Medieval Children

Benjamin Schwarz

[An] exhaustive. . . fascinating portrait of medieval English childhood. . .beautifully and intelligently illustrated. . . sensitive. . .lucid. . . a model of accessible scholarly history.
—Atlantic Monthly

John Wilson

[A] wise and learned book. . . [A] delight to read, and superbly illustrated.
—Christianity Today

Publishers Weekly

In his classic Centuries of Childhood (1962), historian Philippe Ari s argued that the view of childhood as a distinct period of life emerged only in the 16th and 17th centuries. Medieval adults, Ari s said, often viewed children as miniature adults. Building on others' subsequent research, Orme (From Childhood to Chivalry; etc.), professor of history at Exeter University, challenges Ari s's widely accepted views, demonstrating in exhaustive detail that medieval culture indeed distinguished between child and adult experience, and that children occupied a special place in society. Orme carefully examines each stage of childhood from birth clearly an auspicious event in the medieval world to adolescence. Since birth in the Middle Ages was fraught with dangers, the Church provided women with relics to assure a safe delivery. Royal women undergoing labor borrowed the girdle of Virgin Mary; poorer women laid objects such as jasper stones or drawings of the cross across their stomachs to ensure a healthy and uneventful birth. Parents remembered children's birthdays by associating the day with a saint's feast day, but apart from records kept by royal families, there were few written birth records. Children devised songs, rhymes and games using cherry pits and hazelnuts, for instance; toys ranged from simple peashooters hollowed from balsam wood to more elaborate dolls and mechanical toys made for royalty. As children grew up, boys did manual labor alongside their fathers while girls helped their mothers with domestic tasks. Orme's fascinating study reveals medieval society through a keen look at its youngest inhabitants. Meticulous detail and 125 luscious illustrations, 75 in color, make this anelegant and definitive study. (Dec.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-In this scholarly work, Orme re-creates the lives of children of all classes and ages in England. Many medieval writers defined childhood as stretching from infancy to about age 28, and this study covers that age range. Beautiful illustrations, inclusion of rhymes and storytelling, and organization by subject rather than chronologically, will help mature teens understand a period in history (1000-1500) in which personal accounts of daily life were few, much less first-person accounts written by "children" as defined above. A comparable work, Shulamith Shahar's Childhood in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 1990; o.p.) covers the same period for the whole of Europe and also uses storytelling, but its dense text and lack of illustrations make it less attractive. Both works demonstrate that, especially from birth to preadolescence, there are more similarities than differences in the treatment of children then and now, especially in their relationships with parents, teachers, relatives, and friends. Teens will also be made aware of the challenges of research into periods when few written records exist.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.