Monastic practices and ideas often permeate texts dealing with the care for and instruction of children.
By Dr. Valerie L. Garver
Professor of Medieval Europe
Northern Illinois University
By the grace of divine providence [the child Gerald] applied himself to the study of letters, but by the will of his parents only to the extent of going through his psalter; after that he was instructed in the worldly exercises customary for the sons of the nobility: to ride to hounds, become an archer, learn to fly falcons and hawks as was customary. But lest given over to useless pursuits, the time suitable for learning letters should pass without profit, divine will ordained that he should be sick for a long time with such a listlessness from weakness that he should be diverted from worldly pursuits but not hindered in his desire for learning.2
For a reader1 unfamiliar with Odo of Cluny’s early tenth-century vita of Gerald of Aurillac, this passage might sound like a prelude to Gerald’s entry to a monastic life. The young aristocratic boy made ill by God so that he could become an ascetic and prayerful monk.3 Instead Gerald of Aurillac grew up to be an exceptionally pious layman who often emulated the life of a monk while remaining in the world. Other evidence of lay childhood from late eighth- and ninth-century sources written in Carolingian controlled lands reveals a similar monkish influence. Most remaining evidence concerning Carolingian children in both the lay and religious estates comes from texts written by clerics. These texts reveal some Carolingian conceptions of childhood; the idealized nature of the remaining evidence, which includes various topoi, however, makes it impossible to determine the degree to which these textual depictions reflected the “reality” of childhood. For example, descriptions of and advice concerning lay children resemble stipulations concerning children in monastic rules and descriptions of children destined for the religious life. This similarity particularly applies to discussions of children in the stages of infantia (up to age seven) and pueritia (seven to fourteen) as defined by Hrabanus Maurus (c.780-856) in De universo.4 Hrabanus naturally drew from the work of antique and earlier medieval authorities concerning the ages of man, especially Isidore of Seville and Augustine of Hippo.5 Monastic ideals informed conceptions of lay children in Carolingian society; in particular, religious reforms sometimes focused upon correction of lay children as one means to ensure the future Christian piety of adult aristocrats.6
Monastic practices and ideas often seem to permeate texts dealing with the care for and instruction of lay children, particularly vitae and the four surviving Carolingian mirrors for aristocratic laymen by Alcuin, Paulinus of Aquileia, Jonas of Orleans, and Dhuoda.7 One might expect that vitae, mirrors for lay aristocrats, and monastic rules should exhibit some similarities given that clerics wrote the majority of these texts. The only secular author of a relevant text is Dhuoda, an aristocratic laywoman, who wrote a handbook of advice for her teenage son William between 841 and 843, when he was a hostage at the court of Charles the Bald.8 As much as or perhaps even more so than for the high and late Middle Ages, texts from the early Middle Ages require more than the “straightforward examination” which Albrecht Classen mentioned in his introduction. Children are not the main subject of mirrors and vitae much less the other Carolingian texts mentioned in this essay. However, these texts do share the subject of Christian reform. In the Carolingian empire during the late eighth and ninth centuries, the desire of clerics and kings to reform the church and Christian society as a whole and the intellectual and artistic pursuits of the Carolingian renaissance fostered lay interest in monastic life.9 Dhuoda’s familiarity with monastic ideals reveals the effects of these reforms, and some clerical authors, especially those of lay mirrors, believed the laity capable of imitating some monastic practices. Lay interest may have also spurred clerics to offer advice to the laity. Some early medieval aristocrats sought to emulate aspects of monastic life even if they remained in the world. The imitatio monachorum extended especially to prayer, an interest in the psalter, and correctio, correct Christian behavior and liturgical practices.10 Ideas concerning appropriate behavior of Carolingian men at court drew from monastic ideals.11 The prominence of monastic models in texts of this era makes it unsurprising that they helped to shape Carolingian conceptions of childhood.
Carolingian vitae depict children in an idealized manner, and mirrors offer prescriptions for the care of children, both suggesting some of the hopes clerics had for children and revealing some of the expected behavior, limitations, and weaknesses of children. If parents requested or sought such clerical advice, they possibly had similar expectations of their children. As one might expect, given the concern with Christian reform and the repetition of certain topoi in many of the texts discussing childhood, the image of children in Carolingian sources is often uniform. Among the similarities is a concern with correctio. By encouraging punishment and prevention through correctio, clerics hoped to keep young men and women from developing bad habits.12 In so doing, they took a realistic yet relatively optimistic view of children, who, though prone to misbehavior, could grow into virtuous adults, or at least adults who strove to be virtuous, with the proper direction.13
Many Carolingian monks and nuns entered the religious life as children or oblates. Therefore, most scholarship to this point has focused upon children in the monastic life because the sources pertaining to children who entered the religious life are much more numerous than those for children who remained in the lay estate.14 Carolingian clerics and kings believed that oblates retained a purity into adulthood and obtained an education superior to that of those monks who joined as adults. Both traits were thought to make the prayers of oblates more efficacious than those of monks who entered in adulthood.15 Aristocratic families wanted to benefit from the prayers of oblates, ensuring prayer for their members’ souls in life and after death. Many wealthy parents built and maintained relationships with religious houses through oblation, sometimes retaining contact with their offspring throughout their lives in contrast to the isolation from the outside world that clerical writers urged monks and nuns to practice.16 Lay children also developed connections useful to their families, and proper preparation and upbringing aided them in such endeavors. Lay children had considerable flexibility in creating bonds for their families since they could marry and could travel more readily than their relatives in the religious life. Merovingian and Carolingian convents had trouble keeping girls whose parents wished for them to make strategic marriages. In his Regula ad virgines, Caesarius of Aries forbade aristocratic parents from using convents as schools for daughters they intended to remove later; a capitulary of 803-804 condemned the same practice.17 In sum, Carolingian parents expected their children to build upon and maintain, through marriage and membership in religious houses, the networks of bonds that increased and preserved familial wealth and power. Clerics and quite possibly parents understood that, in order to achieve those goals, children required care and attention regardless of their future estate. References to the preparation of lay children for adult life show concern with inculcating pious Christian behavior in a group prone to misbehavior, especially among boys for whom evidence is more abundant.
Carolingian clerics recognized that children could not learn everything at once, and they explained to parents the necessity of teaching children Christian behavior and belief gradually. Even children destined for sainthood needed this sort of guidance although their vitae frequently include signs of the child’s future piety, before birth and/or during childhood. According to Alcuin’s Vita Willibrordi, while pregnant, Willibrord’s mother miraculously saw a vision of growing light in the shape of a moon. The light entered her bosom through her mouth, signifying the light of truth that Willibrord would bring to dark places.18 Gerald of Aurillac cried out to his parents from inside his mother’s womb, his cries predicting the greatness of his future actions.19 Remaining references to pregnancy, childbirth, and care of infants come mainly from similar miraculous hagiographic accounts; scant information survives from the early medieval period concerning such matters.20 Childhood, infantia (up to 7) and pueritia (7-14), received significantly more attention.
Carolingian clerics recognized infantia and pueritia as formative periods during which children required special care so that they would not go astray. For example, the late ninth-century bishop Hincmar of Rheims wrote that during infantia and pueritia a child developed demeanor and behavior that would last his whole life. He used the example of Alexander the Great learning from his tutor Leonidas poor habits that he was unable to conquer as an adult.21 This awareness of the formative nature of childhood reflects Benedict’s stipulations that abbots and monks treat children differently than adult members of monastic communities, which surely stemmed from late antique and classical ideas about the formative nature of childhood, especially during infantia and pueritia.22 For example, Benedict made provisions for children and old men to allow them to eat before the other monks if necessary, demonstrating a recognition that children could not always wait to eat as long as healthy adults could.23 That understanding of the formative nature of childhood continued into the early Middle Ages, and the Carolingians recognized the necessity of instructing young children in appropriate behavior and Christian beliefs. Parents and other caretakers might have provided part of the impetus for such instruction, exerting pressure upon clerics to provide advice for raising Christian children.24 Texts and sermons, which parents may have read or heard, may have helped them to understand that their children’s souls were at stake.25 When clerics wrote mirrors in order to aid laymen in attaining salvation while living in the world, they probably both drew from and fostered parental concern for children while working to instill Christian behavior among the laity as a whole.
In his Liber exhortationis of 795, Paulinus of Aquileia wrote a text sensitive to the desires and necessities of a male, lay magnate. He urged Eric duke of Friuli to behave piously, writing in language Eric would have understood, with frequent allusions to and examples from lay life. Among these, he wrote that although Eric naturally desired a family, he should not let the “excuse of a wife and children” prevent him from attaining salvation.26 Paulinus included family or household, “familia” among a list of status markers laymen most wanted.27 In his Liber de virtutibus et vitiis of c. 800, Alcuin recognized a layman’s legitimate desire for a wife and sons.28 Laymen doubtless wanted families and felt affection for them, including children. Paulinus indicated the expected strength of the bond between parent and child when he used an extended analogy of that relationship to explain to Eric how he ought to love God: as much or more than he loved his earthly parents.29 Paulinus recalled the care of Eric’s parents, noting that although Scripture directed parents to love their children, the love between parent and child should be less than that for Christ.30 His discussion of a father’s responsibility for his family recalls Benedict’s discussion of the abbot’s responsibility for his monks. God will hold Eric accountable for the souls of his family after his death just as Benedict wrote of the abbof s responsibility for the souls of his flock.31 Paulinus and Alcuin wrote that fathers wished for and loved their children for natural and material reasons; Paulinus went so far as to remind Eric that with children came accountability.
Mothers almost certainly had a similar responsibility for children. In the mid ninth-century Vita Liutbirgae Virginis, both natural and spiritual mothers played roles in instructing children in religious behavior and practice. Liutberga served as an aid and adopted daughter to the Saxon aristocratic woman, Gisla, learning Christian virtues and behaviors from her example. Gisla modeled and taught appropriate behavior to her son and two daughters. In turn, Liutberga served Gisla’s son, Bernard, and adopted Gisla’s former maternal role in the household, helping to mold the behavior of Bernard’s successive wives and children.32 Parents exhibit a similar concern for children destined for the religious life in other ninth-century vitae. According to Huneberc, Willibald’s parents lavished attention and affection upon their little boy and prayed earnestly for his recovery from childhood illness.33
In the Vita Gregorii abbatis of c. 790, Liudger described both the affection and ambition that Addula, Gregory’s grandmother, had for her grandson, a future bishop of Utrecht.34 In the late ninth-century vitae of Herlindis, Renula, and Hathumoda, the authors depicted their parents ensuring their early instruction at convents and then founding new convents for their daughters.35 Mothers were often responsible for the early upbringing of their children.36 In his Vita Rictrudis of c. 907, Hucbald of St. Amand noted that Rictrud made sure that her children were educated and established in the religious life, and she looked after the material and spiritual well-being of her granddaughter Eusebia.37 Of course, these examples reflect a topos of hagiography, the saint’s caring parent. Nevertheless, the example of virtuous and loving parents, who looked after the well-being of their children, that these vitae presented suggests that clerics wished to encourage parents to aid their children in leading virtuous, Christian lives. Thus, Carolingian mirrors and hagiography reveal a concern among clerics and possibly parents for instructing children in appropriate Christian behavior.
The early rearing of children, especially under the age of seven, surely took place mainly in the parental home.38 More formal instruction marked the period of pueritia, especially for those destined to enter the religious life.39 Many lay children, especially boys, however, probably spent time during pueritia at the royal court. Benedict of Aniane was sent by his father to the court of Pippin I (751-68) in order to be “brought up among the queen’s scholars.”40 Alcuin ran a court school during the reign of Charlemagne.41 Aristocratic families frequently sent their sons to court in order to enable them to create bonds with other boys and powerful men as well as the king.42 For example, Dhuoda advised her son about how he could advance himself socially by developing strong relations with the older, well-connected men at court.43 Drawing explicitly from the work of Georges Duby, scholars have suggested that young boys may have obtained their educations in a group centered on one or more of the king’s sons, much as boys in twelfth-century France did.44 This idea conforms with the importance of Königsnähe (proximity to the king) and the bonds aristocratic men formed among each other. If aristocratic boys at court learned similar subjects to those of royal children, they probably studied the liberal arts and how to make their way in the socially complex sphere of aristocratic and royal men. Charlemagne insisted that all his children be instructed in the liberal arts and the sons in military matters and hunting and the daughters in spinning and weaving.45 According to Thegan, the young Louis the Pious studied the liberal arts and worldly rule.46 Boys played in order to prepare themselves for hunting and warfare, principal activities of Carolingian male aristocrats.47
Jonas of Orleans in his De institutione laicali of the 840s stipulated that lay parents provide their children with Christian teachings in a wholesome, disciplined home.48 Children should learn to love God and their neighbors. Jonas further wrote that it was inexcusable if parents and godparents failed to teach children of a “reasonable age” knowledge of Scripture, the mystery of baptism, and faith in the holy trinity.49 Nevertheless Jonas recognized that children could not learn all of Christ’s precepts at once.50 While drawing heavily from Augustine in these passages, Jonas geared his message for a layman. Although oblates would have studied the same subjects that Jonas mentioned and more, they almost certainly studied them in greater depth.
Jonas of Orleans’ admonition that parents teach the psalms as well as other holy texts conforms to contemporary concepts of lay piety. Just as oblates learned psalms in order to participate in the worship and prayers of their houses, lay children learned psalms in order to become pious Christians.51 Owning and knowing the content of psalters marked Carolingian aristocratic lay piety. Alcuin counseled Charlemagne to say the words of Psalm 69 to begin his first prayers of the morning followed by the Pater Noster and a series of other psalms.52 Dhuoda made the same recommendation to William.53 In fact, Dhuoda drew heavily from the psalms when writing her handbook.54 Passages from the psalter comprise a third of her references to other texts (roughly 200 out of 640).55 She taught William using examples from the psalms and tried to impress upon him the need to recollect the psalms. Liutberga taught young girls sent to her for instruction how to sing psalms.56 A few psalters appear among the items that the aristocratic couple Eberhard of Friuli and his wife Gisela bequeathed to their grown children in their will of 867.57 This ownership and knowledge of the psalter further reveals the desire among individual aristocrats to take up some aspects of monastic life. In particular, individual lay people may have followed an ordered routine of prayer. As mentioned earlier, Alcuin urged Charlemagne to pray daily.58 Paulinus of Aquileia and Jonas of Orleans both urged regular prayer to counter sin.59 Dhuoda encouraged William to pray regularly, specifying how and for whom he should pray.60 Surely familiarity with the psalms, Scripture, baptism and the Christian faith helped to make prayer more efficacious – the one praying knew what his prayers meant.
A clear parallel between ideals for oblates and those for lay children is correctio. Monastic texts from late antiquity through the ninth century (and beyond) emphasized correcting bad behavior both in oblates and adult monks and nuns.61 Cenobitic monasticism furthermore stressed obedience. A model oblate would have been obedient in part because of effective correction from the abbot and older monks. Dhuoda adopted the corrective and authoritative role of the abbot when she wrote her handbook, constantly explaining to William the need for loyalty to his father, lord, and herself.62 Her attempts to provide William with a moral compass correspond to an abbot’s duty to look after the well-being of his flock. She makes at least twelve references and allusions to the Rule of St. Benedict, an unusual choice for a lay writer in the early Middle Ages.63 She uses some of these passages to call attention to her authority and to admonish William to take her advice.64 As or more frequently she makes these references to explain to William how to remain humble, mindful, and obedient in order to achieve the best state in which to pray and be contrite for his sins.65 Since the main activity of monks was prayer, these passages demonstrate further the idea that young lay men ideally ought to have adhered to aspects of the monastic life.
Dhuoda’s view of youth was both optimistic and realistic. Believing that some youth could achieve wisdom and piety, she argued that William could work to correct himself through effort and practice.66 William was to cultivate his associations with other youth at court because even the young could be prudent counselors. As examples, she mentioned Samuel and Daniel who as boys were wise judges.67 She probably drew this example from chapter 67 of the Rule of St. Benedict, which states that age should not dictate the order in which the monks sit or receive the kiss of peace because Samuel and Daniel, when youth, judged priests.68 Some youth and adults, subject to sin and temptation, did not achieve such wisdom. In opening her discussion of achieving a moral life in Book 4 she employs a word, sinpectas, from chapter 27 of the Rule of St. Benedict that designated the older monks who could correct the faults of younger monks. She used this word to warn William that his potential counselors (sinpectas) at court, though seemingly wise, could be subject to vice and envy, especially that produced by wealth and power.69 Her choice of this word demonstrates an understanding of correctio influenced by the Rule but tempered with a recognition of the dangerous realties of the Carolingian court. Dhuoda hoped that William would not become one of these poor counselors. She quoted a Biblical passage, 2 Timothy 4:2, in the same manner as the Rule of St. Benedict in order to reinforce the idea of good counsel, in this case urging William to correct others throughout his life just as the Rule insisted that the abbot should correct his monks.70 Correctio should help to produce men who could correct others.
Other texts that discuss lay boys and care for them further emphasize correctio, noting the necessity of providing appropriate discipline. While churchmen sometimes emphasized the purity and potential for good in children, they just as frequently recognized that children were prone to bad behavior. Many late eighth-and ninth-century Carolingian texts stress the purity of oblates’ prayer.71 Other views of early medieval churchmen about children were more ambiguous.72 Churchmen seem to have expected that “boys would be boys,” and they thought adults should punish such misbehavior and consequently mold the boys’ future conduct. Early medieval texts often present children as prone to sin and misbehavior because of their play and lack of restraint.73 In contrast, Paulinus of Aquileia wrote in his mirror for Eric of Friuli that the level of one’s compunction demonstrated perfection, not age. Here he differs from Paul of Tarsus, whose passage in I Corinthians 14:20 he quotes: “Do not be little children in evil, but rather in understanding be perfect men.”74 This passage, as well as practical experience, is surely the source of the idea that children are prone to malice and spite. Such ideas in early medieval texts also undoubtedly drew from the writings of Augustine, as is the case for early medieval penitentials, handbooks for priests that listed the appropriate penance for various sins. Augustine criticized his own childhood in his Confessions, particularly his selfishness, lack of discipline, and theft.75 Penitentials focused upon similar sins of boys (pueri): “stealing, sexual play, quarrelling, [and] lack of control in speaking.”76 Paulinus, however, emphasized that children can achieve perfection, using the example of the young Hebrew David.77 These admonishments strongly suggest a clerical conception of childhood as a state different from that of adulthood and further demonstrate that adults had expectations concerning children’s behavior that were specific to children.
Other Carolingian writers had few illusions about the innocence of childhood and youth. In his influential early ninth-century episcopal capitula, Theodulf of Orleans attested to the fact that boys could sin and needed to exhibit penitence for their sins.78 Even a young girl destined to become a model of domestic virtue could fall prey to sin. In Liutberga’s vita a demon tries to torment the adult Liutberga by recalling a childhood theft. After her needle had broken during communal work at a convent, she stole the whole needle of another girl who was away from her handiwork.79 Hagiographers expressed amazement that boys could control their youthful impulsiveness. According to Willibald, the young Boniface was able to overcome the “fiery passions of youth” through his constant study of Scripture.80 Willibald studied assiduously while experiencing “the foolish pranks of childhood, the unsteadiness of youth, and the disturbing period of adolescence.”81 Odo of Cluny wrote about the extraordinary childhood nature of Gerald of Aurillac, impressed that he did not misbehave.82 Hincmar of Rheims may reveal the propensity of youth for joviality when he mentions the king “rejoicing with the youth” in describing the way the king should interact with the various people at court.83 Female saints are almost invariably depicted as virtuous children who do not fall prey to temptation.84 Overcoming a propensity to misbehavior marked these children as holy. Further, these writers indicate a clear understanding of children’s natural tendency to willfulness and playfulness. In order to achieve appropriate behavior, however, most children required punishment for misdeeds.
Beatings and whippings probably comprised the most common form of childhood discipline in Carolingian lands. Parents and clerics knew the words of Proverbs 13:24, which stated that a parent who loved his child would not spare the rod but rather use it to instruct him. “Qui parcit virgae odit filium suum; qui autem diligit ilium instanter erudit.” The Rule of St. Benedict mandated corporal punishment for both children and adults.85 In his episcopal legislation Theodulf of Orleans urged parents to ensure respectful, modest behavior in their children and to beat their sons if they showed a lack of penance for misbehavior, because the parents’ blows would be better than incurring the wrath of God.86 His statement demonstrates a concern for the sins of boys and may reflect parental reluctance to beat sons. Theodulf does not mention striking girls; one wonders how acceptable it was to beat daughters.87 Such discipline in every day life ideally comprised not an immediate reaction to misbehavior but rather an attempt to influence positively the long term demeanor and actions of the child being punished.
Ninth-century Carolingian sources demonstrate concern with the long term repercussions of appropriate punishment and conversely of a lack of discipline. Jonas of Orleans wrote in his De institutione laicali of parental responsibility for correcting the sins of children early and effectively.
Furthermore there are many parents who neglect to correct their sons, while they are at a critical age, with whippings so that they proceed rightly: who, when they reach the age of reason, begin to be subject to wicked deeds, and cannot easily be restrained from evil with parental chastisement; whose sins it is certain will be ascribed to the parents who did not want to chastise them at a young age.88
Jonas further wrote that parents should act as shepherds in their homes, recalling the role of a Benedictine abbot looking after his flock.89 Solicitude in caring for children produced not only a house free of sin, which would naturally provide an ideal atmosphere for the children, but also eventually pious adult Christians. In his didactic biography of Charlemagne of 884, Notker the Stammerer wrote that Charlemagne punished a young man he had just appointed bishop for his childish behavior in trying to leap on a horse in an unseemly fashion. He kept him behind at court, not allowing him to be a bishop, so he could achieve the behavior ideally expected of an adult man.90 This episode demonstrates an expectation that adults should be able to overcome the impulsivity of childhood and youth and that kings should not tolerate childish lapses in their religious and secular magnates. For our purpose, however, these sources reflect a clear awareness of the characteristic behavior of children.
Correction was not an end in itself. Proper discipline could instill Christian behavior in children, influencing their adult actions. Clerics wanted to channel the potential violence of men through early discipline. Men first learned military pursuits as children and youths. For example, Gerald of Aurillac became so skilled as a youth that he was able to “vault over the backs of horses with ease,” and he “excelled in military exercises.”91 The future monastic reformer Benedict of Aniane, as a youth at the court of King Pippin I, was “beloved by his comrades in arms.”92 Male love for the arms of war, for hunting and military matters concerned clerics, especially Paulinus of Aquileia, who wrote in the Liber exhortationis that men should instead arm themselves with spiritual riches and praise for God.93 Paulinus wished to curb Eric of Friuli’s love for the markers of his status: arms, horses, clothes, and land.94 Instead Eric ought to turn his skill at arms into efforts to be a soldier of Christ.95 Gerald was probably the perfect example of such a lay man. He never became enamored of arms and violence, even going so far as to insist that his troops and he rush into battle with the points of their spears and swords turned away from the enemy, fighting with the backs of their weapons. Odo notes that Gerald, nevertheless, was invincible.96 Clerics and quite possibly some parents hoped that discipline and religious upbringing of lay boys would help to produce dutiful Christian soldiers, who did not excessively prize their arms. Dhuoda certainly knew all too well what failure could mean. She recognized that the violent times in which she lived made it especially difficult to navigate tangled social and political networks and still attain eternal salvation. She hoped to prepare William for such predicaments, and other Carolingian texts reveal similar concerns. Shaping the behavior of lay children could help to ensure their future success in this world and the next.
Carolingian hagiography and lay mirrors reveal an image of training and discipline for lay children that strongly resembles that for children in or bound for the religious life. Clerics naturally drew from texts with which they were familiar, including monastic rules, and they would have been more familiar with oblates than lay children. These sources nevertheless reveal something about the experience of lay childhood in Carolingian lands. These clerics hardly lived in perfect claustration. Most of the men I have mentioned appeared or lived at the royal court at some time, and bishops, such as Jonas of Orleans, Theodulf of Orleans, and Paulinus of Aquileia, would have dealt regularly with the laity. The great sensitivity to lay concerns that Jonas of Orleans and Paulinus of Aquileia particularly display indicates that references of clerics to lay children probably drew from some knowledge of lay childhood. These clerics also surely remembered their own childhoods and obviously appreciated them as such.97 Equally the laity would have been familiar with monasticism; many families founded and supported monasteries. Furthermore, Dhuoda’s adoption of monastic ideals and language in addressing William is not merely a result of imitating clerical works. She blended ideas of religious reform circulating at the time with her notion of a mother’s duties in order to provide William with maternal advice in her physical absence.
Parents and clerics had a rather positive view of children in late eighth- and ninth-century Carolingian lands. As did adults through much of the Middle Ages, they recognized that children needed special care and discipline because they differed from adults. Although prone to sinful behavior and misdeeds, children could learn through discipline to behave in a Christian manner and become pious and virtuous members of society. Molding the behavior and actions of children ideally helped to promote uniformity in Christian practice and belief. Carolingian reforms, therefore, extended to children destined for both secular and religious life. Their ideal upbringing included similar elements: singing of psalms, familiarity with essential Christian doctrine, relatively frequent prayer, and correction of faults. Differences in childhood experience between future clerics and magnates then were not as sharp as one might guess.98
These conclusions demonstrate not merely that relationships of affection could exist between parents and children in Carolingian lands but that Carolingian clerics encouraged the nurturing of children while working to increase Christian piety among the wealthy and powerful. An expectation of an emotional bond between parent and child doubtless helped to shape these clerical exhortations and further demonstrates, as will many of the essays in this collection, a richness and variety of emotion among medieval parents and children that Aries did not notice. Advocating the prayer, psalms, and discipline of the monastic life among children indicates that clerics believed that lay children could achieve eternal salvation.”99 They urged parents to play a major role in such efforts. Parents may have wanted and requested such advice. Thus, both affective relationships between parents and children and institutional and cultural concern for the spiritual well-being of lay children marked the Carolingian era. Molding the behavior of lay children so that they could learn to control their impulsivity and lack of discipline meant that as adults they could more capably navigate the complex network of social bonds and ensure the strength and power of their families. Those in Carolingian lands knew that the future of social and political institutions and even the salvation of their immortal souls lay in the hands of their children.
Endnotes
- For valuable suggestions and comments on various versions of this essay and the paper from which it was originally drawn I would like to thank Albrecht Classen, Robert Feldacker, Tom Noble, and fellow scholars who attended the international symposium on “Childhood in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age,” at the University of Arizona (April 30-May 2, 2004).
- “Qui divina providente gratia studiis litterarum applicatus est, ea tantum parentum voluntate, ut decurso psalterio, mox saecularibus exercitiis, sicut nobilibus pueris mos est, erudiretur. Scilicet ut Molossos ageret, arcista fieret, cappos et accipitres competent! jactu emittere consuesceret. Sed ne inani studio deditus, tempus ad discendum litteras congruum in vacuo transiret, divino nutu dispositum est, ut diutius aegrotaret. Tali equidem infirmitatis languore, ut a saeculari exercitio retraheretur, sed ad discendi Studium non impediretur.” Odo of Cluny, Vita Sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis Comitis, 1.4, PL 133, cols. 639-710; here col. 645. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted; here I rely heavily upon Gerard Sitwell’s translation in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania University State Press, 1995), 295-362.
- An eighth-century example of a childhood illness as cause for entry into the religious life: Huneberc of Heidenheim, Vita Willibaldi episcopi Eischstetensis et vita Wynnebaldi abbatis Heidenheim ensis auctore sanctimoniale Heidenheimensi, 1, ed. O. Holder-Egger. MGH, SS 15.1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1887), 80-117; here 88. In a reversal of this convention, Boniface’s father became ill after objecting to his son’s entry into the religious life. Willibald, Vita Bonifatii, 1, ed. Wilhelm Levison. MGH, SRG 57 (Hannover: Wilhelm Levison, 1905), 1-58; here 6-7.
- Hrabanus Maurus, De universe, 7.1, PL 111, cols. 179-85; here cols. 179-81.
- Christoph Dette, “Kinder und Jugendliche in der Adelsgesellschaft des frühen Mittelalters,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 76 (1994): 1-34; here 4-5. Concerning the ages of man in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, see: Emiel Eyben, “Roman Notes on the Course of Life,” Ancient Society 4 (1973): 213-38; here 227-29; Emiel Eyben, “Die Einteilung des menschlichen Lebens im römischen Altertum,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologiell 6.2 (1973): 150-90; Emilien Lamirande, “Les äges de l’homme d’apres Saint Ambroise de Milan (d. 397),” Melanges offerts en hommageau Reverend Pere Etienne Gareau, eds. Pierre Brind’Amour, Ross Kilpatrick, and Pierre Senay (Ottawa: Editions de l’Universite d’Ottawa, 1982), 227-33; Brent D. Shaw, “The Family in Late Antiquity: The Experience of Augustine,” Past and Present 115 (1987): 3-51; here 40-41; Pauline Stafford, “Parents and Children in the Early Middle Ages,” Early Medieval Europe l0.2 (2001): 257-271; here 262.
- I am currently working on a more expansive study of Carolingian lay childhood that will address more fully many of the issues raised in this preliminary essay.
- Vitae and other prescriptive texts allow early medievalists to comment upon issues that they could not otherwise address. Richard B. Lyman, Jr., “Barbarism and Religion: Late Roman and Early Medieval Childhood,” The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), 75-100; here 77.
- For example, Odo’s vita of Gerald can help to explain lay aristocratic culture because Gerald often presents an inverse of typical lay aristocratic behavior and actions. Stuart Airlie, “The Anxiety of Sanctity: St Gerald of Aurillac and his maker,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43,3 (1992): 372-95. Other early medieval texts reveal a similar “monastic imprint.” Among these are penitentials: Rob Meens, “Children and Confession,” The Church and Childhood, ed. Diana Wood. Studies in Church History, 31 (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994), 53-65; here 55. * Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, ed. and trans. Pierre Riehe (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1975). The two English translations rely upon Riche’s work. Without facing Latin text: Carol Neel, ed., Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman’s Counsel for her Son (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991, repr. 1999). With facing Latin text: Dhuoda, Handbook for her Warrior Son, Liber Manualis, ed. and trans. Marcelle Thiebaux (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). All citations to the Manuel are from Riche’s edition.
- Carolingian capitularies and records of synods and councils touched upon many aspects of everyday life as well as upon religious issues. Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms 789-895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977); J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 162-389; Richard E. Sullivan, “The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 64 (1989): 267-306; John J. Contreni, “Learning in the Early Middle Ages,” Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts, ed. John J. Contreni (Hampshire, Great Britain, Brookfield, VT: Variorum, Ashgate, 1992), 1-21; here 9; Yitzhak Hen, The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul To the Death of Charles the Bald (877) (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2001). Also see the following essays in The New Cambridge Medieval History, 2, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): Thomas F. X. Noble, “The Papacy in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries,” 563-86; Roger E. Reynolds, “The Organisation, Law and Liturgy of the Western Church,” 587-621; Mayke de Jong, “Carolingian Monasticism: the Power of Prayer,” 622-53; Julia Μ. H. Smith, “Religion and Lay Society,” 654-678.
- For correctio see Percy Emst Schramm, Kaiser, Könige, and Päpste (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1968), 336; Giles Brown, “Introduction: the Carolingian Renaissance,” Carolingian Culture: Emulation and innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1—51; here 11-28.
- For concern with the psalter see Paul Kershaw, “Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred,” Early Medieval Europe 10,2 (2001): 201-27; here 211-13; Jonathan Black, “Psalm Uses in Carolingian Prayerbooks: Alcuin and the Preface to De psalmorum usu,” Mediaeval Studies 64 (2002): 1-60; here 1-35; Jonathan Black, “Psalm Uses in Carolingian Prayerbooks: Alcuin’s Confessio peccatroum pura and the Seven Penitential Psalms (Use 1),” Mediaeval Studies 65 (2003): 1-56; here 1-24. ” Matthew Innes, “Ά Place of Discipline’: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth,” Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed. Catherine Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 59-76; here 75-6. For a critical discussion of Alcuin’s life and intellectual contributions, see Albrecht Classen, “Alkuin und Hrabanus Maurus: Zwei Gelehrte der Karolingischen Renaissance,” to appear in Mittelalter Mythen. Vol 4: Dichter, Künstler, Gelehrte, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich (St. Gallen: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2005).
- This idea spread in part through vitae·, Willibald’s Vita Bonifatii may have been a model for other authors of vitae in its depiction of Boniface’s childhood, which provided an early example of Carolingian correctio. Some vitae cited in this essay concern members of Boniface’s circle including those of Willibald, Willibrord, and Gregory of Utrecht. Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter. Karolingische Biographie 750~920n. Chr., ed. Walter Berschin, Vol. 3. Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters, 10 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag, 1991), 7,132.
- Allison P. Coudert, in her contribution to this volume, reaches the opposite conclusions regarding early-modern attitudes toward children, probably because of the strong influence of Protestant ethics and spirituality. However, despite the overarching fear of children’s bad, perhaps even evil nature, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors implicitly also expressed deep concern and love for the youngest members of their society.
- Some children went back and forth between the lay and religious life, most famously Gottschalk. Scholars have examined his struggle to return to the lay life after being given as an oblate. Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 73-99.
- Idem, In Samuel’s Image, 133-45, 245-50.
- De sanctis virginibus Herlinde et Reinula abbatissis Masaci in Belgio, 4-8, AA SS Martii III (Antwerp: Johannem Mevrsium, 1688; rpt.), 385-92; here 386-87. Fora case in which a family appears to have retained contact with two adult daughters who each founded a convent, see Vita Liutbirgae Virginis. Das Leben der Liutberg, 2 and 15, edited by Ottokar Menzel. MGH, Deutsches Mittelalter, Kritische Studientexte, 3 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1937, repr. 1978), 11 and 20. See also Mayke de Jong, “Growing up in a Carolingian Monastery: Magister Hildemar and his Oblates” Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983): 99-128, and Maria Lahaye-Geusen, Das Opfer der Kinder. Ein Beitrag zur Liturgie- und Sozialgeschichtedes Mönchtumsim hohen Mittelalter (Altenberge: Orlos Verlag, 1991). For a contrasting view, see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: the Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 228-55.
- Caesarius of Aries, Regula ad virgines, c.7.4, ed. Adalbert de Vogüe, Cesaire d’Arles, Oeuvres monastiques, I. SC 345 (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1988), 170-273; here 186; Capitula ecclesiastica ad Salz data (a. 803-804), c. 6. MGH, Capit. 1.1, ed. A. Boretius (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1881), 116; Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West, 64-65; Dagmar Beate Baltrusch-Schneider, “Klosterleben als alternative Lebensform zur Ehe?” Weibliche Lebensgestaltung im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1991), 45-64; here 57-60.
- Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi, archiepiscopi Traiectensis, 2, ed. Wilhelm Levison. MGH, SRM 7 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1920), 81-141; here 117. ” “quod in hujus mortalitatis clausura vitales actus erat habiturus.” Vita Sancti Geraldi, 1.3, cols. 643-4. Such predictive prenatal events were fairly common in medieval hagiography.
- Mary Martin McLaughlin, “Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries,” The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd de Mause (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1983), 101-81; here 112.
- Gerhard Baader, “Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe im Frühmittelalter,” Frauen in der Geschichte VII. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Geschichte der Frauen im Frühmittelalter. Methoden—Probleme— Erbebnisse, ed. Werner Affeldt and Annette Kuhn (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986), 126-35. That lack of Information holds true for most of the Middle Ages. Lorraine C. Attreed, “From Pearl Maiden to Tower Princes: Towards a New History of Medieval Childhood” Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983): 43-58; here 45-46.
- Hincmar of Rheims, De ordine palatii, Prologue. MGH, Fontes 3, ed. Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1980), 34-36. Hincmar composed it in 882 for Charles the Fat. See also Dette, “Kinder und Jugendliche in der Adelsgesellschaft des frühen Mittelalters”, 12.
- Regula Beneiicti, 30, 37, 39, La Regle de Saint Benoit. Sources Chretiennes, 181-82, ed. Adalbert de Vogiie and Jean Neufville (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1972), 554, 572, 576-78. Late antique ideas of children and family drew from ancient sources as well as Christianones. Peter Brown, “Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” Religion and Society in the Age of Augustine, ed. Peter Brown (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 161-82; Brent D. Shaw, “The Family in Late Antiquity.”
- RB, 37,572.
- Janet L. Nelson, “Parents, Children, and the Church in the Earlier Middle Ages,” The Church and Childhood, ed. Diana Wood, 81-114; here 82-3. Although a difficult contention to prove absolutely, it conforms to other evidence concerning requests for advice or instruction from clerics during the early Middle Ages. Aristocratic laymen allegedly requested the three surviving lay mirrors by clerics: Wido of Brittany asked Alcuin (c. 800); Eric of Friuli asked Paulinus of Aquileia (c. 795); and Matfrid of Orleans asked Jonas of Orleans (c. 840s). To be sure, such “requests” may stem from literary conceit, but Charlemagne’s daughters wrote Alcuin a letter requesting an exegesis of the Gospel of John. He accordingly provided them with one. MGH, Epis. 4, no. 195, 196 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1957), 322-25, see especially 324, lines 25-27. Other aristocrats, therefore, may have requested advice and instruction.
- Carolingian legislation stipulated that clerics regularly preach to the laity in a language they could understand. The most frequent subjects of sermons to the laity were basic knowledge of the Christian faith and the means to lead a Christian life. Thomas L. Amos, “Preaching and the Sermon in the Carolingian World,” De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. Eugene A. Greene, Thomas L. Amos, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989), 41-60; here 46-49; Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms 789-895 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 80-113; Rob Meens, “Religious Instruction in the Frankish Kingdoms,” Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 51-67; here 54.
- “excusatiouxoris aut filiorum gratia.” Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 13, PL 99, cols. 197-282; here col. 208.
- Paulinus, Liber exhortationis, 8, col. 203.
- “Villam emis: bonam desideras. Uxorem vis ducere: bonam quaeris. Filios tibi nasci vis: bonos optas.” Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis, 14, PL 101.2, cols. 613-38; here col. 623. Alcuin’s reference to sons, rather than to children or daughters, indicates the need for heirs; his list of lay male desires is shorter than that of Paulinus and seems to emphasize what was probably most important to lay men.
- Paulinus, Liber exhortationis, 21, col. 214.
- Paulinus, Liber exhortationis, 21, cols. 214-15.
- Paulinus, Liber exhortationis, 29, cols. 225-26; RB 2,442.
- Vita Liutbirgae Virginia 4-10,12-16.
- Huneberc of Heidenheim, Vita Willibaldi 1-2, 88-89.
- Liudger, Vita Gregorii abbatis, 1, ed. O. Holder-Egger. MGH, SS 15.1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1887), 67-68.
- De sanctis virginibus Herlinde et Reinula, 3-4, 6-7, 386-87; Agius, Vita Hathumodae, 3-4, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz. MGH, SS 4 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1841), 166-75; here 167-68.
- Regine Le Jan, Familie et pouvoir dans le monde france (VIV-X’ siecle): essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995), 56.
- Hucbald of St. Amand, Vita sanctae Rictrudis viduae, 10, 25, AA SS Maii, III (Brussels: Impression Anastique, 1968), 79-89; here 83 and 87.
- Some oblates entered monasteries before the age of seven. For issues of age in oblation see Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West 73-36, 62.
- A general discussion of schools and the formal instruction of children in Carolingian lands lies beyond the scope of this essay. Among texts not cited elsewhere in this essay that discuss the education of children, see the following and their bibliographies: Mary Pia Heinrich, The Canonesses and Education in the Early Middle Ages (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1924); Pierre Riehe, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West Sixth through Eighth Centuries, trans. John J. Contreni, Third ed. (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1976); John J. Contreni, “Inharmonious Harmony: Education in the Carolingian world,” Annals of Scholarship 1, no. 2 (1980): 81-96; Pierre Riehe, ed., Instruction et vie religieuse dans le Haut Mayen Age (London: Variorum, 1981); Pierre Riehe, Ecoles et enseignement dans le Haut Moyen Age: de la fin du ve siecle-milieu du xie siecle, Second ed. (Paris: Picard, 1989); Μ. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society (Leiden: Brill, 1992); John J. Contreni, “The Carolingian Renaissance: Education and literary culture,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 709-57; Albrecht Diem, “The Emergence of Monastic Schools: the Role of Alcuin,” Alcuin of York: Scholar at the Carolingian Court, ed. L. A.J. R. Houwenand A. A. MacDonald (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 27-44; Mayke de Jong, “De school van de dienst des Heren. Kloosterscholen in het Karolingische Rijk,” Scholing in de Middeleeuwen, ed. R. Ε. V. Stuip and C. Vellekoop (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 57-85;Mayke de Jong, “From Scholastic! to Scioli: Alcuin and the Formation of an Intellectual Elite,” in Alcuin of York: Scholar at the Carolingian court, ed. L. A .J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 45-57.
- Ardo, Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis et Indensitj 1, ed. G. Waitz. MGH, 15.1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1887), 198-220; here 201. English translations Gerard Sitwell’s in Soldiers of Christ, 215-54; here 217.
- Jong “From Scholastici to Scioli: Alcuin and the Formation of an Intellectual Elite,” 52-53.
- Innes, “Ά Place of Discipline’: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth,” 8-10.
- Dhuoda, Manuel, 3.4-10,148-84.
- Dette, “Kinder und Jugendliche in der Adelsgesellschaft des frühen Mittelalters,” 14-15; Innes, “Ά Place of Discipline’: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth,” 66.
- Einhard, Vita Karoli magni, 19, ed. O. Holder-Egger. MGH, SRG 25 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1911, repr. 1965), 23.
- Thegan, Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, 2. MGH, SRG 64 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1995) 178.
- Eric Goldberg, ‘”More Devoted to the Equipment of Battle Than the Splendor of Banquets’: Frontier kingship, military ritual, and early knighthood at the court of Louis the German,” Viator 30 (1999): 41-78; here 45-46; Regine Le Jan, “Remises d’armes et rituels du pouvoir chez les francs: continuites et ruptures de l’epoque carolingienne,” Femmes, pouvoir et societe dans le Haut Moyen Age, ed. Regine Le Jan (Paris: Picard, 2001), 171-89.
- “salutaris diciplinae domus” Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 1.8, col. 134.
- “ut cum ad intelligibilem aetatem pervenerint, et fidei et baptismatis mysterio instruantur: ut si forte latius, uberiusque in sensu divinarum Scripturarum proficere aut noluerint, aut nequiverint, saltern fide Trinitatis sanctae et mysterio sacri baptismatis in excus abiliter existant instructi.” Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 1.8, col. 135.
- Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 1.8, col. 134.
- Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 1.12, col. 145.
- Alcuin, Officia perferias, cols. 509-10.
- Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 2.3,124-32.
- Dhuoda uses a line straight from Alcuin’s preface to De usu psalmorum, demonstrating her familiarity with that text on the psalms. Pierre Riehe, “Les bibliotheques de trois aristocrates laics carolingiens,” Le Moyen Age Fourth Series. 18, or 69 (1963): 87-104; here 94; Black, “Psalm Uses in Carolingian Prayerbooks: Alcuin and the Preface toDe psalmorum usu,” 1-35.
- M. A. Claussen, “Fathers of Power and Women of Authority: Dhuoda and the Liber manualis,” French Historical Studies 19 (1996): 785-809; here 788.
- Vita Liutbirgae Virginia 35, 44.
- Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Cysoing et de ses dependences, ed. I. de Coussemaker (Lille: Impr. Saint-Augustin, 1886), no. 1, 4.
- Alcuin, Officio perferias, cols. 509-10.
- Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 28, cols. 223-25; Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali, 1.11-12, cols. 143-47.
- Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 2.3-4, 8.1-17,124-32; 306-24 but especially 2.3.
- RB, 2, 23-30,542-54. Institutio sanctimonialum Aquisgranensis, Canon 22, ed. Albert Werminghoff. MGH, Cone 2.1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1908), 421-56; here 452.
- Claussen, “Fathers of Power and Women of Authority: Dhuoda and the Liber manualis,” 800-01.
- Ibid., 794-95. She very rarely quoted the text directly. For problems concerning the version of the RB with which Dhuoda was familiar, see 796, n. 58; 804, n. 99.
- See especially Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 3.1, lines 64-65,138 compared to RB, Prol., 412.
- Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 2.3, lines 1-4,124-26 (RB, 20, title, 536 and 7, line 51, 486); 2.3, lines 10-11, 126 (RB, 52, line 4, 610); 2.3, line 80,130 (RB 67, page 662); 3.10, lines 11-17,172 f!B, 7, line 1, 472); 5.2, lines 1-2, 272 (RB 48, line 18, 602). Her discussion of humility in 1.3 also greatly resembles Benedict’s in the Prologue of the RB.
- Dhuoda’s optimism in William’s ability to correct himself is apparent throughout the Liber Manualis but especially in Chapter Four of Book Four.
- Dhuoda, Liber Manualis, 3.5, line 18,156.
- RB, 63, line 6, 644.
- Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 4.1, lines 8-11,198 (RB, 27, line 2, 548). For problems of translating and interpreting sinpectas, see Thiebaux, ed., Dhuoda. Handbook for her Warrior Son 255, n. 3.
- Dhuoda, Liber Manualis, 4.8, lines 261-70,254 (RB, 2, lines 23-25,446).
- De Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West 33-45.
- Nelson, “Parents, Children, and the Church in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 87-88.
- For Anglo-Saxon examples, see Vita Sancti Cuthberti Auctore Anonymo, 1.3, 64-66 and Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti, 1, 154-58 both in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (New York: Greenwood Publishers, 1969) and Felix, Vita Sancti Guthlaci, 11-17, in Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 78-80. Felix’s Vita Sancti Guthlaci may have been a model for Willibalds’ Vita Bonifalii and Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti for Alcuin’s Vita Willibrordi Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter. Karolingische Biographie 750-920 n.Chr., 8,122. For similar Ottonian views, see references in Dette, “Kinder und Jugendliche in der Adelsgesellschaft des frühen Mittelalters,” 28-29.
- “Simus in malitia parvuli, et viri perfecti in sensu.” Paulinus of Aquileia, Uber exhortationis 43 col 245.
- Augustine, Confessions, 1.10-20, 2.6-29, ed. James J. O’Donnell, Vol. 1 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1992), 9-15, 20-22.
- Nelson, “Parents, Children, and the Church in the Earlier Middle Ages,” 84-85.
- Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 43, col. 246. Paulinus’ reference to David is particularly apt in a text for a lay aristocrat. David was a great secular military and royal leader, and David was Charlemagne’s nickname at court.
- “Nam poenitentia pueris adeo videtur necessaria, ut legamus quosdam pueros pro meritis peccatorum ministris Satanae traditos, quia absque poenitentia interierunt.” Theodulf of Orleans, Second Capitulary, X, 31. MGH, Capit. Epis. I, ed. Peter Brommer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung,, 1984), 182-83.
- Vita Liutbirgae Virginia 28, 32.
- Willibald, Vita Bonifatii, 2, 8.
- Huneberc of Heidenheim, Vita Willibaldi 2,89. The quotation is from the translation of C. H. Talbot in Soldiers of Christ op. cit., 143-64; here 147.
- Odo of Cluny, Vita Sancti Geraldi 1.4, cols. 644-45.
- “congaudendo iunioribus.” Hincmar of Rheims, De ordine palatii 7.35, 92.
- Rudolf, Vita Leobae, 7,124-25; De sanctis virgitiibus Herlinde et Reinulq 4,387; Vita Liutbirgae virginis, 3-5,11-13; Agius, Vita Hathumodae, 2,167; Hucbald of St. Amand, Vita sanctae Aldegundis virginis, 4-5, col. 861.
- RB, 23, 30, 45,542, 554, 594.
- “Admonendi sunt fideles sanctae dei ecclesiae, ut filios suos et filias suas doceant parentibus oboedientiam exhibere dicente domino: Fili, honorifica patrem tuum. (Eccles. 7:29) Nam et ipsi parentes erga filios suos ac filias modeste debent agere dicente apostolo: Et vos, parentes, nolite ad iracundiam provocarefilios vestros. (Eph. 6:4) Nam et hoc dicendum est eis, ut, si illi genitali affectu parcere velint iniuriis filiorum, non has impune dominus sinit, nisi forte digna paenitentia exhibeatur, et quia levius est filiis, parentum quaelibet flagella suscipere quam dei iram incurrere.” Theodulf of Orleans, First Capitulary, XXXIII. MGH, Capit. Epis. I, ed. Peter Brommer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1984), 131.
- I have found almost no early medieval references to beating girls. The Laws of King Liutprand outline when it is acceptable for a guardian to strike his female ward: only when she isa child and in need of correction may he strike her as he would his own daughter. Otherwise striking a girl or young woman could result in the guardian’s loss of her mundium. The Lombard Laws, ed. and trans. Katherine Fischer Drew (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973, repr. 1989), 197.
- “Porro sunt plerique parentes, qui filios suos dum lubricae aetatis existunt, verberibus ad bene agendum corrigere negligunt: qui cum ad intelligibilem aetatem pervenerint, et malis operibus deservire coeperint, non facile a malo cohiberi parentum castigatione possunt; quorum peccata parentibus, qui eos in tenera aetate castigare noluerunt, imputari dubium non est.” Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 2.14, col. 195.
- Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali 2.16, col. 197.
- Notker, Gesta Karoli, 1.6, 9.
- Odo of Cluny, Vita Sancti Geraldi 1.5, col. 645; Sitwell, in Soldiers of Christ, 300.
- Ardo, Vita Benedicti abbatis, X, 201. English translation is Gerard Sitwell’s in Soldiers of Christ, op. cit., 215-54; here 217.
- Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 12, col. 207.
- Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 17, col. 210.
- Paulinus of Aquileia, Liber exhortationis, 19-20, cols. 210-14.
- Odo of Cluny, Vita Sancti Geraldi 1.8, col. 647.
- Perhaps Bartholomew Anglicus remembered his own childhood as he wrote about children, too. In fact, many medieval scholars discussed childhood with great sensitivity. See Albrecht Classen’s introductory essay in this volume.
- Ulrich Nonn, ed., Quellen zur Alltagsgeschichte im Früh- und Hochmittelalter, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaf tliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 89-92. See also his selection of sources about the everyday life of early and high medieval children, 94-153.
- The same hope inspired sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers and theologians, as Allison P. Coudert argues in her contribution to this volume.
Contribution (67-85) from Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Albrecht Classen (Walter de Gruyter, 07.18.2005), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.