Children in the Early Christian Centuries

Dan Dervin has created a consequential overview of the life opportunities for children—from the Greek/Roman era through to the late medieval period—and finds that children were treated with caring and love and a unique group-accepted identity. This is in stark contrast to my own findings and the difference seems to lie in how one interprets some of the documents and how one defines generalized group attitudes. The author seems to believe that the punishment of the children he describes was acceptable and the result of Catholic theological conundrums, that the punishments and teachings weren’t designed to create delusional thinking about self and the heavenly reward. I’ll try to show the opposite in my remarks.

While I’m certain that Professor Dervin doesn’t join in this child abuse or hatred, his dispassion may be seen as favoring the historicity of it. Indeed, he focuses on the Limbo problem for the unbaptized addresses a current issue for the Church – why would God choose to ignore the unbaptized when he embraces and loves all people? The issue will soon explode into Catholic consciousness and favor the unbaptized as having entitlement to heaven-

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ly rewards.

The medieval world, in particular, inherited many of the worst features of previous civilizations that were only exacerbated by this persistently dysfunctional period–horror fills the diaries, journals, biographies and autobiographies we have found. Would that we could simply declare that early childhood abandonment (e.g., to relatives, craftsmen, church, colleagues, as well as foster care) established psychic defense patterns in children conditioning the willingness of adult societies to harm others. Or that projection onto others of one’s own unresolved abandoning-parent issues allowed these societies to viciously attack/destroy/forcibly deport those whom they had declared as their “enemies.” Of course, this is all true but it is definitely not simple.

The psychohistorical approach and evidence has provoked extreme displeasure among others too resistant to admit the preponderance of the evidence: childhood was an awful experience.

Clearly, there was a universality of child abuse, usually inflicted by immature parents, built into the social fabric. It was molded into each society’s fundamental essence, supported by accepted moral values and overlooked or embraced as “normal” by literature and religion. Thus, inserted into society’s fabric in childrearing (the pun is intended), abandoning and intrusive and always abusive childhood encouraged group fantasies allowing war, depressions, social injustice and mass delusions–to “stay ‘sane’ by being able to participate in group craziness rather than having to experience idiosyncratic craziness” (Lloyd deMause, “Schreber and the History of Childhood,” Journal of Psychohistory, 15/1 [1987], p. 428). Ralph Frenken has added to the growing body of evidence conclusively proving that childhood was bleak at best, normatively abysmal, horrifying in reality and its repetition served to make the human condition awful (Ralph Frenken, “Child Witches in Renaissance Germany,” The Journal of Psychohistory, 26/4 [1999], p. 864-867).

Indeed, thirteenth to fourteenth century accounts frequently reveal urban poverty and rural vagabondage–these were not the most ideal of times. Thirteen-thirty Florence had a pauper population of over 17,000 and the post-plague bourgeoisie attempted to hold onto their positions by enacting restrictive regulations and laws suppressing the advancement of the apprentices, laborers and women. A large class of laborers emerged who were prevented from having the ability to organize themselves; their bitterness frequently erupted in riots against bourgeois-dominated city governments. In 1980 Aurel Ende writes, “The increase in infant mortality and the acceleration of industry go hand in hand…It was working class parents who were unable to ‘care’ for their five to ten children. They, and most of their children, had to work–that is, the surviving children did, because death was well known to the working class family.” Moreover, “infanticide, in both hidden and open form, was not unusual…the corpses of newborns were often found in Berlin’s sewers” (Aurel Ende, Journal of Psychohistory [1980], pp. 252-253).

Violent social conflicts accompanied the cycle of dislocations and disasters. Famine, plague, war and royal tax increases led the most miserable part of the population to recognize that their lives had become intolerable. After a swath of death was carved by the plague, there was still a lower birth rate, a higher death rate, and widespread malnutrition. Endemic plagues produced a mentality of panic, demoralization, desertion of family and community, incomprehensibility about the source or meaning of the horror, the fantasy of poisoning, a search for and labeling of scapegoats (Christian hysteria centered on pogroms against Jews), the decimation of monastic communities (severely restricting their positive contributions to society’s stability) and eruptions of bizarre religious behavior (such as the extraordinarily ascetic Flagellants).

These social conflicts exacerbated underlying pathologies and heightened popular irrationalities so those negative behaviors became dominant and helped tear society apart. We should view this sundering as an impetus to construct something better, “restoring unity and social order to a fragmented and conflict-ridden society” (Michael Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995], p. 22).

The Nature of Childhood

From the thirteenth century onward, greater focus in the miracle records was placed on the childhood of saints as well as on infancy and childhood for all. This has erroneously misdirected many into believing that childhood had improved.

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Michael Goodich reports that “The uncertain conditions prevalent in the fourteenth century appear to have enhanced concern for the safety of children in the face of the dangers lurking in the natural world, the perils of war, the high mortality rate of the plague years (particularly among minors), and the disrepair of Europe’s physical substructure.” And “the sharp drop in population further heightened the desire to insure the survival of endangered infants and children”(Goodich, 1995, p. 86).

The years 1250 through 1360 witnessed a significant drop in children per family from 3.5 to 1.9 (Goodich, 1995), as well as a life expectancy decline that combined to maintain a reduced population rate until the sixteenth century. Furthermore, “Anxiety over the vulnerability of children, coupled with a belief in their innocence and purity, led to their prominent placement in religious processions, a growing number of visions of the Infant Jesus and of visions credited to children, and the celebration of the Feast of the Innocents” (Michael Goodich, “Il Fanciulo come Fulcro di Miracoli e Potere Spirituale [XIII e XIV secolo]” in A. Paravicini-Bagliani & A. Vauchez [Eds.], Potere Carismatici e Informali [Palermo, 1992], pp. 38-57).

Canonization cases, miracle records and saints’ lives are filled with tales of children helped, for, it would seem, “concern for the welfare of children had become public policy” (Goodich, 1992).

This alleged growing concern for the survival of infants is claimed to have resulted from the new mendicant orders’ belief that childhood innocence offered the best chance for acceptance of Christian teaching, the growing urban charities’ special focus on the care of orphans and poor children, the severity of plague death among the child population making so few children available to each community (this idea would appear to be based on the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder) as well as a decline in lifestyle, health and hygiene which particularly impacted children’s survival expectations.

The failure to have one surviving child assuring family and inheritance continuity was met by anger toward wives–a grand gesture of displacement. Fetal mortality was rivaled by infant mortality–postnatal diseases and loss of appetite were listed as the highest causes. Superstition, magic and herbal remedies were popularly combined to assist in the relief of infant problems–while some herbal remedies worked, most herbal and all of the other remedies did not. Saints noted for their child assistance efforts were routinely invoked–again, with a variety of successes attributed to saints that, most probably, belonged to natural causes. Infant and child mortality had a more serious side within the scope of religion, for it denied access to Christ in heaven to the unbaptized child’s soul; it also had a more serious practical side for it eliminated support for parents in their old age and seriously complicated inheritance issues.

Miraculous child revivals or rescue strengthened the unity of the medieval communities. Their huge number also reveals the significant life threat to children (especially rural) from drowning and falls. The majority of recorded child-accidents involving miraculous salvation deal with near-drowning (boys were twice more prone to this than girls) in “wells, ponds, lakes, ditches, marshes, streams, pits, cesspools, dams, springs, vats of wine, beer and water, threshing pits, canals, sewers, baths and floods”–in short, in any body of water (Goodich, 1992). Burning occurred in “ovens, boiling oil or porridge, hearths, fires and lightning storms” (Goodich, 1992). Children frequently fell from “overturned boats, towers, benches, steps, ladders, bridges and open windows” and (as if this wasn’t enough) children were injured by “falling trees, knives, falling bricks, collapsing walls, spindles, runaway carriages and mill machinery;” there were also “poisonous roots, dog bites, marauding wolves, snakes, spiders and horses” (Goodich, 1992). Children were frequently injured, killed, sexually abused and taken for ransom in the fourteenth century habit of victimizing civilians during war.

This stands in paradoxical contravention of the above noted heightened care and concern for the welfare of children – it would be better understood as the defense processes of splitting or ambivalence. “Angry, abusive parents may produce angry, abusive children not just by the example they set but by the injuries they inflict” (Carol Tavris, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, 3rd ed. [NY: Touchstone, 1989], p. 75). Therefore our paradoxical contravenetion may more accurately reflect the reality of medieval childrearing. Assumptions that children

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were valued more because there were so few of them are not supported by reliable evidence (Frenken, 1999). Pretending that concern for children had risen to the level of public policy contradicts statistical realities and the evidence noted above-children, then as now, remain the convenient target for abuse.

Suffocation in bed led the list of home injuries and was particularly connected to prevalent parental drunkenness (and the unconscious turning over onto the small child lying next to the drunken parent). Of further hazard to the child’s life was working at an early age as well as neglect and abandonment as the frequent outlook for children, especially of the lower classes. Higher class children didn’t have it much better, however, and had the problems of strangulation or drowning while in the care of their nurse, inadequate or nonexistent rescue efforts (because of fear of legal penalties for touching their bodies before the coroner’s arrival), misjudged physical ability (being expected to do more than they were really capable of doing) and simple parental neglect. Most accidents occurred while children were able to move about unsupervised (from ages eighteen months to seven years), from late March to early October (because of the frequency of child labor and outdoor activities) and after three o’clock.

In my opinion, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is easily diagnosed in many medieval autobiographies, diaries and elsewhere. So much so that we should better understand this as a fundamental factor influencing medieval lives. Thus, “The existence of persecutory alters, organized parts of the personality that are hostile to and punish the host personality, are quite common in medieval literature. What is not often appreciated is that these persecutory alters are not simple introjections of perpetrators of abuse. Rather, they more often begin their existence after traumatic events in early childhood as protectors and only later on turn into persecutors.” So, “after the traumatic event has occurred, the child sets up a part of his or her personality as a protector that prevents the child from ever having to experience the trauma again. The alter sees to it that every action of the child is monitored so that the situation that led to the trauma isn’t repeated—the child being convinced that he or she is responsible for whatever is done to him or her.” Frenken reports that “in severe traumas, this means, in essence, that the child has to be careful not to grow, explore, need or desire too much, lest they bring on the dreaded traumatic event or rejection. The protector starts using persecutory behavior toward the host personality when the child starts getting more freedom and opportunity to grow, individuate and get satisfaction.” This is “usually in puberty, when the persecutor fears that sexual behavior will mean loss of control over the host and a repetition of the traumatic situation. From puberty on, the protector turns into an active persecutor” (Frenken, 1997, p. 395).

I agree with Scheck who argues that “Violence among children and legal public violence have a close relationship” (Scheck, 1987, p. 414). Certainly, the frequency of medieval public violence could not be lost upon its traumatized children– public executions, burnings, hangings, beatings, flagellation were seared into the child’s mind along with the fear of demons, witches and assorted frightening creatures. Add to this the frequency of public abuse of animals and the lessons of violence and abuse become concretized in a dysfunctional society (Deborah Tanzer, private correspondence).

Doesn’t this make one want to revise all of those allegations of happy medieval childhoods?

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