Were There Children in the Middle Ages?

Until fairly recently there was an idea that "childhood" as we think of it today did not exist in the Middle Ages. You can see this in a recent online essay:

Regardless of social class, childhood in the late Middle Ages was markedly different from what we know today. Children were viewed as miniature adults, expected to contribute to the family’s livelihood from an early age. [link]

One of the reasons behind this theory is pictures from the era that show little distinction in clothing worn by children and adults. That essay goes on to say:

Playtime was limited, and the concept of a carefree, innocent childhood was virtually nonexistent. Instead, children were taught the skills necessary for survival.

One of the first serious explorations of daily life in the Middle Ages found evidence against this theory. The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, by Barbara Hanawalt, looked at coroners' reports in England that explored deaths. Interrogation of witnesses regarding "what you were doing when..." turn up a wide variety of daily activity that otherwise would never have been recorded. Those reports tell us that young children (with ages in the single digits) are playing at home or outside with friends, and not dragged into slavish agricultural labor or being drilled in the "skills necessary for survival." In fact, children are out playing and falling into ditches or dying in other accidents totally unsupervised by adults. They kicked balls around, or played catch, or were playing with toys or dolls by the hearth when disaster struck.

There is another notion that parents did not love their children the same way modern parents do. Because families were larger than they often are now, and because a child might be given the same name as a child born previous to the same parents that had died early on, the feeling is that parents considered babies interchangeable, or merely as a way to produce "more laborers" for the family business. There are plenty of recorded examples of parents grieving for dead children, lullabies that were sung to babies, and toys and games that were made for them. More affluent families had advice books written for raising children well and making sure they are moral.

The Church supported the difference between children and adults:

It came to regard children under the age of puberty as too immature to commit sins or to understand adult concepts and duties. [link]

Puberty was 12 for girls and 14 for boys, and that is when they generally began to be educated in ways that would lead to economic success in the future, either in their parents' trade or as an apprentice to some other person with a desirable career.

Since a large part of the population—perhaps up to a third—at any time was under the age of puberty, there was no getting around the idea that children were different and needed to be nurtured and cared for, not treated as tiny adults. That's a lot of babies being produced at any time, and a lot of mouths to feed. Was there a way around that? Did the Middle Ages have methods of contraception available to them? Let's take a look at that topic tomorrow.

There Might Be Bears

There is a question about Ursus arctos in England, the brown bear that was most common in that part of the world: when did it disappear?

The illustrations of bears found throughout the Middle Ages show that people were quite familiar with them. There is little hard evidence of their range and dates, however. The brown bear was widespread in Europe after the last Ice Age, but estimates of when the wild population in England died out range from pre-Roman occupation to late- or even post-Medieval times. The few bones found in caves or other sites do not paint a definitive picture.

It is possible the Romans brought bears with them for the purposes of entertainment, and that some of these were released to breed and expand on the island. Some stones to mark graves from Anglo-Saxon times (420-1066 CE) have bears carved on them, and small carved bears in children's graves suggest they were considered protection for children. But were these evidence of bears in England, or just symbols brought from Northern Europe, where bears were plentiful and part of the culture?

After 1066, the only certain evidence of bears in Great Britain comes from bear-baiting in London—seen in the illustration from a 14th century manuscript—and bears kept at the Tower of London as a zoo, and a medical school in Edinburgh where bones were kept.

In the 12th through 19th centuries, bear-baiting was a "sport" that involved pitting a chained bear against one or more dogs, and sometimes against other animals. In Europe, it was popular in Sweden and Great Britain. It was also common in India, Pakistan, and Mexico.

The arena for it was called a "bear garden" or "bear pit": a circular space with a high wall and raised seating outside of it. The bear would be chained by the leg or neck near one end. Henry VIII was fond of watching bear-baiting, as was Elizabeth I; she even overruled Parliament when a bill was introduced to ban bear-baiting on Sundays. Bear-baiting was eliminated by Cromwell's Puritans, but brought back after 1660. It was not long afterward, however, that people in England started to speak out against the cruelty of bear-baiting (also, the cost of importing bears was becoming prohibitive). The Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835 ended it.

Bear symbolism in the Anglo-Saxon culture, mentioned above, is probably seen no more clearly than in the greatest and best-known epic hero of Anglo-Saxon literature, the "predator of the makers of honey." You all know him, but by a different name, so I'll leave you with that riddle until tomorrow.

Quoits

The idea that quoits—a game in which players toss rings at a stake, hoping to encircle it—originated with the "Greek or Roman discus" does not seem to me to hold up. The discus was flung for distance; quoits is a game of accuracy. The fact that each is circular is not sufficient to link the two historically.

Those who subscribe to the Greco-Roman origin use it as a basis for quoits coming to Britain during the Roman occupation. The game of quoits ("coiting") in England during the reign of Edward III, and again during the reign of his successor, Richard II, was outlawed in favor of pastimes such as archery, which would translate to readiness in battle. This was duplicated in the Statutes of Kilkenny (see here and here) by Edward's son, Lionel of Antwerp, in his rôle as viceroy of Ireland.

(Ironically, quoits was referred to as "manly and healthy amusements" in 1836 in a Washington, DC, advertisement for the available amusements at a nearby coffee house.)

The similarity between quoits and the game of horseshoes suggests that the game might have started with people idling their time by throwing spare horseshoes at a stake or peg. That assumes, however, that "horse shoes" in the past were the ring- or U-shaped pieces of metal they are now.

And that is something worth looking into in more detail.

Battle of the Numbers

Among the accomplishments of Hermann of Reichenau, he also provides us with the set of rules for one of Europe's oldest board games, developed by a monk to teach Boethian number theory, called Rithmomachy or Arithmomachia, "Battle of the Numbers."

The pieces on the rectangular 8x16 board, their "ranks" and their allowed moves are determined by mathematical rules based on their geometry (Circles, Squares, Triangles, Pyramids) and the numbers marked on their surfaces. I could not possibly explain the rules in a short post—nor should I be able to, since the intent was to design a game that truly requires a grasp of mathematical functions and the skill to apply them quickly. Feel free to educate yourselves on the rules here and here.

Laser-etched pieces. [link]

It was more than just a game of strategy like chess (to which it has some resemblance). According to a 2001 book, Rithmomachy

combined the pleasures of gaming with mathematical study and moral education. Intellectuals of the medieval and Renaissance periods who played this game were not only seeking to master the principles of Boethian mathematics but were striving to improve their own understanding of the secrets of the cosmos. [The Philosopher's Game, Anne Moyer]

The game became popular as a teaching aid in monasteries in France and Germany, and even reached England where Roger Bacon recommended it to students at Oxford. Over the centuries it spread as an intellectual pastime, and by the Renaissance it had spread enough that instructions were being printed in French, German, Italian and Latin. Sadly (mercifully?), the game fell out of popularity and the public's consciousness after the 1600s until modern historians re-discovered it.