Children in the Middle Ages

Fifth to Fifteenth Centuries

Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett
Translated by Jody Gladding

What can we know of the children of the European Middle Ages? Until recently, it was commonly thought that a history of the everyday life of children could not be written: since children were of little interest to medieval adults, documentation on childhood was rare and fragmentary. According to some, the concept of childhood, concern for education, and love of children are all relatively recent phenomena in the West. Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett challenge these assumptions in this learned and lively book. Drawing from a wide range of sources—iconography, archaeological finds, letters, romances, pedagogical texts, miracle accounts, law codes—they reconstruct the actual life of medieval children at work and at play, in the fields, the streets, the schools, the apprenticeships, and the castles.

Children in the Middle Ages portrays medieval childhood at all levels of European medieval society, from the peasant girl who longed to read, to the apprentice scribe doodling pictures on the margins of the manuscript he copied, to the future duke of Berry whose bedroom was redecorated twice a year, changing at Easter from red to green, the color of spring. The authors consider children’s roles in the family and social institutions, their emotional and educational environment, and their symbolism in Christianity. They demonstrate that despite often difficult living conditions, the great majority of children were surrounded by family affection. They also demonstrate the misery of orphaned and abandoned children, the ravages of disease and war, and the exploitation of children as slaves and beggars. _Children of the Middle Ages _is a vivid history of how medieval children lived and died.

Danièle Alexandre-Bidon is Fellow at the University Lumière-Lyon II and co-author of A réveiller les morts: La mort au quotidien dans l’Occident médiéval.

Didier Lett is Assistant Professor in Medieval History at the University Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and author of Enfances et familles sous le regard de l‘Eglise XIIe-XIVe centuries.