locus; fields are not, historically, indeterminate spaces free of constraint, in that ownership and customs determining access apply, here, most likely the conventions governing common land.29 Economically, the field’s relationship to the household is strong; Jack is gainfully employed there, according to his father, “ ‘Till he be strenger / To wynne better wage’ ” (35–6), and his presence frees up a strong adult to do more work (37–40). His economic utility is retained across both environments, its continued presence forming an indispensable foundation for his identity. Jack’s movement into this new space also communicates his innate good cheer: Upon his bak he bare his staff. Of no man he ne gaff: He was mery inowgh. (49–51) Whatever stigma is attached to this lowly job assignment for the son of the head of household, Jack, impervious to the opinions of others about his status, is simply “mery inowgh.” For Phillippa Maddern “an effervescent and literally 25 The Boke of Curtasye also explicitly cautions a child not to “stryfe with no kyn worde,” against his lord (ibid., 305, line 226), curtailing a boy’s ability to engage in discourse on difficult topics. 26 Daniel Punday, Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 117. 27 Ibid., 137. 28 Ibid., 140. See also 127, 138 . 29 This space is described as “the feld[e]” four times (38, 41, 49, 206). This simple designa tion implies audience familiarity with such a location and the lack of possessive pronoun leaves open the possibility of shared usage.

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inconsequent lightness or merriment, often attached to trivial sources of pleasure (‘they louen an appil more than gold’…), and sometimes active in circumstances that make them inappropriate in adults” is the “natural” emotional state commonly attributed to children in late medieval England.30 While this state might be expected of children, it was monitored and kept in check by oversight and harsh discipline.31 Jack, however, demonstrates an inherent balance, an “enoughness;” while his merriment might be construed as plentiful, it is not excessive and does not distract him from his duties. In the open environment of the fields, Jack is equipped with almost nothing beyond his controlled cheerfulness coupled with his utility. These qualities, pleasing to adults, form the basis of his identity as a “boy” and confirm his worthiness of assistance. Punday’s formulation of space and movement interacting to produce meaning extends to voice, when voice is considered to be an aspect of embodiment. Jack’s subsequent speech augments the essential characteristics of boyhood that render him worthy of assistance. Although there is no appropriate voice within the household with which he can articulate his plight, outside the house, Jack has an assured, independent and cheerful voice that expresses his innately moderate response to his affliction. He takes out his meal and: When he sawe it was so bad Lytill lust therto he had And putt it up anon. Iwysse, he was nott for to wyte. He seyde, “I will ete but a lyghte Tyl nyght that I come home.” (55–60) Even alone, he does not express strong negative emotions, but shows a willingness to live with his mistreatment. This accepting, moderate response generates his first, well governed words; produced in the open without an interlocutor, they confirm his inherent loyalty to the smooth running of his father’s household over his own discomfort. The openness of the field removes distractions, including relationships, throwing Jack’s innate characteristics into sharp relief. These traits are then tested and rewarded by his interaction with a passing stranger in need:

30 Philippa C. Maddern, “How Children Were Supposed to Feel; How Children Felt: England 1350–1550,” in Childhood and Emotion: Across Cultures 1450–1800, ed. Claudia Jarzebowski and Thomas Max Safley (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2014), 129. 31 See Orme 8

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Uppon an hill he hym set. An olde man therwith he met, Cam walkyng be the wey. He seide, “God spede, good son.” He seide, “Sir, welcome, The sothe for to saye.” The olde man was hungrid sore And sayde, “Son, hast thou any mete astore That thou mayst geve me?” The boye seide, “So God me save, Thow shalt se suche as I have, And welcome shalt thou be.” The lytill boye gaffe hym suche as he had And bad him ete and be glad And seide, “Welcome trewly.” The olde man, for to pleise, He ete and made him at eise, And sayde, “Sir, gramarcy.” (61–78) Without clearer indicators of identity, they negotiate this encounter as younger and older male (“son”). While food changes hands, the shared currency of this transaction, which gives meaning to the gift, is the courteousness of their dialogue. This old man’s manner of speaking marks his membership in the same networks of hierarchized homosocial relationships that shape Jack’s formal obligations as a son and a hyne, thus framing, or it could be said, confining Jack’s subsequent agency within a masculine network of nurture. The field not only permits but promotes the importance of vocal movement; in this pared-down environment without other competing trappings, their languagebearing voices (with implied appropriate intonations and gestures) form the basis of their relationship in which their roles are clear; they can interact with confidence, and entertain the possibility of advancement. In exchange for the food, the old man offers three magical gifts “That shall not be forget” (81); Jack chooses what they will be. The first and second gifts that Jack requests conform closely to Maddern’s characterisation of childhood as typically occupied by “trivial” sources of merriment and represent a simple exchange of reward for kindness. After asking for a bow and arrow, and receiv ing a set that never misses, Jack requests a pipe; “ ‘Thouh it were never so lite /

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Than were I mery inowe’ ” (95–6). The pipe is, like him, both little and closely associated with cheerful emotions. Jack then declines a third gift with characteristic moderation and merriment: “Let se, what shall that other be? For thou shalt have yeftis thre As I thee hyght before.” The boye than lowde lowgh And sayde, “Be my trowth I have inowe; I will desire no more.” (103–8) His laughter adds an ethical dimension to his vocalic repertoire as it bestows sincerity on the following oath that he will not take more than he needs;32 however, the old man counters Jack’s declaration of satisfaction with a further oath, a reiteration of his promise and finally a direct command: The olde man saide to hym, “Aplyght, Thow shalt have as I thee hyghte. Therfore sey on, let se.” The lytill boye seyde full sone, “I have a steppemoder at home. She is a shrowe to me. “When my fadir gewyth me mete She wold the devill had me cheke, She stareth so in my face. When she lokyth on me so Yef she myght lette a rappe goo That myght rynge all the place.” (109–20) This declaration conveys the reassuring insistence that the old man intends to honor his commitment, and it creates space for Jack to articulate his predicament (and its childishly conceived solution) without dishonouring his father or himself; however, this opportunity is dependent upon an obligation. Instead of being the recipient of a gift, he is now put in a subordinate position 32

The multiple references to Jack’s innate sense of moderation correlate to the relationship Jonathan Nicholls suggests between Ecclesiasticus and its emphasis on moderation, and medieval teaching on courtesy as directed towards children; see The Matter of Courtesy,

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where he is obliged to complete the old man’s speech act, and then to obey his direct command. This point of transition, when he is under obligation to use his voice to articulate an experience that was previously unmentionable, is registered through the faltering of Jack’s essential cheerfulness. The formal but positive dialogue between these two males who are otherwise strangers has produced a safe opportunity for Jack to reveal his emotions and his desires. Yet Jack’s ability to confide his mistreatment and seek help materializes when an adult demands that he speak about his own experience. The opportunity to unburden himself is inextricable from the compulsion for Jack to obey in this exchange, as is the question of whether it is important for Jack to experience happiness and security for his own sake or because others would be inconvenienced by his failure to display prescribed characteristics, in which case his merry presentation would be an obligation owed to those who care for him. The old man’s insistence suggests prior knowledge of Jack’s problem, and his final declaration—“ ‘No more, than, I ne can, / But take my leve of thee’ ” (128– 9)—further intimates that he has been summoned expressly to meet Jack’s need. The ideal of a network of male mentoring is implicit in Jack’s trust of this unknown older man who proves himself through his speech and binds Jack to him through performative language. To deserve his place in this network, Jack must himself implement the opportunity he has been given; however, his agency is only made possible (indeed permissible) when sanctioned by a knowing male elder.33 The individual stranger disappears, but the network he represents takes on material form in the magical gifts which he leaves with Jack. From this moment of empowerment, Jack’s voice expands dramatically beyond language-based dialogue. Since Saussure’s dismissal of parole, the role of voice in making meaning has been suppressed as language has been privileged. Referring to sound and the sense of hearing, Christopher Woolgar points out that “contemporary Western scholarship has focused on the use of language in signification; and the strength of the link between the word as signi fier and the object it signifies has had a central role in linguistic theory,” a focus which precludes other ways of understanding sounds, especially voices. Mladen Dolar elaborates on the implications of this Saussurean legacy for the status of voice:

See Rogers, “Courtesy Books, Comedy, and the Merchant Masculinity of Oxford Balliol College 54,” n.p. C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 62.

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If we take Saussure as a provisional starting point… then it is easy to see that the Saussurean turn has a lot to do with the voice. If we are to take seriously the negative nature of the linguistic sign, its purely differential and oppositive value, then the voice—as the supposedly natural soil of speech, its seemingly positive substance—has to be put into question. It has to be carefully discarded as the source of an imaginary blinding that has hitherto prevented linguistics from discovering the structural determinations which enable the tricky transubstantiation of voices into linguistic signs. The voice is the impeding element that we have to be rid of in order to initiate a new science of language.35 For Dolar, in the “common-sensical” definition, voice is reduced to unimportant phonemes, chaff to be stripped from the kernel of language. This suppression of voice also entails a severance of meaning from the body that produces it, obscuring other forms of embodied connection, especially but not exclusively of an oral or aural nature. By bringing voice back to the body and recognising it as more than a vehicle for words, Jack’s emancipatory strategies become far richer in meaning. The old man’s boon introduces sounds that all, in this text at least, involve the mouth (even by contrast) and are closely related to voice: piping, farting and laughing.36 The first thing Jack does with the pipe is to lead the animals home, which restores to him literal sustenance, as his father rewards him with a capon’s leg (154–6). The pipe is thus connected to the successful performance of Jack’s household duties, to his father’s approval, and, powered by Jack’s breath, to his own embodied self, including his literal sustenance, through the site of the mouth.37 Jack’s first act of piping also appears calculated to goad and entrap his stepmother; inevitably, when she sees his father reward him with food: That grevid his dame herte sore: Ever she was tenid more and more. Than she starid in his face. 35 Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, 17. 36 This is stipulated as part of the fart gift: “ ‘All that maye her heere, / They shall hem not astere / But laugh upon a rowe’ ” (124–6). 37 No-one else tries to play the pipe in the shorter version discussed here; in the additional episode found in cul Ee. 4. 35 and all printed editions, the friar summons Jack to appear before an ecclesiastical court. The presiding officer blows hard into the pipe but fails to make a sound; Furrow, ed., Ten Fifteenth-Century Comic Poems, 144 lines E61–E

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And she let go a gret blaste That every man therof was agaste That was in that place. (157–62) The success Jack achieves through his piping causes farting to become the stepmother’s non-language-bearing voice, as is stated explicitly in the climactic humiliation of the text: The goodwyfe cam in behynde. She began to lepe and wynde And sharpely for to shake. But when she lokid on litill Jak, Her arsse to hym spake And lowde began to crake. (373–8) The displacement of her voice not only over-rides her interference with Jack’s food supply and the father-son bond; it is instrumental in the production of Jack’s common-sensical, language voice in the household: Ever they lowgh and had good game. The wyffe wex red for shame; She wolde fayne be agon. Jak seide, “Wele I wote I trow this game were wele smote Though it had be a gon stone.” Ful egerly lokid she on him tho. Another rappe she let goo; And ever she awey went. Jak seid, “Will ye se? Or ever she astent.” Ever they lough and had good game. The wyffe went awaye for shame: She was in moche sorow. The goodman seide, “Go thi weye, For it is tyme, be my faye: Thyn arce is not to borowe.” (163–80)

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As a result of his stepmother’s shame, which incorporates the degradation of her voice, now emanating from the wrong orifice, Jack’s joking and laughing voice, emanating from an appropriately well fed mouth, evokes companionship, and re-establishes his proper place within the household. He appears merely a “little” boy who cannot restrain his puerile delight in scatology, laughing alongside his household companions while his father uses his own voice to assert decisive authority over his wife. Jack’s gleeful and insouciant responses to her humiliation are the first instance of a pattern where his actions suggest calculation that is disguised by heightened merriment. In response to this shaming, the stepmother “made a pleynte” (185, my emphasis) to a friar staying at the house, and asks him to go to the field the next day and beat Jack. This complaint strongly recalls the terms in which the narrator condemns her in the opening of the narrative: “I have a boy that in this howse wons; He is a shrew for the nons. He doth me moche care.” (187–9) This reprisal also recalls her earlier words, “in fayth it is a shrewed lad” (28), and is intensified a few lines later when she declares that he is “cursed byche” (196), followed by “He dothe me moche shame” (198). The “he dothe me” construction, combined with the opening “For ofte she did hym moch care” (23), are the most direct attempts in Jack and His Stepdame to represent intersubjective causality, and are in both cases associated with thought, complaint, femininity, secrecy and negative emotions. Surmising what others think, expending energy anticipating their actions, bearing the brunt of the emotions that accompany their complaining as well as experiencing the “care” that they inflict are collectively antithetical to the reassuring, respectful, masculine certainties that were established through Jack’s dialogue with the old man. The judgement of, and response to this cluster of attributes is enacted through Jack’s treatment of the friar. The friar’s claim to full manhood is pitilessly rejected in this narrative. Acting on the stepmother’s instructions, the friar’s subsequent speech to Jack is explicitly threatening. Jack’s seemingly straightforward response—“What aylith thee? / My dame farith as wele as ye. / Thou haste no cause to chyde” (220–2)—forms a double entendre characteristic of his empowered righting of wrongs answers as a child, but knows more than a child is credited with understanding, again disguising evidence of strategizing. He then distracts the friar from his mission by offering him a bird shot down with his bow. Once lured into the brambles to collect it, Jack pipes; the friar is trapped, forced to

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dance as long as Jack plays, causing him to shred his clothes till virtually naked and injure himself extensively, to Jack’s intense amusement: Ever the boye blewe and lewh amonge. […] Than sayed the boye and sware withall, “Be my trowth, here is a sporte ryall For any man to se with yee.” (253, 256–8) Jack’s response to the friar’s distress makes explicit the conjoining of body and pipe through breath, suggestively mingled here with laughter which, like piping, is shaped by the intake and exhalation of breath. Piping here extends Jack’s intrinsically boyish voice, augmenting his innate merriment into a literally irresistible sound; as the friar states, “ ‘Me thoughte the pipe went so merely / That I cowde not blyne’ ” (311–12). The image of a child transported by sheer joy is powerfully evoked by the laughter that interrupts, and dissolves into the act of blowing through the pipe: it is not difficult to imagine the sound of music, a tune bent and broken, unexpectedly loud and soft in turns, as merriment overcomes Jack’s very breath—we can virtually feel his happiness through these implied sounds. This is one of the most powerful descriptions of a child’s own experience of happiness that survives in Middle English. And yet, it is inextricable from the friar’s abject humiliation. Jack’s self expression is valorised as an endorsement of anti-fraternal sentiment. The description of Jack laughing recalls the laughter he shared with the householders (163, 175); taken together, these three occurrences resemble a refrain. Completing the pattern, Jack’s independent, language-bearing voice immediately follows, this time swearing and making oaths. Although these oaths are light-hearted, they provide a connection to the valorised and gendered oaths of his exchange with the old man, similarly underwritten by Jack’s laughter, affirming the rectitude of Jack’s conduct. As Jack reintegrated himself into the world of the hyne with jokes at his stepmother’s expense, the same tactic is employed here to reinstate Jack into a more general but homosocial version of community at the friar’s expense—who amongst men would not laugh at such a sight? By implication, the friar, who does not contribute to the household economy and is effeminized through allegiance with the stepmother, is excluded from this grouping.38 Instead, he will soon be associated 38

The friar’s and stepmother’s relationship is not sexualised as it tends to be in other anti fraternal texts; rather, in this narrative, the friar becomes emasculated as a man who does the bidding of a woman, potentially aiding her capacity to undermine the goodman’s

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with madness and shameful displays of emotion (280–8; 335–48). In both cases, Jack’s agency is concealed by his articulation of himself as a joyful spectator. But whereas the stepmother lost her language-bearing voice, the friar is man enough to be forced to submit discursively to the child’s authority. Jack’s trap elicits from the friar what is perhaps one of the most compelling of the “common uses” of voice, a pledge: Ever the frere hyld up his hande… And prayed hym, “Be stylle, And here my trowth I plyghte to thee, Thou shalte never have harme of me: I will do thee non ylle.” The boye seide to hym that tyde, “Crepe owte on that other syde, And hye thee thou were go. My dame made a pleynte to thee And now I can non other se: Thow must compleyne to her also.” (259–70) In contrast to the conduit formed by the old man’s speech acts, which permitted Jack’s private burden to be brought almost literally into the light of day, here the friar becomes a kind of discursive buffer, offering a “masculine” pledge to Jack on one front (supported by a gesture of surrender), and on the other, turning the discourse of complaint back on the stepmother and isolating it from the workings of the homosocial productive household. Once again, out in the fields where his positive capabilities are more freely expressed, Jack gives the orders, speaking to the friar as a subordinate, a power reversal enacted through a pledge. This disparaging reference to complaint suggests that this discursive register is feminized, devalued, and rejected within the text, illuminating the extent to which it would have been a transgression for Jack to address his stepmother’s mistreatment verbally at the beginning of the narrative. With matters brought to a head, the friar and stepmother complain to Jack’s father. Alarmed that the pipe might be the devil’s work, he demands that Jack play it for him (351). The goodman, like the king of the Seven Sages, is required to exercise his authority and asks his son to speak directly, but more than that, interests. For Ben Parsons, the more important point is that “In each case the priest fig ures sustain their injuries when trespassing into the territories of the laity,” “The English Fabliau in the 15th and 16th Centuries,” 550.

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to play; not only Jack’s words, but the sounds he breathes into his pipe are on trial.39 Jack first makes light of the accusation, informing his father that “ ‘I did ryght not nought to hym this day / But pipe him a sprynge’ ” (329–30), and tells his father that “ ‘I shall yow shewe of my gle: / Ye shall have a fytte’ ” (353–4), mischievously punning on “fytte” as musical genre and “experience.” Once again his verbal responses produce him as childishly merry for the sake of his interlocutor, but the double meaning of his words is available to the reader. When he pipes, the household and the village beyond dance uncontrollably, even to the point of serious injury, his father included (355–408). Jack’s piping literally enters the bodies of others through the sense of hearing, over-riding their own agency and animating their bodies and emotions. Like human voices, pipes intone, and the musicality of their sounds expresses and produces emotions in both player and listener.40 In this avowedly pre-Saussurean narrative, the pipe, associated with this new concept of boy, a category of being for whom positive emotions are integral in this text, seems precisely to communicate something that is beyond language. The emotionally upbeat musical genres of the gle and fytte (as well as the reference to the earlier sprynge) extend Jack’s range of empowered vocalizations; like his spoken words, their performance represents him as a carefree and thought-less little boy whose intelligence and resourcefulness are hiding in plain view. Transferred thus from body to body, Jack’s exuberance becomes a form of community asset, the irresistible joyfulness intoned by the pipe, powered by Jack’s breath, offering an intersubjective sharing of his capacity for pure merriment. Jack overtakes the community’s collective will and virtually inflicts pleasure upon it. As Mark Truesdale observes, “there is undeniably 39 40

The prince produces a narrative through which the father discerns the truth. This moment differs in the various versions but is present once the father has heard and accepted the son’s account and embarks upon the course of punishing his wife. The claim that the pipe is associated with boyish past-times is made on admittedly slender but compelling evidence. Nicholas Orme, in Medieval Children, does not include pipes in his discussion of children and instruments; visual representations of pipes tend to occur either accompanied by a tabor, or played by professional musicians, or by shepherds, who are invariably represented as adults. But this narrative strongly implies that Jack’s requests are recognizably boyish, pipe included. Pipes are strongly associated with boyishness in a play from the Chester Mystery Cycle, when the pipe given to the infant Jesus is one of four quintessentially boyish gifts; see umiansky and David Mills, eds., Chester Mystery Cycle, Early English Text Society , 9 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 150–53. Amongst the possible kinds of pipe that might be intended, it is sufficient to point to Jack’s contentment with something small and, by implication, simple. The pipe in the Wynkyn de Worde woodcut (stc 14522) does not necessarily reflect the apparently simple instrument envisaged in the narrative.

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something violent, threatening and disruptive about this mad, anarchic carnivalesque throng.”41 And yet, it does not result in disharmony or punishment; there is a tacit acceptance that this boy’s piping has brought something of value to the community. The containment of the potential threat resides with Jack’s innately moderate nature. Jack concludes this chaos himself through a harmonious exchange with his father. Using the only “ye” in the text, he takes discursive control and asks his father a direct question: The boye sayde, “Fader, wyll ye reste?”42 “In feyth,” he seide, “I holde it beste,” With ryght a good chere. “Make an ende whan thou wilte. In feyth this was the meryest fytte That I hard this sewyn yere. (409–14) This dialogue marks Jack’s ultimate success, affirming his worthiness of his father’s love, trust and respect—they address each other directly, with affection, deference and satisfaction. This is also the outcome of the Seven Sages of Rome.43 It is difficult to discount the almost identical goals of the texts, the one employing an orderly procession of male voices in a royal court, the other, combined courteous and subversive vocalisations made coherent through their impact on conventional relationships within a goodman’s household. Jack is as courteous, dutiful and enterprising as any prince, and his patrimony as honourable as any king’s. He knows and accepts his place in the existing order where, it is implied, he will reap the rewards of obedient, diligent participation. He tacitly accepts this promise, even when ostensibly engaging in subversive boyish amusement. In the narrative’s consistently circular logic, Jack’s energy and its value are made available to him by the very system he is protecting, while erasing evidence of his individual capabilities in the process. But their brief appearance constitutes a preview of the man he will become, one who is capable of meeting all manner of challenges and upholding authority his own domain. The point 41 Truesdale, “Carnivalesque Magic,” 10. 42 Jack addresses his father with this question only in Rawlinson C. 86; all versions differ from each other. 43 See for instance the son’s speech and the Emperor’s response in Oxford Ms Balliol College 354, in Karl Brunner ed., The Seven Sages of Rome (Southern Version), Early English Text Society os 191 (London: Oxford University Press, 1933) 187.3733–188.3760. This manuscript also contains Jack and His Stepdame

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of his actions is not autonomy; it is to demonstrate that he is committed to the model of community which has been established for him, which is extended in this final episode beyond his place in his father’s household into the village with which the household is connected. His temporary control of them all is experienced as involuntary pleasure, as though the acknowledgement of his emotional claim on them is undeniable but not entirely welcome. At the same time, merriment is a characteristic that is expected if not demanded of this boy, suggesting that a community is also owed the feeling of delight brought about by children in their midst. In the historical atmosphere that Dyer identifies where the decreasing commitment by male progeny to maintaining family holdings has flow-on effects for communities, this inextricable mixture of compulsion, obligation and pleasure expresses simultaneous recognition of and unease about this boy’s importance to his community, with a note of entitlement to his beneficial presence as well. His boyishness has animated them through a form of connection that is the inverse of utility, but Jack’s utility is central to his community value. As an expression of collective emotional connection, the impact of Jack’s piping is unquestionably powerful, but not invited, and it results from Jack effectively being permitted to care for himself as long as he upholds the existing structure of authority, expressed through his gratification of existing expectations, without any community member recognizing let alone assisting; this lack of community awareness is essential to the comic nature of the narrative. This chaotically expressed relationship is coherent as an articulation of anxiety within an authoritarian social order grappling with the failure of its perceived entitlement to control young males as they emerge from childhood. Jack is too young to support himself; while being sent from home at young age was an important option for educating boys, it is presented here as a form of expulsion engineered by the stepmother for her own benefit. That Jack is repeatedly described as little emphasizes that he is not close to an age where he could challenge adult control and make decisions about his future. He has no choice but to submit to this adult control and adopt the values that accompany it. Jack’s embrace of these circumstances implies a smooth path to patrimony. The pipe remains in Jack’s control, capable of unleashing chaos again, but the tidy ending implies that there will be no further need for it.44 Despite the exultant mood that dominates Jack and His Stepdame, this nar rative presents a somewhat bleak glimpse into the potential opportunities for An extra episode is found in some sources where Jack is forced by the stepmother and friar to play the pipe at the ecclesiastical court, with similar results (see Furrow ed. 2013, 21; Furrow ed. 1985, 139–53). See n. 37.

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children to voice negative experiences and thereby obtain support. Jack began with a child who had voicelessness forced upon him; his own need for care was secondary to his father’s honor. By the conclusion, he is not only capable of addressing a range of interlocutors, most importantly his father, but of exercising complete power over them if he chooses. His “pact” with his community is to demonstrate self-control and volitional alignment with their priorities. The desire to believe that little boys thrive on and desire authoritarian subordination is a powerful fantasy in this narrative. Jack’s resourcefulness is applauded, but the narrative extinguishes potential access to agency outside the recognized networks of masculine co-operation. The old man’s magical powers are virtually a metaphor for the advantages and opportunities that are promised to young males who comply with their own servitude. Although Jack is a fictional child whose conduct is informed by ideals, those same ideals, while not to be confused with the realities of day to day life, suggest a society that might have been predisposed to interpret children’s expression of their experiences as disruptive. Exploring the complexity of the child’s voice in Jack and His Stepdame raises broader questions about childhood, literature and history. Jack’s agency is constrained by cultural frameworks that now seem punitive towards children. Is this insight possible because children’s communications are now heard more respectfully? Or, while frameworks for valuing children’s contributions have changed, are their criteria still determined by adults? Are contemporary representations of young heroes and heroines in literary texts simply contingent on the values of the adults who pen the narratives? The challenges implicit in the “recovery” of past children’s voices are best negotiated not only through his torically oriented research, but by deepening awareness of the subtle or even hidden constraints that still determine how children’s voices are heard.

chapter 9

Foreign Guardianship and the Networked Child in Medieval English Romance Paul A. Broyles Bevis of Hampton, eponymous hero of a romance popular in England and throughout Europe from the thirteenth century, first demonstrates his virtue as a child in that most heroic of ways: by insulting his mother and beating his stepfather. Bevis—newly eleven years old in the Anglo-Norman version of the romance (39), a tender seven in its Middle English translation (53)1— storms into the hall and lambastes his mother, calling her “vile houre” (302), fit “to holde bordel” (309), a display that seems exactly calculated to horrify the fifteenth-century Oxford schoolmaster who complained about the indulgence extended in his day to rich youths who “call the dame ‘hoore’ or the father ‘cockolde.’ ”2 Later, Bevis returns to attack both the porter and his stepfather with a mace. These words and blows launch the career of one of medieval and Early Modern England’s most famous romance knights. Bevis’s remarkable display of temper understandably made an impression on the romance’s readers and tellers. Bevis’s branding of his mother as “whore” survives into continental French redactions of the Bevis story as a chanson de geste;3 his attack on his father became part of a program of woodcuts that characterized English prints of Bevis for almost 200 years.4 But his perfor1 For the Anglo-Norman version, see Der anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone, ed. Albert Stimming (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1899); translations are from Boeve De Haumtone and Gui De Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances, trans. Judith Weiss (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008). For the Middle English, see The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun, ed. Eugen Kölbing, Early English Text Society 46, 48, 65 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1885–94); except where noted, the text cited is based on the Auchinleck manuscript, as edited by Kölbing. 2 A Fifteenth Century School Book, from a Manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Arundel 249), ed. William Nelson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 13; see Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 158. 3 Der festländische Bueve de Hantone, Fassung i–iii, ed. Albert Stimming, 5 vols. (Dresden: Max Niemeyer, 1911), ii.590, iii n Echard, “Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration,” in Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, ed. Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), 154–68, at 161–62.

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mance is notable not because it is a childish display of pique, but because it is a righteous, appropriate response to Bevis’s situation. At the opening of the romance, his mother orchestrates the murder of his aged father at the hands of her lover; this is the stepfather Bevis threatens and assaults. The text, which presents his mother as a villainous figure, is fully on Bevis’s side. While Bevis’s insult and attack may possess comedic potential, they need not be read for laughs. Bevis is telling the truth, and standing up for both his father and his heritage, and even risking his body to do so—after he insults his mother, she orders his death, and he comes out of hiding to strike his stepfather. His words are not just childish insults, but embody mature (if misogynistic) social values: as Noël James Menuge puts it, Bevis “speaks to his mother in the voice of patriarchy.”5 The child’s actions are spectacular, in the manner that many actions by romance heroes are spectacular: he puts virtue on display in a way that is fully continuous with his adult heroic identity. In showing a young protagonist possessed of adult heroism, Bevis is participating in a widespread romance representational tradition. Romance heroes are often noted in childhood not just for their physical beauty, but for virtue, courage, strength, and noble comportment that suggest they already contain their adult selves. These young romance heroes are the secular–heroic equivalents of those saints whose Lives show them to have possessed extraordinary piety and asceticism as children.6 Readers of classic English romances like King Horn, Bevis of Hampton, and Havelok the Dane could be excused for concluding that many of them hew closely to Philippe Ariès’s infamous characterization of medieval children as figures represented as small adults and childhood as a stage of life to which society was indifferent.7 Such characters are young in age, but they may seem disappointing sources for considering medieval childhood: exemplary figures who have more to tell us about the aristocratic ideal than about actual children. Phyllis Gaffney has noted that literary scholars have been slower than historians to repudiate Ariès, finding in literary depictions an indifference to children and a hesitancy to realize them as full characters.8 Gaffney, studying 5 Noël James Menuge, Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law (Cambridge: D. rewer, 2001), 108. See Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1990), 15, on exceptional children, including saints, who seem to skip childhood. s, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1960), 23–25; Philippe Ari s, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Knopf, 1962), 33–34. Phyllis Gaffney, Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Old French Narrative (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 5–7.

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the French literary tradition, posits a generic distinction between chanson de geste and romance: chansons, she suggests, often (though not always) depict heroic children as exceptional proto-adults, hewing to Ariès’s view that childhood was not a distinct phase of life in the Middle Ages; romances are more concerned with individual personal and psychological development and are thus more likely to present childhood as an important developmental phase.9 But this distinction does not hold for romances in England, and particularly in Middle English, where chansons de geste never held sway.10 Rather than the individualized, psychologized development, focalized by love, that Gaffney describes for the children of French romance, those in English romance often demonstrate the consistently adult characteristics associated with the children of epic. But a number of romances in which seemingly static protagonists pass from child to adult share a motif that emphasizes the transition between the states of childhood and adulthood: a period of foreign guardianship. In these romances, children become separated from their homes and families and are raised by someone else in another land, emerging as knights capable of claiming and inhabiting adult social roles.11 By displacing the transition from the status of child to that of adult capable of fulfilling the obligations of the hero’s role, these romances suggest that there is a fundamental difference between even exemplary children and adults. Separating noble children from their homes and families allows romances to model their integration into a geosocial world beyond the limits of family and home. The fundamental function of foreign guardianship is to expand protagonists’ relationships and influence beyond their family environments—an expansion that is essential to creating the adult heroes they must become. Bevis is one figure who is transformed by foreign guardianship. Though even as a child he demonstrates righteousness and bravery, he is hardly capable of punishing those who have wronged him and pressing his claim to Southampton. When he reveals himself again to protect his tutor, Saber, from 9 Ariès, indeed, pointed to epic alongside pictorial art to argue that medieval children were depicted as small adults. But Gaffney is careful to note that both genres coexisted and changed, with chanson de geste responding to the influence of romance. Gaffney, Constructions, 19. 10 See Melissa Furrow, Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), esp. chapter 3. 11 The terminology of childhood and adulthood is complicated. Many of the figures discussed here emerge from foreign guardianship as teenagers, removed from the mar riage and landholding that marked full social maturity. However, they almost universally become knights and leave guardianship ready to pursue marriage and land, as they were not when their guardianship began.

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punishment for concealing him, his mother has him carried to the coast and sold to merchants, who will in turn sell him into a pagan land. They take him to King Ermine (king of Egypt in Anglo-Norman and of Armenia in Middle English), who is impressed with the child and takes him in, making him chamberlain and promising that he will later be standard-bearer. Bevis remains in Ermine’s court until around age fifteen, when he is an accomplished fighter and is eventually knighted. Although political machinations force Bevis out of Ermine’s court, his narrative trajectory has been irrevocably changed. Though he will continue throughout his life to combat usurpers and press his claim on his native Southampton, his adventures, alliances, and enemies are intertwined with King Ermine and eastern Saracen lands. The romance concludes not merely with his reclaiming his homeland but with his establishing his family and allies in a network of royal power that stretches across Europe into the Levant. It is not Bevis’s character that changes in passing from childhood, but his interconnections with others. And Bevis is far from the only figure so transformed. Characters like Horn, Havelok, and Florent of the Octavian romances show the power of foreign guardianship for thinking about how aristocratic children become members of the adult world. Foreign guardianship is closely associated with one of the major storypatterns of English romance: exile-and-return, a structure common in insular romances (in both English and French) in which a hero is deprived of his homeland by an invader or usurper, is exiled across the water, and ultimately returns to regain his home.12 But other romance patterns involve foreign guardianship as well, most notably “separated family” stories, in which children are forcibly removed from their parents (whether by abduction, mistake, supernatural assault, or abandonment) and are later reunited with them. What these stories have in common is a broader pattern of separation and reclamation that Susan Wittig has identified as one of the fundamental structures of Middle English romance.13 Children begin in the bosom of home and family, are removed from that environment, and spend a period under the protection of a guardian outside their homeland. Just as not all stories featuring foreign guardianship belong specifically to the exile-and-return pattern, not all exile-and-return stories are stories of foreign guardianship. Fouke Fitz Warin sees its protagonist exiled across the sea, 12 See Rosalind Field, “The King Over the Water: Exile-and-return Revisited,” in Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 129–42, on the insularity of exile-and return and for one list of romances following that pattern. Susan Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), 175–78.

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but as Fouke is an adult already in possession of his father’s lands when King John unlawfully transfers them to someone else, he does not experience guardianship in his exile. (Indeed, it is telling that when Fouke first flees across the sea to Brittany, the text does not even relate with whom he resides, beyond a generic group of friends, “lur amys.”)14 Similarly, not all separated family stories involve foreign guardianship. In Sir Isumbras, the hero’s sons are abducted by wild beasts and reappear, riding them, for a final battle; the romance does not concern itself with what might have happened to them in the meantime.15 In English romances, children who pass into foreign guardianship are typically boys. The protagonists of a majority of English romances are male. Female youths do serve as subjects of the narrative structures and motifs that give rise to foreign guardianship narratives—exile-and-return and separated family— particularly in stories of calumniated queens, like Chaucer’s Tale of Custaunce and its many analogues.16 However, the young exiled female protagonists of English romance tend to be both less obviously children and less clearly under the care of guardians than their male counterparts. Emaré, for instance, begins her exile when she refuses the sexual advances of her father; the romance implies her sexual maturity.17 Others, including Custaunce, leave their homes for the purpose of marriage. Gaffney has suggested that, at least in chansons de geste, “childhood tends to be gendered masculine” and young women tend to become prominent as they enter their reproductive years; although she notes a greater interest in girlhood on the part of romance, the pattern of the chansons accounts for many of the exiled young women of English romance.18 However, a future study of the circumstances of girls’ foreign exiles would be valuable. In practice, the boundaries of foreign guardianship are somewhat blurry. For instance, Havelok, prince of Denmark, is brought up in England by his compatriot Grim; nevertheless, Havelok’s integration into both a different society and a different class qualify Grim as a foreign guardian. The purpose of this chapter 14 Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. E. J. Hathaway et al., Anglo-Norman Text Society 26–28 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 25. 15 Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills (London: J. M. Dent; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), 125–47. 16 The classic comparative study of calumniated queen narratives is Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens (New York: New York University Press, 1927). Leslie Zarker Morgan suggests that such stories function as enfance narratives for women, bridging epic and romance traditions: “Female Enfances: At the Intersection of Romance and Epic,” in The Court Reconvenes: Selected Papers From the Ninth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of British Columbia, 25–31 July 1998, Barbara K. A Carleton W. Carroll (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 141–49. Mills, Six Middle English Romances, 46–74. Gaffney, , 101, 128–133.

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is not to provide an exhaustive catalogue of works depicting foreign guardianship, or to delineate strict criteria for recognizing it as a category. Rather, by examining several prominent examples of the motif including King Horn, Bevis of Hampton, Havelok, and Octavian, as well as a selection of sources and analogues, it demonstrates how this period encodes cultural meaning, envisioning the passage out of childhood as a social process related to the child’s orientation in the world. The representation of foreign guardianship in romance turns social process into spectacle. Foreign guardianship, in particular, carries the western European heroes of English romances well beyond familiar spheres, into other lands and other social and cultural positions: the pagan East, the laboring classes. In staging such extreme displacements, foreign guardianship explores the relationship between the child and society in a much more extreme way than many of the depictions of wardship studied by Noël James Menuge. Menuge, reading between literature and law, has detected in a cluster of English romances (including several that also feature foreign guardianship) a pointed concern with legal and social issues of wardship.19 In contrast to the sometimes technical precision Menuge finds in depictions of wardship, foreign guardianship is consistently larger-than-life. Rather than precise fictionalized representations of common situations, it offers broader, more abstract patterns for thinking about the passage from childhood to adulthood. The period of foreign guardianship is an important period in the careers of the heroes who undergo it. It is during this period that heroes pass from youth to adult capability, gaining the ability to avenge wrongs and regain heritage. In a sense, this period produces the adult heroes who achieve the feats for which they are memorialized in the romance. The importance of foreign guardianship as a stage in the hero’s career is marked in some romances by its association with significant ages, like seven and fifteen. While Bevis is eleven years old when he is exiled in the Anglo-Norman version, the Middle English translation lowers his age to seven: in general the conclusion of the first stage of life, infantia, according to many medieval schemes, as well as an age at which boys were to pass out of the care of women and might begin formal education.20 Since it is Bevis’s mother who expels him from the land, the translator’s choice of age seven seems no accident. 19 Menuge, Medieval English Wardship; Noël James Menuge, “The Wardship Romance: A New Methodology,” in Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance, ed. Rosalind Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 29–43. 20 Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Methuen, 1984), 6, 17–18; Shahar, Childhood, 23, 113, 174,

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Guy of Warwick’s son Reinbroun is likewise seven when he is abducted from the care of his father’s steward, who has been serving as his tutor, and is sold into the court of an African king, where he grows to knighthood.21 Foreign guardianship might conclude around fourteen or fifteen, broadly corresponding to the end of childhood and the beginning of the third stage of life, adolescentia, as well as to the increasing independence and moral and physical capacity.22 Bevis is this age—fifteen in Middle English,23 fifteen or sixteen in Anglo-Norman—when he does his first major battle in the kingdom of his guardian and is subsequently knighted. At fifteen or sixteen in the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn, Horn and his companions are “bien creü” [“fully grown”] (laisse 21, v. 423); at this age they are knighted and do battle, and Horn falls in love with his guardian’s daughter and is expelled.24 It is during the intervening time, under the foreign guardianship of King Hunlaf, that Horn “est eissu de s’enfaunce” [“left his childhood behind”] (laisse 66, v. 1303). The Middle English Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild (a version of the tale not otherwise discussed here, in part because the end is lost) agrees that they are “ful fiftene.”25 Two of the three manuscripts of the Middle English King Horn report that Horn is fifteen at the beginning of his story, when his father is killed and he is exiled. Noting the consensus among other versions, editor Rosamund Allen rejects this couplet as both non-archetypal and narratively misguided, perhaps a garbled recollection of a source or perhaps merely because of the age’s narrative significance.26 Whether at the beginning or end of his guardianship, the age of fifteen registers the importance of the stage as a moment of transition. In the Southern Octavian, it is at fifteen that Florent begins his disastrous career as an apprentice tradesman (669); he presumably does his

21 Reinbroun, in The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. David Burnley and Alison Wiggins, Version 1.1, National Library of Scotland, 15 March 2004, https://auchinleck.nls.uk/mss/ reinbrun.html, l. 40. 22 Shahar, Childhood, 27–29; Orme, From Childhood, 6. 23 In the Cambridge and Chetham manuscripts, he is fourteen. 24 Text from Thomas, The Romance of Horn, ed. Mildred K. Pope, Anglo-Norman Text Society 9–10, 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955); translations from The Birth of Romance: An Anthology; Four Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Romances, trans. Judith Weiss (London: J. M. Dent; Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992), 1–120. 25 Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild, ed. Maldwyn Mills (Heidelberg: C. Winter Universit tsverlag, 1988), l. 426. King Horn: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Ms Gg. 4.27 (2), ed. Rosamund Allen (New York: Garland, 1984), pp. 259–60. Further citations of will be from this edition, by line number.

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first battle at the same age.27 (In the Northern Octavian, on the other hand, he is “wysse, faire and bolde” and renowned at age seven, L 634–35, and is set to work at either seven or twelve, L 643, C 640.28) The significance of the age of seven in English romance parallels the Old French epic tradition, where it is frequently mentioned.29 Foreign guardianship, then, is loosely associated with the second stage of life, pueritia, spanning from the end of the helpless and dependent age of infantia to the start of the relative self-possession and maturity of adolescentia. Notably, according to Julie A. Baker this period is sparingly treated in the enfance narratives of French epic heroes, which are likely to highlight the hero at ages seven and fourteen.30 English foreign guardianship narratives, too, largely elide the events of the intervening years, but these years nevertheless play a prominent role in the life of the hero. Of course, these significant numbers are not universal. Horn, for instance, is ten when he is exiled from his native Suddene in the Anglo-Norman version (laisse 7, v. 141). In another romance of foreign guardianship not treated here, William of Palerne, William is just four when he is snatched by a werewolf to foil an assassination attempt.31 Some romances do not make an issue of the age of separated children at all. But the fact that several romances associate the beginning or end of foreign guardianship with important ages of transition flags it as a symbolically meaningful period. The span between about the ages of seven and fifteen marked a significant period in the lives of aristocratic young men: while ages varied, they might leave home and enter the court of a seigneur around the age of seven, undergoing a period of service and training that might conclude around age fifteen, when some might be knighted.32 The period in question, then, is a stage of life associated with chivalric pedagogy. We might accordingly expect education to be one 27 Octovian Imperator, Ed. From MS BL Cotton Caligula A II, ed. Frances McSparran (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979). 28 Octovian, ed. Frances McSparran, Early English Text Society 289 (London: Oxford University Press, 1986). Citations beginning with L are from the Lincoln Thornton ms; those beginning with C are from the Cambridge University Library, ms Ff.2.38, where the age of apprenticeship is given as seven, l. 640. 29 Gaffney, Constructions, 33. 30 aker, “The Childhood of the Epic Hero: Representation of the Child Protagonist in the Old French Enfances Texts,” in The Child in French and Francophone Literature, ed. Norman Buford, French Literature 1 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 91–107. Guillaume de Palerne: Roman du siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha (Geneva: Droz, 1990), v. 35. The opening of the Middle English version is lost, so the age is found only in the French text. Shahar, , 210–11. On the variability of ages, see Orme, From Childhood, 45, 190– 191; Orme, Medieval Children, 317.

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important function of the period of foreign guardianship. Moreover, Phyllis Gaffney and Nicholas Orme have both observed that romances emphasize education—especially in knightly skills and aristocratic comportment—as an important component in the formation of adult heroes.33 Gaffney goes so far as to suggest that given romance’s interest in personal formation and development, “the theme of the young hero’s education in courtly and knightly living is part of the romance ethos.”34 Indeed, some romances tell us that their heroes are taught during their period of guardianship. When Horn is taken in by the king of Westernesse, King Almair charges his steward, Athelbrus, to “teche” Horn and his companions. The subjects of this education are to be crucial occupations of nobility: hunting, falconry, harping, song, and (in Horn’s case specifically) to act as cupbearer and carver. Horn’s exile in a noble court thus includes a pedagogy of nobility. Some other romances, like Sir Perceval of Galles and Chevalere Assigne, foreground learning by dramatizing their child protagonists as figures of extreme ignorance, ignorant of the meanings of such concepts as “knight” and “mother” and prone to extreme faux pas in their courtly inexperience—though in light of Gaffney’s thesis, it is perhaps significant that Perceval originates in the continental French romance tradition.35 Both Enyas in Chevalere Assigne and Perceval experience childhood displacement in the manner of heroes under foreign guardianship: Perceval is raised in forested isolation by his mother to keep him from knowledge of knights and arms; Enyas is brought up by a hermit who finds him after he has been abandoned on a bank. (Enyas, in his ignorance, corresponds with a different chanson de geste archetype identified by Gaffney: not puer senex, like most of the heroes discussed here, but nice or simpleton.36) Both, moreover, eventually avenge their disinheritance. But neither explicitly undergoes foreign guardianship; Perceval is raised by his mother in a geography marked only by its separation from the Arthurian courtly world, and Chevalere does little more to place the wild landscape where Enyas is raised by the 33 Gaffney, Constructions, 149–55; Orme, From Childhood, 82–85. 34 Gaffney, Constructions, 155. 35 Robert Grout demonstrated the richness of the Middle English Sir Perceval of Galles in relation to theories of child development in “Theories of Childhood: Perceval de Galles and Children’s Worlds of Romance” (presentation, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 12, 2017). For Sir Perceval, see Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, ed. Mary Flowers Braswell, teams Middle English Texts (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), 1–76, http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/ braswell-sir-perceval-of-galles; for Chevalere Assigne, see The Middle English Metrical Romances, ed. Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930), 857–73. 36 Gaffney, Constructions

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hermit. While they share motifs and story-patterns with the foreign guardianship romances, this lack of geographical precision betrays different interests. By contrast, the degree to which romance heroes embedded in more geographically precise worlds actually learn during their periods of foreign guardianship is tempered by generic assumptions about character. At the same time King Horn presents Horn as a young nobleman who needs to be educated in noble arts, it undercuts that education through a sense of the young noble’s readiness for this knowledge. “Horn mid herte laȝte [seized, apprehended] / Al that [Athelbrus] him taȝte” (247–8), we are told, and that is all the energy the romance spends on Horn’s learning; it progresses instead to the universal esteem in which the child is held, and especially the love that the princess Rimenhild feels for him. And of course Almair takes Horn in because he is extraordinarily beautiful, a typical romance sign of nobility. Horn is to be taught noble pursuits, but he learns them easily, primed by his essential noble status.37 To the extent that noble pursuits are presented as something to be learned at all, Horn parts company with many young romance heroes, for whom such activities and practices are so innate that they emerge even when the child’s social pedagogy teaches something entirely different. This reversion to type is frequently played for humor, as in Octavian. The youth Florent, separated from his royal family as an infant, is taken in by a burgess of Paris, who aims to raise him as a tradesman; neither Florent nor his adoptive father Clement know of his noble lineage. Yet Florent’s nature gets in the way. When Clement sends him with two oxen—to become a butcher’s apprentice in the Northern version, to sell them at fair in the Southern—Florent stops along the way to exchange the beasts for a falcon that he sees in the possession of a squire. Clement beats the boy severely, but even this violent pedagogy cannot stamp out Florent’s orientation toward nobility; when Clement later sends the child to carry a considerable amount of money (in the Southern version, for the explicit purpose of learning to be a money-changer, l. 785), Florent sees and desires a magnificent horse, for which he insists on paying all the money he 37 The Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn, which is more concerned with Horn’s courtly refinement, provides further detail regarding his education and his tutor Herland’s desire that he excel (laisse 18, vv. 371–74). However, Horn remains preternaturally good at everything: “Fort e bel le fist Deus, le sire esperital, / Ne mais tiel n’iert truvé [“Heavenly God made him handsome and strong, unlike any other mortal man”] (laisse 18, vv. 382–3); “ert en tuz sens tut li meuz enseign ” [he was in every way the best taught the most expert; my translation] (laisse 19, v. 393); “si avoit valur de larget , / Ke plus vaillant de lui ne pout estre trov ” [“He had so many talents that no one was worthier than he”] (laisse 19, vv. 401–01a).

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has, despite being quoted a lower price. (In the Southern version, this bad deal is specifically ascribed to his failure to change money, the new trade that has been chosen for him: he has no sterlings, so he gives all his florins, ll. 813–15.) While Clement remains enraged, at this point his wife at last recognizes the truth that Florent is a noble child: “That he had neuyr kynde of þy blode, / That he þese werkys hath wroght” (Northern, C 755–56). In the Northern version, this puts the matter entirely to rest. The Southern version does eventually allow him a trade, but one better suited to his innate nobility, seeing to the beasts of the hunt: “That wyf hym tauȝt markes & poundes, / He purueyde haukes and houndys” (889–90). Not only does Florent not need to be educated in noble comportment; no level of socialization or pedagogy can strip them from him, and he can only labor in a role befitting his nature. Where the pedagogy of guardianship is concerned, Havelok undoubtedly offers one of the richest and most complicated representations, suggesting that upbringing can shape a hero—but in ways that supplement, rather than replacing, innate nobility. Julie Nelson Couch has noted that Havelok is an unusually vulnerable hero, and that the romance is particularly interested in representing childhood beyond proto-heroism.38 In contrast to Bevis’s brash attacks on his mother and stepfather, the “litel” Havelok (481), having witnessed the murder of his sisters, begs Godard (his late father’s treacherous steward) for mercy and offers to renounce his heritage: “Al Denemark I wile you yeue, / To þat forward þu late me liue” (485–86); he will even swear that he is not his father’s son (494–95).39 This startling plea starts Havelok’s path to kingship off-balance; it is only because because Godard still fears Havelok’s revenge and orders Havelok’s death anyway that the story does not begin with its hero renouncing his throne. Spirited away to England by Grim, the fisherman hired to kill him, Havelok labors, first selling fish, then performing manual labor in the royal kitchens. Unlike Florent, Havleok embraces his occupation; as Couch puts it, “Havelok’s words are those of a worker and the son of a worker.”40 Unlike the preternaturally beautiful youths who are always recognized as disguised nobles, Havelok’s social role masks his nobility: the regent Godrich forces the English princess Goldeborw to marry Havelok because he believes he can usurp her claim by marrying her to a “þral” (1098), and Goldeborw is 38 Julie Nelson Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance,” Chaucer Review 42, no. 3 (2007), 330–52, especially 337. See also Eve Salisbury’s chapter in this volume, “Havelok’s Sisters: Vulnerability and the Child Body,” which attempts to revivify Havelok’s murdered sisters, arguing that their bodily vulnerability and moving deaths enable the reintegration that concludes the romance. 39 Havelok G. V. Smithers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Couch, “Vulnerable Hero,” 341.

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disconsolate, believing herself “biswike, / Þat she were yeuen unkyndelike” (1251). For Couch, this kind of vulnerable, class-crossing hero is distinctly different from other mini-adults of romance. But although Couch suggests that Havelok is changed by his youthful experiences, the romance simultaneously threads through it a continuity of nobility. Havelok literally embodies inherent nobility: a light shines from his mouth, and his right shoulder bears a “kynemerk” (605), both signs that reveal his royal identity to all who see him. Despite Couch’s sense that the aesthetics of vulnerability “call[] into question the idealized power of an invincible nobility,”41 the narrative habits of the tale fully uphold Havelok’s lifelong path to kingship. Aside from the virtual inevitability of the two unjustly dispossessed heirs recovering their lands, when Goldeborw protests that “hire sholde noman wedde / Ne noman bringen to hire bedde / But he were king or kinges eyr” (1114–16), she speaks truly without knowing it, for her future husband Havelok is heir to one kingdom and will also rule another; the shape of the plot exceeds characters’ knowledge. Havelok’s experiences as a laborer are undoubtedly part of his formation as a good king, emphasizing the interdependency of the noble and lower classes.42 Both noble and laborer function in Havelok as what Elizabeth Fowler calls “social persons”: “abstract figurations of the human … that attain recognizable, conventional status through use  … [and] provide a shorthand notation” for types and ideas.43 Havelok is not a romance of personal learning in the vein of Twain’s novel The Prince and the Pauper, where a noble-born boy gets a taste of what everyday life is really like. Havelok’s guardianship allows him to occupy the figure of laborer, but the point is more symbolic than psychological unity. And for some characters, even the notion of change or learning seems irrelevant. Bevis can hardly be said to learn, or to cross classes. When he arrives in King Ermine’s land, the king immediately praises him and offers the child 41

Couch, “Vulnerable Hero,” 346. Couch acknowledges narrative drive of “an always alreadyinvincible subjectivity,” finding it in tension with the romance’s staging of vulnerability. Despite this tension, we should not understand the romance as undercutting the narrative assumption of kingly destiny. 42 This understanding is almost universal among modern critics, though articulated in many ways; for an influential statement, see David Staines, “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes,” Speculum 51, no. 4 (1976), 602–23. 43 Elizabeth Fowler, Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early English Writing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 16–17. Fowler has offered a similar analysis of Sir Isumbras characterizing the hero as taking on a sequence of social persons before unifying them in his final lordship. Elizabeth Fowler, “The Romance Hypothetical: Lordship and the Saracens in Sir Isumbras,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2000), 97–121, at 101–06.

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both the princess’s hand and inheritance of his kingdom if Bevis will merely convert to Islam. Bevis shows himself as loyal to Christianity as to his family’s honor, responding with an emphatic no. King Ermine, far from being annoyed, admires the child’s steadfastness and appoints him chamberlain or cupbearer, with the promise to make him standard-bearer when he comes of age and is knighted. And thus he endures until age fifteen, when he fights his first battle against rivals in Ermine’s court. The Middle English version explicitly emphasizes Bevis’s continuity across this period by making his first battle an aggressive assertion of Christian identity, as one of his Saracen companions mocks him for not knowing that it is Christmas, and Bevis declares his intent to fight them all in recollection of his father’s Christmas tournaments (608–17). Bevis does not “learn” arms: he’s a martial child at seven and an accomplished warrior at fifteen, without any process between them. While he lacks the calendrical learning that would allow him to recognize Christmas Day, he burns with a violent religiosity. He asserts his values, his honor, and his religion just as brashly/confidently at fifteen as at seven. In short, Bevis encapsulates the noble stasis identified in other child heroes. He proceeds through a series of stages that bring him closer to recovering his heritage, and later his lost bride and her patrimony—but without personal change or change of character. Rather than instruction in chivalric practices, the central function of foreign guardianship in romances of exiled youths is interconnection. Child heroes enter their romances with their worlds circumscribed by their families and local environments. Foreign guardianship expands their narrative worlds, thrusting them into wider geographies and affiliations that carry them beyond this native sphere. The exiled children of romance are defined, at their origin, by their parents. Indeed, with marked frequency, these romances open by singing the praises of the hero’s father. In some cases, these openings even suggest broader matter: the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn, for instance, points in its opening to a (lost) romance of Horn’s father Aalof (laisse 1, vv. 1–2).44 Bevis begins by lauding Bevis’s father, Guy. Octavian is not solely the story of Florent, but it is worth noting that the account of Florent’s father Octavian and his marriage precede the separation of the family that sets up Florent’s adventures. Reinbroun—a romance unique to the Auchinleck manuscript that separates the adventures of Guy of Warwick’s son, Reinbroun, into a freestanding text—offers a brief summary of Guy’s renown and Reinbroun’s conception (13–30), even though it immediately follows an account of Guy’s life in full. Even the more complicated 44 On the lost Aalof, see R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England Methuen & Co., 1970), 112–13; , ed. Mills, pp. 59–62.

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Havelok, with its doubled structure, gives us separate accounts of the fathers of Goldeborw and Havelok, each acting as prologue to the story of the child’s disenfranchisement. These beginnings are so commonplace as to seem obvious; of course such romances begin by telling us about the hero’s heritage. For one, it provides a veneer of historicity. For another, it is the father’s death, or separation from him, that sets events into motion: Horn would not be banished, Bevis sold, Florent adopted by a merchant unless a father, once present, were taken away. Yet these openings serve to do more than merely set the story in motion. They equally serve to circumscribe the world of the protagonist at the text’s beginning. When the Saracens arrive in Suddene, Horn’s world has been defined exclusively in terms of his father Murri, his mother Godhild, and his twelve companions. At Bevis’s first appearance, the world consists of his father and his mother; by the time he is exiled, he has acquired two local guardians—his treacherous stepfather and his uncle Saber—but is still constrained by locality and family. The worlds envisioned in the beginnings of these romances are small and local. What happens in these moments where a child, exiled or abandoned enters the care of someone else, then, is a passage beyond that circumscribed world, the closed environment of family and home. The children are put into contact for the first time with a broader world, a world that surpasses native land and kin group, a world that often has its own politics and its own threatening forces. In generating connections and creating opportunities for the child hero, the function of foreign guardianship broadly resembles that of fosterage as explored in northern European literary contexts in Lahney Preston-Matto’s chapter in this volume.45 But while fosterage mediates and improves existing relationships, and (as Preston-Matto argues) often serves to compensate for a loss, the foreign guardianships of romance displace their child heroes much more dramatically, into distant countries and unknown families. These child heroes forge connections on a global stage, and because they are often the last living members of their families, their connections serve specifically to define the hero. The Anglo-Norman and Middle English accounts of Horn demonstrate in juxtaposition two ways in which foreign guardianship brings about the transition between the local, closed world of childhood and the broader, networked world of the adult hero. In both, Horn and his young companions, exiled by Saracen invaders, wash up on an unknown shore, where they are approached 45 Lahney Preston Matto, “ ‘I Would Like to Make it Up to You by Fostering Your Son’: Secular Fosterage and Fixing Relations in Medieval Northern Europe,” 109–26 in this volume.

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by the inhabitants of the land. In the Anglo-Norman version, Horn and his companions are nervous about these new arrivals, and, after receiving pledges of safety and support, Horn reveals why, telling the king, “Mis peres fu … pruz; en meint liu fui faidé; / Ne sai s’i unc vus forfist” [“My father was … a brave man, with enemies in many places; I do not know if he ever did you wrong”] (269–70). Horn’s worry shows that in leaving his homeland, he has moved into a different kind of world. As the romance opened, his father’s lands were an integral unit, menaced from without by those stock enemies of chanson de geste and romance, Saracens. As he passes beyond his native land, however, he enters a fragmented world of competing affiliations that destabilize his original environment. Horn’s father, stable center in his native Suddene, becomes a potential danger in a world that Horn did not have to navigate before coming into the control of another. The Middle English King Horn, by contrast to the Anglo-Norman version, gives no thought to the idea that Horn’s father might have been involved in preexisting networks beyond the text—and the omission is itself telling. In the Middle English text (which, unlike the Anglo-Norman, suggests no prequels or sequels), the narrative world has contracted so dramatically that the idea that Horn’s father might have political connections with other lands and rulers that Horn encounters is utterly beyond the imagination of the text. Almost without exception, lands are introduced as Horn comes to them.46 Almair, who becomes Horn’s guardian, accepts him as a displaced noble youth, marked by his exceptional beauty, but Horn’s specific land and parentage are irrelevant to all but Horn. Thus, leaving Suddene and coming to Westernnesse (and later to Ireland) draws Horn into spaces that are not merely potentially dangerous, as in the Anglo-Norman text, but entirely apart from his natal environment: Westernness and Suddene have no links at all, until Horn himself creates those links. While many romances sketch fuller, more geographically detailed worlds than King Horn, a major part of the work of family separation and subsequent foreign guardianship in many romances is precisely to bring romance’s children into new and unfamiliar lands and political networks. Bevis, born in Southampton, is sold into the pagan realm of Egypt (Anglo-Norman) or Armenia (Middle English)—a land unmentioned in the text before Bevis is 46 Reynes, the domain of Horn’s adversary Modi, appears in the name “Modi of Reynes” (959); it is not named when Horn briefly travels there late in the text (1519–24). On the other hand, while the Saracens who invade Suddene are African in the Anglo Norman text, notoriously fails to specify where they come from; see Diane Speed, “The Saracens of ,” Speculum 65, no. 3 (1990), 564–95.

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exiled there by his mother. Indeed, the text ignores the geographical connection that might appear to touch most closely on Bevis’s family, privileging instead the lands of the Levant to which Bevis becomes connected through his guardianship. Bevis’s murderous stepfather Doun is the Emperor of Germany (“Almayne”); when Bevis defeats him midway through the romance, we might expect Bevis to bring Germany under his power. However, when the Anglo-Norman text reports that Bevis “son heritage tint … / de la terre Doun fu il justiser” [“took possession of his inheritance, governing Doun’s land”] (2376–77), the implied referent is Southampton, which Doun has usurped; we never hear again about Germany, though Ermine’s kingdom continues to play a prominent role.47 Aside from his homeland and its environs, the spaces and peoples that seem to matter most to Bevis are those the hero encounters as a result of his upbringing with Ermine. Reinbroun, presented in the Auchinleck manuscript as a Guy of Warwick spinoff, helps demonstrate the nature of these interconnections through its differences from other romances. Reinbroun, Guy’s son, is abducted at age seven and raised in the court of an African pagan, King Arguus, until, when he has become a knight, he reunites with his childhood tutor, Heraud. We hear nothing of Reinbroun’s upbringing (the story remains with Heraud). When the men at last recognize each other, Reinbroun immediately forsakes his service to Arguus, who has been routed by Heraud; they abandon Africa, which does not return to the story. On their way back from Africa to England, they are twice stopped to undertake adventures in aid of other knights. In their first adventure, Reinbroun defeats an elf-knight in Mechel Arderne, liberating Amis, a former ally of Guy; the outcome of the episode unites the restoration of Amis’s rightful holdings with the restoration of Guy’s close friend Tirri’s lands, which were lost in the course of Guy’s adventures. In the second episode, Reinbroun battles a challenger knight who is ultimately revealed as Heraud’s son Haslak. In contrast to Bevis’s adventures en route to his home, Reinbroun’s insistently refer back to a larger narrative world that precedes the text. His adventures do not forge new connections; they are either quickly discarded or refresh existing links. Reinbroun’s foreign guardianship perhaps functions so differently from other romances because of its different relation to other literary works. Although the Reinbroun material is partly interwoven with his father’s story in the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic, this Middle English redaction explic itly separates it. Yet it does not become completely independent of the Guy

A significant episode occurs at Cologne before Bevis retakes his homeland, but the text shows no signs of connecting Cologne with Almayne.

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material; in the Auchinleck manuscript, Reinbroun follows what might be considered one or indeed two separate romances about Guy; together they span Guy’s entire career, but the verse form changes at a crucial turning point.48 Certain statements and events in Reinbroun, like King Athelston’s appeal for aid against a Danish giant (unresolved in the course of Reinbroun) make no sense without the context of the preceding material concerning Guy. Whether we regard this Auchinleck bundle as two texts or three, the manuscript’s treatment of Reinbroun amounts to an effort at cyclification, reorienting a single narrative into an interdependent corpus.49 This dependency is reflected in the kind of world through which Reinbroun moves: less a world that Reinbroun connects than one in which he picks up the traces of the connections that his father has already forged. Simple and constructed from commonplace elements, Reinbroun rewrites the patterns attending foreign guardianship through a multigenerational lens, much as the Romance of Horn threatened to do with the invocation of Aalof’s enemies. The spaces and networks that romance heroes encounter during their periods of foreign guardianship exert profound influences on their careers. Heroes who undergo foreign guardianship not only travel among kingdoms and forge connections between them; their knightly identities are shaped by contact with these networks. One way foreign guardianship shapes heroes is through marriage. Horn, Bevis, and Havelok all find wives in the lands of their guardianship. Establishing such erotic connections is a common narrative impulse, but characters do not understand it as a purpose of foreign guardianship. Both Horn’s King Almair and Bevis’s King Ermine grow hostile upon learning of romantic relationships between their daughters and the heroes of the respective romances, having been convinced that the heroes intend to displace them. Nor are the heroes themselves initially keen on such romantic liaisons. Horn’s Rimenhild and Bevis’s Josiane number among the “wooing women” memorably profiled by Judith Weiss;50 both heroes try to avoid romantic entanglements with them, 48

For an overview of the questions surrounding the division of Guy in Auchinleck, see Julie Burton, “Narrative Patterning and Guy of Warwick,” Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), 105–16, at 106–08. 49 The term “cyclification” is drawn from Bart Besamusca et al., eds., Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances, Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, 17–18 December, 1992 (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1994). 50 Judith Weiss, “The Wooing Woman in Anglo-Norman Romance,” in Romance in Medi eval England, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows, and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), 149–61.

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protesting their difference in rank. Neither the guardians, nor the children they take in, view guardianship as an arrangement that ought to lead to marriage; eroticism threatens the hierarchies of the guardianship relationship. King Horn makes explicit how marriage entangles the hero politically with his guardian’s kingdom; the jealous comrade who betrays Horn and Rimenhild to her father warns falsely of Horn’s plan “To bring þe of lyue, / And take Rymenhild to wyue” (703–04).51 Marrying the princess and usurping the kingdom are fundamentally linked acts in the logic of the text. And love between the hero and his guardian’s daughter ends the period of guardianship in many cases: Almair banishes Horn for a supposed sexual relationship with his daughter; Ermine orchestrates Bevis’s imprisonment for the same reason. Havelok plays out the tensions inherent in such arrangements in even greater detail, for the marriage is desired neither by Havelok nor by Goldeborw. Havelok is built on a framework of intertwined double dispossessions: Havelok, heir to the Danish crown, and Goldeborw, heir to England, are both minor wards following the deaths of their fathers. Havelok flees to England under the care of Grim after the usurper Godard attempts to have him murdered. Goldeborw, meanwhile, is imprisoned by her usurper Goodrich. Goodrich, however, seeks to solidify his control by marrying her to Havelok, whom Goodrich believes to be lowborn and unsuitable. (Indeed, he chooses Havelok for exactly the reason Horn initially disqualifies himself as a match for Rimenhild: he is a “þral,” Havelok 1098, King Horn 430). Menuge has shown how this plot resonates with legal concerns about the disparagement of wards through unsuitable marriages.52 But the marriage of Goldeborw to Havelok is a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at disparagement; instead, it fulfills the role that marriage often takes in foreign guardianship, shaping Havelok’s royal career by leading him toward kingship. The marriage is a crucial step in securing the heritage of both youths: it is only after marrying Havelok that Goldeborw observes the bodily signs of his kingliness and proposes that they travel to Denmark to reclaim his kingdom. Moreover, marriage brings Havelok’s guardianship to an end (for he returns with his bride to find his guardian, Grim, dead) at the pre cise moment he prepares to reclaim his heritage. In short, in a story where the principal characters actively resist their union, Horn’s guardianship leads him into a land where he can marry his double and unite two kingdoms that have fallen into hostile hands. Romance of Horn makes the claim even more forcefully—“A cel fol, vel viellart, sun aume toudrai, / E par cesti mut bien mun regne cunquerrai” [“I’ll seize the kingdom from that old fool and with that I’ll certainly reconquer my realm”] (laisse 92, vv. 1893– 94)—but also has Horn (according to the lie) insult the king more deeply by asserting that he will not marry the princess, merely keep her as a paramour. Menuge, Medieval English Wardship, 89–93.

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Havelok’s marriage to Goldeborw fundamentally reshapes his royal identity. With the aid of Goldeborw and of Grim’s sons, he slays Godard and regains Denmark. However, it is in England that he ultimately settles and rules, entrusting Denmark to an earl who supported his claim. As he leads an invasion force “Engelond al for to winne” (2537), the usurper Godrich describes Havelok and his followers as “uten-laddes” (2581), foreign men or soldiers. But Havelok does not come alone; in the same breath, the text reminds us “þat she þat was so fayr, / Þat was of Engelond rith eir, / Was comen up at Grimesbi” (2539–41). In the climactic fight against Godrich, Havelok reminds us that the claim is Goldeborw’s: “Yeld hire þe lond, for þat is rith” (2718, emphasis added). But when Havelok has overcome Godrich, the surrendering English have already begun to collapse Havelok and Goldeborw as authority figures because of their marriage: Þan þe Englishe men þat sawe,… Þat Goldeboru þat was so fayr Was of Engeland rith eyr, And þat þe king hire hauede wedded, And haueden ben samen bedded. (2767–72) Noted in this moment for his marriage to Goldeborw, Havelok is designated “the king,” ambiguously king of Denmark (as the romance has already ratified) and of England (as the conclusion will confirm). Havelok administers the peace that follows, and it is to him that the defeated forces first offer “manrede and oth” (2775). He has reclaimed his native Denmark before undertaking the English expedition, but it is his coronation in London that serves as the romance’s triumphant resolution. And, although Goldeborw is heir to the kingdom, it is decidedly Havelok’s coronation: “For he to Lundone for to bere / Corune” (2944–45); “Þe feste of his coruning” (2949). When his men wish to depart for Denmark, he dispatches his supporter Ubbe to take charge of the country, while we hear that: Hauelok bilefte wit ioie and gamen Jn Engelond, and was þer-inne Sixti winter king with winne, And Goldeboru quen. (2964–67) As far as the romance tells us, Havelok never returns to Denmark. This ending resolves the doubled structure of the romance, positioning Havelok’s accession to the throne of England as the ultimate compensation for both youths’

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Although he fulfills the expectations of the exile-and-return plot by reclaiming his own land, the conclusion of the romance, transformed by his marriage to Goldeborw, leaves him most closely aligned with the land in which he grew up under Grim’s guardianship, not the land of his birth and his inheritance. And in the course of shifting his alignment to England, Havelok intertwines England and Denmark; while he rules in England, he places Denmark under the control of his follower Ubbe, and the marriages he arranges to honor his loyal supporters define links between the countries centered on Havelok. Eve Salisbury even suggests that Grim’s daughters, whose marriages to Englishmen Havelok ordains, take the place of Havelok’s murdered sisters whose own duty was to shape Denmark’s royal future through intermarriage.53 Havelok’s identity has changed, and the relationships that swirl around him have changed the relationship of the lands in the romance. The land of the hero’s guardianship can exert such a profound influence on the hero’s identity that it even changes his name. In the Northern Octavian, after becoming renowned for defeating a Saracen force menacing Paris (where he has been raised under Clement’s guardianship), Florent is known for a time as “Florent of Paresche, / … / Thoghe he ther were noght borne” (1181–83). Florent, of course, is a foundling with no knowledge of his parentage; eventually recognized by his father, the Emperor of Rome, he is instead called “Florent of Rome, / Als it was full gude right” (1291–92), but his earlier name shows how easily he became identified with the city where he was raised. And similar shifts of identity can occur even for heroes who do know their ancestry. While Horn is the exiled heir of Suddene, neither the romance nor its charac ters ever refer to him as “Horn of Suddene.” However, a messenger seeking him out to warn him that Rimenhild will be forced to marry another man brands him “Horn of Westernesse” (966, 1235). Horn becomes verbally more closely aligned with Westernesse, land of his guardianship, knighting, and betrothal, than with the native land he seeks to reclaim. Unlike Havelok, Horn does ultimately return to live out his days in his native Suddene. But the conclusion of his romance follows a pattern that further illustrates how the relationship between heroes and world changes as a result of foreign guardianship. Horn and Bevis both conclude by making tours of the lands they have visited in the course of their romances and installing new rulers in each. When the romances began, these lands were unconnected. By the end, the hero can move frictionlessly among them, and they are linked by personal connections. In King Horn, Horn remixes the poem’s political map. See Eve Salisbury, “Havelok’s Sisters: Vulnerability and the Child Body,” this volume, 263–5. Or “Horn of Estnesse” as two manuscripts sometimes have it, a verbal form that still clearly links Horn with Almair, whose kingdom is the only one with a similar name.

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Immediately upon defeating Ffikenhild, the opponent who has attempted to forcibly marry Rymenhild, the romance reports that “Horn makede Arnoldin þare / King after king Aylmare / Of al Westernesse” (1527–29), installing his faithful watchman from Suddene as the successor to his father-in-law. And he continues to replace the governors of surrounding lands on the basis of personal loyalty: His sworn brother Athulf he marries to the princess of Ireland, where he lived after being banished from Westernesse; Athelbrus, who raised Horn in Westernesse, is given the rule of Reynes, the otherwise unseen realm belonging to Horn’s romantic rival and adversary, King Modi. By making Athelbrus a king, but not the king of Westernesse, Horn fills vacant thrones in ways that emphasize not preexisting associations but rather personal connection to him. The romance draws Horn back, centripetally, to the land where he began, encapsulating the romance exile-and-return structure.55 But by the closing lines, he has transformed an archipelago of unconnected lands, into which his exile thrust him, into a narratively coherent, personally centered world. The Romance of Horn even reports that after settling the disposition of other territories, Horn “En Bretayne revint a Rimer l’onuree, / E iluc sorjornat itant cum lui agree” [“returned to Brittany and glorious Rigmel, and remained there as long as he pleased”] (laisse 244, vv. 5223a–24), fathering his children in his wife’s land before returning to his land of birth. Though Horn concludes his career by returning to reign in Suddene, he has formed an expansive network of loyalties, and his own family is geographically hybrid. Bevis’s concluding tour accomplishes a similar personalization of the narrative map, but he himself forsakes his native land for one of the territories opened to him by his period of exile. Twice exiled from his home of Southampton, Bevis, after a battle with the English king, marries his son Miles to the English princess. The marriage concluded, “Beues tok leue, home to wende” (4570), but the romance’s sense of “home” has shifted. Even though the “pes and loue” (4559) between King Edgar and Bevis at the conclusion of hostilities has pre sumably ended Bevis’s banishment, Bevis returns to his native Hampshire only long enough to to bestow his earldom on his uncle and protector, Saber, who has served as steward in his absence. Saber’s son Terry he installs in a land where Bevis himself had previously won a victory and was briefly engaged to the princess. He then heads to Ermonie, where he was raised by Kind Ermine, and one manuscript specifically identifies this, not Southampton, as Bevis’s



Cf. Robert Rouse, “Walking (between) the Lines: Romance as Itinerary/Map,” in Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts, ed. Rhiannon Purdie and Michael Cichon (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), 135–47, at 140, which describes Guy of Warwick’s journeys as “helical.” Guy, however, advances both in status and in spirituality in ways the heroes discussed here, like Horn, do not.

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home: “Sere B. homward gan hym hye / Toward þe lond off Ermonye” (p. 216, ms E, l. 230). But Bevis does not settle in the land of his guardianship, either; that he leaves to his other son, Gui, whom King Ermine has made heir. Finally, Bevis and Josiane retire to rule in “Mombraunt, þer he was king” (4574, repeated 4586).56 Mombraunt, almost as much as Ermonie, is a land that attaches to Bevis because of his guardianship. Mombraunt’s king, Yvor, marries Josiane against her will in the first portion of the romance; in the second, Yvor invades Ermonie, and is ultimately driven off by Bevis. Mombraunt is a territory that enters Bevis’s world only through its connections to his land of guardianship; Bevis gains the kingship of Mombraunt through defending his guardian’s land, which passes to his son. It is in their entanglement with a broader world that the heroes of the romances I have been discussing may really be said to be changed as they later regain their homes. Horn drives out the invaders and establishes himself as King Horn with the aid of an army of Irishmen who have followed him since his time in exile at the Irish court; the text identifies Horn’s followers as “Irisshe” as many as four times (1026, 1312, 1320, 1398), as though to remind us that Horn’s fighting force comes from abroad. Notably, he makes his guardian, Athelbrus, a king. While Bevis benefits from a local insurrection to recapture his homeland, he also defends the lands of his guardian-turned-father-in-law, ultimately bestowing them on his son, and in the end he ultimately retires to Mombraunt, a city he won in service to his guardian Ermine. By the end of the romance his family rules over an international confederation of territories; through his exile, his family’s fortunes have far exceeded his father’s sphere of influence. Havelok settles in England, his bride’s land, entrusting his native Denmark to an ally. Even Octavian sees the coalescence of an alliance of Christian warriors against the Saracens, and Florent weds a Saracen princess. Florent and his brother Octavian are children of the Emperor of Germany and of the King of France’s daughter, but it is because of Florent’s upbringing under the guardianship of Clement, a burgess (Northern, C 571) or butcher (Southern 398) of Paris, that he proves himself as a warrior and joins with an international force defending Christendom. Well before his birth identity is revealed, Florent is 56 In the Anglo-Norman version, which compresses the ending, Egypt (that version’s equivalent of Ermonie) is not visited as part of the final tour; since Bevis’s son Gui has already succeeded King Hermin, the text seems to consider the matter settled. Bevis in the Anglo-Norman version rushes home to discover Josiane on her death-bed both die together, while in the Middle English version they rule together for many years before their deaths. Nevertheless, both versions see Bevis return to, and ultimately die in, Mombraunt.

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“set with honour / Betwyx the king of Fraunce and þe emperor” (Northern, C 1120–21), and the Southern version emphasizes the international nature of the army that assembles for the climactic battle: a “ost … / Of Crystene men” (1593– 4) with companies led by “þe kyng of Ierusalem” (1677), “þe kyng of Fraunce” (1687), “þe kyng of Speyne” (1699), “þe emperor of Almeyne” (1701), “þe kyng of Portyngale” (1706) and “þe kyng reall / Of Nauerne” (1709–10). The displacements of both Florent and his brother Octavian from their native lands, and especially Florent’s upbringing and heroic debut in Paris, do not merely reunite these children with their birth family but see them joining for victory with “alle þe kynges hende / Of Crystendome” (1777–78). These periods in which the child is raised by another are less about learning than they are about networking, about forging links that cross political boundaries and even, in some cases, the boundaries of culture and class. Entering those networks prepares the child to be an agent in the world. Medieval English romances deploy the motif of foreign guardianship in order to push their young protagonists beyond the local, familiar, seemingly self-contained world of their birth environment and force them to acquire new affiliations and spheres of action. Although exile-and-return typically proceeds centripetally—the originary loss of homeland or family implies return and reclamation—the plot is about more than simply getting back stolen lands. Exiled heroes forge connections and identities that create extensive networks. They do not simply regain their homes or families: they incorporate them into broader topologies of alliance and power. In their depiction of children, such romances advance an idea about the fundamental difference between childhood and adulthood: children are isolated, insular figures, who must form links and move within broader networks in order to function as adults. Like most aspects of romance, the careers of these heroes are fantastical and larger-than-life, despite the historical backgrounds that have been suggested for the exile-and-return pattern. The stories of heroes who undergo foreign guardianship displace their heroes in spectacular ways: to lower social classes, as in Havelok and Octavian; to distant lands with rulers belonging to another religion, as in Bevis. The combination of the protagonist’s youth and extreme displacement define a literary realm of exile distinct from the historical and historiographical parallels adduced by Laura Ashe and Rosalind Field.57 But the experience of passing out of childhood far from parents and birth home was an altogether common one. Shulamith Shahar writes unequivocally that “when [noble] children were parted from their mothers,… [t]hey 57

Laura Ashe, “ ‘Exile-and-return’ and English Law: The Anglo Saxon Inheritance of Insular Romance,” Literature Compass 3, no. 3 (2006): 300–17; Field, “King over the Water,” 41–53.

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were dispatched to the courts of other nobles to be educated;” only eldest sons might remain at home.58 Shahar places this separation around age seven, or in the few years following. Nicholas Orme, though less rigidly prescriptive about ages and arrangements, acknowledges that the tradition of sending noble children to other households had a long history, and became common in the period from 1066 to 1530.59 Both historians stress that the practice had many motivations, from practical to pedagogical to social, but both acknowledge in particular that such arrangements forged bonds, both solidifying ties between households and exposing children to those who could advance their careers and serve as valuable connections.60 The exchange and service of children within noble households was in large part a networking activity. These exchanges crossed what we would think of as geographical and cultural borders; Orme notes that Christine de Pisan’s son served in England as a page to John of Salisbury, while Henry duke of Lancaster was reputed to have taken in children from France and Spain.61 Against the backdrop of such networks, the transformations wrought on romance heroes by foreign guardianship are particularly resonant. These romances stage traumatic ruptures, in which noble children are cut off from family and home and thrust into unfamiliar worlds. Undoubtedly, some noble children leaving home at the time these texts were composed and copied felt much the same. But romances imagine foreign guardianship as a time of interconnection and success: noble youths become noble adults by standing by courtly, Christian principles and by forming links, alliances, and relationships in the new worlds they come to inhabit. Given the evidence that children were among the readers of such romances, it seems entirely possible that they offered young readers ways of imaginatively making sense of their experiences.62 58 59 60 61 62

Shahar, Childhood, 209. Orme, From Childhood, 45. Orme, From Childhood, 47–48, 57; Shahar, Childhood, 216–17. Orme, From Childhood, 55–56. Linda Olson, “Romancing the Book: Manuscripts for ‘euerich Inglissche,’ ” in Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 95–151, at 109–16, suggests that the Auchinleck manuscript, which contains the Middle English Bevis and Reinbroun as well as Horn Childe (another telling of the Horn story), might have served as “a children’s literary corner” or “the nursery library within a larger aristocratic book collection” (113). Orme, Medieval Children, 298–302, notes the evidence for child readership and response in a sixteenth-century print of Bevis. See also haner, “Instruction and Delight: Medieval Romances as Children’s Literature,” Poetics Today 13, no. 1 (1992): 5–15.

part 3 Vulnerable Children

chapter 10

The Loss of Innocence

Childhood and Transition to Adulthood in the Mortuary Practices of the Early Viking Age Sarah Croix When one thinks about the Viking Age, what it was like to be a child is usually not quite the first question that comes to mind. Military conquests, maritime technology, trading networks and social competition remain among the main characteristics defining this historical period. Alternatively, one could also attempt to define the Viking Age based on its specific culture, with at its core the question of how Scandinavian peoples perceived themselves as humans and their place in the world. From this angle, the question of age and the early stages of life appear highly relevant. Indeed, as an embodied form of identity, age is both conditioned by biological growth and decay as well as psychological development and socialization. As it invariably leads to death, the passing of age is deeply entangled with understandings of the human condition. Therefore, responses to the death of an individual at a specific age may be highly revealing of culturally defined perceptions of personhood. Understanding mortuary practices as a reflection of the stress caused by the death of an individual, the present article proposes an analysis of the various mortuary treatments received by individuals from birth up to their early 20s at selected sites (Ribe, the Scandinavian emporia, and Viking-Age Denmark), combining archaeology and physical anthropology.1 Specific qualities and attributes connected to childhood and adulthood are presented when crossing contemporary written evidence. As a result, the “missing” childhood of the grand historical narrative appears as a well-defined age group in opposition to early adulthood, beginning in the juvenile years before full maturation of the body. The archaeology of childhood is now a well-established field of research, with studies spanning regions all over the world and covering various 1 In the following, when dealing with biological age as defined by physical anthropology, the age groups used for the osteological analysis of the human remains from Ribe will be used; Infans i: ca. zero-seven years; Infans ii: ca. seven-twelve/fourteen years; Juvenilis: ca. twelve/ fourteen-twenty years; Adultus: ca. twenty-forty years; Maturus: ca. forty-sixty years; Senilis: over fifty years. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004458260_012

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prehistoric and historical periods. Having emerged from feminist theory,2 it now reaches out to other conceptual frameworks, such as developmental psychology.3 For Viking-Age Scandinavia, the impact of feminist theory on studies of childhood, aiming at bringing to the fore the invisible forgotten by history,4 has become less explicit in more recent research, which focuses on understanding childhood as a social and cultural construct, with specific roles and values.5 Most often, childhood is understood a priori as the age of play, for example when tracking down children through the finds of miniature objects, such as weapons, boats, horses, figurines, pots and even quernstones as well as bells,6 in opposition to adulthood, the age of work. This distinction is admittedly debatable for the medieval North, as finds of board games in Viking-Age elite burials and episodes in the Icelandic saga literature hint that adults also were very much fond of play.7 Also, work was not reserved to adults, as the learning of various tasks was a key part of socialization.8 Finger impressions on some crucibles from Kaupang, too small to belong to adults, may indeed reflect

2 E.g. S. Crawford and G. Shepherd, ed., Children, Childhood and Society (Oxford: Archeopress, 2007); J. Moore and E. Scott, ed., 1997. Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (London/New York: Leicester University Press, 1997); S. Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); V. Garver, “Childbearing and Infancy in the Carolingian World,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 21, no. 2 (2012): 208–44; J. E. Baxter, The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender, and Material Culture (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005). 3 D. Sommer and M. Sommer, Care, Socialization, and Play in Ancient Attica: A Developmental Childhood Archaeological Approach (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2015). 4 G. Lillehammer, “A Child is Born. The Child’s World in an Archaeological Perspective,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 22, no. 2 (1989): 89–105; T. Linderoth, “Vart har alla barnen tagit vägen?,” Populär Arkeologi 8, no. 3 (1990): 14–16; L. Linder, “Hade den vikingatida bärsärken några barn?,” in Arkeologi om Barn, ed. B. Johnsen and S. Welinder (Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, 1995), 69–77. 5 S. Welinder, “The Cultural Construction of Childhood in Scandinavia, 3500 BC–1350 AD,” Current Swedish Archaeology 6 (1998): 185–204; L. Mejsholm, “Gränsland. Konstruktion av tidig barndom och begravningsritual vid tiden för kristnandet i Skandinavien” (PhD diss., University of Uppsala, 2009). 6 For overviews, see D. McAlister, “Childhood in Viking and Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin, 800–1100,” in Everyday Life in Viking-Age Towns: Social Approaches to Towns in England and Ireland, c. 800–1100, ed. D. M. Hadley and L. ten Harkel (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013), 87, and C. Callow, “First Steps Towards an Archaeology of Children in Iceland,” Archaeologia Islandica 5 (2006): 55–96. For bells, A.-S. Gräslund, “Barn i Birka,” Tor 15 (1973): 164. 7 L. Gardeła, “What the Vikings Did for Fun? Sports and Pastimes in Medieval Northern Europe,” World Archaeology 44, no. 2 (2012): 234–47. 8 Callow, “First Steps,” 56; Baxter, Archaeology of Childhood

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the participation of children in craft activities and the learning of specialized skills such as metal casting at an early age.9 To which biological stage of development and/or to which calendar years childhood should correspond vary greatly across time, space, and cultures.10 As one of the precursors in the study of childhood in Scandinavian archaeology, Gräslund set the end of childhood at puberty, around fifteen years old, corresponding to the age of maturity in the early medieval provincial law of Uppland.11 In physical anthropology, the physical traits distinguishing an adult from a non-adult are generally considered to be acquired during the late teensearly twenties when expressed in ranges of calendar years.12 This classification, however, is colored by contemporary perceptions of age transitions in Western societies, and underlines the challenges of integrating the results of dental and skeletal analysis of human remains for their social and cultural interpretation.13 Physical anthropology is indeed frequently involved when dealing with the puzzling situation that is the very small number of children (Infans i and ii) among the buried populations of Viking-Age Scandinavia before the influence of Christianity was felt on mortuary practices around the turn of the first millennium ad, with figures far below the generally high rates for infant mortality in pre-industrial societies.14 Explanations for this phenomenon are fairly consistent from scholar to scholar and throughout the Viking world: alternative mortuary practices, perhaps involving the use of a preferential space outside the main cemetery, or infanticide; taphonomic processes, where preservation conditions in the soil may be particularly aggressive towards the more fragile 9 U. Pedersen, “I Smeltedigelen. Finsmedene i vikingtidsbyen Kaupang” (PhD diss., University of Oslo, 2010), 321. 10 E.g. M. A. Grove and D. F. Lancy, “Cultural Models of Stages in Child Development,” in Childhood and Adolescence: Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Applications, ed. U. P. Gielen and J. L. Roopnarine (2nd edition. Santa Barbara, CA: abc-clio, 2016), 47–62. See also H. Montgomery, An Introduction to Childhood: Anthropological Perspectives on Children’s Lives (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 79–103 and 201–232 for a wide range of examples. 11 Gräslund, “Barn i Birka,” 162. 12 C. G. Falys and M. E. Lewis, “Proposing a Way Forward: A Review of Standardisation in the Use of Age Categories and Ageing Techniques in Osteological Analysis (2004–2009),” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 21 (2011): 707–8. 13 Falys and Lewis, “Proposing,” 712. 14 Welinder, “Cultural Construction”; K. M. Weiss and H. M. Wobst, “Demographic Models in Anthropology,” American Antiquity 38, no. 2 (1973): 1–186; G. Acsádi and J. Nemeskéri, History of Human Life Span and Mortality (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970), 236–51; for medieval Denmark, see e.g. P. Bennike, . Lewis, H. Schutkowski and F. Valentin, “Comparison of Child Morbidity in Two Contrasting Medieval Cemeteries from Denmark,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128 (2005): 734–46.

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bones of children; and skills of excavators in recognizing and retrieving infant bones.15 The latest contribution to the subject of early infancy in the pre-Christian culture of the North tackles the difficult issue of the emotional response to the loss of a child. Turning away from consensual assumptions about motherly bonds colored by contemporary perception of childhood, Eriksen focuses on alternative forms of deposition of dead infants and children up to the age of twelve throughout the Scandinavian and Germanic areas during the first millennium ad. She suggests that small children were perhaps not perceived “as full social beings, individuals with inherent rights” but rather as animate objects.16 This constitutes an important nuance to the question of the missing children and to the old debate of the non-existence of childhood in the past.17 At the same time, it brings to the fore an increasingly important topic in archaeological research, that of personhood and ontological status in past societies.18 Moving past a focus on the early years of life, claims have been made in the past couple of decades against the portioning of the study of age into groups by considering the entire life-course, from infancy to death (and beyond).19 While this question has been addressed for several age groups in the Viking and medieval North,20 explicit approaches to the life-course in Viking-Age Scandinavia remain sparse. Focusing on material culture and mortuary practices rather than on questions of life-course, several archaeological studies across early medieval North-Western Europe have shown how grave-good 15 P. Bennike, “Vikingetidens Mennesker,” in Vikingetid i Danmark. Arkæologi på Saxoinstituttet, ed. H. Lyngstrøm and L. G. Thomsen (København: Saxo Institutet, 2013), 31; P. Holck, Cremated Bones: A Medical-Anthropological Study of an Archaeological Material on Cremation Burials (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2008); N. L. Wicker, “Selective Female Infanticide as Partial Explanation for the Dearth of Women in Viking Age Scandinavia,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. G. Halsall (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 215; C. Clover, “The Politics of Scarcity: Notes on the Sex Ratio in Early Scandinavia,” Scandinavian Studies 60 (1988): 147–88. 16 M. H. Eriksen, “Don’t All Mothers Love Their Children? Deposited Infants as Animate Objects in the Scandinavian Iron Age,” World Archaeology 49, no. 3 (2017): 1–19. 17 Cf. P. Ariès, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Plon, 1960). 18 Cf. C. Fowler, The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach (London: Routledge, 2004); for a review of the impact of ontological research in archaeology, see B. Alberti, “Archaeologies of Ontology,” Annual Review of Anthropology 45, no. 1 (2016), 163–79. 19 R. Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012); J. Sofaer Derevenski, “Linking Age and Gender as Social Variables,” Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift 38 (1997): 486. 20 S. Lewis-Simpson Youth and Age in the Medieval North (Boston: Brill, 2008).

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assemblages may vary according to age and sex, usually making use of large data sets and statistical tools.21 While children and the elderly now play an increasing role in our understanding of age in the past, adolescence is perhaps the age category which has received the least attention in the recent developments within the field. The frequent lack of explicit consideration of whether individuals in their teenage years—the “juvenilis” group in physical anthropology—should be included in the “children” group in previous research literature illustrates this problem. It is indeed an ambiguous question, both from a cultural and a biological point of view, raised for example by Sellevold, which did not lead further than the assumption that, probably, juveniles were seen as adults in Iron Age Denmark—but still were analyzed together with children in the same study.22 The idea of youth and transition to adulthood has been approached based on Old Norse literature and law material with a strong focus on the experiences of young men.23 While doubt remains as to how far back in time the provisions of the Scandinavian medieval laws would apply, the Icelandic literature remains a difficult source for understanding social perceptions and experiences in South Scandinavia several centuries earlier in the Viking Age.

21

G. Halsall, “Female Status and Power in Early Merovingian Central Austrasia: The Burial Evidence,” Early Medieval Europe 5, no. 1 (1996): 1–24; E. Stauch, “Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold! Zur altersdifferenzierten Analyse frühgeschichtlicher Bestattungen,” in Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts im Westen, ed. S. Brather (Berlin: Walter de Guyter, 2008), 275–95; S. Eisenschmidt, “Bemerknungen zu Alter und Geschlecht in der wikingerzeitlichen Gesellschaft—beleuchtet an Gräbern aus Schleswig,” in Beretning fra Femogtyvende Tværfaglige Vikingesymposium, ed. E. Marold and U. Müller (Aarhus: Hikuin, 2006), 7–24; N. Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear: A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite (Oxford: British Archeological Reports, 1999); M. Gebühr, “Alter und Geschlecht. Aussagemöglichkeiten Anhand des Archäologischen und Anthropologischen Befundes,” in Prehistoric Graves as a Source of Information: Symposium at Kastlösa, Öland, May 21–23, 1992, ed. B. Stjernquist (Uppsala: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1994), 73–86; J. Staecker, “Geschlecht, Alter und materielle Kultur. Das Beispiel Birka,” Historia Archaeologica 70 (2009): 475–500. 22 B. J. Sellevold, U. Lund Hansen and J. B. Jørgensen, Iron Age Man in Denmark (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab, 1984). 23 C. Callow, “Transitions to Adulthood in Early Icelandic Society,” in Children, Childhood and Society, ed. S. Crawford and G. Shepherd (Oxford: Archeopress, 2007), 45–55; M. Clunies Ross, “From Iceland to Norway: Essential Rites of Passage for an Early Icelandic Skald,” Alvíssmál 9 (1999): 55–72; C. Larrington, “Awkward Adolescents: Male Maturation in Norse Literature,” in Youth and Age in the Medieval North, ed. S. Lewis (Boston: Academic Publishers, 2008), 151–66; E. Mundal, “Forholdet Mellom Born og Foreldre i det Norr ne Kjeldematerialet,” Collegium Medievale 1 (1988): 9–26.

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From this overview of previous research, it appears that the archaeology of age and childhood in Viking-Age Scandinavia still lacks a discussion of how to define the ontological status of non-adults. This issue is entangled with several aspects: the assumptions of what childhood is and was; the reactions triggered by the death of a child and the perception of death expressed through mortuary treatment; and the transition from childhood to adulthood. As a moment of tension and negotiation between personal identities and social expectations, this phase of transition that is marked by mortuary practices may indeed enable particular insights into a culturally specific understanding of age and, ultimately, of personhood more generally. While it can be calculated in numerical terms, using the calendar year, or in biological terms, evaluating the growth and decay of the human body, age is indeed a social and cultural construct. Definitions of age are therefore contextually variable, and often expressed in relative terms rather than absolute figures (cf. “I am too old for this s*”). In early medieval Western Europe, for example, it seems that counting age in years mattered less than a more relative appreciation of age in terms of younger or older.24 Age is also linked to a complex intersection of plural identities, which may change through the life-course.25 Contrary to other forms of social identities, however, the feeling of belonging to a particular age group is not only relational, as a response to the need of situating oneself within the social fabric; it is also bound to the body itself. In this sense it is in part similar to sex, which may change culturally throughout the life cycle, but hardly without active transformation biologically. Age, by definition, changes on both levels and imposes shifting self-perception and social affiliation on the individual. Age is thus constantly transient, and efforts at categorizing age groups through calendar years and associated roles and values are necessarily inadequate. Yet a number of episodes throughout the life cycle epitomize this transientness. In contemporary Western culture, menopause, retirement, the birth of the first grandchildren, the moving to a nursing home all mark specific stages of transition from adulthood to the senior years. At the other end of the spectrum, the many “firsts” in the late teens/early twenties (first job, first partner, first car, first flat, first intercourse, first hangover etc.) define the step from childhood to adulthood. Childhood as 24

V. Garver, “Old Age and Women in the Carolingian World,” in Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. A. Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 121–44; Stauch, “Alter ist Silber,” 277. 25 E. C. Casella and C. Fowler, “Beyond Identification: An Introduction,” in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification, ed. E. C. Casella and C. Fowler (Boston, MA: Springer US

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the age of play, socialization, learning, and economic dependence then meets its end. While contemporary Western culture has designed a specific age category for this passage, adolescence, it is tackled in various ways cross-culturally and can be marked by a diversity of life-cycle rituals involving complex materiality, without necessarily a prolonged transitional period. For the Aztec, childhood was marked by several transitions all leading to the learning of adulthood, a process which was achieved in the early teens with the choice of one of three possible gender identities defined by reproductive and labor roles.26 Puberty and the acquisition of reproductive abilities are often associated to the transition from childhood to adulthood. Varying attitudes to the sexuality of teenagers in contemporary Western culture highlight, however, that the physical possibility of having children does not necessarily mean that one is no longer a child. Sexual behavior is sanctioned by law, and corporeal development can be helped (or prevented) through hormonal treatment. Today, parents may decide to slow down the arrival of puberty, especially for girls, arguing that they are psychologically not ready for the social consequences—coping with other children’s reaction and avoiding unwanted sexual attention.27 The biological development, it is argued, is not on the same pace as the psychological one, endangering the well-being of the child altogether. These attitudes are revealing of current perceptions of childhood and adulthood, but also of the processes which are at stake in the definition of age groups and the needs for managing important transitions between them. Yet they are also culturally contextual, and it cannot be assumed that other cultures at other times and places in history would have felt the need of dissociating the development of body and mind. Archaeologically, however, there does not seem to be any other source material combining human biology and cultural practices as explicitly than burials.28 Age at death can be estimated by dental and osteological analysis of the human remains, and perceptions of after-life, death, and identities can be interpreted on the basis of the way the dead were treated. At first sight, the method seems rather straightforward: confronting the two data sets would enable revealing how responses to death varied depending on age at death, and including all non-adults, from birth to ca. twenty years old, may differentiate 26 R. A. Joyce, “Girling the Girl and Boying the Boy: The Production of Adulthood in Ancient Mesoamerica,” World Archaeology 31, no. 3 (2000): 474. 27 C. Roberts, “Psychosocial Dimensions of Early Puberty and its Treatment,” Lancet (Diabetes & Endocrinology) 4, no. 3 (2016): 195–97. Lillehammer, “A Child is Born,” 89–105.

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significant changes within the group. While this approach still appears to be functioning rather adequately, there are two difficulties: uncertainties on how to estimate age at death and how to understand mortuary rituals. Forensics and physical anthropology commonly assess age at death on the basis of an analysis of state of growth or decay of skeletal remains. By combining the assessment of a number of measurable traits, it is possible to produce relative estimates expressed as more or less narrow ranges in calendar years.29 While the current methods retain some uncertainty with individuals of a more advanced age, the rate of growth of the human body is, however, marked by nearly yearly changes, allowing for more precise identification of age at death for non-adults. More recently, attempts at determining skeletal changes associated with puberty have allowed understanding the particular experiences of young women in medieval England.30 The dental and skeletal age, however, is obviously a biological one. When trying to track down the social and cultural understanding of a major transition such as the acquisition of reproductive capacities, possible concerns about transposing a biological interpretation onto a cultural construct are not as problematic as they may appear at first. Indeed, one could expect that the transition from one age group to the other, if defined by such biological change, would then occur when the biological change happens instead of being based on a strict number of calendar years or an assessment of psychological development. In this manner, using the osteological determination of age at death reflects the biological development of the body and may therefore act as an adequate marker. Furthermore, if age is to be understood as always transient, this constant state of liminality in one’s identity is multiplied by the passing from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Death is a time of stress for the living causing a reorganization of the social fabric,31 and responses to this stress may take different forms depending on the social significance of the deceased. Identities are allegedly constructed in the context of mortuary practices, as perception or wishes of representing specific characteristics and memories of the dead

29 E.g. J. E. Buikstra and D. H. Ubelaker, ed., Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains (Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, 1994). 30 M. Lewis, F. Shapland and R. Watts, “On the Threshold of Adulthood: A New Approach for the Use of Maturation Indicators to Assess Puberty in Adolescents from Medieval England,” American Journal of Human Biology 28 (2016): 48–56. 31 T. Oestigaard and J. Goldhahn, “From the Dead to the Living: Death as Transactions and Re negotiations,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 39, no. 1 (2006): 27–48.

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individual.32 Death rituals may indeed be designed in order to reflect these perceptions, with variation in treatment of the body, position of the grave in the burial area, marking of the grave, deposition of objects and animals etc. The selection and deposition of objects in particular can be interpreted as “idealized expression of aspired identity constructed by mourners, and holding the power to generate and reproduce social relations and identities.”33 To sum up, this method, in many ways adequate to understand the cultural and social negotiations of biological processes, does not directly inform about the definition of age groups, their roles and values, or life-cycle transitions such as the passage from childhood to adulthood. What its application to archaeological burials may reveal is how society perceived the individual at the moment of their death. The stress caused by this particular individual’s death and whether age at death participates in this stress may, in turn, provide an important cue to the perception of age. Even though the perception of biological age and cultural age may differ, it is only through their comparison that tensions and discrepancies may challenge our expectations regarding their definitions. In the following, the interpretative potential of this method will be examined by its application to a well-defined data set, that of the recently investigated pre-Christian cemetery in Ribe, Denmark. The particularities of the patterns observed in Ribe will be assessed in the light of further comparison with similar early urban sites, i.e. the Scandinavian emporia, and a more rural context, i.e. Viking-age Denmark (Fig. 10.1). Ribe’s first cemetery has been the object of a recent research project, which combined cultural analysis of mortuary practices and osteological analysis of human and animal remains.34 The site is located at a particular cultural and social crossroad where tensions, innovations and specificities in how age and identity were negotiated were likely to occur. The medieval town of Ribe, near the coast of the Wadden Sea in South-West Jutland, Denmark, is arguably the first town in Scandinavia.35 From its emergence around 700 ad to the second half of the ninth century, the site is only documented archaeologically and 32 C. Fowler, “Identities in Transformation: Identities, Funerary Rites, and the Mortuary Process,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. L. Nilsson Stutz and S. Tarlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 511–26. 33 H. Williams, “Review Article: Rethinking Early Medieval Mortuary Archaeology,” Early Medieval Europe 13, no. 2 (2005): 205. 34 https://urbnet.au.dk/research-projects/northern-europe/city-of-the-dead/. 35 C. Feveile, ed., Ribe Studier. Det Ældste Ribe. Udgravninger på nordsiden af Ribe Å 1984– 2000, 2 vol. (Hø ologisk Selskab, 2006); S. Croix, “Permanency in Early

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Map of early Viking Age sites in Scandinavia. Drawn by the author

consists in a market-site formed of regulated plots where various crafts and exchanges took place, a so-called “emporium.”36 Further to the North-East, a large burial ground, stretching over eight-nine hectares, has been excavated in several instances since the 1970s, with two main campaigns at Rosen Allé in 1989 and in 2014–2016 (Fig. 10.2). Both chronologically and geographically, Ribe is on the margins of Viking-Age Scandinavia. The main phase of occupation of the site, in the eighth and the ninth century, predates in part the traditional beginning of the Viking Age, the attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793. Geographically, it is located between land and sea, at the gate between Scandinavia and the Continent, the pagan North and the Christianized South.37 While it may have been related to Danish royal power since its emergence, the emporium and its inhabitants were neighbors to Danes, Saxons and Frisians Medieval Emporia: Reassessing Ribe,” European Journal of Archaeology 18, no. 3 (2015): 497–523. 36 C. Feveile, “Ribe on the North Side of the River, 8th–12th century,” in Det Ældste Ribe: Udgravninger på nordsiden af Ribe Å 1984–2000, ed. C. Feveile. Ribe Studier 1.1 (Højbjerg: Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, 2006), 65–92; S. M. Sindbæk, “Northern Emporium: the Archaeology of Urban Networks in Viking Age Ribe,” in Urban Network Evolutions, ed. R. Raja & S. M. Sindbæk (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2018), 161–66. 37 S. Croix and N. IJssennagger-Van der Pluijm, “Cultures without borders? Approaching the Cultural Continuum in the Danish-Frisian Coastal Areas in the Early Viking Age,” Scandinavian Journal of History 46, 3 (2021): 304–27. doi: 10.1080/03468755.2019.1687332.

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Plan of the Ribe cemetery. Morten S additions by the author

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, Museum of Southwest Jutland, with

and may have interacted with Slavs, Norwegians and Franks as well. Longdistance maritime connections, a focus on non-agrarian activities and an original way-of-life do not make of the site a “town” in the modern or even medieval sense of the term, but should be seen instead as a particular form of urbanism with new opportunities and experiences for its inhabitants. Despite several excavation campaigns, it cannot be claimed that Ribe’s first cemetery has been entirely excavated.38 Modern urbanism is largely to blame, 38 A complete publication of Ribe’s first cemetery is under preparation (S. Croix, The City of the Dead. Burial Customs in Early Ribe. Højbjerg: Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab). See also S. Croix, “Ribe’s pre-Christian Cemetery—The Burial Customs of an Early Urban Community,” in Proceedings of the 18th Viking Congress, ed. A. Pedersen and S. M. Sindbæk

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as the contemporary town of Ribe is raised on top of the Viking and medieval site. Indeed, the site has been in nearly continuous occupation since its emergence, which has had a destructive impact on the archaeology. To this date, 100 features connected to this burial ground have been documented and, because they only represent a fraction of the original site, it is impossible to give a realistic picture of the population that was originally buried there in the eight-tenth centuries. The cemetery is marked by two phases of use: an early one, dated to the eighth–early ninth century, to which most graves belong; and a later one representing a small grouping of graves dated to the tenth century.39 Whether there is continuity between the two is uncertain, and focus will be put on the early phase which is contemporary to the emporium. One of the most remarkable characteristics of this cemetery is the diversity in mortuary practices, which may reflect different cultural affiliations. They combine inhumations, in pits, coffins, boats, oriented South-North or West-East, and cremations, where remains from the pyre have been deposited in pits or in urns. Objects were frequently associated to the deceased, as well as animals. While the tenth-century graves are exclusively inhumation-oriented West-East, all mortuary practices are represented for the eighth-ninth century graves. Osteological remains of both humans and animals were preserved from 71 of the 100 features, and all have been analyzed.40 Among them, 67 human individuals were identified, and it was possible to estimate age at death for 60 individuals and possible sex for 26. This discrepancy is due to both natural and cultural processes: no inhumed skeleton was preserved in its entirety due to the poor preservation conditions created by extremely acidic sandy soils, and cremation deposits only selected some of the human remains from the pyre. Fortunately, teeth were often present, even for cremation graves, which enabled a rather precise assessment of age at death, especially for non-adults. When discussing preferential mortuary practices correlated to age at death, this implies a bias towards cremation as their human remains turned out to be more adequate for osteological analysis than inhumations.

(Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020), 465–80; M. Søvsø, “Ribes Ældste Gravpladser,” in Død og Begravet—i Vikingetiden, ed. J. Ulriksen and H. Lyngström (København: Saxo-instituttet, 2016), 154–64. 39 For the dating of the younger phase, see C. Feveile, “ASR 1000 Ribelund II,” in Det Ældste Ribe: Udgravninger på nordsiden af Ribe Å 1984–2000, ed. C. Feveile. Ribe Studier 1.2 (Højbjerg: Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, 2006), 267–87. 40 S. Østergaard, “De Dødes By. Begravelserne fra de Hedenske Begravelsespladser i Ribe Osteologiske Analyse af Knoglematerialet” (Unpublished report, Afdeling for Konservering og Naturvidenskab, Moesg rd Museum, 2017).

Grave ID Body treatment

G1

G5

G9

G10

G15

G22 G24

G27

G1

ASR 8

ASR 8

ASR 8

ASR 8

ASR 8

ASR 8 ASR 8

ASR 8

SJM 129

 

S–N, crouched

 

 

Circular ditch with   cremation deposit Inhumation W–E, Supine

Cremation (pit?)   Cremation (pit)  

Cremation (pit)

Inhumation

Cremation (urn)

Cremation (pit)

Cremation (pit)

S–N, supine

F?

 

 

 

F?

 

 

Position of the body Sex

 

   F?

 

F

F

 

 F?

Gender

Armring in copperalloy, iron object

Objects

 Infans II

 Infans II (c. 5–12)

 Juvenile (c. >12) Infans I (c. 2,5)

3 glass beads

Juvenile (c. 12–19)/ Knife, pin, spindleInfans II whorl, 13 glass beads Infans II 19 glass beads, amber pendant  Juvenile (c. >12) Iron, copper-alloy

Juvenile (c. 15–20)

Adult/Infans I

 Juvenile (c. 13–15)

Age at death

Data on burials of individuals with an age at death (osteologically defined) under 18–20 from the Ribe cemetery

Ribe cemetery—early phase ASR 43M70 GO Inhumation

Site

Table 10.1

Bird wing

Dog (medium)

Animals

The Loss of Innocence

209

G2

G12 G17

G24 G25

G30 G42

SJM 348

SJM 348 SJM 348

SJM 348 SJM 348

SJM 348 SJM 348

Infans I (c. 5–7)  Infans II

Juvenile (c. 15–20)  Juvenile (c. 13–15)

Infans I (c. 5–6)  Infans I (c.