Raising children in the 15th century. Children about children in the Middle Ages and the attitude towards them, there are many...: tal_gilas - livejournal. Bastards in Jewish communities

17.10.2020

Some perceive the Middle Ages as a world of beautiful ladies and noble knights, while for others it seems like hell straight out of the paintings of Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Probably, in the world of the Middle Ages, as in the modern one, the beautiful coexisted next to the terrible - it all depends on where you look from.

Anke Behr offers to live for a short period of time with a twelve-year-old boy, Enders, the son of a merchant from the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. And the reader perceives the world of the medieval city as a twelve-year-old boy sees it, without thinking about causes and consequences and without making assessments. Together with Enders, we run to the port to meet his father, returning from a long journey, knowing that he already has an unusual coin hidden in his pocket - a gift for his son’s piggy bank; Together with Enders we run to school, where they force a hat in the shape of a donkey’s head on him for not learning a lesson. And we learn about the uprising of Lübeck artisans and small traders from the words of his friend Jos, the son of a blacksmith, who, repeating the words of his father, shouts angry accusations in his friend’s face. Together with Enders, we spend several days in delirium, while the doctor tries in vain to relieve the temperature with bloodletting and leeches, and we rejoice at the recovery.

Two years ago I was at a training camp in Tallinn, in the Old Town, where the atmosphere of a medieval city is carefully preserved: narrow streets are paved with cobblestones, shops sell nuts with sugar prepared according to ancient recipes, and on Town Hall Square there is still a pharmacy opened in the fifteenth century. One of the departments of this pharmacy works as a museum, and there you can see medieval potions: hedgehog powder, dried bats, rhinoceros horn poultice and toad skin tincture. They say that this pharmacy even has unicorn blood, but I didn’t notice it. Anke Behr's book seemed to take me back when, after training, we ran away from the hotel to wander through the ancient quarters and look into unusual shops.

Reading “Enders, the Merchant’s Son,” you understand that the history of a country, the history of civilization, is made up of hundreds of thousands of stories of specific people, their thoughts, feelings, and actions. And you understand that you and your life are also part of modern history.

But the most amazing thing is that in this book there is another, as if “built-in” book - an album about the art of medieval book illustration-miniatures. The book is illustrated in the way that a real medieval tome—a codex, as books were then called—could be decorated. Here you can see biblical scenes, genre scenes, floral ornaments, one of the popular medieval scenes - the “Dance of Death”, where daring skeletons grab the hands of rich and poor people and start dancing with them. And there are also absolutely fabulous stories. Here is a beautiful lady feeding a unicorn, but Enders and Jos are frightened by a terrible sea monster that looks like a dragon. And, dreaming of uncharted lands, Enders believed that they existed. These drawings are full of symbols and allusions that were understandable to people of the Middle Ages, which we still need to unravel.

Ksenia Barysheva

More about the book by Anke Behr “Endres, the merchant’s son. From the life of a medieval city,” Bogdan Ivanov told in the article

Eremina O.N. (Millerovo, Rostov region, MBOU gymnasium No. 1)

Tkacheva N.I. (Millerovo, Rostov region, MBOU gymnasium No. 1)

1. Arieza Philip “Child and family life under the Old Order” Ekaterinburg, 1999

2. Bessmertny Yu. L. Life and death in the Middle Ages. Essays on the demographic history of France. M.: Nauka, 1991.

3. J. Gies Marriage and family in the Middle Ages M., Russian Political Encyclopedia, 2002-384 p.

4. Gulik Z.N. Cruelty to children in the Middle Ages http://sun.tsu.ru/mminfo

5. Zider, R. Social history of the family in Western and Central Europe (late XVIII-XX centuries). M.: Vlados, 1997. 302 p. pp. 38-39.

6. Demose Lloyd “Psychohistory” Rostov-on-Don “Phoenix” 2000

7. Leonov S.A. “The evolution of childhood or what historians don’t want to talk about” http://www.b17.ru

8. Nestor “Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” https://studfiles.net

9. Sylvester “Domostroy” https://azbyka.ru

In the history of mankind, the attitude towards children, towards childhood, in general, the relationship between parents and children, has changed very significantly, and in order to understand and evaluate the current stage of our lives, it is useful to know how things were in the past.

In that academic year We first became acquainted with the history of the Middle Ages. While studying the culture of everyday life of this period, I discovered one thing that was very interesting to me. According to the materials, children in the Medieval West were treated differently than modern parents to your children. Parents, of course, always love their children. But the environment dictates the norms of education, and in the Middle Ages they were quite strange from a modern perspective.

Object of study: the life of a medieval person. Subject of research: living conditions of children of the Middle Ages. The topic of our research is “Children of the Middle Ages”.

The problem with the research is that modern children do not know how children lived much earlier, in the Middle Ages. However, it is important to remember about children everything that happened to them in any era. We can confidently say that their life was far from today's ideal. “The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The deeper you go into history, the less care there is for children and the more likely a child is to be killed, abandoned, beaten...” These are the words that begin the section on the Evolution of Childhood in the book “Psychohistory” by Lloyd de Maus. Is that really true? Did the parents love their children? This is what we had to find out.

The relevance of the topic of this work is due to the fact that nowadays children are an important part of society, their problems and joys become the subject of close attention, regardless of age and location. The life of children is becoming more and more interesting, this is facilitated by technological progress and the desire of parents to create for their child ideal conditions for growing up. Today we know, if not everything, then a significant part about children.

Childhood is a period that lasts from newbornhood to full social and, therefore, psychological maturity. The modern attitude towards children on the part of adults is an attitude where love and a desire to help in everything reigns. In modern society, the ideas of individualism and the originality of each soul prevail. Has it always been like this?

The novelty of our work lies in the fact that we studied and identified the living conditions of children in the Middle Ages, using a variety of points of view.

Hypothesis: the life of children in the Middle Ages was much harder than today.

Purpose of the study: to find out what the life of a medieval child was like.

To achieve this goal, we have set ourselves the following tasks:

Study literature and sources devoted to the study of childhood in the Middle Ages;

Analyze the daily life of a medieval child;

Understand and comprehend the relationships of adults to children in medieval society;

Create a presentation.

Research methods: study of theoretical material, questionnaires, analysis, comparison, generalization.

Unfortunately, there are practically no historical sources on this issue. Some of the most serious works on the problem of medieval childhood are the works of: the American historian and psychologist Lloyd Demos “Psychohistory”, the French historian Philippe Ariès “The Child and Family Life under the Old Order”. It was these works that became the basis of our research. In addition, in our work we used such a source as “Domostroy”, the authorship of which is attributed to the priest Sylvester.

Expected results of the study:

1) revealing the topic will help students learn more about the life of children in the Middle Ages;

2) the work may be of interest to students in studying the life of their peers in the Middle Ages;

3) the results of the study can be used by teachers when preparing lessons, cool hours on the topic “Children of the Middle Ages”;

4) the work can be used to conduct further research on this topic.

In conclusion, the main conclusions obtained from our study are presented. The practical significance of this work is that the results can be used in history lessons, social studies and in extracurricular activities.

Chapter I. Brief description of the periods of childhood in the Middle Ages

People know quite a lot about the history of the Middle Ages from the lives of adults, accomplished people. And if we look at that time through the eyes of children, perhaps we will get a completely different understanding of those years.

Scientists who have studied the situation of children in the Middle Ages usually divide childhood into several periods. We also took advantage of this periodization.

Childhood: from 0 to 7

Infant mortality was high in the Middle Ages. About a third of children did not live to reach the age of five, and 10% died within a month of birth. In this regard, children were baptized very early, most often the day after birth.

In poor, large families, a newborn could become a burden, and infanticide, especially in the Early Middle Ages, was not uncommon. In the Scandinavian North, the custom of “carrying out” children, that is, leaving them far from home to die, persisted for some time even after the adoption of Christianity. Sick and weak babies, especially girls, were doomed to death. The child received the right to exist only after the father put him on his lap and moistened his forehead with water.

An almost universal custom was to restrict the child’s freedom of movement with various devices. The most important aspect of a child's life in his early years was swaddling.

As recent medical studies have shown, swaddled babies are extremely passive, their heart rate is slow, they cry less, they sleep much more, and in general they are so quiet and lethargic that they cause very little trouble for their parents.

When the child left diaper age, other methods of restricting mobility were used on him, different in each country and for each era. Sometimes children were tied to chairs to prevent them from crawling. Until the nineteenth century, aids were tied to a child’s clothing in order to better monitor him and guide him in the right direction.

Bartholomeus Mettlinger, in his Book of Children of 1473, strongly discourages a mother from breastfeeding her baby in the first 14 days after birth, because her milk has not yet acquired beneficial properties. During these two weeks, the nurse should do the feeding, and the author of the work recommends sucking the mother’s milk with the help of a she-wolf (as it says in the original text, but it could be about a puppy). If the mother still wants to breastfeed her baby on her own immediately after birth, it is recommended to give the baby a drop of honey before feeding, and then the mother’s milk will not be so harmful for him.

Paleopathology gives us a lot of data - the study of injuries and diseases of people from their remains. And the bones of children can tell a lot. There were frequent cases of rickets among infants - apparently due to the fact that mothers forced to work hard swaddled them longer (to carry them in the field). In children 6-11 years old, increased growth of peri-cartilaginous bones is observed - a sign of increased injuries associated with the need to work from an early age. Finally, there are a lot of signs of caries (the children’s diet included little meat and dairy products, and the proportion of bread increased).

Either due to busyness, or due to life circumstances, parents did not care too much about the safety of their children. Therefore, tragic incidents were very frequent.

Local judges usually list tragic cases with censure: “A small child, left unattended, walked out of parents' house and fell into the pond; a two-year-old girl died when left unattended. Maud, the daughter of William Bigg, was left in the care of a blind old woman while her mother went to visit neighbors. When she returned, she discovered that the child had fallen into a ditch and drowned. A seven-month-old baby was left in the care of a three-year-old boy. The newborn girl was left in the crib under the care of three-year-old Agnes; she started playing in the yard, and when she returned, she discovered that the baby had suffocated.” “Little girls often die by falling into a river, a well, or a cauldron on a fire,” a contemporary writes warningly. “And a five-year-old boy is a poor guardian for an infant.”

The period up to 7 years was considered of little value and quickly ending. And interest in the child arose when he reached the age of 7.

Adolescence: 7 to 12

“Adults in miniature” - this is how children at this age were treated. Even according to church laws, it was believed that if a child can distinguish good from evil, it means he has already grown up. Now he is obliged to share all the hardships and work of an adult that exceeds his physical capabilities. The only concession was made to the “mind”, i.e. at the age of 7-12 years - it's easy foolish man, who must keep quiet and do whatever he is told. His job is to listen to his elders, remain silent and submit to everyone without complaint.

As soon as the child left diaper age, he began to imitate the type of life and relationships that surrounded him. Girls began to spin from an early age, regardless of whether they grew up in a castle or in a village house. Which doesn't mean they always followed in their mothers' footsteps.

Children were sent away from their parents' home regardless of class: everyone, without exception, had to send their children to other people's houses and, in exchange, accept someone else's children into their own home.

In the 14th century, the Florentine merchant Paolo of Certaldo advised: “If you have a son who is good for nothing, hand him over to a merchant so that he can send him to distant lands. Or you sent him to one of your close friends... Nothing can be done. As long as your son remains with you, he will not find any use for himself in life.”

It was customary for aristocrats to give their children to be raised by richer relatives. And a city resident could send his child to be trained by masters. The death of a child at this age already became a loss for the family, because she lost a couple of working hands. But there was no mourning or bitter regret about the loss of my own child. The father had extensive rights over children in a medieval family.

Historical monuments of German medieval legislation affirm the right of fathers to sell children in extreme cases, during famine, with only some restrictions in favor of those being sold. Thus, in Saxon cities, the law gave the father the right to sell and mortgage children during famine, but in such a way that there was no danger to their lives and oppression of religious beliefs.

The child did not differ from the adult in his clothes; they were only tailored to his height. As is clear from the works of art, the artists did not know how to adequately depict children's faces, and this inability again indicates a lack of interest in childhood.

Adulthood

At the age of 12, full-fledged adulthood. From this age it was possible to get married (for girls) and take on all the adult work completely on your shoulders. No allowances are made for physical strength, experience or knowledge. Any violation is punishable as for an ordinary adult. Even a court can convict a teenager based on general rules. High mortality among all segments of the population led to the fact that not all children lived to be 20 years old.

According to English sources, after reaching the age of twelve, each boy joined the "Group of Ten" - a legal fraternity of 10 villagers. Each of these groups was a kind of justice - all the others could answer for the crime of one. Blood feuds became a thing of the past; the Group of Ten became a kind of predecessor of modern police and public order policing. Each man from the age of 12 was responsible for the other 9, it was impossible to evade. Anyone who did not join the Group of Ten was considered an outlaw.

The role of wet nurses in the life of a medieval child

Wealthy women in the 13th century. The use of wet nurses was so widespread that manuals for parish priests advised against the practice as contrary to the wisdom of both Scripture and science.

Sculptures in churches and miniatures in manuscripts depict the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus, but sermons and parables had no effect on the nobility, who continued to bring wet nurses into the house not only to feed babies, but also to care for growing children. For example, at Kenilworth Castle, each of the Montfort children had their own nanny.

When choosing a wet nurse, responsible parents looked for a clean, healthy young woman of good character and ensured that she followed a proper routine and diet. Trotula of Salerno, a female physician from Italy, recommended that the nurse get plenty of rest and sleep, abstain from “salty, spicy, sour and astringent” foods, especially garlic, and avoid agitation. As soon as the baby could eat solid food, Trotula advised that he be given pieces of chicken, pheasant or partridge breast “the size and shape of acorns. He will be able to hold them in his hand and play with them and, while sucking on them, will swallow them little by little.”

The tradition of giving away children was so strong that it existed in England and America until the eighteenth century, in France until the nineteenth, in Germany until the twentieth. In 1780, the head of the Parisian police gives the following approximate figures: every year 21,000 children are born in the city, of which 17,000 are sent to village nurses, 2,000 or 3,000 are sent to infant homes, 700 are nursed by wet nurses in their parents’ homes, and only 700 are breastfed by their mothers .

1.2. Education methods

There was no special education for children. In principle, they did not care for the child. In wealthy aristocratic families, children were given to a wet nurse immediately after birth. Among artisans and peasants, from an early age the child crawled around the kitchen and house, unnoticed by anyone. The kids were not given any games, no conversations, or any skills.

He had to learn everything himself, looking at adults. Children of this age were not noticed and were not embarrassed.

Beatings and infliction of pain are the main elements of what we consider to be cruel educational practices. Up until the eighteenth century, a very large percentage of children were regularly beaten. Even being part of the royal family did not exempt you from beatings. Already, as king, Louis XIII often woke up in horror at night, expecting a morning flogging. On the day of his coronation, eight-year-old Louis was flogged, and he said: “It would be better for me to do without all these honors, as long as they don’t flog me.”

For example, in “The Account of Life” by G. Conversini da Ravenna one can find many descriptions of the cruel method of teaching children. Giovanni studied at the Filippino da Luga school, to which his father sent him. The author recalls with a shudder the incident with an eight-year-old boy who studied with him: “I am silent about how the teacher beat and kicked the kid. When one day he failed to recite a verse of a psalm, Filippino flogged him so that blood flowed, and while the boy screamed desperately, he hung him with his legs tied, naked, to the water level in the well... Although the feast of Blessed Martin was approaching, he [Filippino ] stubbornly refused to cancel the punishment until after breakfast.” As a result, the boy was taken out of the well, half-dead from wounds and cold, “pale in the face near death».

A certain London resident, whose neighbor’s little son came into her workshop to play and took a piece of wool from a basket, hit him on the head with her fist so hard that the boy died two days later (the court acquitted the woman, recognizing the murder as unintentional and as a result of a completely legitimate desire “discipline” a naughty child).

For example, in Guibert of Nojansky’s essay “Monody,” the author talks about his training: “he [the teacher] showered me with a hail of slaps and kicks almost every day in order to force me to understand by force what he could not explain himself.” It is noteworthy that Guibert Nozhansky realized the injustice and uselessness of such teacher behavior, although the author believes that there were benefits from the classes.

“Advice from a father to his son” by the Czech writer, bachelor of the University of Prague Smil Flaschka (mid-14th century - 1403), “Discourses on family management” by the medieval Italian teacher Pandolfini, etc. This pious teacher of morality gives the following advice to fathers of families: “Son or Imashi, did not reach the thread in his youth, but crushed his ribs; If you beat him with a rod, he will not die, but he will be healthy, or the daughter of Imashi, lay your thunder on her.” This stern moralist forbids even laughing and playing with the child.

The instruments of beating were a variety of whips and whips, cats, scoops, sticks, iron and wooden rods, bundles of rods, special whips from a small chain (the so-called “disciplines”), special school inventions, such as a beater with a pear-shaped extension at the end and a round hole for blisters to pop up. Comparative frequency of use different methods appears from the list of one German schoolteacher, who calculated that he administered a total of 911,527 canings, 124,000 lashes, 136,715 hand slaps and 1,115,800 slaps.

1.3. Raising children in monasteries

Not only adult monks served in English monasteries; 7-year-old children also became spiritual mentors. The monasteries of the Middle Ages were nothing like schools, as is customary now. None of the church “disciples” (they were called child oblates) returned home after the service. Everyone remained to serve in the monastery until the end of their days. Such early spiritual enlightenment was due to the desire of adults to quickly redeem children from all kinds of sins.

And what before the child sent to a monastery, so much the better. Most of them never saw their parents again. Those who came to the monastery were dressed in monastic robes and immediately forced to learn the rules. You can imagine how difficult it was for children under 10 who had to get up at midnight and go to the chapel for service 3 hours later. And there were several such services a day, they continued all year round, without interruption. The execution of the daily routine was strictly controlled by senior monks; any offense was immediately punished. Punishment could include strict fasting or lashes on the naked body. No one punished adult monks who made similar mistakes in this way.

Children entered the monastery regardless of the condition of their parents. Rather, on the contrary, wealthy residents specifically sent their children to the monastery, thereby showing respect to the Almighty. They sincerely believed that by sending a child to a monastery, he would save their souls from going to hell with his prayers.

1.4. Raising in knightly families

Raising boys

The education of male children was from the very beginning aimed at acquiring knightly skills and studying court morals, while the “sacred arts” were studied, as it were, by the way. Sons of noble houses often received very serious religious education at the age of seven.

From the 7th year of life, boys learned to introduce themselves to girls, where it was not the father who took upon himself to raise his son, but the “educator”. The boy could be given to be raised by a knight or, finally, to the ducal palace with other peers of his age and class. Mostly boys studied physical exercise, the art of hunting, crossbow shooting, participated in tournaments and learned the science of warfare.

In addition, boys from noble families learned court manners, learned to sing, play the harp, gusli and violin. For studying foreign languages they were given the opportunity to travel to foreign countries. The noble side of knightly education was that boys and young men had to learn the rules of treating a lady.

At the age of 14, young men underwent not only the science of external decency, but also serious training as a “squire” in the practical service of a knight was required. The youth were now becoming fit for military service. After passing probationary period the young man in the circle of knights received a reward in a simple form, and after a battle or after a won victory on the battlefield, in a solemn atmosphere with the celebration of the entire court or in the church with an oath to protect the church, widows and orphans, not to start an unjust enmity, to honor women, he was awarded gold spurs and was blessed with a sword.

But in order to become a knight, considerable financial expenses were required, so the children of nobles had a greater chance of becoming a knight. In the Middle Ages, a teenager from a wealthy family could receive a generous reward, and by becoming a knight, he could receive benefits in the form of a piece of land or high status in society, which in the Middle Ages was perhaps the most important thing. Among the numerous castles in England, luxurious, well-fortified castles of knights and wealthy classes have always stood out as an indicator of their own greatness and status. Such buildings were perfect for training future knights. One such castle, Bodiam, built by Sir Edward Delangridge, became the first military academy in history. It was possible to study the art of knighthood from the age of 6-7 years. If the boy had a noble origin, he was sent to live in another castle with a lord who was a fully trained knight. Any boy began his long path to fame by serving as an ordinary page. A page is something like a servant who, in addition to his daily duties, learned the basics of chivalry in the evening. The future knight had to sweep the floor and clean the stable every day.

The most thankless role was that of a whipping boy, who had to serve at court and take beatings instead of the grandchildren and children of the masters. It was also not an easy task to work as a pisser, who had to rush to the call with a chamber pot at parties and balls for adult gentlemen, due to the lack of a toilet, to push the chamber pot under the crinoline of the ladies.

Young knights were taught to be respectful; there were special rules of conduct among knights.

The children of aristocrats, surprisingly, were the most unfree of all.

Throughout the medieval period, land was the source of wealth and status. Kings and lords have always fought bitterly for land. Children were often the victims of this struggle. If they were left orphans with an inheritance, they often became a vulnerable card on the battlefield for land ownership. In 1444 Margaret Beaufort became one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country. When her father died, Margaret's guardian quickly married her to his son, although both were under 8. Because of her enormous wealth, the little girl found herself the center of political games - the King of England annulled her first marriage and married Margaret to his brother, to whom was 26, despite the fact that the girl was only 12. To get her wealth, the newly-made husband conceived the girl’s first child after 2 months of marriage. A few months later, her husband died in the civil war, and 3 months later, a son was born to a 12-year-old girl who had been in 2 marriages and was widowed. The son who was destined to change the entire history of England. He would become a powerful king who would unite England after the War of the Roses. His name was Henry 7, who later founded the Tudor dynasty.

Raising girls

Since the knightly, courtly, male world considered a woman, she became the pole around which court poetry was concentrated. Thus, women became the patroness and protectors of literature.

Well-mannered women and girls were those who could sing, hold a conversation, play the harp, or read epic poems expressively. An educated young lady was required to master the fine arts handmade, skills in reading and writing, singing, playing musical instruments, as well as knowledge of foreign languages.

In Middle Times, they were raised in the spirit of asceticism; according to the customs of those times, a girl had to be modest, submissive to her father and husband, she was obliged to malnourish and pray constantly. Under no circumstances should she leave home before marriage without being accompanied by loved ones.

1.5. Raising in peasant families

Compared to noble children, the daily lives of rural children were significantly different. The mortality rate of peasant children in the country was very high. Most children died before they reached their first birthday. As a result, parents were not as emotionally connected to their child. They knew that in the near future they would have a new child who would take the place of the deceased. As a result, the child received less affection and love with all the social and emotional consequences.

Not much attention was paid to children's education. Instead, they were left to their own devices, growing up in society, listening to parents and relatives sing and tell stories, watching adults drink and dance at festivals, learning early on the hard work of adults by watching and imitating them.

Rural children were treated as free labor by their parents, who often lived on the edge of poverty. Children, from the time they could walk, had to work in the fields. Work in the field began early and was quite painstaking and boring, and most importantly, incredibly difficult for a boy of 8-9 years old. If children did not carry out assignments or their duties, they faced severe physical punishment. On average, boys reached marriageable age at 14 years old, and girls at 12; this period could differ depending on the region and the customs of the people inhabiting it. Raising children could differ significantly depending on the situation of the family.

1.6. Education of citizens

Masters often took on children aged 12 years and older for training, and the relationship between them was regulated by a special agreement. This contract was made in 2 copies, one of them was a copy. Only by adding two contracts could the authenticity of such an agreement be proven. The terms of the contracts are from 7 to 12 years, depending on the age of the boy. The contract described strict rules for the boy to live with the employer - it was forbidden to gamble and communicate with the opposite sex. In case of violation of the rules, the punishment was quite interesting - doubling the service life.

Young apprentices were a very valuable source of cheap labor in an urban environment. Many of them saved up their savings in order to open their own businesses. However, due to their age, most of them spent money on entertainment and ended up with nothing. But the most persistent, not tempted by temptation, had a great future ahead of them. Joining the Merchants' Guild opened up new opportunities for growth for young entrepreneurs.

Thus, a special class of young artisans with their own businesses made a huge contribution to the development of the English economy.

All of the above allows us to draw the following conclusions:

Medieval childhood was a short period, and the child early joined the world of adults, began to work or learn knightly occupations.

As can be seen from everything said above, such a concept of “raising children” did not exist. The child was not the center family life. His position in the family was in many cases marked by lack of rights; his father had complete control over his life and death.

Thus, we see that the principles and methods of raising children during this period were dictated by the difficult living conditions of the vast majority of the population. However, it can be noted that each of the ages represents a static state. The emphasis in these classifications was not on the process of transition from one age to another, but on the characteristics of each of them, considered in isolation.

Chapter II. Entertainment for children of the Middle Ages

2.1. Children's games

As a result of our research, we discovered several other memories. This is what the 13th century Franciscan monk, known as Bartholomew of England, wrote about contemporary children in his encyclopedia “On the Properties of Things.” “Children often have bad habits and think only about the present, neglecting the future. They love games and empty activities, not paying attention to what is profitable and useful. They consider things that are not important to be important and important things to be unimportant. They cry and sob more over the loss of an apple than over the loss of an inheritance. They forget the favors shown to them. They love to talk to other children and avoid the company of old people. They keep no secrets, but repeat everything they see and hear. They alternately cry and laugh, constantly scream, chatter and laugh. Once washed, they get dirty again. When their mothers wash them and comb their hair, they kick, punch and kick and resist with all their might. They think only about their bellies, always wanting to eat and drink. As soon as they get out of bed, they are already hungry for food.”

Medieval manuscripts often contain images of children playing. A clear confirmation of this fact is Bruegel’s painting “Children at Play” [Appendix 1], written more than 500 years ago. It depicts many children playing the way a modern person imagines - some are playing dice, girls are twirling in colorful skirts, some seem to be acting out a wedding scene.

The child's activities consisted of various games. Such as hide-and-seek, blind man's buff, leapfrog, etc. and toys: balls, bones, grandmothers, tops, wooden horses, rag and leather balls, dolls with moving arms and legs, planed from wood, miniature dishes.

There is a lot of evidence that medieval people were not at all deprived of a sense of love and affection for their children, that they were cared for and educated. Letters from the 9th century from the Frankish noble woman Duoda have been preserved, in which she expresses maternal care for her son living in a foreign land.

There are cases where mothers diligently cared for the survival of their frail babies, even resorting to magical means. The French inquisitor Etienne de Bourbon (mid-13th century) left evidence of the peasant cult of St. who outraged him. Guinefor, who turned out to be a greyhound dog. Peasant women from an area near Lyon brought their sick newborns to the grave of this “saint” for healing.

To sum up, we can say that the expression of parental feelings towards children is difficult to detect when there are few sources of the type of sources in which feelings in general are usually embodied: memoirs, personal letters and biographies. But in the course of the study, it was revealed that images of children playing often appear in medieval manuscripts.

Thus, we see that during the Middle Ages, children were not deprived of the love of their parents, and, despite having certain responsibilities, children had the opportunity to play and have fun.

Chapter III. Questionnaire

In order to find out what my peers think about their childhood and whether they know about the life of children in the Middle Ages, we decided to conduct a sociological survey [Appendix 2] among students of our gymnasium. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire method. The survey involved middle school students - grades 5-8.

Respondents were asked the following questions:

We got the following results:

90% believe that the child’s age corresponds to the period from 0 to 17 years;

6% period from 0 to 14 years

4% period from 0 to 12 years

74% consider their childhood happy

21% find it difficult to answer

5% consider their childhood unhappy

As a result, we found out that the vast majority of respondents identified the age from birth to 17 years as childhood; the vast majority consider their childhood years to be happy, but they are not interested in the life of children in early historical periods.

After familiarizing students with the materials research work, we conducted a repeated survey [Appendix 2].

As a result, we received the following data:

Regarding the first question [Appendix 3]:

80% still consider childhood to be the period from 0 to 17 years

15% - from 0 to 14 years

5% - from 0 to 12 years

On the second question [Appendix 4]:

91% consider their childhood happy

7% undecided

2% consider their childhood unhappy

On the third question [Appendix 5]:

As a result of repeated questioning, we found out that, having become acquainted with the materials of the research work, schoolchildren:

Having compared the childhood of modern children with the medieval one, they began to consider their childhood happier;

The overwhelming majority of schoolchildren, who had previously not been interested in the history of children, showed interest in the problem of medieval childhood that we raised.

Annex 1

Painting “Children's Games” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (detail of the painting)

Appendix 2

What age do you think a person can be considered a child?

A) A person aged 0 to 12 years

B) A person aged 0 to 17 years

B) A person aged 0 to 14 years

Do you consider your childhood happy?

B) I don’t know

Are you interested in the lives of children in early historical periods, such as the Middle Ages?

B) Never thought about it

Appendix 3

What age do you think a person can be considered a child?

Appendix 4

Do you consider your childhood happy?

Appendix 5

Are you interested in the lives of children in early historical periods, such as the Middle Ages?

Conclusion

At the end of the work done, the following conclusions can be formulated:

1.Childhood was a short period; the children of peasants began to work together with their parents, and the children of city dwellers went to learn a craft. In adolescence, the sons of noble parents were often sent to be raised in the house of their overlord, and girls were married off early.

2. The principles of raising children during this period of history were dictated by life itself and the church. Denying the need for the harmonious development of a child, church ministers promoted only the “fear of God.”

3. However, medieval parents loved their children, in general, the same way as the average modern parent. Society demanded a different upbringing than in our days, but this does not mean that parental love did not exist.

4. We can confidently say that their life was far from today's ideal. They had their own problems, games and responsibilities. To many, medieval life will seem somewhat cruel, but we can’t change anything. Oh times, oh morals! . This is precisely the expression that can characterize the attitude towards children in the Middle Ages.

5. Thanks to the research, modern children began to consider their childhood happier.

Consequently, the hypothesis of our research was confirmed: the life of children in the Middle Ages was much harder than modern life.

There have always been children and there will always be children. Their proper upbringing and care - vital role modern society. The Middle Ages helped many followers take a fresh look at childhood, understand it and accept it as the most important stage human development.

Bibliographic link

Tkachev A.A. CHILDREN OF THE MIDDLE AGES // Start in science. – 2018. – No. 5-2. – P. 253-262;
URL: http://science-start.ru/ru/article/view?id=1089 (access date: 04/03/2020).

"Children's Games", Pieter Bruegel Sr.

Infancy

Children of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were divided by fate into two categories - aristocrats and commoners - and their lives were very different depending on which group they belonged to. From birth, the children of the aristocracy and wealthy class were raised by servants, nannies and educators. The prince might have two nurses, four nannies who rocked the cradle, one or more maids and a washerwoman. As soon as he began to walk, footmen were assigned to him, who followed him, making sure that he did not fall and tear his expensive clothes. His mother did not breastfeed him because breast-feeding, as is known, reduced the chances of conception, and she had to bear as many children as possible for the dynasty.

A commoner's mother was more likely to nurse her child and therefore be more attached to it. But the larger the family, the more trouble the mother had, so other children had to help with the younger ones and rock the cradle, change diapers, and do laundry. Childcare was a welcome reprieve from work for both mothers and children.

The babies in both classes were constantly swaddled to prevent them from catching colds, but most importantly to prevent their tiny limbs from becoming twisted. In addition, in this position, children were less likely to fall out of their cribs, which seemed to be a problem. Local authorities kept records of accidents where the ropes used to hang cribs were wrapped around necks, or when children fell out of them and died. On the other hand, it was considered common practice to leave a child alone in a cradle, provided that he was swaddled. Children wore necklaces made of large coral beads to protect them from evil. Imagine: a cord, large beads, even pendants made of sharp corals... What terrible thing could happen?

Babies who learned to walk were in greater danger, since they could fall into a fire or a pot of water at any moment. Therefore, they were often "tied to their mother's apron" or placed in a wooden walker. Even drawings of small children on leashes or belts have been preserved. Around the same time that babies were weaned, they began to eat soft food called tyura. It was made from porridge, milk or bread soaked in almond milk. Sometimes the nannies chewed the food and then fed it to the babies. This was the custom down to Tudor and Elizabethan times.

Infancy was supposed to last until the age of seven. Before that, girls and boys were raised the same, and they all lived under the care of women in the nursery. They played with animals and toys - dolls, balls, hoops, miniature utensils and small musical instruments. But boys were allowed to play with knives, bows and arrows, toy swords and horses on a stick.

Children up to adolescence

At the age of seven, children left the nursery and were handed over to teachers, went to a city school, or began to learn a craft. Some were sent to boarding schools, where they wore long black robes over their clothes as a sign of their learning. They woke up with the first rays of the sun, prayed, washed, got dressed, ate a light breakfast and went to class by 6 am. At 11 o'clock in the morning they had lunch in the great hall or went home to eat if they lived in the city. The days were spent studying, working and playing. Around five in the evening they sat down to a modest dinner. Children were exempt from fasting and other dietary restrictions imposed by the church at this time. But some pious children could fast with adults.

The children went to bed early, often before sunset, immediately after prayers. At boarding school they slept two in a bed until they were fourteen, after which they were considered adults and slept alone. Poor children slept at home in the same bed as their siblings or parents - not only to keep warm, but also because beds were very expensive. Even among the rich, real beds were reserved only for adults. The cribs for children were more like a mattress made of hay on a stand. After the age of seven, the children slept only with siblings of the same sex, a dog, and a couple dozen fleas. Even the children of aristocrats shared their bedrooms with siblings and their servants. Sleeping alone was considered strange, lonely and sad.

Children, especially those under seven years old, played on outdoors completely naked, and no one was surprised. The older boys swam or played in the rain naked, the girls only in a light shirt. The boys also did not hesitate to relieve themselves on the street and relieve themselves from the bridge. The girls were more modest - they used the chamber pot or the toilet. A handful of hay or dry leaves was used for wiping. The rich could afford to cut old blankets or clothes into napkins, but apparently did not wash their hands afterwards, despite the fact that hand washing was mandatory after waking up, before eating and going to bed.

Games

After school or housework, children went outside to play, either alone or in the company of older children. Basically the games were simple: running, jumping, classes, singing, dancing, hunting, fishing, throwing stones, climbing trees. The children also played team games - hide and seek, leapfrog, jumping, acrobatics and wrestling. They played with toys such as hoops, balls, throwing sticks, horses on a stick, jump ropes, stilts, swings, shuttlecock (badminton), croquet, skittles (bowling), cloche (like golf), football and tennis. Children and adults played cards, dice and Board games: chess, checkers, backgammon, mill and board games such as lila and cribbage. They could be drawn on the ground and played with pieces made from pebbles and cherry pits.

For older children, it was time for games of skill with dough, coins and knives. Children from wealthy families hunted and rode horses. At local fairs and religious events, competitions were held for girls and boys, where prizes were awarded to the best.

Snow and cold provided scope for other activities. Children built snow forts and threw snowballs, skated on ponds and streams on bone skates, and sledded down hills and ice slides. Spring brought with it a change in weather and the opportunity to play with newborn animals. Summer was sometimes for catching birds and insects, swimming and playing in the water, weaving flower wreaths and walking.

Study and work

We tend to think that people in the Middle Ages were illiterate, but most children learned to read at home, in church or city schools. Until the 14th century, most schools charged fees, until the German free education movement caused many municipalities to offer free education to boys and, in some cities, to girls. This was seen as a contribution to the wealth and piety of the community as a whole. Girls also learned to read at home or in monasteries. The textbook was the Bible translated into the local language.
Learning trades, including carpentry and candle making, was as important to a medieval child as learning to read or math. As early as possible, teenagers learned what their parents did, or became apprentices to learn the basics of another craft. Some young women studied brewing, trading, dyeing, weaving, or midwifery, but most girls were trained to manage households. Girls learned to clean the house, cook, manage servants, sew, and care for children. They also knew how to collect medicinal herbs in the forest, make medicine, treat all types of wounds and even set bones, since the services of doctors were very expensive. Boys worked with their relatives in the fields, mines, stables and workshops. At first they could only do small tasks, but by the time they were 13 years old, they could do almost any job in their father's workshop.

Keywords

CRUELTY / CHILDREN / MIDDLE AGES / CRUELTY / CHILDREN / THE MIDDLE AGES

annotation scientific article on sociological sciences, author of the scientific work - Gulik Zoya Nikolaevna

The cruel treatment of children in the Middle Ages in Western Europe and Rus' is considered. During this period, a certain stereotype of attitude towards a child developed, which can be defined as “neglect”; despotic orders reigned in the family; cruel methods of education were considered the norm. The author made an attempt to reconstruct changes in the behavioral code of medieval people regarding cruelty

Text of scientific work on the topic “Cruelty to children in the Middle Ages”

Z.N. Gulik

CRUEL TREATMENT TO CHILDREN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The work was carried out with the support of the non-profit organization “Charity Fund for Cultural Initiatives”

(Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation)"

Key words: cruelty; children; Middle Ages.

Childhood is a traditional and one of the most important subjects in the socio-anthropological study of cultures of the past and present. It represents a problem whose solution lies in the field of interdisciplinary research. The modern attitude towards children and offspring on the part of adults is declared as an attitude permeated with love and selflessness. Precedents that contradict this cause bewilderment, disapproval and condemnation of society. Modern society is dominated by the ideas of child-centrism and individualism, the value and uniqueness of every child’s soul. But has it always been like this? Have the concepts of “child” and “childhood” always had the meaning that we give them today? According to research by anthropologists and archaeologists, primitive man and modern people have no biological differences. Differences in the lives of ancient and modern people are observed at the social level.

Childhood is a period of human life that lasts from birth until the onset of active puberty, the formation of a worldview and the emergence of opportunities to perform socially necessary activities subject to self-control and responsibility. It is obvious to historians that the phenomenon of childhood in different cultures had different historical and psychological content. This article makes an attempt to consider the attitude towards children in Western Europe and to identify the reasons for the historical uniqueness of the attitude of adults towards their children, which we will try to identify by comparing childhood in Western Europe and in Russia.

Consider the concept of “cruelty.” Firstly, it is used to describe and define such actions and deeds that, from the point of view of a modern person, are considered negative, i.e. rude, inhumane, unnatural. In everyday life, they are associated with primitive religious cults, the manifestation of unbridled passions, states of “eclipse of reason,” with violent lawless actions of authorities or people, with violation of justice. Secondly, the concept of “cruelty” acts as an ethical and social characteristic in a situation where some are accused, others are justified, and others are insulted.

In the era of barbarism and chivalry, cruelty was organically inherent in members of society. For a Zulu, scalping an enemy and eating his head is the highest valor. Echoes of archaic cruelty can be found in Western European medieval literature.

The “Song of the Nibelungs” describes an archaic ritual when the winner drinks the blood of the enemy: “Realizing that reasonable advice had been given to their friend, / The Burgundians began to drink the blood from the wounds of the dead, / And this added so much strength to the fighters, / That they took away they then become friends with many ladies.” However, Fraser, in the now classic “Golden Bough,” gives many similar examples. In this work we will proceed from the fact that cruelty is behavior that goes beyond the use of force on a scale that calls into question the viability of a social system.

To understand the behavior of adults towards a child in the Middle Ages, let’s first try to understand the views of a medieval person on childhood. The Middle Ages inherited very contradictory attitudes towards childhood. As D. Herkley writes in his work “Medieval Children,” all the peoples of the Roman Empire, excluding the Jews, allowed infanticide in cases of the birth of sick or excess children. The father in the Roman family had the right to refuse the newborn the act of zizzerio, accepting him into the family, and thereby doomed him to death. However, the author notes that the ancients cared about the upbringing of children, which was very harsh.

The barbarians' attitudes towards childhood seemed to be different. The Germans, according to Tacitus, do not kill children; they love to have a lot of them, but do not pay attention to their upbringing, and only on the threshold of manhood does a boy acquire value for the society of warriors. The Wegeld tariffs in the barbaric “truths” indicate that the life of an adult, especially a man, was valued incomparably higher than the life of a child or an old man. In Scandinavia, there was a widely known custom when anyone could do whatever they wanted with a child taken out of the house by the bond (owner). This is the fate of children “doomed to the grave.” The great poverty of the Scandinavian world gave rise to a tradition that the authors do not mention in relation to the Germans.

In the Middle Ages, children were treated differently than in modern times, which, as we read in the article “The Child in the Early Middle Ages” by Pierre Richet, was characterized by a general dislike for them (although this statement seems controversial to the author of this article). In support of this thesis, P. Richet cites data that many men and women refused to have children, seeing them only as a burden. In this regard, the author draws attention to numerous indications from early medieval monuments about the use of anti-

rudimentary remedies (for example, “bad drink” that prevented pregnancy), about abortion, murder and abandonment of newborns.

During the Middle Ages, there was a certain stereotype of attitude towards a child. The uniqueness of the behavioral model of adults of that time was not that people were deprived of parental feelings, but in their specificity: ardent love for children was combined with fatalism, humility before fate, and passivity in overcoming the misfortune that threatened the child. This was largely due to the underdevelopment of the rational and intellectual tools of human consciousness in the Middle Ages, to the narrowness of the spiritual world, which led to a lack of understanding of the specifics of children's behavior, in particular the physical and psychological characteristics of childhood and adolescence. Of certain importance was also the fact that with frequent childbirth and no less frequent child deaths, parents did not always have time to become attached to the newborn, to feel it as a continuation of their own “I”. Thus, Trouvert Mare-chal writes that “he has enough strength to “bake” more sons if any of them falls victim to treachery,” i.e. the death of a child would not be a great grief in the author's life.

Descriptions of childhood were of little interest to Russian chroniclers. Words denoting the younger generation appear ten times less frequently in The Tale of Bygone Years than nouns referring to adult men. The terms used by adults in relation to children reveal the style of consciousness. “Youth” literally meant “non-speaking”, i.e. “not having the right to speak, the right to vote in the life of the clan or tribe.”

The “neglect” of children in medieval Rus' is evidenced by the instructions of the clergy (“cry briefly for dead” children), as well as laws that provide facts about the sale of children to “oderen” (for full indefinite use) to visiting guests. Another example is the sale of children, which is described in “The Prayer of Danil the Zatochnik”: when asked about the reason for such an act, the father replied: “If they were born like their mother, then when they grow up, they will sell me myself.”

One of the first to note the historical and psychological nature of such neglect of children was Lloyd Demos, who in his work “Psychohistory” provides a periodization of the types of relationships between parents and children in history. Let us note that his theory does not work outside of a broad sociocultural context that takes into account the specifics of historical and economic development, the geographical factor, and the historically developed value orientations of culture. Based on this, this periodization can hardly be applied with equal success to both Western Europe and Russia. The possibilities for historical and cultural editing of Demoz’s tools are provided by the technology of analysis of the unconscious developed within the framework of the Tomsk methodological and historiographical school.

The material of a historical and cultural nature accumulated by science allows us to say that the socio-psychological structure of the personality of the Middle Ages was of an authoritarian nature with pronounced

neurotic traits, which is clearly revealed by the picture of educational practices of that time. Beatings and infliction of pain are the main elements of what we consider to be cruel educational practices. For example, in “The Account of Life” by G. Conversini da Ravenna one can find many descriptions of the cruel method of teaching children. Giovanni studied at the Filippino da Luga school, to which his father sent him. The author recalls with a shudder the incident with an eight-year-old boy who studied with him: “I am silent about how the teacher beat and kicked the kid. When one day he failed to recite a verse of a psalm, Filippino flogged him so that blood flowed, and while the boy screamed desperately, he hung him with his legs tied, naked, to the water level in the well... Although the feast of Blessed Martin was approaching, he [Filippino] stubbornly refused to cancel the punishment until after breakfast.” As a result, the boy was pulled out of the well, half-dead from wounds and cold, “pale in the face of imminent death.” And Domostroy recommended doing this: “. do not weaken when beating a child: if you beat him with a rod, he will not die, but he will be healthy. Loving your son, make his wounds more frequent.” .

The despotic order that reigned in the family could not but affect the situation of the children. The mother of Theodosius of Pechersk, as the author of the Life repeatedly emphasized, tried to influence her son through violent methods. She beat him (even kicked him) until she literally fell from fatigue, put him in shackles, etc. The psychology of “Domostroy” is firmly rooted in the everyday life of the broad masses and is reflected in a large number of Russian sayings and proverbs: “Whoever doesn’t listen to the tat, listens to the kata (i.e., the whip)”: “Love the fist like a soul, and shake like a pear” : “Parental beatings give health,” etc.

Parental severity was not indifference or neglect, as R. Fossier believes, it had a historical and psychological character, rationalized in religious terms. If a child has done something wrong, he must be punished, often cruelly: if he cries, it means that an evil spirit has taken possession of him - the child will be beaten. Such severity was by no means a relic of the paternal omnipotence of ancient times, but a form of service to the Lord.

The father in a medieval family had broad rights, for example, the right to sell and mortgage children. Historical monuments of German medieval legislation affirm the right of fathers to sell children in extreme cases, during famine, with only some restrictions in favor of those being sold. The Swabian Mirror says that a father in times of need can rightfully sell his children, but not to a house of prostitutes or for murder. In Saxon cities, the law gave the father the right to sell and mortgage children during famine, but in such a way that there was no danger to their lives or oppression of religious beliefs.

Slavic monuments also indicate that during the famine of 1230 and 1231. parents sold their children into slavery: “and the fathers give their children food, from bread, as a guest.” Other monuments of ancient Russian law indicate that the father (parents) are

he freely disposed of the freedom of his children not only during famine. According to the Code, parents could send their children to work, for school years, and according to the Code of Laws of Ivan IV - even to servitude.

So, the period of childhood for a medieval person hardly evoked pleasant memories. The fact that a child was sometimes torn away from his family early and raised with rather harsh methods could not but affect his psyche. During childhood, in most cases, the child did not develop a sense of basic trust, which is a fundamental prerequisite for mental stability. This is one of the central ideas of E. Erikson’s concept of identity. Deprivation of maternal care, separation from close figures, as well as deprivation of parental love, cannot but affect the “radical decrease in the sense of basic trust” and not affect the nature of the relationship with the world of an already adult person.

The threshold of confidential intimacy between loved ones in the family in that era was much lower than it is today. This formed the psychological basis for the reproduction of the very structure of the authoritarian character of the Middle Ages, where relationships were built on the obligation, the unconditional authority of the elder in the clan, family. A parallel to such a code of behavior of a child-parent was very convincingly shown by P. Quignard using ancient material, which indicates its rootedness in ancient societies. Despite the similarity of these practices in ancient societies, their subsequent evolution in different conditions of historical existence, it seems, determined the differences in subsequent stages of historical growth.

It is noteworthy that the picture of attitudes towards children in Western Europe was different. If in the early stages in some countries (for example, Scandinavia) there were children "doomed to the grave" and examples of neglect were common

adults in relation to children, then later we see the germs of intimacy in different sections. For example, in Guibert Nogentsky’s essay “Monody,” the author talks about his training: “...he [the teacher] showered me almost every day with a hail of slaps and kicks in order to force me to understand by force what he could not explain himself.” It is noteworthy that Guibert Nozhansky realized the injustice and uselessness of such teacher behavior, although the author believes that there were benefits from the classes. And if we further draw the reference line of the macrohistorical picture of the phenomenon of childhood in Western Europe, then indirect signs indicating a change in the emotional atmosphere in the family can be considered the abundance of children's toys found during archaeological excavations, their use from the 11th-111th centuries. special baby bassinets. Montaigne, in an essay about children, writes that his father was so kind that he hired a musician who woke him up every morning with the sounds of music in order to delight the children’s tender ears.

This is how new practices of behavior towards children appear in Europe (and in Russia we do not observe such changes). How to explain this special dynamism of changing attitudes towards childhood, as well as the very authoritarian structure of individual consciousness on Western European soil? What was the reason for the more archaic attitude towards children in medieval Rus'? It can be assumed that the earlier transformation of the authoritarian structure of consciousness is associated with the more dynamic development of Western Europe, which received an “antique inoculation.” The fairly rapid growth of commodity-money relations contributed to the flourishing of cities and the strengthening of the burghers. There has been an increase in a person’s individual self-awareness, the emotional atmosphere in the family and the behavior of adults towards the child have changed. Consequently, there was a gradual elimination of cruelty towards children.

LITERATURE

1. Unhappy A A. Childhood: history and modernity. St. Petersburg : Nestor-History, 2007.

2. Uvarova T.B., Eman I.E. Cruelty. The Politics of Cruelty in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Abstract Review) // Culture and Society in

Middle Ages - Early Modern Times. Technique and methodology of modern historical, anthropological and sociocultural research. M., 1998.

3. Song of the Nibelungs. L.: Nauka, 1972.

4. Herkley D. Medieval children // Culture and society in the Middle Ages: methodology and methods of foreign research: abstract

collection. M., 1982.

5. Bessmertny Yu.L. Rhetoric of knightly sorrow according to the data of English-French literature of the 12th-13th centuries. // Man and his loved ones in the West and

East of Europe (before the beginning of the New Age) / under the general. ed. Yu. Bessmertny, O.G. Axle. M., 2000.

6. Old Russian stories. Perm: Book. publishing house, 1991.

7. Mogilnitsky B.G. History of historical thought of the 20th century: a course of lectures. Vol. 3: Historiographical revolution. Tomsk: Publishing house Tom. un-

8. Nikolaeva I.Yu. Multidisciplinary synthesis and verification in history. Tomsk: Publishing house Tom. University, 2010.

9. Childhood memory. Western European memories of childhood from late antiquity to early modern times (III-XVI centuries). M.: Publishing house

10. Danilevsky IN. Ancient Rus' through the eyes of contemporaries and descendants (1X-11th centuries). M.: Aspect-Press, 1998.

11. Kuznetsov Ya.O. Parents and children folk proverbs and sayings. M., 1911.

12. FossierR. People of the Middle Ages / trans. from fr. A.Yu. Karachinsky, M.Yu. Nekrasova, I.A. Egypti. St. Petersburg : Eurasia, 2010.

13. Shpilevsky S. Family authorities among the ancient Slavs and Germans. Kazan, 1869.

14. Erickson E. Identity: youth and crisis. M., 1996.

15. Bessmertny Yu.L. Life and death in the Middle Ages. Essays on the demographic history of France. M.: Nauka, 1991.

16. Montaigne M. Experiments. Selected chapters. M.: Pravda, 1991.

People of the 12th century were not afraid of life and observed the biblical commandment: “be fruitful and multiply.” The annual birth rate was about 35 people per thousand. The large family was considered normal for all segments of society. However, royal couples set an example here: Louis VI and Alyx of Savoy, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis VII and Blanca of Castile, each gave birth to eight children.

During the period we studied, the birth rate even seemed to increase. Thus, in Picardy, as the study shows, the number of “large” (from 8 to 15 children) families in aristocratic circles was 12% in 1150, 30% in 1180 and 42% in 1210. Thus, we are already talking about significant growth.

Contrary to many years of assertions by historians, the childbearing period of women in the 12th and 13th centuries was almost the same as that of modern mothers. If it was considered short, it was only because it was often interrupted by death during childbirth or the death of a spouse, who could be much older than his wife. And young widows, with the exception of women of aristocratic origin, rarely remarried. The first child was often born relatively late, which is why the gap between generations is quite large. But it was not felt as noticeably as it is now, due to the common age difference between spouses or between the first and last child.

In this regard, the example of Alienora of Aquitaine is indicative. She was born in 1122 and at the age of 15 (1137) she married the heir to the French throne, the future Louis VII, to whom she gave birth to two daughters: Maria (1145) and Alyx (1150). In 1152, after fifteen years of marriage, she divorced and soon married Henry Plantagenet, ten years her junior. From this new union eight children were born: William (1153), Henry (1155), Matilda (1156), Richard (1157), Geoffrey (1158), Eleanor (1161), Joanna (1165) and John (1167). Thus, the birth of her children refers, on the one hand, to the period between 23 and 28 years, and on the other, it occurred at the ages of 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 43 and 45 years. 22 years passed between the birth of the first and last child.

Another typical case: William Marshal (Guillaume le Marechal), Earl of Pembroke, regent of England from 1216 to 1219, married only at the age of 45, choosing Isabella de Clare, a wealthy heiress, and 30 years younger than him, as his wife. Despite the age difference, the couple managed to give birth to nine children. It should be added that in the examples given we are talking only about those children about whom something is known. Those who died at an early age are practically not mentioned in documents and chronicles.

Indeed, infant mortality was very high. About a third of children did not live to age five, and at least 10% died within a month of birth. In this regard, children were baptized very early, most often the day after birth. On this occasion, a ceremony was performed in the parish church, no different from today. The custom of immersing a naked newborn child in the baptismal font virtually disappeared in the 12th century. Baptism was carried out by “pouring”: the priest poured holy water on the newborn’s head three times, making the sign of the cross and saying: “Ego te baptize in nomina Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti” (“I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (lat. (Note per.)

Usually a newborn had several godfathers and mothers. There was no civil ceremony, and therefore a large number of recipients was considered necessary in order to better preserve the memory of the event. It is known that Philip Augustus was baptized the day after his birth, on August 22, 1165, by the Parisian bishop Maurice de Sully (the one who decided to reconstruct Notre Dame Cathedral in 1163), and that three godfathers and three godmothers were present: Hugh, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, abbot of Saint-Victor, Ed, former abbot of Saint-Geneviève; his aunt Constance, wife of the Count of Toulouse, and two widowed women who lived in Paris.

Until the age of 6-7 years, the child was raised by nannies. His activities consisted of various games, such as hide and seek, blind man's buff, leapfrog, etc. and toys: balls, bones, grandmothers, tops, wooden horses, rag and leather balls, dolls with moving arms and legs, planed from wood, miniature dishes.

It seems that in the Middle Ages adults showed a certain indifference to the small child. Only in a few documents and literary works can one find images of parents fascinated, touched or excited by the actions of their offspring, who have not yet reached the age of learning.”

Michelle Pastoureau " Everyday life France and England during the time of the Knights of the Round Table"

“Medieval encyclopedias talk about children separately from adults, in the medical sections, because they need special care. Medieval law, whether Roman, canonical or customary, also places children in a special category endowed with; personal and property rights that require guardianship during childhood. The very concept of being a child implied vulnerability and the need for special protection.

F. Ariès's 1960 theory about the medieval perception of children as small adults was based in part* on his observation that in medieval art children were dressed the same as adults. But this is not entirely true. The handwritten miniatures show a nursery! clothes are simpler and shorter than adult clothes. Boys wear a shirt, leggings and caftan, girls wear a dress and tunic. The miniatures depict children playing ball, swimming, shooting arrows, controlling puppets, enjoying puppet shows - a range of entertainment typical of children at all times. In his history of the Earls of Gwiner, Lambert of Ardre tells that the young | The count's wife, probably 14 years old, still loved to play with dolls. The chronicler Giraldus of Cambrai recalls that his brothers built sand castles (while Giraldus, a future monk, built sand monasteries and churches).

Encyclopedias and special treatises - such as the work of the famous Trotula, who taught in the 12th century. at the Salerno Medical School, prescribed careful care for newborns: they contained instructions on how to tie the umbilical cord, bathe the baby, and remove mucus from the lungs and throat. Children were born only at home under the supervision of a midwife: hospitals already existed, but they were not intended to receive births. Midwives even delivered babies to queens and noble ladies, since men were prohibited from entering the maternity room. Trotula recommended rubbing the newborn’s palate with honey, rinsing the tongue with hot water “so that he can speak more correctly,” and protecting the child in the first hours of life from bright light and loud noise. The newborn's senses should be stimulated by "various pictures, different colored fabrics and pearls" and "songs and soft voices."

The newborn's ears, the treatise warns, "should be pressed and shaped immediately, and this should be done continually." His limbs should be tied with swaddlings so that they are straightened. The baby's body - "flexible and pliable", in the words of Bartholomew of England - was considered susceptible! deformations, in accordance with the “softness of nature! child" and become easily bent due to improper handling.

Whether peasant children were swaddled is unknown; in her study of coroner's inquests among lower-class English peasant and town families, B. Hanawalt identified many cases in which newborns appeared, but did not find a single mention of swaddling. Giraldus of Cambrai reported that the Irish do not follow this practice: they leave newborns “to the mercy of merciless nature. They do not cradle them or swaddle them, nor do they help their tender limbs with frequent bathing or shape them in any useful way. Midwives do not use hot water to lift the nose or press down the face or lengthen the legs. Nature, which receives no help, itself, at its own discretion, forms and places the parts of the body that it has brought into being.” To Girald's amazement, in Ireland nature "shapes and trims [children's bodies] to their full strength with beautiful straight bodies and handsome, well-featured faces"..|

In the English villages named in coroner's reports, babies were kept in cradles by the fireside. Apparently, they were often carried with them to Montaillou. “Once on a holiday, I stood in the square in Montaillou with my little daughter in my arms,” says Guillemette Clerger, a witness. Another village woman describes a wedding feast at which “I stood by the hearth, holding in my arms the newly born daughter” of the groom’s sister.

The wives of peasants and artisans raised their children themselves, unless some circumstances prevented this, for example, the mother's service. When Raymond Arsen of Montaillou went to work as a servant for a family in the city of Pamiers, she gave her illegitimate baby to be raised in a neighboring village. Later, when she began to get hired to work during the harvest, she took the child with her and sent her to another village. Wealthy women in the 13th century. The use of wet nurses was so widespread that manuals for parish priests advised against the practice as contrary to the wisdom of both Scripture and science. Sculptures in churches and miniatures in manuscripts depict the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus, but sermons and parables had no effect on the nobility, who continued to bring wet nurses into the house not only to feed babies, but also to care for growing children. At Kenilworth Castle, each of the Montfort children had their own nanny.

When choosing a wet nurse, responsible parents looked for a clean, healthy young woman of good character and ensured that she followed a proper routine and diet. Trotula of Salerno recommended that she get plenty of rest and sleep, abstain from "salty, spicy, sour and astringent" foods, especially garlic, and avoid excitement. As soon as the baby could eat solid food, Trotula advised that he be given pieces of chicken, pheasant or partridge breast “the size and shape of acorns. He will be able to hold them in his hand and play with them and, while sucking on them, will swallow them little by little.”

The nanny, wrote Bartholomew of England, takes the place of the mother and, like a mother, rejoices when the child rejoices, and suffers when he suffers. She picks him up when he falls, comforts him when he cries, kisses him when he is sick. She teaches him to speak by repeating words and "almost breaking his tongue." She chews meat for the toothless baby, whispers and sings to him, strokes him when he sleeps, bathes and anoints him.

The baby's father, according to Bartholomew, was a representative of that generation whose goal was to multiply the family with the help of sons who would “preserve it through his descendants.” Such a father will limit himself in food only to raise his sons. He takes a deep interest in their education, hiring the best teachers and, in order to stop possible insolence, “does not address [them] with a cheerful appearance,” although he loves them as himself. He works to increase the wealth and inheritance of his sons and to feed them in their youth so that they can feed him in his old age. The more a father loves his son, “the more diligently he teaches [him],” and diligence by no means excludes instruction with the help of rods. “When his father loves him especially, it does not seem to him that he is loved, because he is constantly oppressed by scoldings and beatings, so that he does not become impudent.”

At the same time, infanticide continued to exist, although it was no longer a common way of controlling births, as in the ancient world; Church courts in England and other countries imposed punishments for him from traditional public repentance and strict fasting on bread and water to scourging, a more severe punishment was assumed in cases where the parents were not married, that is, they committed adultery, while married parents were allowed to purify themselves by swearing innocence and presenting witnesses to prove the honesty of the accused.

The attitude of medieval law towards infanticide differed from the modern one in two respects: infanticide was seen as “something less than murder”, but, on the other hand, as something worse than negligence leading to death. Thus, the attention of the church was drawn not only to the sin of the parents, but also to the well-being of the child. Parents not only had to have good intentions, but also actually care about the child. B. Hanawalt found only two possible infanticides among 4,000 murder cases in the coroner's records she examined. In one case, two women were accused of drowning a three-day-old baby in a river at the request of a mother and her son and daughter; everyone was acquitted. In the second, a newborn girl whose umbilical cord was not tied was found drowned in a river; her parents remained unknown. The hypothesis that infanticide is sometimes hidden under the guise of an accident is not supported by the sex ratio of children who died accidentally; the classic neglect of female infants would be reflected in the predominance of accidents involving girls; in fact, 63% of children who die as a result of accidents are boys.

Of course, parental neglect often led to a fatal outcome. In one case cited in the coroner's records, the father was in the field and the mother went to the well when the straw covering the floor caught fire; As a result, the child in the cradle burned. Such tragedies could be caused by chickens swarming near the fire and picking up a burning twig, or an ember falling on a chicken's wing. Other pets were also dangerous. Even in London, a pig that once wandered into a family store fatally bit a one-month-old baby.

Having got out of the cradle, the children were exposed to other dangers: wells, ponds, ditches; boiling pots and kettles; knives, scythes, pitchforks - all this threatened the child. Accidents happened when they were left alone while their parents went to work, when older sisters and brothers were looking after them, and even when their parents were at home doing business. One day when a certain father and mother were drinking in a tavern, a man who broke into their house killed their two little daughters. Inquest records reflect judges' negative views of neglect by parents or older siblings: the child was "without anyone to look after him" or "left unattended." A five-year-old boy was described as a “poor caregiver” to a younger child.

B. Hanawalt's research also reveals cases where parents gave their lives for the sake of their children. One August night in 1298 in Oxford, a candle set fire to the straw on the floor. The husband and wife rushed out of the house, but remembering their infant son, the wife "rushed back into the house to look for him, but as soon as she ran in, she was overcome by a huge fire and suffocated." In another case, a father was killed while protecting his daughter from rape.

The expression of parental feelings towards children is difficult to detect given the paucity of the type of sources in which feelings in general are usually embodied: memoirs, personal letters and biographies. But the Inquisition's investigation into Montaillou provides many pictures of parental affection. The lady from Chatoverdun left her family to join the Cathars, but could hardly bear to say goodbye to the child in the cradle: “When she saw him, she kissed the child, and the child began to laugh. She left the room where the baby was lying, but returned again. The child began to laugh again, and this continued several times, so that she could not bring herself to tear herself away from the child. Seeing this, she said to the maid: “Take him out of the house.” Only the overwhelming religious conviction, for which she later died at the stake, could separate this woman from her child21.

The loss of a child not only caused emotional problems, but also them. A good example paternal feelings is the reaction of Guillaume Benet, a peasant from Montaillou, who said to a friend who was comforting him: “I have lost everything I had due to the death of my son Raymond. There is no one left to work for me." And, crying, Guillaume consoled himself with the thought that his son had received communion before his death and, perhaps, was “in best place than I am now."

One Cathar couple, Rai moi and Sybille Pierre from the village of Arquet, whose newborn daughter Jacot became seriously ill, decided to give her communion, which was usually done for people who had reached the age when what was happening was understandable. After the sacrament was given, the father was satisfied: "If Jacot dies, she will become God's angel." But the mother had different feelings. The perfect ordered not to give the baby milk or meat, which were forbidden to the chosen Cathars. But Sybill “couldn’t stand it any longer. I can't let my daughter die in front of me. So I will give her breasts.” Raymond was furious and for a while “stopped loving the child, and he also stopped loving me for a long time, until later he admitted that he was wrong.” Raymond's confession coincided with the refusal of all the inhabitants of Arque from the teachings of the Cathars.

F. and J. Gies "Marriage and family in the Middle Ages."

In 1653, Robert Pemell complains about the manner of women “of both high and low position, giving up their babies to the irresponsible women of the country,” in 1780, the head of the Parisian police gives the following estimated figures: every year 21,000 children are born in the city, of these, 17,000 are sent to village nurses, 2,000 or 3,000 are sent to infant homes, 700 are nursed by wet nurses in their parents' homes, and only 700 are breastfed by their mothers.

One woman in Bavaria began to be considered a “dirty, obscene pig” precisely because she herself fed her child. Her husband threatened her that he would not touch food until she gave up this “disgusting habit.”

For many centuries, it was customary to regularly give children opium and alcoholic beverages to prevent them from screaming. A Jewish papyrus speaks of the effectiveness of a mixture of poppy seeds and fly droppings for children...

Until the 18th century, children were not potty trained, but instead were given enemas and suppositories, laxatives and emetics, regardless of whether they were healthy or sick. One authoritative 17th-century source states that infants should have their bowels cleaned before each feeding because milk should not be mixed with feces.

Swaddling was sometimes such a complex procedure that it took up to two hours. For adults, swaddling provided an invaluable advantage - when the child was already swaddled, they rarely paid attention to him. There are often descriptions of how children are placed behind a hot stove for several hours, hung on a nail in the wall, placed in a tub, and generally “left like a bundle in any suitable corner.”
Children were often not only swaddled, but also strapped to a special stretcher board, and this continued throughout the Middle Ages.

Until modern times, the fight against homosexuality, and not against masturbation, was in the foreground. In the 15th century, Gerson complains about adults who are surprised to hear that masturbation is a sin. Fallopius advises parents to “diligently enlarge the boy’s penis during childhood”

ellesilver.ru

Raising children in the 15th century. Children about children in the Middle Ages and the attitude towards them, there are many...: tal_gilas - livejournal. Bastards in Jewish communities

Bibliographic link

annotation scientific article on sociological sciences, author of the scientific work - Gulik Zoya Nikolaevna

Related topics scientific works on sociological sciences, the author of the scientific work is Zoya Nikolaevna Gulik

Text of scientific work on the topic “Cruelty to children in the Middle Ages”