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  2. "A tender age": cultural anxieties over the child in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

"A tender age": cultural anxieties over the child in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

William F. MacLehose 2007 © Columbia University Press
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Series
  • Gutenberg-e
ISBN(s)
  • 9780231503709 (ebook)
  • 9780231142564 (hardcover)
Subject
  • European: 400-1400
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  • Table of Contents

  • Resources

  • Related Titles

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  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright and Permissions
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 Nurturing Danger Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Medicine and the Problem(s) of the Child
    • [Intro]
    • Textual Background
    • Embryology and the Question of Nourishment
    • The Trouble with Midwives
    • Neonatal Care: The Nurse's Milk
    • Conclusions
  • Chapter 2 Suffer Little Children Baptism, Heresy, and the Debates over the Nature of the Child
    • [Intro]
    • Contexts and Sources: The Rise of Heresies and Catholic Responses
    • Negative Views of Childhood: Sin and its Consequences
      • [Intro]
      • Mind and Body
      • The Sinful Child
    • Positive Images of Childhood: The Infant as Metaphor
      • [Intro]
      • Exceptions Prove the Rule: The Worthiness of Children
      • "Sinite parvulos": A Divine Invitation
    • God's Mercy: The Divine Plan of Salvation and Justice for the Child
      • [Intro]
      • Fides aliena
      • Historicizing God's Plan for Children
      • The Mercy of the Good Father
  • Chapter 3 Simplicity and Faith Childhood, Maternity, and the Creation of a Jewish Threat
    • [Intro]
    • Historical and Textual Backgrounds
    • Powerlessness and The Child
    • Power Misused: Jews and Children
      • [Intro]
      • Children, Jews, Money, and Deceit
      • Ritual Violence
      • The Jewish Patriarch and the False Family
    • Power Redefined: Maternal Mourning and the Child
      • [Intro]
      • The Language of Loss
      • Ritualized Mourning: Rachel Crying
      • Gender, Parenting, and Justice
    • Power, Piety, and Intimacy: Mother, Son, and Christian Family
      • [Intro]
      • The Virgin and the Child
      • Holy Family and Earthly Child
      • The Child, Christian Community, and Revenge
    • Further Diffusions
    • Conclusions
  • Chapter 4 "The Path of the Foolish Children" Delusion, Disillusionment, and the Challenge of the Children's Crusade of 1212
    • [Intro]
    • Childish Devotion
    • Gullibility and Folly
    • The Innocents Abroad
    • Conclusions
  • Conclusions
  • Appendix to Chapter 2 Contexts and Sources: The Rise of Heresies and Catholic Responses
  • Notes
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1 Nurturing Danger Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Medicine and the Problem(s) of the Child
    • Chapter 2 Suffer Little Children Baptism, Heresy, and the Debates over the Nature of the Child
    • Chapter 3 Simplicity and Faith Childhood, Maternity, and the Creation of a Jewish Threat
    • Chapter 4 "The Path of the Foolish Children" Delusion, Disillusionment, and the Challenge of the Children's Crusade of 1212
    • Conclusions
    • Appendix to Chapter 2
  • Bibliography
    • Abbreviations
    • [Note]
    • History of Childhood
    • Medieval Pediatrics (Chapter 1)
    • Infant Baptism and Heresy (Chapter 2)
    • Ritual Murder and Marian Miracles (Chapter 3)
    • The Children's Crusade (Chapter 4)

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Source: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.

The illustration comes from a late-thirteenth-century manuscript of the Decretum, Gratian's compendium of canon law. The image depicts the centrality of the child, both in this moment of the text and in the ritual to which it alludes. On the right stand the godparents; on the left, the parents and officiating priests. The raised gesture of the child, paralleling or mimicking that of the priest, suggests an active participation of the infant in the ritual. Such an interpretation may problematize the notion of fides aliena, in this case the faith of the godfather who holds the infant. While Catholic polemicists never argued for the active bodily involvement of the infant in the rite, Bernard of Clairvaux did attempt to interpret the cries of the child at the font as evidence of the puerile novitiate's assent and awareness of his dire predicament.

Baptism The illustration comes from a late-thirteenth-century manuscript of the Decretum, Gratian's compendium of canon law. The image depicts the centrality of the child, both in this moment of the text and in the ritual to which it alludes. On the right stand the godparents; on the left, the parents and officiating priests. The raised gesture of the child, paralleling or mimicking that of the priest, suggests an active participation of the infant in the ritual. Such an interpretation may problematize the notion of fides aliena, in this case the faith of the godfather who holds the infant. While Catholic polemicists never argued for the active bodily involvement of the infant in the rite, Bernard of Clairvaux did attempt to interpret the cries of the child at the font as evidence of the puerile novitiate's assent and awareness of his dire predicament.

Source: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.

The Massacre of the Innocents: The illustration comes from an historiated initial in a late thirteenth-century Burgundian breviary associated with the abbey of St.-Bénigne in Dijon. The massacre often appeared in painted and sculpted cycles of the Infancy of Christ, especially from the twelfth century onward. This particular image portrays the brutality and extreme emotion of the scene in a compact format. The scene is reduced to four characters, King Herod ordering the massacre, a soldier committing the atrocity, an infant being impaled, and a mother crying over the event. It illustrates a sermon for the Feast of the Innocents.

Massacre The Massacre of the Innocents: The illustration comes from an historiated initial in a late thirteenth-century Burgundian breviary associated with the abbey of St.-Bénigne in Dijon. The massacre often appeared in painted and sculpted cycles of the Infancy of Christ, especially from the twelfth century onward. This particular image portrays the brutality and extreme emotion of the scene in a compact format. The scene is reduced to four characters, King Herod ordering the massacre, a soldier committing the atrocity, an infant being impaled, and a mother crying over the event. It illustrates a sermon for the Feast of the Innocents.

Related Titles
HEB IdTitleAuthorsPublication Information
Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Aries, Philippe. New York: Random House, 1965.
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