Medieval Children

By Nicholas Orme

Book Overview

What was childhood like for medieval boys and girls in England? How were children named and brought up, what hazards faced them, what games did they play, and how were they prepared for adulthood? This richly detailed book provides for the first time a complete history of childhood in England from about the year 1000 to the sixteenth century.

Leading medieval historian Nicholas Orme draws together a vast range of sources and disciplines--history, literature, religion, and art--to create a picture of medieval childhood more comprehensive than ever before. Beginning with pregnancy and childbirth, Orme explores the succeeding stages of a child's growth to adulthood. He discusses baptism, the significance of birthdays and ages, and family life, including upbringing, food, clothes, sleep, and the plight of the poor. He also chronicles the misfortunes of childhood, from disablement, abuse, and accidents to illness and death. In a fascinating review of the special culture of children, the author describes their rhymes, toys, and games; their religion and relationship to the Church; and their learning to read the literature for children. The final chapter of the book explains how adolescents grew up and entered the adult world.

In this vivid recreation of childhood in the middle ages, Orme underscores the importance medieval society attached to childhood. Childhood was clearly regarded as a distinct cultural period in life, and children were considered both special and different from adults.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300097549
• ISBN13: 9780300097542
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 2.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A Must for Anyone Interested in Medieval History

An in depth look at how children in the middle ages were brought up, schooled and treated, the intricacies of baptisms and godparenting and what it meant to grow up in the "dark ages". Much more interesting than cathedral architecture or the dates of the crusades. Plus! The origin of the word "ampersand".

The nice side of the middle ages.

A couple of years ago Steven Osment published a book called "Ancestors," which sought to criticize the views of Philippe Aries that people in the past had treated their children incredibly callously. Unforuntately, Osment's book was brief and somewhat superficial, even though he was basically right. This book is one that Osment should have written, except that Osment is a historian of Reformation Germany and Orme is a historian of medieval England. Contra Aries, Orme and his fellow scholars "have gathered copious evidence to show that adults regarded childhood as a distinct phase or phases of life, that parents treated children like children as well as like adults, that they did so with care and sympathy, and that children had cultural activities and possessions of their own." They book is lavishly illustrated and based on all sorts of information, from archival studies, to records of the royal family (the family most studied), to an abundance of visual evidence (Pieter Brugel's "Children's Games" is used to special effect). Orme has also found archealogical evidence of toys and school books that children have scribled on.Orme starts off with conception: "Medieval Christians came to believe that God put the soul into the foetus when it took human shape, at about forty-six days for a male, and ninety for a female; until that point, the embryo was not human and had neither human life nor human soul." This view was held by Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas. We discuss the ceremonies of baptism, the responsibilities of godparents, and the naming of children. We discuss the relative rarity (though not absence) of birthdays. We learn about cradles and swadling, about weaning and day and night time activities. Infanticide was viewed with disapproval, and we learn about accidents and possible abuse. Perhaps 42.5% of children died before they were ten in the late 1500s. We learn about changing views of the fate of unbaptised children. Especially interesting are children's use of rhymes and songs, to which Orme devotes a whole chapter to. We also learn about the use of toys, a practice well developed by the Middle Ages. Orme talks about dolls, windmills, and tops. He shows use pictures of toy knights on horsebacks which were mass-produced from moulds. "Children, of course, have never confined themselves to toys made specially for them. Poor or rich, they have fashioned their own from anything lying at hand. Gerald of Wales, describing his childhood...in the 1150s, recalls how he and his brothers played with sand and dust...They built towns and palaces, and he made churches and monasteries." Orme goes on about games, such as marbles and chess, as well as playing at war.Orme devotes another chapter to the church, and like today some churches were tolerant of small children wandering around, and others were more easily irritated. There are, rather surprisingly, two chapters on reading, one on learning how to do it, and another on literatur

Lots of information.

Everything you ever wanted to know about medieval childhood but didn't know who to ask. And some beautiful illustrations as well.Other reviews have summarized the contents nicely, so I won't bother.I took one star away, because a few of his statistics strike me as questionable. (I'm not sure that they are wrong, so I won't down-grade him more than one star.) For example, he claims that the average age at marriage was 26 for women, 28 for men. Which seems quite high to me. (While it is a myth that everyone married at 15, early 20's seems more realistic. Unless he is including remarriage of widows/widowers in his figures, which would, of course, bring the average up.) He also claims an average birthrate of about 3 children per family, with a 'survival-past-childhood' rate of less than 2 ... a figure which would have resulted in the total disappearence of the population within a few generations. And finally, while he doesn't give specific literacy figures, he seems to imply that literacy was quite widespread ... which was not the case, and continued to be not the case for quite some time after the introduction of movable type. (Books were extremely expensive, well beyond the means of even the middle classes, let alone the vast peasant/working classes. Most people had no use for reading. The gentry/nobility were usually literate [at least the male half]. Below that level of society, outside the monestaries, very few people could read or write.Despite these flaws, the book has a lot of interesting information. (Though he does seem to be trying VERY hard to demonstrate that various objects/stories/songs/games/activities were used/read/sung/played/done by children ... rather than by society as a whole.)Well worth the read, though it might be worth waiting to see if it comes out in paperback.

Exhaustive and well-written.

I've never seen such a thorough treatment of the subject. It is, to say the least, exhaustive, as well as thoroughly footnoted.Chapters cover all aspects of childhood, from pregnancy and birth to upbringing, the child's place in religion, how children entertained themselves, and how they were educated. There was quite a bit here that I had never seen before, dispelling many commonly-held misconceptions of how children were treated and viewed in the period.The book is large, with good pictures and photos. The writing is extremely good, very readable, and free of overly high-blown language. I especially appreciated the information on education and recreation -- I had never seen medieval spellers or hornbooks, and never knew what kinds of games children actually played. Another chapter covered how children were treated by the Church -- how they were entered into its service, and even quite a bit about the Feast of Innocents, where children took the place of the bishop and priests and had a service!Overall, I found the book to be absolutely a good addition to my history library, and suggest that others interested in the subject may find it so as well. It's $$$, but such a good value doesn't come along often.

A Wealth of Information

This book has so much information, you will wonder why you did not get this book sooner. This book will answer so many of your questions that you may ask concerning life in the middle ages from birth to adult. If you are interested in life in the meddle ages, then I recomend this book to you. The table of Contents:1. Arriving2. Family Life3. Danger and Death4. Words, Rhymes, and Songs5. Play6. Church7. Learning to Read8. Reading for Pleasure9. Growing Up.To give you an idea of just how much information you can find in this bok. I will discuss the first chapter "Arriving" with you. You will see how much one chapter can answer all your question, and this book has 9 chapters.The chapter, Arriving starts our discussing birth, the understanging of churches ideas of birth, time a women was pregnant in te middle agesm 8-10 months. The use of a relic to help in a good birthing. Widwife is discussed, How in royal and noble births, the queen or countess was allowed to choose the chamber where she would give birth. The other subtopic of arriving was Baptism:The Institution, :The Ceremony, Names, Birthdays and Records. The Family Life gets it the family size and shapes in the middle ages, the care given to babies in the middle ages. It discusses that medieval children were weaned as long as 2-3 years and why. Discusses how more aspects of life was done in the daylight, than at night. It goes onto discussing parents and children, giving examples of a confrontation with a irritated father. It discusses the Poor: Talking about how prenant women in need, or neey women with small children, were chiefly thrown on the mercy of teir family, if they had one, or onprivate charaty. It goes into how Parliamentary made laws to deal with the poor. There is just so much information, you can't pass up this book.