Medieval Children and Childood

This article examines the nature of school days and school years in later medieval Western Europe and considers the societal functions of the temporal cultures that emerged. The forms of the school day and year in elementary and grammar schools—alongside school- and youth-centered festivals—were replete with meaning and possessed utility beyond simple responses to environmental factors such as seasonal and meteorological changes. School authorities—whether ecclesiastical or municipal—saw the temporal cultures of medieval schools as a means to socialize children and to create and maintain collective community identities. By exploring a range of different traditions and regional variations, it is clear that the experience of the passage of time was imbued with meaning and social significance for medieval schoolchildren and their communities.

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which it might be possible to identify and record evidence for children's play from medieval settlement site excavations, using evidence form archaeology, history, history of art and folklore studies.  The paper concludes that such evidence is likely to survive and argues that a great awareness of the possible role of children in contributing to the archaeological record would lead to more such evidence being recognised. Published in Childhood in the Past, vol 2, 2009.

La publicació del Memorial dels infants de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu de Barcelona posa a l’abast dels estudiosos una font de primera mà per a l’estudi de la història hospitalària a la ciutat de Barcelona, i es mostra, una vegada més, la capacitat d’aquesta ciutat, de les seves institucions i els seus representants de posar-se al capdavant de les reformes hospitalàries que exigia la societat barcelonina de principis del segle xv, contemporàniament al que s’estava produint a altres ciutats europees com Siena, Florència, París, Milà o Nàpols.

L’estudi previ a l’edició del Memorial ressalta el paper de l’escriptura com a eina fonamental per a la conservació, custòdia i gestió de la documentació que va generar l’Hospital. Ben aviat va sorgir la necessitat d’elaborar unes ordinacions per regular l’exercici, el correcte funcionament dels diferents serveis, la documentació que s’hi produïa, les obligacions dels oficials i treballadors, en definitiva, i en paraules dels autors, “ordenar de forma eficaç tot allò que era necessari per a l’organització de l’Hospital”. Hi ha una clara voluntat de control de totes les activitats dutes a terme i de totes les persones involucrades, entre les quals les criatures que eren deixades a les seves portes, autèntiques protagonistes del Memorial i de molta altra documentació notarial.

Bij het samengaan van kleuterschool en lagere school in de basisschool spraken met name de eertijds geheten kleuterleidsters de vrees uit dat de kinderen het recht op spelen zou worden ontnomen. Zij werden weersproken met de geruststelling: we laten ze lerend spelen of spelend leren. Of dat werkelijkheid geworden is, onttrekt zich aan mijn waarneming, alhoewel de aankondiging van een toets op kleuterleeftijd niet zo geruststellend is. In de Middeleeuwen leed het geen twijfel: kinderen mogen tot hun zevende jaar fulltime spelen. Een ruime keus van zowel slim bedacht als fraai vormgegeven speelgoed stond hun ter beschikking. Er is veel van op schilderijen afgebeeld en bij verbouwingen en afgravingen gevonden. Dit AO laat u zelf zo'n zowel primitief als verfijnd stukje speelgoed vervaardigen en nodigt u uit voor een spannende tentoonstelling.

PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR COPIES OF THIS PAPER. This paper has been withdrawn from academia.edu in anticipation of the publication of a revised, updated and much expanded version, forthcoming from University of Exeter Press in August 2024:
See https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/the-green-children-of-woolpit

With the rise of the royal bastard D. João (1357-1433), Master of Avis, to the Portuguese throne in the late 14th century and his marriage to the English noble Philippa of Lancaster (1360-1415), the kingdom witnessed the beginning of a new dynasty and a new royal family. Comprised by the couple and their six children, the first generation of Avis would be known over time by the significant expression of "illustrious generation". The construction of the image of an "exemplary" family dates back to the reign of the founder and continues throughout the 15th century, with the development of an entire legitimizing and propagandist program of the new royal house. Through word, expressively by drawing up a body of law, by writing royal chronicles, technical and moral treatises (composed by Avis princes themselves or royal servants), the house of Avis sought to corroborate their place in the Portuguese throne and the undeniability of its power. In a context of appreciation of the marital family by Christian morality, the first generation of Avis would identify itself and would be represented by values such as virtue, devotion, loyalty, honor, love and concord. Working toward a shared monarchy, the royal family would not be unscathed to the setbacks and political struggles of its time, going through hard times that partly fractured its exemplary image or the image of some of its members. However, the memoirs basis constituted by the royal couple King John I and Philippa would remain untouched, serving at different times to retrieve the image of the illustrious infants and even to propagandize the following kings of the dynasty.

Keywords: Avis Dynasty. Ínclita Geração. Family representation

A paper I presented at the workshop "Studying Byzantine Prayer Books: Manuscripts, Liturgy, and Society" (22-23 June, 2018, Vienna) organized and hosted by the Euchologia Project, Daily Life and Religion. Byzantine Prayer Books as Sources for Social History.

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/byzantine-research/communities-and-landscapes/euchologia-project/ https://www.facebook.com/euchologiaproject/

This book guides readers through eleven pervasive fictions about medieval history, provides them with the sources and analytical tools to critique those fictions, and identifies what really happened in the Middle Ages.

• Provides an overview of a particular historical misconception and its corresponding truth;
• Presents primary source documents to help readers to see how the misconceptions developed and spread, and provide evidence for what we now believe to be the historical truth behind each fiction;
• Suggests further reading and additional sources of information;
• Fosters critical thinking skills and engages readers with the history of the Middle Ages.

This thesis will explore the emergence and development of the narrative that Jews ritually killed Christian children in twelfth and thirteenth century England. The role that these accusations played in ‘demonising’ Jews did not diminish during the following centuries but instead grew in popularity. The accusations that gave rise to these narratives have their origin in the specific social, cultural, and religious environment of twelfth century England. Historians have long treated the accusations of ritual murder as separate events and analysed them as such. However, the power of these accusations lies in their ability to be constructed as narratives and to spread through adaption into different communities and societies. This adaption is due to the ability that these narratives have to incorporate other narratives that are popular in different communities. Hagiographical elements, Marian tales, and biblical stories that manipulation of the innocence of children were incorporated into the narratives of ritual murder which served to elicit a specific emotive response and engagement with their audience. This development in the nature of the ritual murder narratives is a reflection of both English society and the changing nature of the Anglo-Jewish relationship during the central Middle Ages.  This thesis will add to the evolving discussions surrounding the emergence of ritual murder and the subsequent spread of the blood libel accusation. By tracing the accusations back to their origin in England, and analysing how it evolved during the space of two centuries, an increasingly comprehensive understanding of the narratives can be constructed. By utilising hagiographical material, chronicle accounts, and literature created in post-expulsion England, this thesis aims to present a cohesive analysis of different narrative strands that were woven together to construct and develop the accusations of ritual murder.

t: Nel presente articolo si presentano i risultati dell’analisi condotta su alcune necropoli italiane di ambito romano-bizantino nelle quali è stato possibile rilevare la presenza di un utilizzo differenziato delle aree di inumazione, evidenziando, nella progettazione dello spazio funerario, una distinzione tra il trattamento funerario degli adulti e quello riservato agli infanti.
L’identità sociale del bambino, connaturata come ‘altra e diversa’ rispetto a quella dell’adulto, così come desunta dalle fonti documentarie, potrebbe, in parte, giustificare la necessità di differenti pratiche sepolcrali ad esso destinate chiarendo le forme di distribuzione e articolazione delle sepolture
adottate nei contesti presi in esame.

Een klein boekje over middeleeuws speelgoed voor een groot publiek, met name schoolkinderen. Gebaseerd op mijn boek 'Kinder delijt' (1998). Mooie plaatjes en achterin instructie hoe je zelf een nootmolentje kunt maken.
* Niet meer in de handel; zelf printen mag.

A little book about mediëval toys for a large audience, especially school children. Based on my book 'Kinder delijt' (1998). Good pictures and at the back instructions for how to make a walnut windmill yourself.
* Out of print; home printing allowed.

The early medieval sites of Castel Trosino and Nocera Umbra, both located in Central Italy, were discovered by chance at the end of the 19th Century during agricultural works. Their study is very significant not only because their material culture is the widest source to know italic-byzantine handiworks widespread from 6th to 8th Century, but also because the percentage of graves belonging to infants is remarkable. This study will focus on children burial practices but also on infant grave goods and their specific choice, for instance the intentional will to insert particular gemstones. A careful observation of children mortuary practices reveals that elements of ancestral tradition blend with elements linked to the context and it’s possible to identify three main categories of grave goods in Castel Trosino’s and Nocera Umbra’s infant burials. One composed from objects strictly connected to the past and to the ancient traditions (e.g. pierced coins, pottery’s or glass’ vessels); a second category where we found elements reminding to the past but that show a strong influence of the cultural context in which they’re inserted (e.g. jewels and fibulae) and finally a third one that includes objects completely new as regards of ancient customs (e.g. gold crosses).

Miracle tales are a rewarding source material for the study of the conditions of children and young people in the Middle Ages. Other sources originate mainly from the elites of medieval society, whose views on child rearing and childhood were rather extreme. Miracle tales on the other hand were told by people from all segments of society and illustrate the life of medieval children in a great variety of situations of leisure and work. However, all miracle tales are not equally well suited for the use of social history. It is especially the miracle collections of the later Middle Ages–to which the Swedish miracle collections belong–that provide such material. Examples are given in the text.
["Children and Young People in Medieval Miracle Tales". In Swedish.]

The mass conversion of Jewish children to pigs (the Miracle of the Oven) in the thirteenth-century Middle English Infancy of Jesus Christ, a preface to the Early South English Legendary, reveals Jewish law as a proleptic confession of Jewish animality and consigns Jewish children to a temporal abjection that absorbs the ESEL’s many anxieties about Christian childhood. This abject temporal state, which this essay names the “already/never,” militates against redemptive hope for Jews and justifies the expulsion of Jews not only from Christian England but also from ordinary English Christian time. Simultaneously, in juxtaposing the affective lives of the Holy Family and of Jewish families to demonstrate that Jewish children are ungrievable, the miracle tale poses a genealogy for violence against Jewish children not in the blood libel but in Christ’s own childish violence against his Jewish companions.

Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection, by Martha Wolff, Susan Frances Jones, Richard G. Mann and Judith Berg Sobré, with contributions by Ilse Hecht, Peter Klein, Cynthia Kuniej Berry, and Larry Silver, Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 250-59

A Review of Adam Gidwitz's "The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog" (Puffin Books, 2016). This work of historical fiction, written for children, is set in medieval France and deals with the famous burning of the Talmud in the 1240s. https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3442/talmuds-and-dragons/

The medieval elementary and grammar-school pupil is a partially-hidden figure in the documentary
sources of the period. Their existence, and their existence in abundance, is clear from the fact that so many schools
and teachers were operating in the later Middle Ages. Evidence specific to the schoolchild, however, is lacking and the
researcher has to explore documents in lateral way in order to find information on their everyday experiences. Even
identifying individual pupils by name can be difficult. This article will explore the archival sources available in French
cities, in this case the city of Lyon, in an effort to identity possible sources of data on the medieval schoolchild. It will
look at sources that name pupils, either as groups or as individuals, and it will discuss what evidence for their daily lives
can be extrapolated from a selection of documents. The documents examined in the article include the proceedings of
ecclesiastical chapters, school statutes, obituaries, wills, proceedings of the municipal council, and pedagogical literature.
Some of these must be closely read in order to find the children and pupils within their pages but they are there, often
in surprising circumstances, such as the illegitimate children who received legacies from the parents and other family
members in order to pursue their education and the pupils who had early-printed works dedicated to them. This article
will serve as a map for other scholars seeking to study pre-modern school children.

An English princess of the mid-thirteenth century, dead by the age of three and a half, Katherine occupies only a footnote in the history of England. Yet the costly tomb monument at Westminster Abbey provided by her grieving father, Henry iii, was probably the earliest recorded memorial to a child known to have been set up in England. It may also have been part of Henry's response to the commemoration programme that his brother-in-law, Louis ix of France, had instigated. Nothing now apparently remains of Katherine's tomb to remind posterity of her brief existence, but its commissioning marked a step up in Henry's growing ambition to be seen as an innovator at the forefront of the artistic developments of his age, and the story surrounding its provision affords insights into the role of display and material culture in Henrician politics.

The article focuses on medieval finds clay figurines of horses. These toys were produced in the Rhineland, the Netherlands, southern and western Germany, then these patterns were distributed in Silesia, Bohemia, Austria and Moravia. Detailed analysis of finds from all these areas helped to supplement the knowledge of the figurines from Silesia.

This article examines the nature of school days and school years in later medieval Western Europe and considers the societal functions of the temporal cultures that emerged. The forms of the school day and year in elementary and grammar schools—alongside school- and youth-centered festivals—were replete with meaning and possessed utility beyond simple responses to environmental factors such as seasonal and meteorological changes. School authorities—whether ecclesiastical or municipal—saw the temporal cultures of medieval schools as a means to socialize children and to create and maintain collective community identities. By exploring a range of different traditions and regional variations, it is clear that the experience of the passage of time was imbued with meaning and social significance for medieval schoolchildren and their communities.

The article focuses on medieval finds clay figurines of horses. These toys were produced in the Rhineland, the Netherlands, southern and western Germany, then these patterns were distributed in Silesia, Bohemia, Austria and Moravia. Detailed analysis of finds from all these areas helped to supplement the knowledge of the figurines from Silesia.

A área da Praça da Figueira, em Lisboa, tem uma localização periférica face ao perímetro da cidade romana em sentido estrito. Na proximidade, a ocidente, foram detectados os restos de um circus, que de acordo com os dados publicados (SEPÚLVEDA et al., 2002) não poderá ser anterior aos principados de Domiciano ou Trajano. Para NE, na Encosta de Sant´Ana, trabalhos recentes deram a conhecer um caminho secundário com respectivas áreas funerárias, já conhecidas desde meados do séc. XIX. Para sul, nas zonas mais próximas ao Tejo, onde tinham lugar as actividades portuárias, pontuavam officinae de transformação de productos piscícolas. No final do séc.III/início do séc. IV o espaço escavado na praça assumiu um ar de paisagem arruinada, fruto de uma acção “desmonumentalizadora” da necrópole de Olisipo. Ainda assim, a área envolvente à grande via romana que conduzia a Scallabis, e daqui a Emerita e Bracara persistiu temporariamente como área de sepultamento (fase IV): predominando as inumações, praticadas no interior de ataúde em madeira ou em fossa simples aberta no solo, sobrevivem ainda cistas em tijolo destinadas a cremações, pelo menos num caso de tipo bustum. A fase V inicia-se numa etapa indefinida da segunda metade do séc. IV, prolongando-se ao longo do séc. V e seguinte(s ?). Caracteriza-se por uma baixa densidade ocupacional, tendo sido interpretada como equivalente a uma retracção da área suburbana NO da cidade, assumindo a área da Praça da Figueira um perfil periurbano, senão mesmo rural. Numa primeira etapa da investigação, e por questões de conveniência do discurso, a fase V englobou distintas realidades que hoje se podem distinguir. Assim, uma extensa unidade estratigráfica foi identificada na maior parte do espaço intervencionado, provável resultado de uma deposição longa no tempo. A disposição “universal” daquela U.E. e a sua sobreposição a duas importantes entidades integradas na fase V (via romana e um pequeno conjunto edificado) autoriza a distinção entre dois momentos diferenciados, objecto do presente trabalho e que denominámos A e B: no primeiro a via foi alvo de uma última reparação/ repavimentação, bem datada por dois numismas de Arcádio, como se instalou junto a ela uma provável unidade de exploração agrária, de carácer familiar, tendo sido colectados nos contextos de abandono de um dos dos compartimentos exemplares em terra sigillata clara africana D das formas Hayes 67 e 91B e praticado um sepultamento infantil; em B o espaço viário foi desprovido de qualquer estrutura detectada arqueologicamente e praticados três enterramentos de não adultos - dois com idade em torno do nascimento, dispersos e sem qualquer espólio associado - colocados durante o processo de formação da U.E. citada acima, revelando a inexistência de quaisquer evidências de uma preocupação na prática fúnebre, parecendo assumir significado o facto de não terem sido sepultados num espaço de cariz funerário
https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.5116.8961

Approaches from social history, medical anthropology, and the history of the emotions can aid in the understanding of sick and physically impaired children as they appeared in the miracle stories of medieval England. An analysis of the medical and religious meanings attached to bodily defects in the Middle Ages discovers that hagiographers harnessed the emotions evoked by childhood illness to create a distinctly Christian concept of childhood imperfection.

This volume analyses the constructions and realities of childhood in Poland, c. 1050-1300 CE, by examining a range of texts and considering the ways in which children fit within textual frameworks and genres. These texts include two major chronicles, monastic sources, and hagiography related to five major saints. The textual sources are put into conversation with findings from archaeology. The author argues that certain common themes, such as assumed care for children, the need for education, and the puer senex trope do feature through most texts of any genre, and the book also explores how Poland was similar to and different from the situation in western Europe.

Sin lugar a dudas, uno de los fenómenos más importantes de la Edad Media fue la aparición y proliferación de las reliquias. Aquellas que más veneración tenían eran las vinculadas a la Pasión de Jesucristo, sin embargo, existían otro tipo que siguieron fomentando la devoción: las reliquias de la Natividad y Epifanía de Jesús. Dentro de las mismas, podemos encontrar que las más veneradas responden al episodio del Nacimiento. Entre ellas, se encuentran restos del Santo Pañal, la Sagrada Cuna o gotas de la leche de la Virgen María. En el caso de la Epifanía, se veneraban los restos corporales de los Tres Reyes Magos y los regalos que estos entregaron a la Sagrada Familia. Con este tipo de objetos podemos ver que después del episodio de la Pasión, el Nacimiento y la Epifanía del Niño también generaron una gran devoción que se encuentra presente en la sociedad medieval a través de las múltiples reliquias que se veneraron por toda Europa.

This paper considers the presence of children and youths in the context of miracle cures and the hagiographies which record them.  The questioning of space here is two-fold:  on one hand, this paper will consider the reality of ‘minors’ within the religious space of these cult-centres; one the other, this paper considers the place of children and youths within the miracula themselves.
Through statistical, literary and textual analysis, alongside chosen case-studies, from eight twelfth-century hagiographies produced in England, this paper asks some key questions.  How were children identified both in miracula and at the shrine?  How did these younger cure-seekers interact with both the space and others within the space of the cult-centres?  Why was the ability to cure the young so important to these cults?  Adopting this innovative approach the paper will aim to shed light on the place of children within the sacred sphere of the saints’ cults.

This paper was written for 'Spaces and Places of Childhood and Youth', University of Reading (24th September 2015)