youth in the middle ages (2004)

YOUTH IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Edited by P.J.P. Goldberg, Felicity Riddy

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for MedievalStudies in association with Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Our objective is the promotionof innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have aspecial commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief thatthe future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent dis-ciplines at once inform and challenge each other.

Editorial Board (2001–2004):

Prof. W. M. Ormrod (Chair; Dept of History)Dr P. P. A. Biller (Dept of History)Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English & Related Literature)Dr J. Hawkes (Art History)Dr M. O. Townend (Dept of English & Related Literature)

All inquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essaycollections, should be addressed to: The Director, University of York, Centre forMedieval Studies, The King’s Manor, York YO1 7EP (E-mail: [email protected]).

Publications of York Medieval Press are listed at the back of this volume.


Edited byP. J. P. Goldberg and Felicity Riddy

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

© Editors and Contributors 2004

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislationno part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,

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First published 2004

A York Medieval Press publicationin association with The Boydell Pressan imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataYouth in the Middle Ages / edited by P.J.P. Goldberg and Felicity Riddy.

p. cm.Includes index.

ISBN 1–903153–13–1 (alk. paper)1. Children – Europe – History – To 1500. 2. Children – Europe –History – 16th century. 3. Youth – Europe – History – To 1500.4. Youth – Europe – History – 16th century. 5. Europe – Socialconditions – To 1492. 6. Europe – Social conditions – 16th century.7. Social history – Medieval, 500–1500. I. Goldberg, P. J. P., 1958–II. Riddy, Felicity. III. Title.

HQ792.E8Y68 2004305.235’094’0904 – dc22 2003017822

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Printed in Great Britain byAntony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

CONTENTS

List of Contributors vi

Introduction: After Ariès 1P. J. P. Goldberg, Felicity Riddy and Mike Tyler

Childhood and Youth in the Early Middle Ages 11Edward James

Jewish Society under Pressure: The Concept of Childhood 25Simha Goldin

Desiring Virgins: Maidens, Martyrs and Femininity in Late Medieval 45England

Kim M. Phillips

Out of the Mouths of Babes: Authority in Pearl and in Narratives 61of the Child King Richard

Rosalynn Voaden

A Safe-Haven for Children? The Early Humiliati and Provision 73for Children

Frances Andrews

Migration, Youth and Gender in Later Medieval England 85P. J. P Goldberg

Good Advice on Leaving Home in the Romances 101Helen Cooper

‘Youth on the Prow’: Three Young Kings in the Late Viking Age 123Judith Jesch

Index 141

CONTRIBUTORS

Frances Andrews is a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of StAndrews

Helen Cooper is a professor of English at the University of Oxford

P. J. P. Goldberg is a senior lecturer in History at the University of York

Edward James is a professor of History at the University of Reading

Judith Jesch is Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham

Simha Goldin is a senior lecturer in Jewish History at the University of TelAviv

Kim M. Phillips is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Auckland

Felicity Riddy is a professor of English at the University of York

Mike Tyler is a doctoral student in Medieval Studies at the University of York

Rosalynn Voaden is an associate professor of English at the Arizona StateUniversity

vi

Introduction: After Ariès


P. J. P. Goldberg, Felicity Riddy and Mike Tyler

I

Childhood as an object of study has been seen as the creation of Philippe Ariès(1914–84), a French agricultural development expert by profession andfree-lance historian in his spare time.1 His L’Enfant et la vie familiale sousl’Ancien Régime, first published in 1960, was issued two years later in English,under the misleading title Centuries of Childhood – misleading because toEnglish-speaking readers it appeared to be a study of childhood in isolation,rather than a study of the child in the family. Where other historians of thefamily have sought to identify the development of affectivity primarily bystudying the relations between husband and wife, Ariès, unconstrained by theconventions of professional academic history, had the brilliant idea of tracingchanges in family structures via the emotional relations between parents andchildren.

The book was an attempt to answer the question whether the idea of thefamily has diminished in the face of the twin processes of modernization andindustrialization as divorce, once unknown, proliferates and parentalauthority is eroded. Ariès’s answer is that as ‘a value, a theme of expression,an occasion of emotions’, the family only arrived in the early nineteenthcentury.2 Physical changes in domestic housing allowed the modern nuclearfamily, which Ariès sees as emerging at this period, to cut itself off from theworld.3 Publicness, defined as sociability, is therefore held to characterize theAncien Régime, while privacy, defined as the retreat into the home and intoself-sufficient family relationships, is seen as a modern condition.

1

1 This has been claimed by, for example, the psychotherapist Adam Phillips, in his intro-duction to the Pimlico edition of Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, trans. RobertBaldick (London, 1996), p. [iv]. Quotations are from this edition.

2 Ibid., pp. 397–8.3 Since 1960 a considerable body of scholarship has emerged that would challenge some of

these assumptions. The earliest English work to impact significantly on scholarly percep-tions was Peter Laslett’s The World We Have Lost (London, 1965). This was followed byHousehold and Family in Past Time, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1972). Evidence for a nuclearhousehold structure in parts of north-western Europe from the later Middle Ages isfound, for example, in P. Desportes, ‘La Population de Reims au XVe siècle’, Le Moyen Age72 (1966), 463–509.

Privacy now is ideological: it gives priority to the particularistic relationsbetween parents and children which are a hallmark of modernity. For Ariès,the pre-modern family is an institution for securing the continuation of thepatrimony, for providing training in conduct and thereby inculcating respectfor the good order of society. None of this requires the emotional bondsbetween its members that characterize the modern family, which understandsitself as organized round its love for the children. Ariès generally acknowl-edges that parents loved their children in the pre-modern era, but argues thatparental love was not thought of as a defining feature of family life.

The modern idea of the family, then, produced the idea of the child. Thesections of the book devoted to pre-modern childhood draw on an awesomeand somewhat eclectic range of evidence, primarily literary and artistic, inwhich Ariès attempts to discern large patterns in support of this central thesis.The opening sentence of a chapter entitled ‘The Discovery of Childhood’strides with typical, generalizing confidence through a minefield of problemsabout the relation between art and life, about what gets represented, by andfor whom, and for what purposes – indeed, about what survives: ‘Medievalart until about the twelfth century did not know childhood or did not attemptto portray it. It is hard to believe that this neglect was due to incompetence orincapacity; it seems more probable that there was no place for childhood in themedieval world.’4 By ‘no place for childhood’ Ariès means that there was noplace for it as a separate and privileged category; it was, he assumes, ‘a periodof transition which passed quickly and which was just as quickly forgotten’.5

Summarizing his argument about the Middle Ages at the end of Part One ofCenturies of Childhood, he begins thus:

In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist; this is not to suggestthat children were neglected, forsaken or despised. The idea of childhood isnot to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds to an aware-ness of the particular nature of childhood, the particular nature whichdistinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult. In medievalsociety, this awareness was lacking.6

Nevertheless, from the thirteenth century on, he argues, we can begin to seethe development of the modern idea of childhood. Children start to appear inart: adolescent angels, the infant Jesus, the soul as a naked child. The iconog-raphy of Jesus extends to other holy children, and then to narrative genres inwhich children appear alongside adults, playing or helping or watching. Fromthe fifteenth century two new genres appear: child portraits, includingmortuary effigies, and putti, and these two merge in the seventeenth century

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4 Ibid., p. 31. For a critique of Ariès’s use of visual evidence see A. Burton, ‘Lookingforward from Ariès? Pictorial and material evidence for the history of childhood andfamily life’, Continuity and Change 4 (1989), 203–29.

5 Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, p. 32.6 Ibid., p. 125.

in nude studies of children. And at the same time an old genre, the familyportrait, begins to plan the group around the children, foreshadowing themodern centrality of the child in the privatized home.

In Ariès’s thinking, then, childhood and privacy are interdependentconcepts which are held to come into being together. In order to respond tothis argument, therefore, it is not enough to show that there was affectionbetween parents and children in the Middle Ages, which has often been doneand which Ariès knew perfectly well already; we also need to prise childhoodand privacy apart.7 We might begin to do this by looking at how Ariès under-stands privacy and publicness. In Centuries of Childhood, ‘private’ means ‘theisolated group of parents and children’ and ‘public’ means ‘society’: Ariès’spublic sphere is not a political concept but a social one. Ariès’s association ofchildhood with privacy, and his understanding of publicness only as socia-bility, means that he may not have found ‘an awareness of the particularnature of childhood’ because he was looking in the wrong place.

II

One such public use of the idea of the child (and here ‘public’ has the sense of‘the state as a source of power’) is in the sermon delivered by the archbishopof Canterbury, Archbishop Arundel, to the assembly that was summoned inOctober 1399 to confirm Richard II’s enforced abdication and Henry IV’saccession to the throne. Latin and French summaries are preserved in theparliamentary rolls. The archbishop, an old adversary of Richard’s, took as histheme a text from the first book of Kings: ‘A man shall rule over the people.’The parliamentary record reports that:

The said archbishop has shown that this honourable kingdom of England,which is the most plentiful corner [angle] of wealth in the world, has for along time been led, ruled and governed by children [enfantz], and the adviceof widows . . . the kingdom would have fallen into utter desolation andgrievous misfortune if it had not been that almighty God, through his greatgrace and mercy, has sent a wise and discreet Man for the governance of thiskingdom who, through the aid of God, wishes to be governed and coun-selled by the sagacious elders of his kingdom [les Sages & Aunciens de sonRoialme].8

The archbishop developed the contrast between the boy ruler of the previousreign and the man ruler of the new one: ‘for now it is not a boy who rules but aman’ . . . ‘For when a boy reigns wilfulness reigns [voluntas sola] and reason is

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7 A pioneering attempt to demonstrate an affective bond between parent and child in themedieval era is B. A. Hanawalt, ‘Childrearing among the Lower Classes of Late MedievalEngland’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (1977), 1–22.

8 Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et Petitiones et Placita in Parliamento Tempore Ricardi R. II, 6 vols.(London, 1783), 3: 415.

exiled . . . From this danger we are now set free, because a man shall havedominion.’ The archbishop uses Paul 1 Corinthians 13, ‘When I was a child Ispoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child’, as a point ofdeparture for a condemnation of Richard’s ‘childish’ inconstancy and false-hood, of which Arundel himself had been a victim. Biblical texts were acommon source of the tropes of misrule, as we know from Langland’s PiersPlowman. In the B-text, written in the late 1370s around the time of Richard II’saccession, the boy-king was represented as the kitten in the fable of belling thecat. Langland quotes a familiar text from Ecclesiastes: ‘Woe to the land wherea boy is king!’ For Langland, the dangers presented by the boy-king areslightly different from those described by Archbishop Arundel:

‘Ther the cat is a kitten the court is ful elenge.’ [unhappy]That witnesseth Holy Writ whoso wole it rede –Vae tibi ubi puer rex est, &c. [Woe unto you where a boy is king]For no renk ther reste have for ratons by nyghte. [men; rats] (194–7)9

It is the powerlessness of the boy kitten, his inability to control theover-mighty rat-lords, which are at issue here. The perspective of Langland’slines is that of the under-mighty subject – the mice in the fable – who need theprotection of a strong central authority and for whom the kitten is no help atall.

Arundel’s 1399 sermon has of course two targets, not just one: the obviousone is Richard; the other – the unmentioned one – must have been theeight-year-old earl of March, who had as good a claim to the throne as HenryIV. The archbishop’s boy-man contrast is an attempt to foreclose the youngearl’s unstated claim, so the contrast does have a literal force, insofar as itrelates to the adult Henry and the boy earl. But of course in relation toRichard, its immediate and explicit target, it does not have literal force: youthis now detached from chronological age. The powerful contrast between thechild and the man (parvulus and vir) cannot be mapped on to the actual ages ofthe two men because Richard was thirty-two when he was deposed andHenry Bolingbroke was only six months older. There is no medievalage-scheme in which Richard’s actual age could be defined as childish. InArundel’s sermon youth and age are now attached to political ideologies:childishness is a style of government: capricious, inconstant, wilful, auto-cratic. The events of 1397–9, which include the appeals of Warwick, Arundeland Gloucester and the latter’s murder, Richard’s banishment of Bolingbrokeand Mowbray and of that same archbishop of Canterbury who was to preachagainst him – all these are seen as an abuse of royal power which is repre-sented as childish. This is how the archbishop developed the theme:

4


9 William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: the B Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London,1978).

As for speech, truly, the child is inconstant in speaking, easily speaking thetruth and easily speaking falsehood, easily giving his word, but then forget-ting straight away what he has undertaken. . . . But we are freed from thesedefects when the kingdom is ruled by a man, for it is a characteristic of aman that he keeps guard over his tongue.10

One of the striking things about this set of contrasts, between inconstant anddeceivable speech on the one hand and manly taciturnity on the other, is that itis also coded as feminine and masculine. Inconstancy and deceit are tropes ofmisogynistic discourse. In fact, in the archbishop’s sermon ‘boy’ and ‘woman’are explicitly conflated and are together opposed to manliness: the accusationagainst the previous regime is that the kingdom was governed by childrenand counselled by widows. The widow here represents the ungovernedwoman who should, by virtue of her sex, be ruled – like the child – by wise oldmen.

Arundel’s representation of Richard II as disregarding the advice of the‘sagacious elders of his kingdom’ is a version of a charge frequently laidagainst Richard during his reign and beyond. According to Richard the Redeles,for example: ‘The cheventeyns cheef that ye chesse ever / Weren al to yonge ofyeris to yeme swyche a rewme’.11 Accusations of this kind, like Arundel’sboy–man contrast, seem to relate to the style of the court – what might betermed its ‘youth culture’ – as much as to the chronological ages of membersof Richard’s household. Court style included extravagant spending on fashionand luxury items, as well as what looked to outsiders like outrageous sexualmores, including the divorce and remarriage of Robert de Vere, and JohnHolland’s seduction of John of Gaunt’s daughter.12

Aristocratic discourses, on the other hand, could use the hostile, androgy-nous conflation of ‘woman’ and ‘boy’ in order to redefine the meaning ofyouth and redeploy it as a position of power. It is possible, perhaps, to see thishappening in the Wilton diptych, that exquisite small altarpiece that depictsRichard II on one panel as a beardless boy kneeling in front of John the Baptistand two earlier saintly English kings, Edward the Confessor and Edmund. Onthe other panel is the Virgin carrying the Christ child, surrounded by angelswho wear Richard’s livery badge of the white hart. It is courtly but not frivo-lous; secular in its ostentatious display of elegance and luxury – even John theBaptist seems to be wearing designer furs – and yet devotional; immenselystylish in the aristocratic mode. The king and St Edmund wear the fashionable‘sleves long and wyde’ which Chaucer’s Squire wears, and which were casti-gated by anti-court moralists, like the poet of the Richard the Redeles.13 The

5


10 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3: 423.11 Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, ed. James M. Dean (Kalamazoo, Michigan,

2000), lines 88–9.12 Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 352–5.13 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales’, line 93, The Riverside

Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson et al., 3rd edn (Oxford, 1988).

livery badges are enamelled en rond bosse which was the latest technique injewellery-making.

The diptych has been plausibly dated between 1395, when Richard wastwenty-eight, and 1399, when he was thirty-two, and is equally plausibly heldto have been commissioned by the king himself. One of the enigmas of thisaltarpiece is why Richard should be represented as a boy, in a period so thor-oughly attuned to age codes. Other portraits from the 1390s show himbearded; this one emphasizes the femininity of boyhood in a way that seemsdeliberately positioned against ideas of manliness: a contrast in this regardmight be drawn with Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII. In the representation ofRichard, androgyny is an image of regality; to recall Archbishop Arundel’ssermon, it is authorized by the feminine court of heaven and its queen – akingdom apparently governed by children and the counsel of widows. Youthis not represented as irrational or inconstant, as the voluntas sola that was heldto be inimical to the traditional interests of the nobility, nor as voluptuous orpowerless. The young king is meekly deferential before the sagacious elders,Edward the Confessor in the middle and St Edmund on the left, but is alsotheir leader. The three kings, Edward the Confessor, Edmund and Richard,seem to allude to the Magi, appropriately because Richard was born on theFeast of the Epiphany.14

This iconography has often been noted; what has not been noted in thiscontext, though, is that the Magi are frequently represented in manuscript illu-minations as the three ages of man: the beardless boy, the lightly beardedmature man and the grizzled old man, as these three kings are.15 The Magi,like these three kings, approach the infant Christ in a reversal of the usual agehierarchy, because in fourteenth-century representations it is usually theoldest king who is depicted as kneeling to present the first gift, whereas herethat role is taken by Richard, the youngest. By representing Richard as part ofan Ages of Man sequence, in which the implication is that there is a naturalprogression from youth to maturity to age, the diptych counters the kind ofhostile youth-age dichotomy which Arundel’s sermon was able to exploit. Theregality of youth, moreover, is confirmed by the gesture of the other regalchild who represents a fourth age – of infancy – and who holds out a banneremblazoned with a red cross, on the orb of which is depicted a tiny island. In abreathtakingly absolutist gesture, England is apparently exchanged betweenthe infant and the boy.

To medievalists it may seem hardly surprising that, in the reign of a king

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14 See Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas and Caroline Elam (eds.), The Regal Image of Richard IIand the Wilton Diptych, introd. Caroline M. Barron (London, 1997).

15 See J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man (Oxford, 1966). Edmund, on the left, is depicted with asmall forked beard and gold hair that is beginning to show streaks of grey; next to him,Edward the Confessor has a full grey beard and hair.

who came young to the throne, there should be a continued political contestover what it means to be a child, and Rosalynn Voaden’s article in this volumeexplores this more fully. This contest suggests that, far from there being nomedieval awareness of the distinctiveness of childhood, it was in fact under-stood in subtle, complex and contradictory ways.

III

In writing about childhood and youth in the medieval past, scholars have toconfront the inevitable obstacles created both by the comparative paucity ofsources and the inherent tendency of the evidence to reflect ideology ratherthan social practice or to privilege elites over common people and males overfemales. The essays that follow both reflect and engage with these underlyingproblems.16 Thus Edward James explores the idea of childhood as reflected inthe writing of Gregory of Tours. He considers the continuities and discontinu-ities of terminology and approach in the descriptions and narrations of child-hood incidents which he finds present throughout the works of Gregory. Hisanalysis indicates that there are grounds to challenge the assumption that theclassical tripartite division of childhood into the categories of infans, puer andadolescens was recognized and specifically understood in the early MiddleAges. Instead, he sees evidence to conclude that although childhood itself was adevelopmental category which was recognized and which occasionedthought, debate and a degree of idealism, the classical categories of adoles-cence and youth, and ‘youth’ in our modern sense, were not recognized asspecific stages in life. For James, the works of Gregory suggest that with theonset of puberty came adulthood and probably marriage – a model which heoffers for further critical analysis against regional and chronological variation.

Simha Goldin is similarly concerned to tease out evidence for an ideologyof childhood within Northern European Jewish society of the high medievalera. Using for a benchmark the model put forward by Ariès, Goldin examinesJewish communities that confronted the threat of persecution and forced con-version at the hands of their Christian neighbours in the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries. These societies looked towards their young as a means ofpreserving the Jewish faith. Tracing this response through contemporarychronicles and exegetical texts contextualizing Talmudic tradition, the imageof a society with a particular understanding of the parent-child relationship ishighlighted. The resulting picture, which tends to focus on the male rather

7


16 The essays published here were, in all but one instance, first given as papers in the YorkMedieval Seminar series and a related day conference on the theme of ‘Youth’ during thecalendar year 1995. Simha Goldin’s chapter was subsequently added by invitation. Anumber of other scholars contributed to the original series, namely Caroline Barron, SallyCrawford, Guy Halsall, Sophie Oosterwijk, Richard Smith, Jenny Swanson and JackieTasioulas. The editors wish to thank all the contributors to the original series.

than the female child, is of a culture within which a strong concept of thenature of childhood existed, both within the family and in the wider commu-nity. Evidence of the ways in which the child was integrated into an emotionalframework within the family, and into the ritual framework of the widercommunity is used to illustrate that children were regarded in an affectionateand sympathetic way. In particular, their inclusion in these rituals of worshipboth within the home and in the synagogue, not simply as ‘little adults’ but asindividuals following a specific path of personal development on theirjourney to full maturity challenges the Ariès model.

Ideology is again the focus of essays by Kim Phillips and Rosalynn Voaden,who take us to the English later Middle Ages, but whose studies engage withthe influence of literary patrons and contemporary politics respectively. Phil-lips explores the response of an audience comprising young, affluent femalesto the conflicting messages of homiletic literature and the iconography of thevirgin martyrs in the later Middle Ages. Taking as a starting point theapparent contradictions between oft repeated warnings regarding the dangersof personal vanity contrasted with the conventional images of beautyportrayed in the representations of the virgin martyrs, she examines thepossible interpretative frameworks within which these conflicting messagesregarding physical beauty may have been processed. Identifying the conceptof parasexuality as a characteristic inherent in the visual and textual personaof the virgin martyr, Phillips takes as his focus a series of saints’ lives writtenfor a circle of female patrons by monastic authors working in East Angliaduring the first half of the fifteenth century. The text is seen to serve as an ideo-logical bridge between writer and reader and to foster a reciprocal relation-ship between audience and writer. By means of this relationship, the worldlyinterests of the audience, particularly young female readers, are simulta-neously nurtured and encouraged, whilst being channelled into ‘safe’ orrepressed ideological settings.

The literary construction of a child as a figure of authority and the tensionsinherent in this process are the concerns of Rosalynn Voaden. Looking at threefourteenth-century texts, Pearl, the Anonimalle Chronicle (1333–81) and theWestminster Chronicle (1381–94), she discusses ways in which the writersrespond to the challenge presented by the need to establish the authority ofthe child, on the one hand the Pearl maiden, on the other, the boy King RichardII. In this apparent suspension of hierarchies vested in age and parental status,she traces a process by which these traditional signifiers of authority aredisplaced by an alternative system of ordering deriving from the perceivedattributes of the child: innocence, purity and marginal position in the socialstructure. Voaden examines the process by which the physical body of thechild is infused with an external authority through association with anothersacred body, that of the Queen of Heaven, or the sacred body of the king onearth. Considering these texts against the backdrop of the complex andunstable politics of late fourteenth-century England and the eventssurrounding the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, Voaden places the debate

8


surrounding such challenges to the customary hierarchy in a broader andmore tragic context.

The exploration of the lived lives of historical children and young people isalways more difficult since children especially are all too often invisible in thehistorical record. Frances Andrews has found a rare window on to the experi-ence of children within records of the northern Italian communities of devoutlaity known as the Humiliati. Her focus is ‘the relationship between parentalresponsibility and religious vocation’. Entry to the order can be seen as apossible solution to the difficulties of reconciling a desire to live an orderedreligious life with the need to fulfil parental or familial responsibilitiestowards children. Examining the cases of six adults and seventeen childrenwho were admitted into what appear to be communities of Humiliati, themotives of both the adults and of the order itself are considered. Whilst it isapparent that for the parents or other relatives involved, the Humiliati areseen as offering a safe haven in uncertain circumstances for the children, themotives of the order itself in accepting children are less clear. Although thereis in many of the cases examined the accompaniment of a significant financialor material donation to the order, a purely financial framework for the rela-tionship between order, parent and child is not considered entirely satisfac-tory. In contrast, it is suggested that the response of the order marks a realattempt to extend the option of participation in the full religious life to fami-lies, including children, whilst still preserving the rights of the young to exer-cise free choice to stay or leave on reaching maturity.

The needs of younger children were, it would appear, commonly under-stood to be best met within the context of the natal family. Even in cultureswhere well-born infants were routinely dispatched to wet nurses, the infantwould be returned once weaned. At some point, however, most children wereexpected to leave home. It is a theme that recurs through several of the essayshere. P. J. P. Goldberg asks some factual questions for later medieval Englandrelating to the age at which youngsters flew the nest, how far they travelledand where they went. He observes from deposition evidence and similarsources that it was adolescents and the young adult who constituted the mostmobile group. Mobility, indeed, he suggests was a ‘facet of youth’. Althoughthe distances travelled were often comparatively small, it may be that mostpeople moved away from their natal communities, usually at some pointbefore marrying and so realizing the stability implicit in marriage. Numbersof both men and women, identified as servants and labourers in the contem-porary records, seem, however, to have remained relatively mobile and tohave abstained from marriage. In some ways such individuals never achievedsocial adulthood. They were also identified as problematic and potential trou-blemakers by a magisterial elite.

The process of leaving home also represents a moment charged withemotional tension. It is a rite of passage whereby the child escapes the shelterof paternal and maternal care and makes his or her own way in the world. Inshort the child becomes youth. The certainties of childhood are exchanged for

9


the uncertainties of adolescence. This moment of profound cultural anxiety isreflected in the proliferation of romance narratives centred around the depar-ture of the hero or heroine from the natal hearth. These form the basis of HelenCooper’s study. Such narratives ostensibly proffer advice to the young, but infact offer such obvious truisms that this can hardly be the primary purpose.The means of transmission, expression and context are, moreover, oftenconfusing and complex. The result is not so much a process by which the heroor heroine, or by implication the reader, is equipped with useful and practicalinformation and principles of use in their subsequent careers. Rather themoment at which the action of the narrative is halted for the confidentialconversation between parent and child, age and youth, is a point of memorialmarking a moment of transition, a recognition of the inevitability of movingfrom a certain to an uncertain world.

The need for the youth to make his or her way in the world, having flownthe nest, finds particular expression in the warrior culture of the Viking era.Judith Jesch considers contemporary or near-contemporary skaldic versenarratives of three Scandinavian kings of the early eleventh century. Each ofthese three, Olafr Haraldsson, Knutr Sveinsson and Magnus the Good, werecelebrated for achieving their status at notably young ages, and, for two ofthese individuals, through prowess in arms. Jesch examines in detail therepresentation of their careers as youthful and vigorous leaders. She finds atension inherent in the competing requirements for a Viking king to bevigorous and strong, whilst also possessing wisdom and experience. Incombination, these three narratives are offered as an illustration of the debateabout the nature of kingship in Scandinavia which was to bring about a shiftfrom a ‘Viking’ model based on conflict and achievement in arms to a more‘medieval’ model. In her analysis, Jesch illustrates this as a system withinwhich it was necessary to reconcile dynastic, ecclesiastical and nationalconcerns with the traditional warrior values of courage, leadership andprowess in arms.

10


Childhood and Youth in the Early Middle Ages


Edward James

This article was originally entitled ‘Writing the History of Youth in the EarlyMiddle Ages’. My concern was to think about the potentiality of the documen-tary source material for the study of youth: narrative historical sources, hagi-ography, the legal material and so on. I found it in practice impossible to writeabout youth without writing about childhood, and in the end I found myselfconcentrating on the writings of Gregory of Tours: a proper title for this articleis thus either ‘Childhood and Youth in Merovingian Gaul’ or, more honestly,‘Childhood and Youth in Gregory of Tours’. I concentrate on Gregory not justbecause I am working on a monograph on this author, but also because, in the880 printed pages in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica edition, he presents uswith a very large body of material, covering both the historical andhagiographical genres, which also includes probably more autobiographicalmaterial than we have extant from anyone else in the early Middle Ages – notexpressed with the sophistication of Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions,perhaps, but rich and interesting despite that, or because of that.1 The advan-tage of having such a body of material from one person is that, although itmight only be one man’s view of the subject, it may at least provide someconsistency of terminology and approach. Understanding one man’s view ofchildhood and youth would, after all, be a start, given the startling lack ofresearch into this topic by early medieval historians, and given its inherentproblems.2

The first question to ask, of course, is what questions ought we to beasking? What are the issues that we should like to resolve about childhoodand youth in the early Middle Ages? We should naturally like to know if ourown concept of ‘youth’ – which is itself highly subjective, extremely fluid atthe edges and not very stable at the middle – had any corresponding conceptin the period, or whether people in the early Middle Ages used quite differentcategories. We should like to know how adults treated young people, and viceversa. We should like to know about adult understanding of child and youth

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1 The works of Gregory of Tours were edited in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ScriptoresRerum Merowingicarum I, ed. W. Arndt and B. Krusch (Hanover, 1885), henceforth MGHSSRM I.

2 In the encyclopedic work by Margarethe Weidemann, Kulturgeschichte der Merowingerzeitnach den Werken Gregors von Tours, 2 vols. (Mainz, 1982), there is a section on children inthe law (I, 316–17), but otherwise there is no section on childhood or youth.

behaviour, and the extent of adult tolerance of it. We would like to know aboutearly medieval ‘youth culture’: to what extent did young people have theirown culture of play and music, and to what extent were they incorporatedinto adult activities, and if so, from what age? We would like to know aboutthe rituals of childhood and youth, including those imposed from above: the‘rites de passage’.

Our chances of knowing much about any of these things are actually fairlyremote; even if we are able to supply answers to some of them, on the basis ofa particular source, we shall find it very difficult indeed to generalize beyondthe period and locality of the source we are using. Did Gregory of Tours have aparticular set of agenda on this issue, or does he fairly represent a commonpoint of view in sixth-century Gaul? Do monastic rule-makers, who have tolegislate for the younger monks, share attitudes towards the young that are tobe found outside the monastery? Legislative material presents especial prob-lems, which historians are much more aware of now than a generation ago.We are no longer able to write the social history of Merovingian Gaul, forinstance, from a reading of the Salic law-code of the Franks. We can note, fromPactus Legis Salicae 24, that boys under twelve are protected by a wergild threetimes that of the adult Frank, and that cutting the hair of a long-haired boy(puer crinitus), or cutting the hair of a free girl, is punishable by a heavy fine.3

The wergild of a girl under child-bearing age, however, is only that of anormal freeman; the trebling of the wergild is stipulated for women ofchild-bearing age.4 We can only speculate as to what this might signify in thesphere of gender relations. The killing of a long-haired boy (that is, it isusually assumed, a free-born boy) is mentioned separately from the killing ofa boy under twelve (also certainly free-born), though the punishment is thesame, and we cannot understand the distinction that is being made betweenthe two. And we know that not only did the Salic law-code only capture amoment in the ever-changing social development of the Franks, but that itmay have expressed the aspirations of lawyers just as much as social realities,that it was probably only rarely publicized or used in law-courts, and that,most important of all, it was only intended to apply to a small proportion ofthe subjects of the Merovingian kings. Most people in Merovingian Gaul, andmost people in Western Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries, weredescended from Roman citizens and used some form of Roman law. However,using Roman law to try to understand any aspect of their society is also virtu-ally impossible: provincial Roman law, unlike imperial rescripts, was notwritten down in a form that has reached us. Enough fragments remain inpost-Roman Wales, for instance, to suggest that the Welsh continued to useelements of Roman law, but did anything of the Roman laws relating to youngpeople survive in Wales? It is impossible to say.

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Edward James

3 Pactus Legis Salicae, ed. K. A. Eckhardt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, LegesNationum Germanicarum IV.1 (Hanover, 1962), pp. 89–92.

4 Ibid., title 41, p. 161.

We might hope that in the future some answers will be provided fromarchaeology. As yet there has been very little work done on child graves fromthe early medieval period, which are the most obvious type of archaeologicalevidence to analyse. It is clear that there are not enough of them: in particular,the graves of infants are frequently not to be found. But some conclusions cannevertheless be drawn, and a turning point in this study is Sally Crawford’sbook on childhood in Anglo-Saxon England.5 Very interesting conclusionsalso appear in the study Guy Halsall has made of the Merovingian cemeteriesof Austrasia, eastern France, and more specifically those of the civitas of Metz.6

He noted that a high proportion of children’s graves, which are very difficultto sort out into male or female by skeletal analysis, had necklaces and fingerrings, and concluded that in childhood males and females were perhapsdressed and treated alike. From puberty, women were buried wearing thenormal dress and accoutrements of mature women; males, on the other hand,were not buried with any of the gender-specific accoutrements of men –specifically, of course, weapons – until around the age of twenty. Whateverconclusion one draws from this, one might suggest that the history of youngwomen is different from the history of young men. And almost inevitably,because of the bias of the sources, most of what we know is about young men.

One of the main problems is that of establishing our categories, or, perhaps,of reconciling our own categories with those of the early Middle Ages. Inmodern usage, youth may be understood as the period between childhoodand maturity, which we may term adolescence and early adulthood. But it isalso understood as signifying immaturity or inexperience, qualities associatedwith being young, which constitutes a much broader definition. At one end,‘youth’ is one stage in several, perhaps seven, stages of man/woman; at theother we have a much simpler categorization of people into adult andpre-adult, or adult and young. Sociologists make a distinction between adoles-cence, which is defined in biological terms from puberty to full physical adult-hood – a brief period of five or six years – and youth, a socioeconomic category.To quote Robert Havighurst, from a 1975 American educationalists’ report en-titled Youth: ‘We have chosen the ten-year period from age fifteen throughtwenty-four as the time-span for the period of youth, although we recognizethat some young people require several years beyond twenty-five for theestablishment of their psychological and vocational identity.’7 Is it possible inour early medieval sources for any similar distinction to be observed?

As is well known, ancient – and medieval writers following them –normally divided up the life of the young of the human species into three

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5 S. Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud, 1999). This work was publishedafter the text of this chapter was completed.

6 G. Halsall, Settlement and Social Organization: The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge,1995).

7 Youth, ed. R. J. Havighurst and P. H. Dreyer, Yearbook of the National Society for theStudy of Education 74, part 1 (Chicago, 1975), p. ix.

categories: the infans up to age seven, the puer (or puella) up to the age ofpuberty, at the ages of twelve or fourteen, and the adolescens after that. In herstandard book, translated as Childhood in the Middle Ages (which should morehonestly be retitled, as so many books of this kind should, Childhood in the LastThird of the Middle Ages, between 1150 and 1500, Mostly in France), ShulamithShahar deals with young people from conception until puberty. She devotes abrief discussion to the transition from pueritia to adolescentia, however, andnotes that a study of the third stage would be an interesting topic for anotherbook.8 Adolescentia is a state which continues until twenty-five, or eventhirty-five . . . ‘some young people require several years beyond twenty-fivefor the establishment of their psychological and vocational identity’.9 Afteradolescentia, for some classical writers and those who follow them, camejuventus, still not a state of full maturity and literally translatable, I presume,as ‘youth’. For Dante, adolescenzia ended at twenty-five, and was succeeded bygioventute, also to be translated as ‘youth’, which applied until the age offorty-five.10 This categorization was by no means universal in classical andmedieval Latin writers. In the late fourth century Ausonius wrote to agrandson on his fifteenth birthday and congratulated him on reachingiuventus.11 At twenty-five Roman law freed a man from the state of legalguardianship; in Dante’s day a man could participate fully in Italian town lifefrom the same age. Not until full maturity, however, would a man achievepositions of importance within his society. I say ‘man’ advisedly: as Shaharsays, the divisions of life into adolescentia and juventus are not applied towomen, who may well be wives and mothers by their teens, and thus, afterpuberty, in quite different social, legal and political categories. One thinks ofthe epitaph Ausonius wrote for Anicia:

She had enjoyed everything that can be wished for in a long lifespan. [Shewas sixteen when she died.] As a child she gave suck to her baby, as a girlshe was already an adult. She married, conceived a child, gave birth, anddied.12

It makes little sense, I would argue, for the scholar of today interested in‘youth’ to look at the state of the juvenes, the male population betweentwenty-five and thirty-five. Indeed, it would make more sense to translate notjuventus but adolescentia as ‘youth’ rather than as ‘adolescence’. Adolescentiacorresponds to a much longer time-span than the relatively short periodrecognized as biological adolescence by modern writers. Should I, in thischapter, then, be dealing with the life of young people – and maybe specifi-cally young males – between, let us say, fourteen and twenty-five? Obviously

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Edward James

8 S. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London, 1990), p. 30.9 Youth, ed. Havighurst and Drewer, p. ix.10 Shahar, Childhood, p. 28.11 Ausonius, IX: Decimi Magni Ausonii Opera, ed. R. P. H. Green (Oxford, 1999), p. 28.12 Ausonius, XIII, 2: ibid., p. 77.

there would be potentially a lot of material. A number of successful earlymedieval kings, for instance, managed to pack most of their careers into theyears before they were twenty-five. Most early medieval warriors did as well.It was indeed, according to Felix, in St Guthlac’s adolescentia that he ‘remem-bered the deeds of the heroes of old, and as though waking from sleep hechanged his disposition [he had been a saintly little child] and gatheringbands of followers he took up arms’.13 (He displayed his incipient saintlinessby returning to his victims a third of everything he stole and plundered fromthem.) It is probably no coincidence that, according to Bede, Benedict Biscopwas twenty-five years old when he retired from his warrior career and settleddown and founded a monastery, and it is notable in this context thattwenty-five was recognized as the age at which, canonically, a man could beordained as a priest.14

When I came to look this question, however, I realized that there was amajor problem. The tripartite division of childhood into infans, puer andadolescens, which could be found in classical writers, is indeed repeated bywriters in the early medieval period. It can be found in Gregory the Great,Fructuosus of Braga, and Isidore of Seville (though for numerological reasons– a love of the number seven and its multiples – Isidore has replacedtwenty-five with twenty-eight as the end of adolescentia).15 But moving frompurely theoretical texts like Isidore’s Etymologies to narrative texts like theHistory of Gregory of Tours, or other texts such as hagiographies or letters, wefind that a specific category of ‘young men’ (or ‘young women’) is simply notthere. The word adolescens is indeed used, but rarely, and quite at random.Alcuin refers to himself as having gone on a trip as an adolescens when at theage of thirty-six;16 Gregory of Tours refers to himself as ‘in my adolescence’when he had not yet reached his eighth birthday;17 a sixth-century inscriptionfrom Gaul records the death of a four-year-old adolescens, while another usesthe word infantia of a teenager, an adolescent in our terms.18

Here I move into areas of generalization which are decidedly dangerous,because I have not yet investigated word-usage much outside the works ofGregory of Tours. Someone like Alcuin of York, who quite frequently refers tothe younger members of monastic communities, would be a good subject for

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13 Felix, Life of St Guthlac, 16–17: Felix’s Life of Guthlac, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956),pp. 80–1. According to chapter 12 (pp. 78–9), Guthlac had ended his infantia before begin-ning to speak.

14 Bede, Historia Abbatum 1: Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford,1895), pp. 364–5.

15 Isidore, XI.ii.4: Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiam sive Originum, ed. W. M. Lindsay(Oxford, 1912) (no page number).

16 Alcuin, Epist. 172: MGH Epistolae IV, p. 285. Cited by P. Riché, Education and Culture in theBarbarian West (Columbia SC, 1976), p. 448.

17 Gregory of Tours, Vitae Patrum VIII.2: MGH SSRM I, p. 692.18 E. Le Blant, Nouveau Recueil des Inscriptions de la Gaule Chrétienne (Paris, 1893), no. 106,

cited by Riché, Education and Culture, p. 448.

further investigation. But in Gregory, at least, there appears to be no normaldivision of the population into age-groups once they have ceased to be pueri orpuellae, at least until they reach the status, or weakness, of old age. Gregorymay in theory distinguish a class of adolescentia between thirteen andtwenty-five, if he has read the right classical authors, but this does not actuallyaffect the way in which he thinks of real people in historical or social situa-tions. In practice he has a looseness of vocabulary which is quite noticeable(and not that different from our own haphazard way with ‘child’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’and ‘youth’). Indeed, there is at least one case of Gregory of Tours doingprecisely what in this age of self-awareness we can no longer hear withoutwincing: one story is headed ‘the blind girl [puella] from Lisieux’: but in thestory itself Paula is described as ‘iam adulta from Lisieux’.19 It makes onesuspect that not all Gregory’s puellae are especially youthful.20 Looseness ofvocabulary is, however, much more of a problem with Gregory’s pueri. This isnot Gregory’s fault, so much as a flaw in the Latin language, and noted as suchin a contemporary text, Justinian’s legal compilation, the Digest, where wefind:

A reference to puer can have three meanings. (a) We can call all slaves pueri[equivalent to the Alabaman or Mississippian ‘boy’] (b) We may mean boysas opposed to girls; and (c) when we refer to children [that is, children ofboth sexes].21

Christian writers in the early Christian period can add another meaning: amale of any age who is baptized can be referred to as a puer: he has beenreborn again as a child. For Gregory, in fact, the word pueri is often, perhapsnormally, used as a shorthand for pueri regales: the king’s boys, the king’s lads– presumably those adolescentes between fourteen and twenty-five who servein the royal presence as warriors/body-guards/servants. The word may beused precisely to recall ‘slave’, in reference to their status as obedient servants.Occasionally the context shows us that the puer referred to is probably in theclassical age of pueritia, that is between the ages of seven and fourteen; butoften context suggests to us that the pueri are much older than that. The wordpuer without qualification or clear context in Gregory could be a royal retainer;it could be a boy; it could be a slave; and it could, of course, be a royal retaineror a slave who was a boy . . .

In a sense Gregory and his contemporaries knew this problem, and used awhole variety of other words to refer to pueri proper – males between the agesof seven and fourteen: infans, infantulus, juventus, ephebus, parvulus, perparvulus

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Edward James

19 In Gregory, De Virtutibus Sancti Martini II.54: MGH SSRM I, pp. 608 (chapter heading) and627 (text).

20 Though most scholars reject the idea, it is possible that the chapter-headings in Gregorywere supplied by a later scribe.

21 Quoted in T. Wiedemann, Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (London, 1989), p. 154.Comments in parenthesis are my own.

as well as our old friend adolescens. But this, of course, is to assume that we cantell the age of the child being referred to in our sources. Gregory himself onlyrarely specifies age. Interestingly, when he does so it is almost invariably eitherthe age of people at their death or the age of children below the age of puberty.

Because of that last habit, we can see that Gregory does reveal an under-standing of different stages of childhood, together with the type of behaviourthat one might expect at various stages, and we can reconstruct something ofhis attitude to the young. Some of his comments seem slightly odd. Forinstance, he tells how he had recently heard of a little boy (puerulus) aboutthree years old, who was still being suckled by his mother. The boy had afever, and could not eat. While being carried to the tomb of St Maximus ofRiez, ‘on the hands of those who loved him’, he died. His parents ‘wept andshouted’, and threw the boy in front of the tomb, and left it there, lifeless,when the doors of the church closed for the night.22 Next morning the doorswere unlocked, and they saw that the infant boy had raised himself and waspulling himself along the railing of the tomb, ‘for he was not yet old enoughthat he could walk properly’. (At the age of three?) The boy recovered, andGregory heard the story from him when a grown man.23

The same stage of beginning to walk at the age of three occurs in anotherstory. Three years after his birth, a puerulus from Limoges was beginning towalk, his voice was becoming louder, and he was forming words with his lips.‘He lovingly teased his mother, offered kisses, and embraced her neck.’ But ademon blew dust in his eyes in a great whirlwind. ‘Because his mother was anignorant unbeliever and did not think of protecting herself and her son withthe sign of salvation, this treachery was successful’ – that is, the boy becameblind. ‘When he was older he was given to beggers, so that he might wanderaround with them and receive some alms, for his parents were very poor.’Twelve years later he came to Tours, on Christmas Eve 582; he lay in front ofMartin’s tomb, and blood poured from his eyes, and he could see.24

Another story, again relating to a small child, is informative, in that itsuggests that belief in the importance of infant baptism was current at least insome lay circles in fifth- and sixth-century Gaul. A very little boy (puerparvulus), specified as being ten months old, was gravely ill. His mother wept‘not so much for the death of the child as for the fact that he had not yet beenanointed with the sacrament of baptism’. The child was almost dead, and waslaid on the saint’s tomb. ‘The child, who had been stretched out unconscious,awoke and shows by a laugh the joy of his heart; he opened his mouth andcalls his mother, saying “Come here!” ’ The mother was amazed, as she had

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22 Those who think that in an age of high infant mortality parents did not feel for their dyingoffspring need only read some of Gregory’s heart-rending stories.

23 De Gloria Confessorum 82: MGH SSRM I, p. 801; translation from R. Van Dam, Gregory ofTours: Glory of the Confessors (Liverpool, 1988), pp. 88–9.

24 Gregory, De Virtutibus Sancti Martini III.16: MGH RSSRM I, p. 636; translation from R. VanDam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), p. 266.

never before heard her son’s voice. He asked her to bring him water; after shehad done so he ‘returned to the first wailings of infancy, and never spokeagain until he reached that age at which children are accustomed to loosentheir tongues in speech’.25 Two boys – pueroli – were sleeping in a single bed ina house near Poitiers. They heard a bell ringing in the night, and went out andfound a crowd of women: but they realized that they had stumbled on a gath-ering of demons. ‘As is characteristic of their tender age, they did not protectthemselves with the sign of salvation; so one was deprived of his sight and theother of his sight and mobility.’ Both were eventually cured at St Martin’sshrine.26 Again there is the statement about norms of development, and in thelatter case a hint that children could hardly be expected to remember toconduct themselves as prudent adults would.

Our main problem with using Gregory as a source for understanding child-hood and youth in Merovingian Gaul, as the above stories might suggest, isthe context in which most of them appear: young people as the recipients ofcures at the tombs of saints and, in the case of embryonic saints themselves, asrecipients of divine grace. Gregory is certainly aware of what unregenerateand unChristian children are capable of. He repeats the story he found inPrudentius’s poem, Peristephanon, of the martyr Cassianus of Imola, a distin-guished teacher, whom the pagan persecutors handed over to his own class ofyoung boys for punishment. ‘In their thirst for the blood of their teacher theboys struck his head with their wax tablets, lacerated him with the blades oftheir pens, and tattooed the skin of their teacher with tiny pricks; they madehim a martyr worthy of God.’27 But young people normally appear as, if notsaintly, then at least as worthy recipients of divine assistance. Little Gregorywas no exception. He tells of when he was a young boy – in infantia – and hisfather was suffering from gout exacerbated by fever. He had a vision ofsomeone who asked him if he had read the Book of Joshua. Gregory repliedthat he had only learnt the letters of the alphabet and had not even heard ofthe book. (This was almost certainly before Gregory was eight, for at that agehe went to Lyon to study in the house of his great-uncle, Bishop Nicetius.)28

The person in his vision asked him to write a name on a chip of wood and putit under his father’s pillow: his father recovered. A year later, the same afflic-tions returned, and the same person told Gregory to do what was in the Bookof Tobit (which Gregory had also not read): to catch a fish and to burn its heartand liver under his father’s eyes. Gregory did not do this himself, of course: he

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Edward James

25 Gregory, Vitae Patrum I I. 4: MGH SSRM I, p. 671; translation from Gregory of Tours: Life ofthe Fathers, trans. E. James, 2nd edn (Liverpool, 1991), pp. 15–16.

26 Gregory, De Virtutibus Sancti Martini II.45: MGH SSRM I, p. 625; translation from VanDam, Saints and their Miracles, p. 252.

27 De Gloria Martyrum 42: MGH SSRM I, p. 516; translation from Van Dam, Saints and theirMiracles, p. 65.

28 Gregory, Vitae Patrum 8.2: MGH SSRM I, p. 692; translation from Gregory of Tours, trans.James, p. 51.

told his mother, who in turn told servants to catch the fish. Again the cureworked.29

It is also perhaps worth noting, in view of the tone in which these stories ofchildren cured are related, firstly, that cures are vouchsafed by God throughHis saints to those individuals who are worthy – sufficiently pious, suffi-ciently innocent or sufficiently penitent – and that after a child had been curedfrom a life-threatening illness it was not at all unusual for that child to be dedi-cated to that saint for life. Gregory himself was dedicated to clerical life after acure, and he relates a considerable number of other such cases. Sick peoplewere often cured at the tomb of Abbot Maximus of Chinon, he tells us in theGlory of the Confessors. One young boy who was a member of the household ofthe cathedral at Tours was cured; a girl was restored to health on the same day.‘Once information about these cures reached me, I had the boy tonsured andadmitted to the monastery, and I ordered that the girl adopt a habit and beadmitted to a community of nuns to serve God.’30

Sometimes, however, it is precisely in the descriptions of young saints thatwe see how other children were expected to behave. Felix says that his heroGuthlac, when a boy, did not listen to ‘the impudence of the children, nor thenonsensical chatter of the matrons, nor the empty tales of the common people,nor the foolish shouts of the rustics, nor the lying triflings of flatterers, nor thedifferent cries of the various kinds of birds, as children of that age are wont todo’.31 Saint Cuthbert abstained from the rough games of the other children.Saints were expected to be precocious, mature before their time, to have castoff childhood before they had reached the proper age. Gregory’s own uncleGallus of Clermont, as a boy (ab adolescentia) was devoted to God, refused tomarry and had his head shaved; his father gave in, and the abbot made him acleric. ‘He was perfectly chaste, and when he grew older he never had anywicked thoughts; he abstained from youthful games; his voice was alwaysmarvellously sweet and agreeable in song; he always applied continually tohis studies, delighting in fasting, and would often abstain from food.’32

Gregory’s contemporary Venantius Fortunatus, who ended his career asbishop of the neighbouring see of Poitiers and dedicated his collection ofpoems to Gregory, wrote about the former Queen Radegund, turned nun:

she was taught letters and other things suitable to her sex and she wouldoften converse with the other children there about her desire to be a martyr ifthe chance came in her time . . . While but a small child she herself brought

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29 De Gloria Confessorum 39: MGH SSRM I, p. 772; translation from Van Dam, Saints and theirMiracles, p. 51.

30 De Gloria Confessorum 22: MGH SSRM I, p. 762; translation from Van Dam, Saints and theirMiracles, p. 38.

31 Life of Guthlac, 12; translated in Felix’s Life, ed. Colgrave, p. 79.32 Vitae Patrum 6.1: MGH SSRM I, p. 680; translation from Gregory of Tours, trans. James,

p. 33.

the scraps left at table to the gathered children, washing the head of eachone, seating them on little chairs and offering water for their hands.33

And, most clearly of all, a Carolingian life of St Anstrudis records that she

was carefully nurtured by her parents and brought to the Christian religionwith much diligence, learning her letters in the days of her tender child-hood. The newborn virgin went from strength to strength, beyond thecapacities of her girlish age. As soon as she ceased being rocked in hercradle, she learned to sing the praises of the Virgin’s Son. Through divineclemency she exercised her capacious memory for reading and listening,training herself in the mastery of learning . . . Above all, she was so full ofgrace that the ways of her maturity could be discerned in her first years.34

All this is the reappearance in Christian guise of the classical topos of the puersenex – the child old man.

We must not assume that such children were necessarily regarded as actingcontrary to nature: that is, contrary to the usual wicked tendencies of theyoung. There was in fact debate throughout late Antiquity and the earlyMiddle Ages about the innocence or otherwise of baptized children. Thewords of Christ in Matthew (18: 36) were of course a powerful influence infavour of the child: ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, yeshall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’ Isidore expressed it etymologi-cally, of course: puer, he said, came from puritas, and puella from pupilla,because boys and girls are as pure as the pupil of the eye.35 Children whocould preserve such innocence despite the wickedness of the world in whichthey lived were worthy of being blessed by God; adults who could preservethe innocence of their childhood were well on the way to sainthood. It is inthat light, perhaps, that we should note the otherwise worrying story relatedby Gregory of his uncle Nicetius of Lyons – worrying, that is, to a world thathas been hearing the Catholic Church in America apologize for itschild-abusing priests:

I remember in my youth – in adolescentia – when I was beginning to learnhow to read, and was in my eighth year, that he ordered my unworthy self tocome to his bed, where he took me in my arms with the sweetness ofpaternal affection; holding his fingers on the edges of his garment hecovered himself with it so well that my body was never touched by hisblessed limbs. Consider, I beg you, and note well the precaution of this manof God, who abstained thus from touching a child’s body, in which he couldnot have had the least glimmer of concupiscence nor the least incitement to

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Edward James

33 Venantius Fortunatus, Life of the Holy Radegund, 2; translation from J. A. McNamara andJ. E. Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham NC, 1992), p. 71.

34 The Life of Anstrudis, 1; translation from McNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women, p. 291.35 Isidore, XI.ii.12: Etymologiam, ed. Lindsay (no page numbers).

impurity. And when they might be a real suspicion of impurity, how muchmore did he avoid any temptation!36

Gregory’s double-thinking here is intriguing: his uncle could not have desiredthis young boy’s body, and yet even so he made sure that no suspicion of itmight arise.

We must not imagine that bishops like Nicetius, or writers like Gregory,were actually, as churchmen and churchwomen, far removed from the life ofyoung people. Gregory himself, from the age of eight, was brought up in anepiscopal household, and most episcopal establishments and monasterieswould have had a proportion, and perhaps a high proportion, of childrenattached to them. Bede entered his community at seven. Interestingly, there isevidence, scattered widely from Ireland to Italy, of small boys living innunneries too. In the monasteries founded by Fructuosus, parents whowanted to be monks could bring their children with them into their respectivecommunities, and although they had to be separated from each other theyoungest children were still allowed to see their parents when they wanted.37

There were certainly worries among monastic legislators about childrenyounger than that being allowed into the monastery. Caesarius of Arles saidthat ‘if it were possible’ children should only be accepted when they were sixor seven years old, because only at that age could they learn to read andobey.38

Monastic legislators seem to have had a fairly humane attitude towards theyoung. In the chapter of his Rule entitled ‘That no one presume to strikeanother’, Benedict of Nursia writes:

The care of disciplining, and the custody of children up to fifteen years ofage, however, shall belong to all. But this also with all moderation andreason. For he who presumes in any way against one of riper age, withoutprecept of the abbot; or who, even against children, becomes violent withoutdiscretion, shall be subject to the discipline of the Rule; for it is written: Donot unto another what thou wilt not that one do unto thee.39

Paul the Deacon’s late eighth-century commentary on Benedict went evenfurther. He noted that beatings did more harm than good, and that the brutalmaster ought to be punished and he also suggested an hour of recreation, anda reward of sweets at dinner from the abbot to the best-behaved boys.40

I have strayed a long way from the topic of ‘youth’. I have, however,

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36 Vitae Patrum 8.2: MGH SSRM I, p. 692; translation from Gregory of Tours, trans. James,p. 51.

37 Riché, Education and Culture, p. 451.38 Caesarius of Arles, Statuta Sanctarum Virginum 6; quoted in Riché, Education and Culture,

p. 451.39 The Rule of St Benedict, 70; translation from Monks, Bishops and Pagans: Christian Culture in

Gaul and Italy, 500–700, ed. E. Peters (Philadelphia, 1949), p. 55.40 Cited in Riché, Education and Culture, p. 452.

demonstrated a number of things, or at least suggested a number of hypoth-eses. That there is a good deal of evidence that childhood was a topic that occa-sioned thought and debate in the early Middle Ages. That childhood was acategory that was recognized, and to a certain extent even idealized. But thatadolescence and youth, in the classical sense (adolescentia and juventus), and‘youth’ in our sense, were not recognized in practical terms as specific stagesin life, with their own problems and their own status. A child came to adult-hood at puberty, in legal terms, even if the law was uncertain where to put thedividing line; for the Salian Franks, judging by their lawcode, it was twelve,but for the Ripuarian Franks, judging by their lawcode (a century later thanthe Pactus Legis Salicae) it was fifteen. Childebert II, who came to his throne in580 at the age of five, receives a spear from the hands of his uncle Guntram atthe age of fifteen, in 590, to signify that he had reached adulthood and the fulland total control of his kingdom. (His fifteenth and sixteenth years were spentruthlessly eliminating those self-serving advisers who had governed hiskingdom during his minority.) Before that age, judging from saints’ lives,young people’s parents would already have betrothed, or married off, theiroffspring. A third-century Roman jurist said that betrothal could happen afterseven: ‘both sides must understand what is happening, that is, they must beseven years old’.41 Saints, of course, had mostly managed to escape that fate,either by guile or total stubborn disobedience. Many saints’ lives tell of theyoung saint defying his or her parents and fleeing the parental home. Notmany were as courageous as St Pappula, if we are to believe Gregory: she wasdetermined to leave her parents’ house, despite their lack of approval ‘becauseshe was not able to serve God in the house of her parents, where she wasdistracted by the concerns of this world’. She cut her hair, dressed as a man,and enrolled in a monastery in the diocese of Tours. She worked many mira-cles; the monks elected her abbot, which she refused. She lived there for thirtyyears, and only revealed her secret three days before her death, presumably,implies Gregory, that she should be washed and buried by women rather thanmen.42

Before puberty, too, many children seemed to have embarked upon theirfuture careers: either by having joined the clergy, or having gone to school tolearn their letters, or having gone to the household of the king or an aristocratto train as a warrior, or simply having begun to work on their parents’ farm.Gregory gives us the story of St Patroclus, an inhabitant of Berry, and the sonof a certain Aetherius. When he was ten years old he was set to watch over thesheep, while his brother was sent off to school to study letters. ‘They were intruth not of the highest nobility,’ says Gregory, ‘but nevertheless they werefree.’ One day they returned at midday for lunch at their father’s house, onefrom the fields and one from school, and had a row. This was started by the

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Edward James

41 Wiedemann, Adults and Children, p. 149.42 De Gloria Confessorum 16: MGH SSRM I, pp. 756–7; translation from Van Dam, Saints and

their Miracles, p. 31.

one who was at school, who derided Patroclus for his low status, calling him arusticus. Patroclus left the sheep, went to school and showed himself a muchbetter pupil than his brother. He was recommended for employment toNunnio, one of King Childebert I’s officials. ‘He brought him up with all thecare of a great affection, and Patroclus showed himself to be so modest andobedient to all that all loved him with the greatest kindness as if he were akinsman.’ He refused to marry, of course, and joined the clergy.43

Adolescence, in the modern sense, the short period during which modernyouth comes to terms with his or her body, parents and society (not neces-sarily in that order), and in which parents occasionally come to terms withtheir offspring, can sometimes be recognized in our sources, as in the strugglesof the would-be saint for independence. But it does not seem to exist as anamed category. The writings of Gregory, at least, imply throughout that withpuberty came adulthood, and probably marriage. If there is a recognized riteof passage in the life of the young it is at seven or eight, when the child seri-ously sets about training to be an adult. In that sense pueritia corresponds toour idea of ‘youth’, even if the actual age range is different. The ancient worldhad this break at the age of seven or eight too. Seven is when school starts;when betrothal may take place; when, according to Galen, hobby-horses maybe replaced by real horses. Martial said that it was when you ‘laid aside yournuts’: giving up simple games and turning to the more complex role-playinggames that prepared one for adult life. A Byzantine poem in the GreekAnthology dedicates those toys to God: ‘Today, dear God, I am seven years old,and must play no more. / Here is my top, my hoop, and my ball: keep themall, my Lord.’44 It is the age, too, when, in the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesusbegan to help Joseph in the carpenter’s shop – the age at which apprenticeshipbegan. Pueritia is that preparatory, dare I say liminal, stage, during which achild learns to become an adult.

These conclusions are drawn mainly from the writings of one man. Morework clearly needs to be done to see precisely what the chronological orregional variations might be. Gregory the Great would repay work, as wouldAlcuin. This is an area that has hardly been touched by early medievalhistorians; it is an ideal area for future research.

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43 Vitae Patrum 9. 1: MGH SSRM I, pp. 702–3; translation from Gregory of Tours, trans. James,pp. 65–6.

44 From the Greek Anthology, translated in Wiedemann, Adults and Children, p. 153.

Jewish Society under Pressure

Jewish Society under Pressure:The Concept of Childhood

Simha Goldin

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Social attitudes towards children are an important means towards under-standing the past. It is through the procreation of children that a society seeksto perpetuate itself. Securing this continuity is thus one of the most importantgoals of any society. By examining attitudes towards children and childhoodwe are presented with a tool which allows us to expose the social values andaspirations, the weight of a society’s fears and pressures and its basic rulesand norms. The question of attitudes towards children and childhood wasraised by Philippe Ariès’s book Centuries of Childhood, first published inFrench in 1960.1 Ariès argued that throughout the Middle Ages, and up untilthe seventeenth century, the concepts of childhood and family were verydifferently understood from those which developed subsequently. In hisopinion, prior to the seventeenth century children were not recognized asentities separate from adults and were in fact perceived to be merely ‘smalladults’.2 A variety of reactions, both positive and negative, followed the publi-cation of Ariès’s theory. These served to place the topics of children and child-hood at the forefront of historical research, just as they are in the fields ofpsychology, sociology, and anthropology.3 This paper will examine the placeof children in Jewish society of northern France and Germany during thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries in the light of the debate about Ariès’s thesis.4

During the Middle Ages the Jewish group in Christian countries perceiveditself to be threatened by the Christian society that surrounded it. The threat

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1 P. Ariès, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1960).2 See the introduction to this collection for a discussion of Ariès’s arguments.3 For a summary see S. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London, 1983), pp. 1–9, 259–60;

B. A. Hanawalt, ‘Medievalists and the Study of Childhood’, Speculum 77 (2002), 440–50.4 See E. Kanarfogel, ‘Attitudes towards Children and Childhood in Medieval Jewish

Society’, Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times 2 (1985), 1–34; S. Goldin, ‘Die Beziehungder jüdischen Familie im Mittelälter zu Kind und Kindheit’, Jahrbuch der Kindheit 6 (1989),211–33 and 251–6; I. Ta-Shma, ‘Children of Medieval German Jewry: A Perspective onAriès from Jewish Sources’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 12 (1991), 263–80.E. Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages (Detroit, 1992),pp. 33–41.

was multi-faceted and stemmed among other things from the knowledge thatChristians could and did convert Jews to Christianity by force, by induce-ment, or by persuasion. In the long era of persecution and forced expulsionfollowing the first Crusade of 1096, Jews as a community concluded thatChristians intended to focus their missionary efforts particularly on Jewishchildren. This concern of the Jews was predicated on active attempts by bothecclesiastical and lay authorities to take control of Jewish children. Forexample, in 1497 in Portugal all Jewish children were forcibly baptized,undoubtably as a preliminary to baptizing their parents.5

Jewish chronicles written subsequent to the first Crusade emphasize thisfear of Christians seizing Jewish children. This perceived threat helps accountfor the norm of martyrdom, of dying for the sanctification of God’s name.Rachel, a woman who put her own children to death, declared that she did soout of fear that the Christians would baptize them and they would grow up asChristians. In Worms some of the Jews converted in order to care for the chil-dren who had been captured by the Christian community, ‘so they will notexist in their errors, for they are small and do not distinguish between goodand evil’. The writers of these chronicles sought to warn their fellow Jews ofthe Christians’ intentions so these could be guarded against. They related howthe Christians would first separate children from their mothers:

and they took him from his mother’s arms by force and took him away withthem. And three days before they informed them [the women] of thiscompulsion [abduction] the officials of the palace came and sealed off thewell that had water in it for fear that they would throw their children in andput them to death.

Although it is difficult to estimate the extent to which children were killed toprevent their growing up as Christians, it is evident that infanticide was animportant element in the Jewish concept of martyrdom, and created a deepimpression on the generations following the first Crusade.6 In 1171 the entire

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Simha Goldin

5 It is unclear whether the Jews were aware of the theological controversy on the issuewhich raged in the thirteenth century. Gratian maintained that allowing the children to bein the custody of their ‘errant’ parents was harmful to the children, and since theChristian princes held the Jews as ‘slaves’ it was permissible to baptize Jewish children byforce. Thomas Aquinas objected to taking children away from their parents; he viewedthis as contravening natural law. John Duns Scotus maintained that divine authority overthe children exceeded that of their parents, and therefore the children should be removedand baptized. See S. Grayzel, ‘Popes, Jews, and Inquisition, from “Sicut” to “Turbato” ’, inEssays on the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the Dropsie University, ed. A. I. Katshand L. Nemoy (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 151–88; W. Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews(Ebelsbach, 1988), pp. 314–31; S. Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews (Toronto, 1991),pp. 253–7, 268–70.

6 Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarfat, ed. A. Habermann (Jerusalem, 1945), pp. 33–5, 37, 55–7;H. Soloveitchik, ‘Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example’, Associ-ation for Jewish Studies Review 12 (1987), 205–21; S. Goldin, ‘The Socialisation for KiddushHa-Shem among Medieval Jews’, Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 117–38.

Jewish community of Blois was put to death. Jewish correspondence reportsthat the adults were condemned to the stake and the children were taken to beraised as Christians. The Jews exerted the full force of their influence, bothdirect and indirect, on the Capetian royal house to secure the release of thehostage children.7

The Christian goal was perceived to be the conversion of all Jewish chil-dren. As a consequence the Jewish community developed a special attitudetowards their children. This was based simultaneously on tradition and oncontemporary needs arising from the conflict with the surrounding Christianworld. In his 1991 article, Ta-Shma concluded that, in contrast with theattitude displayed by Christians, the particular way in which Jews regardedchildren resulted from the influence of the Talmudic tradition in two areas.The first was ‘Pikuah Nefesh’ (the saving of life), the principle that holds thesaving of human life to be a paramount concern. The Talmudic tradition ofPikuah Nefesh resulted in keeping a closer watch over children who posedmore of a risk to themselves than others. The second was education. TheTalmud imposed on fathers the duty of educating their sons, which in turncreated a greater awareness of the parent-child relationship.8 I intend toexamine this important observation in light of the specific historical context,and of the goals and needs of the community in two aspects: the attitude of thefamily to children and childhood, and the attitude of the community to chil-dren and childhood.9

THE FAMILY’S ATTITUDE TO THE CHILD

BreastfeedingThe question of breastfeeding and nursing mothers has become forresearchers into childhood an important criterion in determining the attitudeof mothers and families to their offspring. The importance of the issue stemsfrom an understanding that the physical bonding between mother and infantin the first months of life is extremely significant and affects the child’s futuredevelopment. A connection has also been made between the consigning ofnursing infants to professional wetnurses and high rates of mortality amongnursing infants up to two years of age. Mothers who gave up their infants towetnurses have been branded by some researchers as uncaring and lacking in

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7 R. Chazan, ‘The Blois Incident of 1171: A Study in Jewish Intercommunal Organization’,Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 36 (1968), 13–31.

8 See Ta-Shma, ‘Children of Medieval German Jewry’, pp. 265–6.9 Here, as at other points throughout this article, it would seem necessary to address the

issue of the Jewish family’s attitude towards its daughters. Although this article dealswith boys and girls, there are significant methodological difficulties inherent in analysingthe sources with a view to discussing the issues of girls. I intend to devote a separatearticle to this topic in the future.

maternal feelings. Both Jewish and Christian sources yield numerous refer-ences to Gentile wetnurses in Jewish homes and it would seem that Jewsfrequently hired wetnurses. However, in the Jewish sources this custom iscoupled with expressions of acute anxiety regarding the welfare of the childbefore the age of twenty-four months. How then can we reconcile these twoapparently contradictory positions?10

Christian wetnurses were indeed found in Jewish homes, but we must notbe misled by the extent of the sources. The marked preoccupation with theissue in both Jewish and Christian records gives little indication of the scope ofthe phenomenon. Rather it stems from the doctrinal and theological questionsthe issue posed for both religions. First, the Church put great emphasis on itstheological superiority to Judaism and therefore regularly castigated thoseChristians, members of the ‘master race’, who shamefully served Jewishmasters, members of the ‘servant race’. Secondly, the Church had an ongoingfear of the overwhelming influence of Jews on Christians living in Jewishhomes. Lastly, after receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist, the female Chris-tian communicant underwent the deep and significant experience of mergingher body with that of Jesus Christ. This created a situation whereby the milk ofdevout Christians, suffused with the vitality of the Messiah, was being used tonourish Jewish children. These three themes appear repeatedly in the writingsof the various pontiffs and clerical commentators, and in local councils andsynods throughout Latin Christendom. Again and again Christian women arewarned against serving as wetnurses in Jewish households. Transgressorswere threatened with an array of sanctions in this world as well as the next.The constant repetition confirms that numbers of Christians went against theauthority of the Church and continued to serve and to live in Jewish homes.11

Frequent concerned references in Jewish sources to Christian wetnursescan similarly be traced primarily to two causes. On the one hand, Christianwetnurses, and indeed other Christian servants, were naturally ignorant ofJewish commandments and customs and by their very presence mightendanger the observance of Jewish law in the household. ‘Gentile wet nursesand maid servants were wont to eat forbidden foods in the house and thesmall children would eat these too and even the adults could not observecaution in the matter of utensils.’12 On the other hand, medieval Jews believed

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10 See Shahar, Fourth Estate, pp. 53–76. For the early modern period see E. Badinter, L’Amouren Plus (Paris, 1980), pp. 62–5, 85; J. Flandrin, Families in Former Times (Cambridge, 1979),pp. 203–7. On the Jewish attitude see: Kanarfogel, Jewish Education, pp. 17–18; Goldin,‘Die Beziehung der jüdischen Familie’, pp. 218–23; Ta-Shma, ‘Children of MedievalGerman Jewry’, pp. 268–70.

11 For example see S. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (Philadelphia,1933), p. 107 (Innocent III: March 23, 1204), p. 115 (Innocent III: July 15, 1205); Kanarfogel,Jewish Education, p. 33 n. 11; Goldin, ‘Die Beziehung der jüdischen Familie’, p. 24 n. 28;Shahar, Fourth Estate, pp. 58, 279 n. 30.

12 See Sefer Hasidim [according to Parma MS.], ed. J. Wistinetski (Frankfurt, 1924), p. 348no. 1039; Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg, Responsa: Rulings and Customs [Hebrew], ed.

that the period of breastfeeding played a significant part in determining thechild’s future character. Great care had therefore to be taken not only in thematter of the infant’s food but also in determining what things the childshould and should not hear. Wrongly managed, these, it was believed, coulddamage the child’s tender psyche and leave scars that lasted a lifetime as theauther of Sefer Or Zarua says: ‘What he is nourished on in childhood resoundsin him in adulthood.’

The Gentile wetnurse was thus perceived to be a true danger. She might lullthe baby to sleep by singing songs she had learned in church or prayers shehad memorized, thus damaging the infant’s soul. In as much as she did notobserve the Jewish dietary laws, she might contaminate the baby with hermilk. This sheds light on the comment by Pope Innocent III that for three daysafter a Christian wetnurse had received Holy Communion at Mass the Jewishfather who employed her would force her to spill her milk out into thesewage. It is undeniable that the Jews feared this sacrament, which to themsmacked of witchcraft intended to harm them and their children. In terms ofHalacha, the way Jews conducted themselves in the light of Jewish law, it wasnot actually forbidden to employ a non-Jewish wetnurse. It was already estab-lished in the Talmud that a Gentile wetnurse could nurse a Jewish infant, butthat close supervision was called for. The Jews of medieval Europe continuedthe Talmudic tradition on this question. They would employ Christianwetnurses but at the same time take precautions to ensure that the physicaland emotional wellbeing of the baby was not threatened. The author of OrZarua wrote ‘One must take care with an idol-worshipping wetnurse lest shefeed the baby pork.’ And on another occasion he noted that ‘A wetnurseshould be warned not to eat pork or other abominations.’ In both cases hisreasoning was the same: ‘So that they may be good Jews . . . so that the babywill be God fearing . . . for what he is nourished on in childhood resounds inhim in adulthood and might encourage him to stray into bad company.’13

Despite this, Christian wetnurses were a permanent fixture in many Jewishhomes throughout the period under discussion, which ranged from the timeof Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi, d. 1105), who mentions that the Jewish traditionof giving children money for Purim was extended to the Gentile wetnurses aswell, until well into the thirteenth century when we find evidence in the writ-ings of Meir ben Barukch of Rothenburg. The important point remains,

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I. Z. Cahana, 4 vols. (Jerusalem, 1957–60), II, 230 no. 131; idem, Sheelot u-Teshuvot Maharambar Barukh (Lemberg, 1860), no. 150; Kol Bo (Lemberg, 1860), no. 96.

13 Isaac ben Moses, Sefer Or Zarua, 2 vols. (Zhitomir, 1862), II, 21 no. 48; p. 127 no. 279. ForInnocent III see Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, p. 115. See Babylonian Talmud, AbodahZarah 26a: ‘A heathen may suckle a child of an Israelite woman, so long as there are othersstanding by her, but not if she is on her own.’ See the commentary of Solomon ben Isaac(Rashi) �� and commentary of Tosafot �� . Haggahot Maimuniyyot toMoses ben Maimon, Mishneh Tora, Hilcot Akum, ch. 9, 16. Moses of Coucy, Sefer MizvotGadol (Venice, 1807), lav, 45. See Rashi commentary to Exodus 2:7–8 ‘Shall I go and call aHebrew woman to nurse the baby for you?’, and Babylonian Talmud, Sota 12b.

however, that so long as there was a Christian wetnurse in the household,parental concern and supervision increased accordingly.14

On the question of breastfeeding, as on the question of wetnurses, themedieval Jews of Ashkenaz abided by the essentials of the rulings found inthe Talmud. The first principle was that the nursing infant comes to recognizethe woman who feeds him and develops a dependence on her which wasdefined by the term ‘knowing her’. Since the health and development of ababy who ‘knew his nurse’ would be endangered by transferring him toanother wetnurse or by prematurely weaning him, both were to be avoided.The second principle was that a widow or divorcee who had a nursing infantunder the age of 24 months (considered the maximum age for weaning) wasforbidden to remarry until the infant had reached that age. The Talmudcontains a long discussion of the possible reasons for this prohibition. Theseinclude the woman’s health and the wellbeing of the baby.

Greater emphasis was placed on those reasons that related to the child’swelfare. It was noted that a nursing mother did not usually become pregnantand thus her remarriage might harm the baby. One scenario held that thestep-father might not ensure that the nursing mother received the foods, suchas eggs and milk, necessary to her milk supply. Another was that the mother(with or without pressure from the step-father) might wish to become preg-nant by her new husband. Her attempts to conceive might cause her milk tospoil or might prompt her to wean the baby prematurely or to transfer him toa wetnurse, even though he already ‘knew’ her. To prevent these eventualities,the prohibition on remarriage before the infant reached the proper age forweaning was held to apply to divorcees as well as to widows. The divorcednursing mother was considered to be in a better position than the widow,since her child still had a father who shared a responsibility for him. Even inthis case, however, there was both the difficulty of finding a suitable wetnurseand the risk to the infant who ‘knew his nurse’.15 An indication of how strictlythe rule was adhered to in the Middle Ages can be found in a specific case of awidow who tried to contravene the norm. The widow remarried though shehad a nursing infant not yet weaned. She took precautions to ensure that thebaby was not harmed by her action; she hired a Jewish wetnurse to replace herand had her swear publicly that she would not abandon her position until thebaby was ready to be weaned. Nevertheless the mother was severely censuredfor her deed. Her critics argued that this case caused a number of breaches inthe wall that had been raised by the Talmud to protect the baby. One argumentclaimed that this would set a precedent which in the future might be used to

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14 See Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), Teshuvot Rashi, ed. I. Elfennbein (Jerusalem, 1943), p. 158no. 131.

15 See Babylonian Talmud, Ketubbot 60a, Rashi �� ; Yevamot 42b, 36b and Rashi � � ��;Gittin 75b and Rashi ��; Mahzor Vitry, ed. S. Hurwitz (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 549, Ketubbot70b, Tosafot �� and ��. Haggahot Maimuniyyot, Nasim, ch. 11, no. 25–6. Isaac benMoses, Or Zarua, I, 72.

hire a Gentile wetnurse to replace the nursing mother; she in turn could bereleased from her vow by the Gentile authorities. Other critics argued that thewetnurse’s husband could release her from her vow and so terminate thenursing prematurely. Still others were concerned that to permit a marriagewhile the baby was being weaned would create a precedent, but that in futurecases the necessary precautions might not be taken and the substitute nursemight not be sworn to remain nor guarantees be given. All the critics quotedthe Talmudic prohibition on the premature weaning of an infant as a prelimi-nary to remarriage. It is therefore evident that concern for the welfare of theinfant was the prime motivation. Consequently the nursing widow ordivorcee was bound to her infant until he reached the age of twenty-fourmonths. During this time his welfare took undisputed precedence over hers.16

Even in ordinary families strong emphasis was placed on the importance ofbreastfeeding, especially on the importance of not replacing the nurse once thebaby ‘knows’ her. Contemporary Jews gave breastfeeding such an elevatedstatus that a woman who had only one child could argue that the baby ‘knewher’ in order to postpone weaning him although this prevented another preg-nancy, thus delaying by two years the fulfilment of the commandment to be‘fruitful and multiply’. In other words, a mother needed the services of awetnurse in any one of the three following cases: her milk supply was insuffi-cient; she had more than one or two babies, in which case she hired one or twowetnurses; or she wanted to conceive again and, since breastfeeding mightinterfere with conception or pregnancy might spoil the milk, she would need awetnurse. A prospective wetnurse would be closely evaluated both in terms ofthe quantity of her milk and her manners and habits, since once the babybecame accustomed to her they could not be separated without jeopardizinghis wellbeing. Even if she subsequently turned out to be a liar or a thief, thefather was forbidden to dismiss her so long as the baby ‘knew her’.17 It isevident from all the cases we have examined that the use of wetnurses signi-fied neither apathy nor neglect towards the baby; on the contrary it indicated adeep concern for his health and welfare.

The bond between parents and childrenAs I have described elsewhere, we find in Jewish sources a distinct ideology indescribing childhood as ‘the way of children’.18 This may be summarized

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16 See note 10, and I. Ta-Shma, ‘On the History of Polish Jewry in the 12th–13th Centuries’,Zion 53 (1988), 347–70. The sources are: Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, I, 206–7 no 740; Meirben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot ha-Maharam (Prague, 1895), no. 864; Meir ben Barukh,Sheelot u-Teshuvot Maharam bar Barukh (Lemberg, 1860), no. 362, Haggahot Maimuniyyot,Nasim, answer no. 24; E. E. Urbach, Abraham ben Azriel, Sefer Arugat Habosem: Prolegom-enon (Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 120–1; E. E. Urbach, Ba’alei ha-Tosafot, 4th edn (Jerusalem,1980), p. 490.

17 Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 72 no. 184, p. 67 no. 159.18 See Goldin, ‘Die Beziehung der jüdischen Familie’, pp. 213–14, 252 nn. 5–13; Ta-Shma,

briefly: ‘the way of children’ is the way in which children grasp the world,owing to their tender age. Their understanding is different, special anddevelops gradually. They are extremely sensitive psychologically and ofcourse vulnerable physically. They are easily frightened, helpless, and pose adanger to themselves. They must consequently be closely and carefully super-vised. This attitude creates a special bond between children and adults ingeneral, and between children and their parents in particular. To understandthe relationship between parents and their offspring, we must identifymoments characterized by intimacy and concern as opposed to apathy andneglect. These have been identified particularly in the area of daily life whereclose human relationships might exist and at times of crisis such as illness ordeath. Within the Jewish group we can detect multifaceted relationships char-acterized by great intimacy and concern throughout the period of childhood.Concern for the physical wellbeing of an infant during the circumcision cer-emony hardly requires comment, but in Ashkenaz we also find expressions ofsympathy with the psychological state of the eight-day-old baby. In thetwelfth century, two blessings which traditionally had been said at the circum-cision were deleted. One was the Shehehiyanu which pertains to new things,and the other concludes with the words ‘that happiness is in his home’. Thereasoning behind the changes was that the baby was miserable: ‘The fathershould not utter the blessings “Shehehiyano” and “that happiness is in hishome” at the feast for the baby who is deep in sorrow.’19

As part of a lecture to parents on their duty to educate their children prop-erly, the author of Sefer Hasidim (later twelfth or early thirteenth century)describes the concern of a parent for the health of his child. We read of parentswho are troubled and fearful of simple childhood illnesses, ‘lest he feel ill inhis head or another of his organs’. When the author describes parentalanguish over the illness of a child he uses the example of Job, who lost all hissons and daughters, and emphasizes, ‘how many fasts and supplications, howmuch wailing a man does when his son is ill, for his soul is devestated over hisson’s body’.20 The sources forcefully emphasize the efforts made by parents toheal sick children. They would search far and wide for new medications; oftenthey would change a sick child’s name in an effort to save him. Families whichhad previously suffered a high rate of child mortality would conduct a cer-emony of ‘selling’ the sick child to another family in order to save him. Parentshad no scruples about using magic to heal a sick child, and were even willingto try Christian advice and methods in order to reverse the course of an illness.

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‘Children of Medieval German Jewry’, pp. 266ff; Hanawalt, ‘Medievalists and Child-hood’, pp. 443–53.

19 See Babylonian Talmud, Ketubbot 8a; Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, II, 53 no. 107; Eleazar benJudah of Worms, Sefer Roqeah (Venice, 1549), no. 108; Meir ben Barukh, Responsa, II, no.210; Meir ben Barukh, Sefer Sharei Teshuvot (Berlin, 1891), p. 129, Haggahot Maimuniyyot,Hilcot Milah, ch. 3, 3.

20 Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, pp. 5–6 no. 2; p. 12 no. 13; p. 93 no. 301; p. 178 no. 583–4;p. 236 no. 960.

One source relates the case of a Gentile woman who urged a Jewish mother todose her sick child with a stone from the sepulchre of the Christian Godrenowned for its healing properties. In the event she rejected the advice, butshe was probably deterred only after she had weighed any possible benefitagainst the harm which could be caused to the child by employing a charmwhich related directly to the Christian Messiah. This cooperation betweenJews and Christians concerning the use of medicinal charms was quietlycommon, though the Jewish sages took trouble to urge moderation anddirected that in no case should a sick Jewish child ever be left in a Christianhome.21

Accounts of heartbreak and sorrow at the death of a child demonstrate thatthe deaths of children were cruel and painful blows to the mother and thefamily. We hear of a mother who went out of her mind with grief at the deathof her son, and of parents who threw themselves into their child’s grave,clutching the corpse and begging that he take them with him. The author ofSefer Hasidim considered it his duty to admonish those who wanted to kisstheir dead children and refused to be parted from them: ‘a man whose son ordaughter has died must not kiss him or her and must not allow his wife to doso because this will shorten the days of his sons and daughters’. Parentswhose child had died were thought to be emotionally extremely vulnerable.The texts advised other parents to refrain from expressing affection for theirchildren in the presence of bereaved parents: ‘If a man has lost his small son ordaughter and he has no other child left, another man should not soon bring hissmall children into the presence of the childless man for this will remind himof his sorrow.’22

Expressions of intimacy and affection between adults and children are notconfined to times of sickness and bereavement. Examples from daily lifepresent a positive picture of family life. So great was the pleasure and enjoy-ment to be derived from children that when a man expressed a desire tobecome a ‘Hasid’ (a radical religious ascetic) he was first advised to limit thetime spent playing games or going on outings with his children and to concen-trate more on their education. The Sefer Hasidim suggests that spending timeconversing or walking with a child was a foolproof way for an adult to forgethis troubles and sorrows. Thanks to ‘the way of children’ – that is their uniquecharacteristics – children were perceived to be essentially different fromadults. Thus for an adult to spend time with children was considered not onlyto bring pleasure and benefit to the child, but also, and perhaps primarily, to

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21 Ibid., p. 71 no. 174; pp. 111–12 no. 363–6; p. 233 no. 1352; p. 303 no. 1218; BabylonianTalmud, Avoda Zara 26a, Tosafot �� ; J. Shatzmiller, ‘Doctors and Medical Prac-tices in Germany around the Year 1200: The Evidence of Sefer Hasidim’, Journal of JewishStudies 33 (1983), 583–93.

22 See Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, pp. 102–3 no. 327; p. 106 no. 345; Babylonian Talmud,Qiddushin 80b, Tosafot �� ; Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 56 no. 102–3;Badinter, L’Amour en Plus, pp. 73–89 (76–9); Flandrin, Families in Former Times,pp. 198–203.

the adult: ‘One whose heart is full of sorrow on the Sabbath should conversewith a youth and thus banish the melancholy from his heart.’23

Physical intimacy was marked: references to kissing children are frequent;babies were held in their father’s arms even during the prayer service on theSabbath, during the reading of the Torah, and during the blessing over thefood.24 Such behaviour is especially significant since children at this age werenot expected to be continent and might easily soil themselves and thosearound them. Despite this, we find no injunction to remove small childrenfrom the focus of family activities and ceremonies. Nor were children keptaway from the table when the family gathered at mealtimes. Even in SeferHasidim, where a strong emphasis is placed on physical cleanliness, fathers areadvised how to protect themselves from the soiling of small children withonly one gentle recommendation to distance the child briefly while makingthe blessing over food. On the Sabbath the father is told to put a pillowbetween himself and the child he is holding on his lap lest his one outfit ofSabbath clothes be soiled. Family members are asked to cover up the child’smess during mealtimes or in the synagogue during the reading of the Torah:‘While the Megillah [one of the five scrolls] or the Torah is being read and thebaby urinates, he [the father] can ask someone else to fetch water.’ Althoughthe preservation of sacred books and scrolls was of primary importance to theJews of the Middle Ages, no admonition to keep small children away fromthem is to be found. Nearly every time we hear of an adult being occupiedwith sacred writings, we find a small child with his father. Even if the childinsists on being on the table, even if he has soiled his surroundings, the fathershould not remove him, but rather ‘cover the books and then take away thedirt and tidy up and bring water’.25

In the framework of the immediate family we can see a tendency towardsintegration which placed the child in the centre: ‘It is customary to send thechildren away from the synagogue in order to hear the candlelighting on timebefore welcoming the congregation for the Sabbath with the Sabbath blessing.The candlelighting should not be held before the afternoon prayer [Mincha] ordelayed until after the welcoming of the Sabbath so that it may be done ontime.’26 From this seemingly mundane passage we can reconstruct a socialpractice in which the child becomes the chief emissary between the father andthe mother in the family’s complete fulfilment of the commandment to keepthe Sabbath. The importance of this commandment extends beyond thedetails of its observation into the realm of Jewish family life. On Fridays thechildren accompanied their father to the synagogue for the afternoon prayer,

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23 See Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 194 no. 770, p. 206 no. 815, p. 242 no. 984, p. 15 no. 16.24 See Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara 17a, Rashi �� ; Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski,

pp. 127–8 no. 432; p. 258 no. 1031.25 See Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 137 no. 484; p. 164 no. 60; pp. 272–3 no. 1073; p. 402

no. 1663. For the attitute towards books see p. 178 no. 683–4.26 Eliezer ben Nathan (Raban), Sefer Raban (Jerusalem, 1965), Shabbat 342.

while the mother remained at home for the cermony of lighting the Sabbathcandles. She would know approximately when it was time, but she waited forthe small child to return from the synagogue and inform her that the after-noon service was over and it was time to light the candles. At precisely thetime the mother lit the candles at home, in the synagogue the father wouldcommence the prayers welcoming the Sabbath.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE GROUP TO THE CHILD

The age a child is obliged to fulfil the commandmentsMedieval Jews employed Talmudic terms to define children in terms of age,but they applied these terms in such a way as to reflect their own attitudestowards children and childhood. In the Mishna and the Talmud, different ageswere established for different obligations. I will focus first on the connectionbetween age and the obligation to observe the commandments. The positionof the texts here is particularly interesting because no particular age was speci-fied for the obligation to fulfil this commandment. This is unlike issues ofpersonal status, for example marriage, including yibum (marrying one’sdeceased brother’s childless wife) and halitza (the widow’s release fromyibum), in which biological-chronological age served as a yardstick. It was alsounlike issues relating to the swearing of oaths and vows, in which the criterionwas biological-intellectual maturity.27

Medieval Jews borrowed two terms from the Talmud: ‘a youngster who hasreached the age of education’ and ‘a youngster who has reached the age ofknowledge’. These they combined to create a new age group termed ‘a young-ster who knows and has reached the age of education’. This definition isrelated neither to the child’s chronological age nor to his biological develop-ment, but rather depends on his capacity for understanding. In their view notall children were equal and each case had to be judged on its own merits.28 Bydefinition, a child who was chronologically a ‘youngster’, that is below theage of thirteen, but in terms of intellectual capacity had reached the age ofknowledge, was said to have ‘reached the age of education’. This meant hehad to be educated and made to perform certain commandments. This wasdespite the fact that his chronological age dictated that he could not yet be

35


27 See Y. D. Gilat, ‘Thirteen Years-old: The Age of Commandments?’, in idem, ed., Studies inthe Development of the Halakha (Ramat-Gan, 1992), pp. 19–31; Kanarfogel, Jewish Education,p. 25 n. 43; Ta-Shma, ‘Children of Medieval German Jewry’, pp. 265ff. Cf. Ariès, Centuriesof Childhood, pp. 25–6.

28 The Talmud examines an apparent contradiction whereby certain actions are defined inone place as recommended for children and in another place as forbidden to them. Theresolution of the controversy lies in the fact that each case referred to a different categoryof children: those who had reached the ‘age of education’ and those who had not. SeeBabylonian Talmud Hagiga 4a, Sukka 28b, Rosh Hashanah 33b, ’Arakhin 2b.

punished for non-performance.29 Jews of this period were relying on portionsof the Talmud in which children were defined as being obliged to fulfil certaincommandments, regardless of chronological or biological age. In the Talmudicliterature there is a definition of a ‘youngster who has reached the age ofknowledge’ and a number of required commandments are enumerated: ayoungster who can wave the lulav (the symbolic palm branch carried onSukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles) is required to carry one; a youngster who canwrap himself up must wear the zizit (fringed garment); the father of a young-ster who can care for his phylacteries must provide him with a set.30 MedievalJews demanded more extensive tests than those required by the Talmud inorder to define the youngster who has reached the age of knowledge. Theybased the elaboration of the tests on sources found in post-Talmudic literatureas well as on ideas developed by their own contemporaries: a child who cankeep himself clean and can remember not to enter the lavatory while wearinghis tefillin (phylacteries) is a child who has ‘reached the age of education andknowledge’ and thus is required to wear phylacteries and recite the basicprayer of ‘Hear, Oh Israel’ (Kriat Shmah).31 According to the Talmud, a childcan be given the ceremonial prayer shawl (tallith) when he is ‘able to wraphimself in it’. In the Middle Ages the child was required to demonstrate afamiliarity with the details of the commandment, ‘It is not enough just to wraponeself, one must toss two corners to the rear and two corners to the front, andproperly hold the fringes while reciting the Shmah according to our custom.’32

As for carrying the lulav, again medieval Jews were not satisfied with therequirements set out in the Talmud that required merely that he be ‘able towave it’. They examined the method by which the boy used the lulav in prayerand checked to see whether he knew precisely when to use it.33 In the case ofthe requirement to recite the Shmah, they accepted that this applied to a childwho had reached the ‘age of education and knowledge’.34 Rather than empha-size that such a child might be below the age liable for punishment, however,they stressed the need to establish to what extent he understood the finerpoints of the commandment, for ‘not everyone is equal, each according to hismerits’.35

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29 Babylonian Talmud, Sukka 28b, Tosafot ��.30 Tosefta, Hagiga, ch. 1, Teharot, ch. 3, in the Babylonian Talmud, Sukka 42b, ’Arakhin 2b.31 See Sukka 42a, Rashi �� ; Berakhot 20b, Rashi �� ; Mahzor Vitry, ed.

Hurwitz, p. 645 no. 514. Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, 4 vols. (Jerusalem, 1964), I,367 no. 61; II, 405–6 no. 699; Meir ben Barukh, Kol Bo, p. 13b no. 21.

32 Babylonian Talmud, Sukka 37b, Tosafot ��; Eliezer ben Samuel of Metz, Sefer Yere’im(Wilna, 1901), no. 401; Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, Sefer Roqeah, no. 220; Eliezer ben Joelha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, I, 367 no. 61; II, 405–6 no. 699.

33 See Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, II, no. 314; Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, II, 389,399, 405–6, 411; Haggahot Maimuniyyot, Hilcot Sisit, ch. 3, 9.

34 See Sefer Mizvot Gadol, ’ashin no. 18; Sefer Mordekhai on Berakhot no. 60; Eliezer ben Joelha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, I, 36 no. 61; 405–6 no. 699; Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 175no. 657.

35 See Babylonian Talmud, Sukka 28b, Tosafot ��.

The origins of this practice can be traced to the end of the eleventh centuryand more particularly the beginning of the twelfth. Evidence is found in thewritings of Rashi (d. 1105 in northern France) and his disciples and grandsons(known as the Tosafists) in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France andGermany. The Talmud and the Mishna raise the question of whether a childshould be prevented from performing prohibited actions, such as extin-guishing fire on the Sabbath or eating forbidden foods. The Talmudic conclu-sion is that since the child is not required to observe the commandments, he isexempt. If his father is aware of the prospective transgression, however, heshould act to prevent it, since, at this stage in the child’s life, his father isresponsible for his actions. In the Middle Ages the commentators (Rashi andsubsequently the Tosafists) reassigned the question of awareness from thefather to the boy. Rashi suggests that the child should be deterred fromexecuting the forbidden action, for example extinguishing fire on the Sabbath,when aware that this action is actually a convenience for his father and hewould be performing it for his father’s benefit. The Tosafists, consonant withthis position, explained that the need to prevent a child from performing aforbidden act depends on whether or not he is a ‘youngster who has reachedthe age of knowledge’. If he is, he should be deterred in order that he nottransgress. In other words, this is not a problem relating to the father, butrather a small child is required to develop a deep awareness of the command-ment even if he is not bound by the commandment itself.36

The Mishna says that small children are exempt from reciting the Shmahprayer and from laying phylacteries. Rashi took the position that fathers werenot required to ensure that their small children recited the Shmah, becausethey were not usually with the children at the appropriate times. Rashi’sgrandsons, the Tosafists, however, criticized his interpretation. Theycontended that he had misunderstood the Mishna. In their view the childrenwho were exempted by the Mishna from reciting the Shmah were children whohad yet to reach the age of education. In their commentary they deploy termsnot present in the Talmudic source, including ‘a youngster who knows’, ‘whohas reached the age of education’. Since it is written in the Talmud that ayoungster who has reached the age of knowledge must perform thecommandment of laying phylacteries, then obviously such a youngster mustalso recite the Shmah, since it is written that, ‘He who knows how to speak, hisfather teaches him Torah and the first verse of the Shmah.’ Rashi’s interpreta-tion, that a child who has reached the age of education is exempt from recitingthe Shmah owing to his father’s absence, is hence untenable. According to theTosafists, when the Mishna refers to a child who is exempt from reciting theShmah, the reference is to a child who has not yet reached the age of educa-

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36 See Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 114a; Shabbat 121, Rashi �� ; Tosafot �� ;Eliezer ben Samuel, Sefer Yere’im, no. 226.

tion.37 From this, and other sources, we can deduce that this new childhoodstage, ‘reached the age of education’, was established between the time ofRashi and the time of his grandsons, the Tosafists, in the first half of thetwelfth century.38

Lowering the age of liabilityThe school of thought that lowered the age of liability – and sometimes alsothe age at which a child is punishable – below the traditional age of thirteen,and linked the punishment to the child’s degree of knowledge and intellectualcapacity, was particularly prominent among the Hasidim of Ashkenaz.39 Intheir view, a child who understands his actions – ‘a child who has reason’ – isliable to be punished for his sins against God, and even for his sins against hisfellow men, the consequences of which are exacted by men. They even recom-mend punishing a child as young as four for cursing or for defiling theSabbath, and their sages call for the punishment of anyone who admits tostealing before reaching the age of thirteen. Drawing on a quotation from anearly Midrash, the Hasidic source concludes his opinion that ‘everythingdepends on reason, not on years, but rather on wisdom, because there arethose under thirteen years whose reason is cunning, for good or for bad’.40

The lowering of the age at which a child is required to fulfil the command-ments did not remain a mere recommendation. We can find evidence for it insocial practice. A key example is the duty to fast on Yom Kippur, the Day ofAtonement. The Talmud says that only children who have reached the age ofresponsibility must fast, but that in order to accustom them to fasting it is wiseto start educating them towards fasting a year early. It is unclear whether theTalmud is recommending an actual fast a year before reaching the age ofresponsibility or whether the intention is merely to delay the child’s usualmealtimes by an hour or so during the course of this year.41 In the MiddleAges there was a tendency to lower the age at which a child first participatedin the fast. Ordinary Jews were aware that fasting was more harmful to thehealth of a child than that of an adult, and they made at least a theoreticaldistinction between the prohibition on wearing leather on the Day of Atone-ment, which applied to small children as well, and the prohibition on eating

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37 See Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 20a, Rashi and Tosafot ��; Sukka 28b, Rashi ��;Tosafot �� ; Rosh Hashanah 33b, Tosafot ��.

38 See Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, pp. 412–13, no. 359; Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, II, 136no. 314; Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, II, 366 no. 640, p. 411 no. 710.

39 See H. Soloveitchik, ‘Three Themes in the Sefer Hasidim’, Association for Jewish StudiesReview 1 (1976), 311–57; I. Ta-Shma, ‘The Practice of “Talmus-Torah” as a Social and Reli-gious Problem in “Sefer-Hassidim” ’, Bar-Ilan Annual 14–15 (1977), 43–98; Kanarfogel,Jewish Education, pp. 86–99.

40 Seder olam Rabba (Wilna, 1894–7), ch. 2; Midrash Tanhuma (Wilna, 1885), p. 70a, SeferHasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 21 no. 15; p. 77 no. 216; p. 422 no. 1773; p. 482 no. 1966.

41 See Mishnah, Yoma, ch. 5, 4; Tosefta, Yoma, ch. 4; Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 82b and Rashi.

and drinking which did not apply to small children because it posed a threatto their health and development.42 Despite this, throughout the Middle Ages,children began fasting very young, the opinions of contemporary sagesnotwithstanding.43 In the middle of the twelfth century, for example, RabbiYacob ben Meir Tam had actually to justify parents who fed their small chil-dren on Yom Kippur, and to emphasize that they were acting in accordancewith the dictates of Halakha. Ordinary Jews, however, remained unconvincedby the advice of their spiritual leaders, and the practice continued throughoutthe Middle Ages. In the late thirteenth century Sefer Kolbo provides evidencethat Jews frequently began training their children to fast as early as the age ofnine, and not merely by delaying meals but by imposing an actual fast.44

Fasting was regarded as an important activity, and like prayer, was consideredto be the form of supplication most preferable to the Almighty, a means ofaltering and improving difficult situations. It would seem that this perceptionwas even applied to small children.

Children in the synagogueAn important yardstick for evaluating the position occupied by children inJewish society can be found in their position in the synagogue, the mostimportant institution in the Jewish community and the primary locus of thesocialization process.45 The small child under the age of responsibility occu-pied a prominent place in the synagogue, emphasizing his importance and theattitude of the community which treated him as an adult. Children of all ageswere regularly present in the synagogue. Very small boys accompanied theirfathers even, as we have seen, if they were not yet continent and even if therewas a real risk that they would disrupt the service. Because children ranaround freely, it was recommended that on the eve of the Passover holiday avery careful search be made in the synagogue for breadcrumbs or other leav-ened foods. The congregation was concerned about the comfort of the chil-dren in the synagogue, and special areas and appropriate seats were set asidefor them. The children’s benches were contributed by members of the commu-nity and were considered the property of the synagogue. Prayer was inter-spersed with many devices intended to educate, guide and involve thechildren in what was going on in the synagogue. For example, the Scroll ofEsther (the Megillah), read on the festival of Purim, contains a number of versesscattered throughout which are recited aloud by the entire congregation, thus

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42 Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 78b Rashi; Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Rabiah, II, 202 no. 531;Sefer Raban, 75b.

43 See Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetski, p. 377 no. 1540; p. 467 no. 1931.44 See Yacob ben Meir Tam, Sefer HaYashar (Berlin, 1898), pp. 108–111 nos. 51–2; Meir ben

Barukh, Kol Bo, p. 32b.45 See S. Goldin, ‘The Synagogue in Medieval Jewish Community as a Integral Institution’,

Journal of Religious Studies 9 (1995), 15–39.

ensuring the alert attention of the children through the entire reading: ‘Andthis custom is only to bring joy to the children . . . it brought pleasure to thelittle ones and stimulated them to pay attention to the reading of the Megillah.’A similar custom was the ritual of having small children kiss the Torah scrollafter the reading.46 Much can be learned regarding the importance of the chil-dren in the synagogue from R. Isaac ben Moses in his book Or Zarua, writtenin the middle years of the thirteenth century, though his opinions wereperhaps more theoretical than applicable in practice. He held that a child whowas below the age of thirteen, but had ‘reached the age of education’, could becalled up to read from the Torah just like an adult, thus greatly enhancing therespect paid him by the congregation. This privilege extended to the othercommandments which such a child would fulfil, as has already beendiscussed, such as sitting in the sukkah, waving the lulav (palm branch),blowing the Ram’s Horn (shofar), wearing the ceremonial fringe (zizit),wearing phylacteries and so on. In other words, in practical terms, a child whohad reached the age of education was integrated into the framework offulfilling the commandments before he reached the appropriate age chrono-logically.47 However, the clearest expression of the adult manner in whichchildren were treated can be found in the ongoing argument and discussionsover whether or not a boy under the age of thirteen could be counted as the‘tenth man’, an adult among adults, for the purpose of completing the Minyan,the quorum of ten men required for public prayer. One of the early sources forthis is R. Isaac Bar-Yehudah, one of the prominent figures in Mainz in the1070s: ‘once during a fire in his town he collected a Minyan to pray and hecould find no more than nine men of an age required to perform thecommandments, so he brought a small boy holding the Pentateuch to pray asthe tenth man’.48 Throughout the medieval era we find evidence of thiscontroversy, and it would seem that critics were addressing a real issue.Closely related to this argument is another fundamental question relating tosmall children, namely whether they should be included in a group of people– whether three or ten in number – who have been summoned to recite theBlessing Over the Food. One Talmudic reference states that small childrencannot be included in the summons, but another source says that a small childcan be included as an ‘adjunct to the ten’. The Talmud does, however, pose asa condition that the youngster must know in Whose honour he has beensummoned. The Tosafists linked the question of the summons to the question

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46 See Goldin, ‘Die Beziehung der jüdischen Familie’, pp. 209–33; Sefer Hasidim, ed.Wistinetski, p. 56 no. 95; p. 127–8 no. 432; p. 137 no. 484; Eleazar ben Judah, Sefer Roqeah,p. 145 no. 266; Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, p. 210 no. 245; Meir ben Barukh, Sefer Sheelotu-Teshuvot (Cremona, 1557), no. 145; Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, II, 21 no. 48; BabylonianTalmud Hagiga, Tosafot ��.

47 See Isaac ben Moses, Or Zarua, I, 215–16 no. 752; II, 20 no. 43. Tosefta, Megila, ch. 3, 11;Mishnah, Megila, ch. 4, 6; Babylonian Talmud, 23a.

48 See Teshuvot Rashi, ed. Elfennbein, pp. 349–50; Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, pp. 50–1;A. Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 298ff.

of participation in the minyan. Their conclusion is of interest: a baby ‘lying inhis cradle’ cannot be included in a summons to be one of three, not because ofhis chronological age, but because he does not know to Whom the blessing isbeing offered. On the other hand, it is permissible to include him in a group often. Therefore, concludes Rabbi Tam, a child can, as in the case of R. IsaacBar-Yehudah, be included in a minyan in order to conduct a prayer service.Tam is vehemently opposed to the custom of letting a child hold the Penta-teuch so as to make him eligible to participate in the minyan. He stresses that itis the child who is significant, since it is he who completes the minyan and notthe accompanying Bible.49 Indubitably the practice can be attributed to thetiny size of each community and the desire to conduct prayer services duringthe day; nevertheless in practice the child substitute came to be accepted asone of the men for the purposes of prayer. As can be deduced from the manypublished interdictions, this practice was vigorously opposed by numeroussages throughout the period, but the pragmatic needs of contemporarycommunities defeated them. Their efforts were particularly futile given thatthe children permitted to participate in the minyan were above ‘the age ofknowledge and education’. Advocates for their inclusion relied on the exten-sive range of duties these children assumed in the synagogue from themoment they reached the age of education and displayed knowledge andunderstanding.50

Another area in which the increasingly elevated status of children isevident is that of the portion of the prayer service known as the ‘Orphan’sKaddish’.51 In the Middle Ages Jews believed that this mourner’s prayer forthe souls of those who had died had the power to alleviate their situation inthe afterlife. Naturally, this burden rested with the children of the deceased.During the course of the twelfth century, a new practice emerged whereby a‘youngster’ who had not yet reached the age of thirteen, and who thus couldnot ordinarily lead the prayers, recited the Kaddish before the entire congrega-tion. This indicates how much he was valued as a member of the congrega-tion, as a member of the community, and as the bearer of a crucialresponsibility for ameliorating the condition of his dead parents’ souls in thehereafter.52

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49 See Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 47b, Rashi and Tosafot �� ; Berakhot 48a, Tosafot�� ; Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, p. 50.

50 Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, pp. 105–6 no. 133 (about Rashi in Babylonian Talmud, Megila24a), Eleazar ben Judah, Sefer Roqeah, no. 334; Sefer Raban, no. 185; Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi,Sefer Rabiah, I, 113–15 no. 128; Meir ben Barukh, Responsa, I, 184–5 nos. 120, 196.

51 I. Ta-Shma, ‘Some Notes on the Origins of the “Kaddish Yathom” [Orphan’s Kaddish]’[Hebrew], Tarbiz 53 (1984), 559–68.

52 Ibid., p. 560 nn. 3–7. Mahzor Vitry, ed. Hurwitz, pp. 112–13 no. 144; Isaac ben Moses, OrZarua, II, 22 no. 50.

CONCLUSION

Modern research has shown that in order for children to be effectively social-ized, it is essential that the child’s family, as well as the larger social group,devote a great deal of attention to him, express appreciation for his efforts on aregular basis, and encourage him to behave in a manner approved by thegroup. In light of the very real Christian threat to convert Jewish children,Jewish society sought to have its members socialized in, and so internalize,those values that were fundamental to their identity. Chief among these wastheir uniqueness in practising and preserving a singular religion by fulfillingthe commandments and practising a way of life very different from thosearound them. The main pedagogical driving force was the desire to perpet-uate the concept of ‘chosenness’, that Jews were God’s ‘Chosen People’. Thistenet was under constant attack by the Church which presented an array ofalleged ‘evidence’: the truth of Christ’s Gospel; the abandonment of theJewish people by God; the transference of ‘chosenness’ to the Christians.

The concept of being the Chosen People, and the superiority inherent inthis position, were powerful tools in the process of self-persuasion. The groupsought to convince its members that deserting the group in favour of the exte-rior, Christian world meant a decline in the moral value of each individualwho left. The tenet of ‘chosenness’ was internalized through the socializationprocess conducted chiefly in the focal institution of the community, the syna-gogue. As we have seen, for the messages contained in the socializationprocess to have the desired influence on children, as new members of thegroup, the entire process in all its various stages had to work efficiently andeffectively. Our sources indicate that in Northern France and Germany duringthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries the small child was considered to be at theheart of the Jewish family. There existed a clear perception of childhood as adistinctive phase in a person’s life. This was associated with an educationaltheory of how individual children should be treated. We find in the attitude ofparents to their offspring much understanding, great warmth and intimacy, aclear expression of emotions, deep concern for children’s welfare, and ingeneral a keen awareness of their particular needs. Another trend becomesapparent from our examination of the attitude of the Jewish community tochildren and childhood. From the time the child reached the age of education,the group initiated a process of rapid incorporation into the normative frame-work, often at a stage much earlier in the child’s chronological and biologicaldevelopment than previous generations had judged appropriate. By viewingthe child even from a very young age as a responsible individual with valuedopinions, Jewish society positioned him at the heart of that society andrequired him to shoulder heavy responsibilities with maximal liability.Despite this desire to incorporate the small child into adult society at a veryearly age, the group nevertheless continued to treat the child as child and notas an adult. The central problem facing the Jewish communities of Europe in

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the Middle Ages was the external threat of conversion. Children received anabundance of care and attention, but also an education intended to preparethem for a unique process of socialization. The community indeed recognizedchildhood as a special time, but because of the threat posed by the Church, itwas thought imperative to equip children with the necessary tools as early aspossible. That children were partially assimilated into the adult world doesnot mean that the special needs of childhood were ignored, but rather that theworlds of children and of adults coexisted in tandem.

43


Desiring Virgins

Desiring Virgins:Maidens, Martyrs and Femininity

in Late Medieval England

Kim M. Phillips

INTRODUCTION

Imagine the scene. A gentry girl of, shall we say, fifteen, is sitting with herfamily in their parish church, in a private pew near the chancel.1 It is duringLent, some time in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the priest haschosen for his sermon the well-worn theme of the seven deadly sins.2 Hebegins with the first mortal sin, pride, and among the admonitions ourmaiden hears this cautionary tale:

A countas, chast of body, gret in doing almes-dedys, devowt in prayerys,deyid, & was drawyn wyth feendys to helle-ward, & cryed, ‘alas!’, & aperydto a lady of fraunce, fowl as a feend, & seyde to here: ‘be þou ware be me &alle oþere! For I was a good lyuere in alle oþere thynges, saaf I hadde dely�tein pride and veynglorye, in prowde aray of myn heuyd & of my body, inlonge traynes, & in brode hornys, and I desyred werdly worschyppe. Andonly for þis pryde I am dampnyd wyth-outyn ende!’3

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1 On private pews for the gentry in the fifteenth century see C. Richmond, ‘Religion andthe Fifteenth Century English Gentleman’, in The Church, Politics, and Patronage in theFifteenth Century, ed. R. B. Dobson (Stroud, 1984), pp. 193–208; P. Graves, ‘Social Space inthe English Medieval Parish Church’, Economy and Society 18 (1989), 297–332 (p. 317). Forinspiration in the writing of this article I am grateful to Jeremy Goldberg, Felicity Riddy,Katherine Lewis, Barry Reay and Martin Jones.

2 Sermons were one among several modes of instruction in the elements of the faith, andSunday was the most likely day for such instruction. This could take place at any time inthe year, but especially on one of the great feasts or during Lent. See H. L. Spencer, EnglishPreaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), pp. 71, 203, 207–16; G. R. Owst, Preachingin Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c. 1350–1450(Cambridge, 1926), pp. 144–8.

3 Jacob’s Well: An Englisht Treatise on the Cleansing of Man’s Conscience, ed. A. Brandeis, vol. 1(no more published), EETS OS 115 (London, 1900), p. 80. This text, from a unique manu-script of c. 1450, provides ninety-five sermons probably designed to be preached duringthe period from Ash Wednesday to the vigil of Pentecost. One cannot be sure to whatextent they were preached orally or whether the text was primarily for private reading,and it has been suggested that they are the work of a Franciscan, so it is not certain that

The dangers posed not only to a woman’s own soul but also to those of themen who might behold her fashionably dressed and adorned body arehammered home some minutes later when the priest, having been divertedonto other themes through discourses on wrath, envy, sloth, avarice, and glut-tony, reaches his crescendo with lechery, which some called the sin ‘fyrþest . . .fro heuene’,4 because it damns two souls in one act. Again, our maiden andother female parishioners are urged to think on their carefully tended hair,their fine dresses, their eye-catching headdresses, and the desperate state ofdamnation which these could lead them, and others, into:

Men may synnen ofte in sy�t of wommen; as nyce wommen þat dy�ten hemqweyntly to make men to mys-vsyn here sy�t on hem, and �it þei wenyn þeisynen nou�t, for þei consentyn no�t to hem. but þei synne grevously, for þeiare cause þat þe soulys of manye men are lost. �if þe womman in here ententdoth so in here aray, þat men þat beholdyn here hadde desyre to don folywyth here, þanne sche is cause of here synne.5

What does our maiden make of the tirade? Perhaps she gives the lesson barelya passing thought – after all, the themes have been so often reiterated duringher short life.6 But part way through the lengthy discourse her eyes drift fromthe priest to the painted panels arrayed behind the pulpit.7 Each brightly-painted panel separately depicts a beautiful young woman, dressed in extrav-agant and fashionable clothes, with golden hair rippling loose down her back,and an expression of elegant serenity. There is little to tell one maiden apartfrom another, except for the items that they clutch – a tower, a tooth in pincers,

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any fifteen-year-old girls ever heard these very words in their parish churches althoughthey may have heard or read them in other places. See Spencer, English Preaching, pp. 31,214–15; R. R. Raymo, ‘Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction’, in A Manual ofthe Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, ed. A. E. Hartung, 9 vols. (New Haven, 1986),vol. 7, p. 2262. However, their message was so commonplace that it is used here to repre-sent a constantly-repeated theme of this period (see note 6 below).

4 Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, 2 vols., EETS OS 119 and 123(London, 1901–3), II, line 7340.

5 Jacob’s Well, ed. Brandeis, p. 159.6 The dangers posed by the beautiful and adorned woman are conveyed with exhaustive

repetition in homiletic and instructional literature. See The Book of Vices and Virtues, ed.W. N. Francis, EETS OS 217 (London, 1942), pp. 43–4; Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed.R. Morris, EETS OS 23 (London, 1866), p. 47; Middle English Sermons, ed. W. O. Ross, EETSOS 209 (London, 1940), pp. 234–5; Handlyng Synne, lines 3241–350 and 7611–22; and G. R.Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1966), pp. 48–9, 118–20,377–9, 390–404 for a sample of this evidently favoured theme. Men’s interest in their ownclothing was frequently condemned too, but more often for engendering pride than lust:Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 404–11.

7 Eamon Duffy discusses such fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century panels and providesillustrations in ‘Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes: The Cult of Women Saints in Fifteenth- andSixteenth-Century England’, in Women in the Church, ed. W. S. Sheils and Diana Wood(Oxford, 1997), pp. 175–96, and The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 171–3 and figs. 59, 60, 68.

a wreath, a wheel – which identify the individual virgin martyrs. This array ofconventionally beautiful virgins must draw the eye of any half-attentivemember of the congregation, given their prominent placement, and theirvisual appeal.

While this scene is a imaginary one, it attempts to illustrate the ways inwhich young medieval women were the recipients of conflicting messagesregarding feminine beauty. While it would be inaccurate to accuse priests andclerical authors of crude hypocrisy – after all, no one ever portrays St Margaretor St Agnes preening her golden locks or plucking her elegant eyebrows – it isapparent that medieval maidens were presented with inconsistent messageson physical femininity. Lessons on the vices and exemplary tales, though theyusually do not condemn natural beauty in itself, constantly warn of the perilsof women’s bodies and fashionable dress. Visual and textual representationsof virgin martyrs, on the other hand, bring those feminine attractions into theforeground of vision. Those viewing the martyrs varied tremendously, fromfemale monastics and male clerics, to aristocratic women patrons and bookowners, and also, given the ubiquity of the martyrs’ representation, lay menand women of all social levels.8 Each group no doubt found differentappealing elements in their lives and representations. This chapter offerssuggestions about just one way in which the virgin martyrs, or certain ofthem, might have functioned in the lives of their real-life counterparts:wealthy, unmarried maidens in their teens. The focus will be on the fifteenthcentury, and much of the evidence examined will relate to East Anglia inparticular. Two kinds of medieval feminine ‘youth’, the real and the ideal, arethus examined here.9 Ultimately, it will be argued that many of the virginmartyrs’ lives provided a powerful model of sexual restraint, but that thepower of those legends was in their use, rather than their avoidance, of imagesof desirable femininity. Maidens of the higher social orders could be moreeffectively taught the value of virginity and chastity if the models of suchvirtues were of a feminine type likely to appeal to elite lay maidens, ratherthan through a total reliance on the ascetic messages delivered in sermon andhomiletic modes. Young women’s relationship with their own femininity wasnot always one of struggle and resistance, but often involved acceptance,

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8 On audiences see Duffy, ‘Holy Maydens. Holy Wyfes’; B. Millett, ‘The Audience of theSaints’ Lives of the Katherine Group’, Reading Medieval Studies 16 (1990), 127–56;J. Wogan-Browne, ‘Saints’ Lives and the Female Reader’, Forum for Modern LanguageStudies 37 (1991), 314–32; K. J. Lewis, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late MedievalEngland (Woodbridge, 2000), esp. pp. 14–25; S. Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late MedievalEngland (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 46–8.

9 The ages covered by women’s ‘youth’ or ‘maidenhood’ are impossible to define exactly inyears, but here the broad boundaries of the life-cycle phase are marked at the lower endby attainment of legal maturity in canon and secular legal codes (from twelve to aroundfifteen) and the age by which a woman would be expected to be ‘fully’ married (usuallyfrom the late teens into the mid-twenties). See K. M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: YoungWomen and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester, 2003), ch. 1.

perhaps even partly the creation, of models of lay femininity which wereeasily absorbed into the social system of patriarchal and materialistic concernswhich surrounded them.

DESIRABLE VIRGINS

Viewing fifteenth-century virgin martyrs as models of glamorous femininityrequires a rethinking of the nature of their appeal as desirable women. Myinterpretation rests on the theory of ‘parasexuality’, a notion which usefullyextends the concept of sexuality beyond the simply titillating or the obviouslyerotic. In recent years scholars have debated whether virgin martyrs’ lives andvisual portrayals would have been perceived to have had any kind of sexualcontent by their medieval audiences. Thomas Heffernan, Kathryn Gravdaland Simon Gaunt, among others, have found powerfully erotic or voyeuristicelements especially in the scenes of stripping and torture of the youthfulvirgins’ flesh, and see these as holding appeal for male readers.10 CatherineInnes-Parker, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Katherine J. Lewis and Sarah Salih areprominent among those who have disputed this approach, finding thereading neglectful of known female audiences and reductive in their assump-tions about portrayals of the body. Too blunt an equation of virgin martyr vitaewith pornography overlooks the martyrs’ agency, courage, strength of will,and ultimate triumph in the face of terrible torments.11 But the notion of‘parasexuality’, though devised for a quite different historical context, canallow us to see a sexualized content to representations of virgin martyrs whichcould have appealed to audiences of the lay female elite through a more subtleprocess than straightforward titillation.

The neologism was coined by Peter Bailey in his study of Victorianbarmaids of the 1830s.12 He chose the prefix ‘para’ for its two meanings:‘almost’ or ‘beside’ (as in ‘paramedic’), and ‘against’ or ‘protection from’ (as in

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10 T. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford,1988), pp. 267–86; K. Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Law andLiterature (Philadelphia, 1991), ch. 1; S. Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Liter-ature (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 194–8.

11 C. Innes-Parker, ‘Sexual Violence and the Female Reader: Symbolic “Rape” in the Saints’Lives of the Katherine Group’, Women’s Studies 24 (1995), 205–17; J. Wogan-Browne,‘Saints’ Lives and the Female Reader’, ‘The Virgin’s Tale’, in Feminist Readings in MiddleEnglish Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect, ed. R. Evans and L. Johnson (London,1994), pp. 165–94 (pp. 174–81), and Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c. 1150–1300:Virginity and Its Authorizations (Oxford, 2001), ch. 3; Lewis, Cult of St Katherine, pp. 85–93,and ‘ “Let me suffre”: reading the torture of St Margaret of Antioch in Late MedievalEngland’, in J. Wogan-Browne et al. (eds), Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medi-eval Britain. Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, 2000); Salih, Versions of Virginity,pp. 74–106.

12 P. Bailey, ‘Parasexuality and Glamour: The Victorian Barmaid as Cultural Prototype’,Gender and History 2 (1990), 148–72.

‘parachute’). Thus ‘parasexuality’ denotes ‘a secondary or modified form ofsexuality’, ‘everything but’ actual sex, and ‘protection from or preventionfrom sexuality [. . .] an inoculation in which a little sexuality is encouraged asan antidote to its more subversive properties’. ‘Parasexuality then is sexualitythat is deployed but contained, carefully channelled rather than fullydischarged.’13

Bailey devised the term to explain the appeal and function of the Englishbarmaid of the 1830s, a figure who underwent a transformation at this timealong with the pub itself.14 As pubs became ‘gin palaces’, bright and invitingmonuments to alcohol-fuelled male society, the barmaid became a figure of‘glamour’, groomed and smiling and ‘an item of allurement among its [thepub’s] mirrors and mahogany, its brassware and coloured tile’. However, thebarmaid’s attractions were for display only. The newly-installed bar had thedouble effect of providing a frame, or a stage, for her charms, while simulta-neously ensuring her virtue by providing a ‘boundary or cordon sanitaire’between her and the customer. The barmaid was therefore a parasexual, ratherthan fully sexual, figure, with her ‘obvious but safely anchored sexuality’fitting the phenomenon’s ‘safely sensational pattern of stimulation andcontainment’.15 Bailey claims the barmaid as the prototype of ‘glamour’,where ‘glamorous’ could stand as a synomym for ‘parasexual’, but acknowl-edges that ‘claiming cultural firsts is always likely to be a dubious exercise’.16

Indeed, reading his article immediately made me think of virgin martyrs inlate-medieval English representations, suggesting a new way of interpretingsuch representations and, more importantly, assessing the uses they may havehad for their women readers, particularly the young unmarried women of myprimary interest. My reading takes the idea beyond Bailey’s in steppingoutside of a straightforwardly heterosexual matrix, in examining how youngwomen might have responded to virgin martyrs parasexually.

The emphasis here is on the virgin martyrs’ lives written by three monasticauthors, living and working within fifty miles of one another within EastAnglia in the first half of the fifteenth century, producing works for an enthu-siastic circle of mostly lay female patrons. This was also the region wheremany churches would commission the most spectacular panel paintings ofvirgin martyrs in the second half of the century. The texts are OsbernBokenham’s series of lives individually produced between 1443 and 1447 andnow known as Legendys of Hooly Wummen, John Lydgate’s 1429–30 version ofthe ‘Legend of St Margaret’, and John Capgrave’s c. 1445 ‘Life of St Katherineof Alexandria’.17 The women of gentle and aristocratic society known to be

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13 Ibid., p. 148.14 Ibid., pp. 150–1.15 Ibid., pp. 149, 167.16 Ibid., p. 165.17 O. Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. M. S. Serjeantson, EETS OS 206 (London,

1938); J. Lydgate, ‘The Legend of Seynt Margarete’, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed.

associated with these authors include Anne Mortimer (née Stafford), LadyMarch (for whom Lydgate wrote his ‘Margaret’), her kinswoman IsabelleBourchier, the countess of Eu (patron of Bokenham’s ‘Mary Magdalene’),Katherine Denston (mentioned in Bokenham’s ‘Anne’ and ‘Katherine’),Katherine Howard (also mentioned in Bokenham’s ‘Katherine’), her kins-woman Lady Elizabeth de Vere (in Bokenham’s ‘Mary Magdalene’ and his‘Elizabeth’), Isabel Hunt (mentioned with her husband John in Bokenham’s‘Dorothy’), Agatha Flegge (in Bokenham’s ‘Agatha’), Katherine Babyngton,subprioress of Campsey Priory in Suffolk (who owned a copy of Capgrave’s‘Katherine’), and the unnamed gentlewoman for whom Capgrave wrote hislife of St Augustine.18 The women who merit mention by the authors them-selves are surely just the tip of the iceberg of gentle and aristocratic femalereaders who enjoyed these saints’ lives. Moreover, as the recent studies byKaren A. Winstead and Sheila Delany point out, these authors were producingtheir vitae in a largely worldly environment.19 This worldliness sets thesefifteenth-century legends apart from earlier versions, such as the thirteenth-century ‘Katherine Group’, which most scholars associate with an audience ofreligious women.20

Of all the narratives, Bokenham’s life of St Margaret paints the clearestportrait of the virgin martyr as an ideal of fifteenth-century feminine glamour.In this as in other of the vitae, the association of virgin martyrs with desire ismost apparent in the moments when the reader’s attention is directed towardsthe martyr’s face or body through the eyes of the textual viewers. Growing upChristian under the care of her nurse in the countryside, Margaret is fifteen,and a ‘merour of al bewte’ (line 406), when she catches the eye of the paganprefect Olibrius as he rides by. The reader’s eye is drawn to Margaret throughOlibrius’ desiring gaze:

[. . .] sodeynly his eyeOn hyr he kest, of contenaunce demure,

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H. N. MacCracken, 2 vols., EETS ES 107 and OS 192 (London, 1911–34), I, 173–92;J. Capgrave, The Life of St Katharine of Alexandria, ed. C. Horstmann, EETS OS 100(London, 1893).

18 On these authors’ female audiences and patrons see S. Moore, ‘Patrons of Letters inNorfolk and Suffolk, c. 1450’, parts I and II, PMLA 27 (1912), 188–207, and 28 (1913),79–105; A. S. G. Edwards, ‘The Transmission and Audience of Osbern Bokenham’sLegendys of Hooly Wummen’, in Late Medieval Religious Texts and Their Transmission: Essaysin Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. A. J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 157–67; K. K. Jambek, ‘Pat-terns of Women’s Literary Patronage: England, 1200 – ca. 1475’, in The Cultural Patronageof Late Medieval Women, ed. J. H. McCash (Athens GA, 1996), pp. 228–65 (pp. 229–30,238–9, 241, 257n., 265n.); K. A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, pp. 118–23.

19 S. Delany, Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England. The Workof Osbern Bokenham (New York, 1998); K. A. Winstead, ‘Piety, Politics and Social Commit-ment in Capgrave’s Life of St Katherine’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 17 (1991), 59–80, andher Virgin Martyrs, ch. 3.

20 Recently Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, pp. 34–63.

And anoon hyr bewte so sore dede lureHys herte, that euene stylle he stent,And of hyr he took more auysement. (lines 444–8)

Olibrius is rendered helpless, almost passive, as Margaret’s beauty brings himto a standstill. In Lydgate’s ‘Life of St Margaret’ the prefect is ‘rauesshedeanoon with hir beaute’ (line 113). In Bokenham what Olibrius, and thus thereader, see is a maiden of pure conventional beauty who could have beenplucked straight from the pages of a romance:

And whan he sey hyr forheed lely-whyht,Hyr bent browys blake, & hyr grey eyne,Hyr chyry chekys, hyr nose streyt and ryht,Hyr lyppys rody, hyr chyn, wych as pleynePulshyd marbyl shoon, & clouyn in tweyne,He was so astonyd of that sodyen caasThat vnnethe he wyste wher that he was. (lines 449–55)

The beauty which so disorients Olibrius matches point for point the arche-types offered by Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Matthew of Vendôme in their guidesto poetical description, and which Bokenham must have been drawing ondirectly given his references to these authors elsewhere in the life (lines 88,1183).21

There is, however, a difference, for Bokenham is adapting a secular ideal fora religious text. Margaret could be Guy of Warwick’s Felice but for the impor-tant point that her charms never become the sexual possession of a man.22

Having supplied this worldly image, Bokenham shifts the reader’s gaze awayfrom Margaret as an object of desire, noting that Olibrius ‘lokyd no fertherethan in hyr face’ (line 456), a comment which suggests that he and his audi-ence know better and can see beyond her surface attractions to her still moreremarkable state of virtue. In this incident Bokenham invites his readers toview Margaret briefly, but safely, through a sexual lens, offering a familiar andappealing sight, before turning the gaze aside and the thoughts to moreelevated matters. Margaret is like Bailey’s barmaid, in her ‘obvious but safelyanchored sexuality’, and the incident offers the ‘safely sensational pattern ofstimulation and containment’ characteristic of parasexuality.

Bokenham’s Christina has something of the parasexual too, entering hersexual maturity at twelve and possessing ‘grete bodyly beute’ (line 2124), somuch so that her father fears for her chastity and conceals her in a high towerwith twelve maidens. The tower acts as an even more efficient cordon sanitairethan a gin palace bar, physically ensuring the maiden’s virginity while height-

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21 Matthew of Vendôme, The Art of Versification, trans. A. E. Galyon (Ames, 1980), p. 43;Geoffrey of Vinsauf, The Poetria Nova: translation in The Poetria Nova and Its Sources inEarly Rhetorical Doctrine, trans. E. Gallo (The Hague, 1971), pp. 45–7.

22 The Romance of Guy of Warwick, ed. J. Zupitza, 3 vols., EETS ES 42, 49 and 59 (London,1883–91), rp. in one volume (London, 1966), lines 65–74.

ening the reader’s sense of Christina as an object of desire. The tower doesnothing to detract the attentions of wooers, who come begging her father forher hand (lines 2139–40). Bokenham’s Agnes, at thirteen blossoming intosexual maturity, draws the eye of the prefect’s son (and thus of the reader) asshe walks home from school (lines 4120–2). Her body becomes more emphati-cally the focus of attention when the prefect, angered by her refusal of herson’s advances and of pagan religion, orders that she be ‘spoylyd shamefastly’[stripped] and thrown into a brothel (lines 4352–3). No sooner has attentionbeen thus directed to the maiden’s body than the bands which hold her hairfall away and it grows down to her feet to cover her nakedness, so thoroughlythat she is better covered by her hair than could be by clothes (lines 4358–64).On entering the brothel she finds an angel waiting to cover her with a brightlight which renders her untouchable and invisible, and a white stole awaitingher in her cell, in which she quickly dresses herself (lines 4368–84). With theseincidents the attractions of the virgin are made apparent, but any danger ofthe text turning the reader into a voyeur is quickly averted.

Assaults on Agnes’ virginity are avoided too, when the prefect’s son entersthe brothel to exercise the ‘flesshys foul lust’ with her, only to be struck dead(lines 4407–27). The brothel theme recurs in Bokenham’s life of Lucy, whenthose who come to drag her to the brothel find that she is miraculously rootedto the spot, and immovable (lines 9248–326). This thwarts the consulPaschasius’ plan to see her raped to death. Again a sexual element is intro-duced, only to be turned aside.

This tactic whereby the author seems to say ‘Look!’, then ‘Look away’, isalso apparent in some of the scenes of the stripping or torture of the virgins.Although some scholars have exaggerated the importance of the stripping ofthe virgin during scenes of torture and the voyeurism thus encouraged,23

certain lives do draw the reader’s attention to the tormented virgin’s desirableface or naked body. Bokenham’s Dorothy is said to have her beauty enhanced,rather than destroyed, following torture and the ministrations of angels toheal her while imprisoned (lines 4785–805). Enraged by repetition of thisprocess, her tormentor Fabricius orders that her face be beaten with staves,‘Tyl of hir face were no semyng’ (lines 4876–81), but to no avail. Readers ofLydgate’s (though not Bokenham’s) life of Margaret are directed to view herthrough the eyes of spectators, who cry out in distress, ‘ “Whi hast thout lostthyn excellent fairenesse,/ Whi hast thou lost this shape and thy beaute?” ’(Lydgate lines 246–7). The erotic implications of the naked body are apparentalso in Bokenham’s Agatha, who, immured in prison following the tortureand tearing-off of her breasts, is visited by an old man (later revealed asSt Peter) who has come to heal her wounds. First ashamed to let him see herbody, Agatha soon relents, acknowledging that so wounded is she that ‘Noman of lust myht tempyd be’ (lines 8639–80). Although this scene could be

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23 An approach critiqued by Lewis, ‘ “Let me suffre’ ”; Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 74–98.

read as indicative of the non-erotic nature of the virgin martyr’s naked body, Ifeel that it is subtle in directing the reader’s attention to the body, only todivert it again. Even St Katherine, whose attractions are at least as intellectualas physical in Bokenham’s account, has attention directed to her naked bodyduring the excursion into the wilderness with the Hermit Adrian whichCapgrave inserted into his version of the Life. The Virgin Mary stripsKatherine in readiness for her baptism by Adrian, but the reader is assured ofthe decorum of this scene: ‘tho was Katarine spoyled – but blind was þe frere/Bothe in hir spoylenge and in hir bapteme’ (Capgrave, lines 1104–5).

The theme of sexual desire is constantly alluded to in virgin martyrs’ lives,only to be deflected.24 The strategy of first inciting then defusing the reader’ssexual attention, safely highlighting the glamour of the virgin martyrs, mayultimately have offered a stronger tactic for enforcing the ideal of premaritalvirginity in young girls or women than more crudely repressive models. Toconfirm this we need to turn our attention to young women living in latemedieval England, and gain some sense of their desires.

VIRGINS DESIRING

If we are to speak of young lay virgins responding with desire to the youthfulfemale martyrs of these tales, what kind of ‘desire’ are we talking about? Thepossibility of homoerotic titillation will not be explored here. Desire can be thelonging for emulation, and that longing may have a sexual tinge where theviewer wishes to emulate the sexual appeal of the object. Often, for womenobserving women, the desirability of the object is likely to be enhanced whenthe latter’s sexual attractiveness is subtly rather than blatantly evident, as thatprovides a more appealing model for emulation. The parasexual object ismore likely to appeal than the pornographic, especially in a culture withhighly ambivalent attitudes to female sexuality. Medieval maidens wereencouraged, even by conservative authors, to pay heed to virgin martyrs andto model themselves upon them.25 Knowledge of what maidens themselvesthought about virgin martyrs, or anything else, is of course tremendouslylimited, given the paucity of sources in which young unmarried women

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24 That Bokenham’s lives of Ursula and the 11,000 virgins, Faith, Cecilia and of Dorothycontain little that could be construed as parasexual warns one not to look for suchelements in all representations of virgin martyrs. As Lewis notes, it is a mistake to assumethat all virgin martyrs and their lives are essentially the same: Cult of St Katherine, p. 81.Winstead emphasizes changing representations over time: Virgin Martyrs, pp. 13–16 andpassim.

25 W. Caxton (trans.), The Book of the Knight of the Tower, ed. M. Y. Offord, EETS SS 2 (London,1971), cap. 72; C. de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. E. J. Richards (New York,1982), pp. 219–40; K. J. Lewis, ‘Model Girls? Virgin Martyrs and the Training of YoungWomen in Late Medieval England’, in K. J. Lewis, N. J. Menuge and K. M. Phillips (eds),Young Medieval Women (Stroud, 1999).

expressed themselves. The handful of texts which are available do, however,make it plausible to suggest that well-off English maidens would haveresponded favourably to the worldly and sexual attractions of the martyrs.

While the daughters of the late medieval English elite did not leave expres-sions of open enthusiasm for virginal asceticism in the historical record (atleast, not while they were still young), some did express strong interest intheir appearance. This tended to take the form of concern with their clothes.Of course, clothing was about showing status at least as much as it was aboutsexual attractiveness, but the strong link made between lechery and women’sclothing in religious didactic texts shows the extent to which fine and fashion-able female clothing signalled sexuality. Virgin martyrs’ bodies were eroticallycharged through glimpses of their naked bodies in their vitae and some visualrepresentations, but the fashionable and form-fitting clothing in which theywere frequently visually depicted, such as in the East Anglian rood screens,could also convey messages of sexual attractiveness which seem likely to haveresonated with young wealthy women.

The best testimony from young unmarried women comes from a slightlylater period, but is unlikely to be much different from the views of maidens afew decades earlier. In the 1530s, while boarding with aristocratic families inFrance, teenaged Anne and Mary Bassett wrote several letters to their motherLady Lisle which included requests for more, or more fashionable, garmentsand accessories. In May 1534 Anne asked for demi-worsted for a gown, akirtle of velvet, linen for smocks, hose and shoes, and three ells of red cloth tomake a cloak with a satin hood. ‘I send you back again the gold ornamentswhich I brought with me, because I know not how to make use of them here. Iheartily beseech you that it may please you to send me some other.’26 ByAugust 1535 Anne, now about fifteen, was painfully conscious of thedemands of fashion.

Madame, I would most earnestly entreat you that if I am to pass the winterin France I may have some gown to pass it in, as I am all out of apparel forevery day. Madame, I know well that I am very costly unto you, but it is notpossible to do otherwise, there are so many little trifling things which arenecessary here which are not needed in England, and one must do as othersdo.27

Her sister Mary was less demanding, but in November 1534 asked hermother to pay a gold crown to secure for her the purchase of a gold ornamentworth five crowns, and in September 1535 her hostess Madame de Boursasked Lady Lisle to procure some pearls for Mary’s headdress, such ‘as hersister hath’.28 Lady Lisle, although conscious of the expense of keeping herdaughters in such fine state, seems to have shared their concerns with worldly

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26 The Lisle Letters, ed. M. StC. Byrne, 6 vols. (Chicago, 1981), III, no. 571.27 Ibid., III, no. 578.28 Ibid., III, nos. 575 and 579.

status, and wrote in response to Mary’s request for new sleeves ‘I think thecost of you well employed.’29

Fragmentary evidence is found from the fifteenth century. DorothyPlumpton, boarding with her father’s mother-in-law, wrote to her father SirRobert, asking him for a fine hat and some kerchiefs.30 The importance ofhaving maidens in great households dressed to fit their station is clear fromthe concerns of the Duchess of Suffolk, who had taken Mary Barantyne (néeStonor) and her sister Elizabeth (or Isabel) Stonor into her household, andwho reportedly complained that the sisters be ‘no better arayed’, and warnedthat ‘with owght they be otherwyse arayed [. . .] sche may not kep them’.31 The‘peer pressure’ of medieval wealthy maidens to dress finely derived fromconcern to display social status. If maidens not only cared about their appear-ance but were expected to do so, it makes sense that they would haveresponded favourably to the conventional attractiveness of virgin martyrs.

Such young women would have been familiar with both textual and visualportrayals of the martyrs. The sheer ubiquity of their representations in thestained glass, wall and panel painting, and sculpture of parish churches, theoral delivery of their vitae in sermons and textual versions available in manu-scripts identified as household books, and in conduct literature, as well as inseparate publications, make it far more unlikely for medieval maidens to havebeen ignorant of virgin martyrs and their representations than otherwise, andit is not stretching plausibility to suggest that the martyrs would have had adeep effect on their imaginations and perceptions of femininity.32

More concretely, and to return to an East Anglian context, IsabelleBourchier, daughter of Anne Mortimer and Richard, earl of Cambridge,would have been a young woman when her aunt, Lady March (wife ofIsabelle’s maternal uncle, Edmund Mortimer), commissioned Lydgate towrite a life of St Margaret for her in 1429 or 1430.33 Twenty years later, as agreat lady in her own right, the countess strolled through her chambers on

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29 Ibid., III, no. 590a.30 Plumpton Correspondence, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Society 1st series, 4 (London, 1939),

no. 165.31 Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. C. Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996),

no. 172.32 For details about the audiences for virgin martyrs’ lives see n. 8 above. For a modern

reader’s response in girlhood see K. A. Winstead (ed. and trans.), Chaste Passions: MedievalEnglish Virgin Martyr Legends (Ithaca, 2000), p. 1. Margery Kempe made many referencesto the martyrs, especially Katherine and Margaret, in her Book, but we do not know howshe may have responded to them in her youth.

33 D. Pearsall, John Lydgate (1321–1449): A Bio-bibliography (Victoria BC, 1997), p. 51. Isabellewas also connected to Lady March by marriage, as her mother-in-law, the countess ofStafford, was the mother of Lady March by her second marriage, and of Isabelle’shusband Henry Bourchier by a third marriage: D. Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970),p. 168. Isabelle cannot have been born after 1415, when her father was executed fortreason. Her brother, Richard, duke of York, was born 1411: G. E. Cockayne, The CompletePeerage, 13 vols., 2nd edn (London, 1959), XII, 905–9.

Twelfth Night 1445, chatting with the Friar Bokenham of the neighbouringpriory of Clare.34 In this decidedly secular and courtly environment, as thecountess’s young sons and others danced and cavorted in their best clothes(whose bright colours of white, blue and green the friar commented onapprovingly, lines 5023–34), the countess and the friar’s after-dinner conversa-tion turned to the lives of saints which Bokenham had composed: of thematrons Anne and Elizabeth, but also the virgins Margaret, Dorothy, Faith,Christina, Agnes, and Ursula and the 11,000. Hearing that another greatcountess, her friend Lady Elizabeth de Vere, had commissioned a life ofSt Elizabeth from Bokenham, Isabelle admitted to a particular devotion ofMary Magdalene, a saint who most powerfully combines the worldly with thedevout and penitent, and commissioned from the friar a life in English of thatsaint (lines 5035–75). The countess stands as an example of fifteenth-centuryaristocratic femininity: respectable and devout, but with an eye to temporalconcerns of fashion, and a taste for piety which embraced rather thanprecluded secular concerns. Her upbringing in a family and social milieuwhich prized the possession of lives of glamorous martyrs by famous authorsseems appropriate, and perhaps helped foster this worldview.

Isabelle’s friend Elizabeth de Vere was already long married when her kins-woman, Katherine Howard, was one of the recipients of Bokenham’s life of StKatherine.35 Elizabeth’s choice of St Elizabeth as the subject for commissionmight indicate a leaning towards, or idealization of, a more completely asceticpiety. Katherine Denston, however, as second recipient of Bokenham’sKatherine, was brought up in a family which strongly mixed materialism withdevotion. Her uncle, John Baret (d. 1467), was a wealthy clothier and propertyowner, who made his fortune in mercantile activities, even if he imitatedgentlemen in his patronage of religious houses in later life.36 While hiscadaver tomb strives to make a fierce statement of the renunciation of earthlyvanities, the guilty bequests in his will to those he has ‘caused to lose silver’ orotherwise cheated, point to an avaricious past. Even on his tomb, below hisghastly cadaver, he could not resist including a small relief portrait of himselfin extravagant merchant dress at the height of his material prosperity.37

Katherine’s half-brother, John Clopton (d. 1494), made enough money as acloth merchant to make spectacular endowments to Long Melford church latein life and in death.38 The fervent piety displayed by these men in old age anddeath does not disguise the fact that their earlier lives were dominated by

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34 This scene has struck many commentators for its vividness, from Moore, ‘Patrons ofLetters’ II, 87–9, to Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, pp. 142–3.

35 Elizabeth married John de Vere in around 1425, when both were very young, andBokenham’s St Katherine was written between 1445 and 1447: Delany, Impolitic Bodies,pp. 19, 34.

36 G. M. Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late MiddleAges (Chicago, 1989), pp. 72–9.

37 Ibid., pp. 74–7.38 Ibid., pp. 80–9.

material concerns, and this was the environment of Katherine Denston’syouth.

Of the other women linked to virgin martyr devotion in fifteenth-centuryEast Anglia less is known, but it is intriguing that Agatha Flegge, wife of SirJohn Flegge, had a daughter called Joan, who was about to be married andtherefore in her teens or early twenties when Bokenham produced his life of StAgatha for her mother c. 1445–47.39 Joan could have found echoes of her ownlife in the tale of Agatha and the other virgins as nubile, highly sought-aftermaidens of high social status. She would have been accustomed to the lengthydiatribes delivered from the pulpit and in homiletic literature against thedangers of the attractive woman, and have heard countless times that fashion-able dress, tended hair, and carefully curving eyebrows were a danger both toher own soul and the souls of men who beheld her. As a young woman aboutto be married, how much more attractive would the beautiful Agatha, orMargaret with her curving brows, or indeed any of the virgins with theirgolden tresses and rich gowns, have seemed as models of pre-marital virginityand life-long chastity?

Some scholars interested in female audiences of virgin martyrs’ lives havesuggested that those women responded most warmly to the defiance, courageand endurance displayed by the martyrs. Wogan-Browne, in particular, haswritten of the functions of such lives especially in late twelfth- and earlythirteenth-century England. She sees the martyrs’ strength of character asoffering ‘serious encouragement to female readers’, and makes sense of theirrejection of unwanted marriages in a historical context in which real women,such as Christina of Markyate, fiercely resisted parental attempts to force herinto marriage over a period of several years (as many as eight, or more), whichincluded dragging her to her betrothal at the altar and aiding her bridegroomin attempting to rape her.40 No doubt many medieval women were attractedto this aspect of virgin martyrs’ character, especially those women who dedi-cated themselves to perpetual virginity or would have liked to, but thisreading does not seem entirely appropriate for the East Anglian noblewomenof the fifteenth century who have appeared here and seem mostly comfortablewith their lives in the world. As Winstead argues, virgin martyr vitae and theirfemale audiences took a turn towards the worldly and the ‘decorous’ in thefifteenth century. Although young women readers have not left their owndirect testimony regarding virgin martyrs, in the 1470s Margery, daughter ofSir Thomas Brews of Topcroft in Norfolk, would compose two letters to theman she hoped to marry, John Paston III, which offer an unusual window onto

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39 John Flegge was in the retinue of Richard, duke of York, alongside members of theDenston family: Edwards, ‘Transmission and Audience’, p. 165. Thus Agatha Flegge waslinked socially, if tenuously, to Isabelle Bourchier and Katherine Denston. Joan Fleggewas married to Sir Theobald Gorges of Somerset in 1447: Delany, Impolitic Bodies, p. 20.

40 Wogan-Browne, ‘Virgin’s Tale’, p. 181; eadem, ‘Saints’ Lives and the Female Reader’,pp. 316–17.

young women’s concerns.41 Margery seems almost the antitype of Christina ofMarkyate, in her passionate enthusiasm for her proposed marriage to JohnPaston. Indeed, it appears that her purpose in composing the letters was adesperate attempt to intervene in the stalled marriage negotiations takingplace between Paston and Thomas Brews: ‘þe mater betwyx my fader and�owe’. Aware that Paston has been enquiring about the prospects of anotherlady, one who might prove a better financial bargain, Margery uses the onlytools she has – her charming powers of persuasion – through portrayingherself as a vivacious, warm and loving young woman. Consciously or other-wise, she emphasizes her conventionally feminine appeal in order to winPaston’s heart. There is nothing of the defiant or the anti-worldly aboutMargery, though she does share the virgin martyrs’ capacity for agency andstrength of will.

Whether Margery herself had any kind of devotion to virgin martyrs isunknown, but note that this, the time of her maidenhood, was also the time inwhich the magnificent East Anglian rood screens were beginning to bepainted in parish churches all around the region in which she grew up.42 Justtwelve miles as the crow flies from Topcroft is the village of Burlingham,whose church of St Andrew contains a panel painting of an exceptionallycomely St Cecilia, while about 19 miles to the north lies Barton Turf, with itspeculiarly late-medieval representation of Apollonia as a beautiful maiden.43

Between the two, fifteen miles to the north of Topcroft, is Ranworth, whosepaintings take a maternal theme and include St Margaret. Thirteen miles tothe south-east in Suffolk, Westhall’s south screen portrays eight female saints,five of them virgins martyrs (including another youthful Apollonia). Furtherafield, at 28 miles to the north-west, Litcham All Saints’ screen of eight womensaints includes six virgin martyrs, and North Elmham, about 25 miles north-west of Topcroft, has the most extravagantly beautiful of all the screens, withvirgin martyrs as seven out of its eight female saints.

East Anglia in the fifteenth century provided an environment in whichboth visual and textual representations of virgin martyrs flourished in moredazzling fashion than ever before in England. The maidens and ladies of theelite of the region delighted in representations of the saints which held thegreatest resonance for them, combining piety with worldly concerns such as afashionably-adorned and attractive appearance. The theory of ‘parasexuality’

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41 The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971–6),I, nos. 415–16.

42 See Duffy, ‘Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes’, pls. 1–3, 5, and idem, Stripping of the Altars, pls.59–60, 68; S. Cotton, ‘Medieval Roodscreens in Norfolk – Their Construction and PaintingDates’, Norfolk Archaeology 40 (1987), 44–54.

43 The portrait of Cecilia was donated, along with one of John the Baptist, by John andCecily Blake: Duffy, ‘Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes’, p. 176. In lives of Apollonia from anearlier period the martyr was depicted as an aging matron. Her transformation into astandard, youthful beauty alongside the other virgin martyrs is a feature of late medievalart: D. H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford, 1992), p. 28.

allows us to view the sexual appeal of the martyrs in a new way, one whichaccommodates the interests of female audiences, and opens up the possibilitythat young women’s indoctrination in the virtues of chastity were fosteredthrough such images of enticement, alongside more obvious ones of repres-sion.

But the question has not been asked, who was in control of this process?Did the women readers and viewers play an active role? Clearly, it would besimplistic to see the legends as merely representative of crudely ‘masculinist’views of their authors. If texts are, as in the Vološinovan paradigm, atwo-sided act as the product of a reciprocal relationship between speaker (orauthor) and listener (or reader), then the predominantly male authors of thevirgin martyr lives are by no means solely responsible for the final representa-tions. As Paul Strohm put it, ‘The text is not transmitted from the author to thereader, but constructed between them as a kind of ideological bridge.’44

Powerful women, such as the named patrons of Lydgate and Bokenham andthe many unnamed women who added to their audiences and Capgrave’s,must count as to some extent ‘co-authors’ of the works produced, if only in thesense that they ensured the popularity of the virgin martyrs and theircentrality in late-medieval English religious practice. Perhaps younger,usually silent, women, as readers, listeners and viewers, also played a role inconstructing the virgin martyrs in their own image. It was thus not onlyheterosexual male authors and readers who made the virgin martyrs desir-able, but also youthful virgins who, in their own way, desired virgins. In doingso they colluded in their families’ anxiety to see that they, at this dangerousage, remained chaste, but at the same time celebrated feminine qualities ofsexual attractiveness and physical beauty. The virgin martyrs were muchmore than male clerical fantasies of feminine desirability. They were alsorepresentative of some laywomen’s ideals of femininity. Then, as now, suchideals were hardly straightforward.

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44 P. Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge MA, 1989), pp. 49–50. See also S. Dentith, BakhtinianThought: An Introductory Reader (London, 1995), esp. p. 39.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Out of the Mouths of Babes:Authority in Pearl and in Narratives

of the Child King Richard

Rosalynn Voaden

Authority is a word on everyone’s lips today. The young attack it and the olddemand respect for it. Parents have lost it and policemen enforce it. Expertsclaim it and artists spurn it, while scholars seek it and lawyers cite it. Philos-ophers reconcile it with liberty and theologians demonstrate its compati-bility with conscience. Bureaucrats pretend they have it and politicians wishthey did. Everybody agrees there is less of it than there used to be.1

Such is a portrait of authority in contemporary western society painted byJohn Schaar, a political philosopher of our own day. In marked contrast, thegeneral perception of authority in the late Middle Ages is of an authoritativeframework grounded in a commonly accepted, traditional hierarchy: Godover king, king over subject, man over woman, parent over child, age overyouth, noble over commoner, lord over serf. However, in this essay I shallexamine three narratives from the late fourteenth century where it appearsthat authority based on that traditional hierarchy was being questioned,where the hierarchy itself is represented as being either suspended orsubverted. In these narratives, the customary structure of authority is broughtinto question because the protagonists are children, and the circumstances ofthe narratives demand that these children be constructed as figures ofauthority. The narratives are the late fourteenth-century English dream-visionpoem Pearl, and chronicle accounts of the coronation of the boy king Richard IIin 1377, and of incidents involving the king which occurred during the Peas-ants’ Uprising in 1381.2 This essay is an exploration of some intriguing paral-lels between Pearl and the Ricardian narratives, with the intention ofdiscovering how customary representations of the hierarchy of power arecontested in order to invest a child with authority. I shall also consider how

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1 J. H. Schaar, ‘Legitimacy in the Modern State’, in Power and Community: Dissenting Essaysin Political Science, ed. P. Green and S. Levinson (New York, 1970), pp. 276–327 (p. 276).

2 Pearl, ed. E. V. Gordon (Oxford, 1953); The Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381, ed. V. H.Galbraith (Manchester, 1927), pp. 107–14 and 143–51; The Westminster Chronicle1381–1394, ed. and trans. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982); T. Walsingham,Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols (London, 1862), I, 329–39 and 454–67.

the authorizing of a child in these narratives reflects a questioning of tradi-tional patterns of authority in the larger culture. I hope not to wring from anyof these narratives meanings that others cannot also discover, or to wrenchthem out of shape to fit my thesis. Nevertheless, I am aware that the risk isthere. While I am not suggesting any overt link between the poem and thepolitical situation, this period of history – the late fourteenth century – was atime when traditional hierarchies were being questioned. There was, forexample, the gathering momentum of discontent among the rural workingclasses which, in England, culminated in the Peasants’ Uprising of 1381.3

Equally worthy of note is the considerable controversy around the time ofRichard’s accession over the works of the theologian John Wyclif, who arguedthat neither spiritual nor temporal lordship was derived from God, and thatevery person could have unmediated access to God’s grace. Wyclif’sreforming doctrines garnered enough support to alarm the ecclesiasticalauthorities, who condemned his writings in 1382. Vulgarized versions of hiswork formed the basis of Lollard teachings, teachings which questioned manyof the institutional practices of the church, and argued for a priesthood of allbelievers.4 Additionally, the fraternal orders – the Friars – who had increasedin numbers and influence during the last half of the century, werecondemning the wealth, power and corruption of the Church, and agitatingfor disendowment.5 At such a time of ferment, when customary structuresand traditional institutions were under attack, and when the basic principlesunderlying the ordering of society were being debated, the ways in which achild was transformed into a figure of authority obviously had significance.

My point of departure is the suggestion that in these three narratives (Pearl,the coronation and the Uprising) the need to establish the authority of a childcontributes to an apparent suspension of the traditional hierarchy. It isreplaced by a system of ordering whose signifiers derive from the perceivedattributes of the child: innocence, purity and a marginal position in the socialstructure. Obviously such a new order has enormous implications for thetraditional authority structure and for society as a whole, and both Pearl andthe Ricardian narratives manifest the tension between the new and the oldorders.

Pearl was probably written between 1360 and 1395; its composition is there-fore roughly contemporaneous with Richard’s accession to the throne in1377.6 The poem recounts a dream vision experienced by the narrator, wherein

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3 The Peasants’ Uprising had been brewing for some decades, and there had been anumber of minor revolts and outbreaks.

4 For Wyclif and his influence on Lollardy, see A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation:Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988). For Wyclif’s influence on the Peasants’Uprising, see S. Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 67–101.

5 K. Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1990),pp. 172–6.

6 Pearl, ed. Gordon, p. xliv. Most critics suggest that Pearl was written towards the end ofthis period.

he sees a maiden, whom he identifies as the child, probably the daughter, hehas lost. She tells him that she is now a queen in heaven, one of the companyof 144,000 virgins. His patent disbelief launches a lengthy dialogue betweenthem, interspersed by lectures from her on Divine Grace and the essentialequality of Heaven.

A large part of the dreamer’s difficulty in accepting the Pearl-maiden’steaching is that not only does he resist her message – that there are no ranks inheaven, and that deserts are not necessarily just – but he also resists theauthority of the messenger. She is his daughter, a child; it is she who should betaught by him. Ecclesiastical doctrine was quite clear about the appropriatehierarchy of instruction: the man was the head of the woman, and womencould only teach in private to other women or to children.7 And here is the onelowest on the scale, a female child, instructing him.8 The dreamer is a manwho insists on the right ordering of things, in other words, a man conditionedby the traditional hierarchy.

This belief that there is, indeed, a right order to things is what social theo-rist Anthony Giddens categorizes as an ‘interpretative scheme’. Within anysociety, he argues, actions occur in relation to a commonly held idea of struc-ture which permits members of the society to reach a mutual understanding ofthe significance of those actions.9 In Pearl, the dreamer’s interpretative schemeis shaped by the established belief that the ordered ranks of heaven aremirrored here on earth – and vice versa. His understanding is confoundedboth by the arguments the Pearl-child is making and by the fact that it is she

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7 At the end of the thirteenth century, Henry of Ghent addressed the question of womenteaching and preaching. He concluded that, while it was permissible for women to teachother women and children in private, for them to teach men in similar circumstances isnot permitted, since they could inflame the men to lust, and because it would be shamefulfor men to be taught by a woman. When God did allow women to prophesy, wrote Henry,it was a sign that men had become emasculated (Henry of Ghent, Summa QuestionumOrdinariarum: Facsimile Reprint of the 1520 Edition (St Bonaventure, New York, 1953), fol.lxviii). See also A. Minnis, ‘The Accessus Extended: Henry of Ghent on the Reception andTransmission of Theology’, in Ad Litteram: Authoritative Texts and their Medieval Readers,ed. M. D. Jordan and K. Emery Jr. (Notre Dame, 1992), pp. 275–326 (pp. 312–13). Evidencethat the debate over women preaching was a concern at this time is offered by the heresytrial of Walter Brut, a lay follower of Wyclif, before the Bishop of Hereford from 1391–3.Brut’s claims that women should not only be permitted to preach, but also to administerthe sacraments led to a revived interest in earlier writers like Henry of Ghent. SeeA. Blamires and C. W. Marx, ‘Women Not to Preach: A Disputation in British Library MSHarley 31’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 3 (1993), 34–63.

8 The fact that this is no longer a child but a resurrected body does not significantly affectthe dreamer’s response, although it should have. The principal tension of the poem, afterall, is found in the dreamer’s inability to recognize his child’s altered state.

9 A Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley, 1979), pp. 70–83. Paul Strohmdiscusses Giddens’ theory in his essay ‘A Revelle: Chronicle Evidence and the RebelVoice’, in Hochon’s Arrow: the Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton,1992), pp. 33–56 (pp. 51–2).

who is making them. She challenges the very basis of his understanding of theordering of his world – and the next.

I may not traw, so God me spede,Þat God wolde wryþe so wrange away.Of countes, damysel, par ma faye,Wer fayr in heuen to halde asstate,Oþer elle� a lady of lasse aray;Bot a quene! It is to dere a date. (lines 487–92)

The issue of investing a child with authority was one which, at this time,could well have affected the ‘interpretative scheme’ of more actors andbeholders than just a fictional dreamer. In 1376 Edward III was dying; so washis eldest son and heir, the Black Prince. The heir presumptive was Richard ofBordeaux, son of the Black Prince, then a child of nine. The Black Prince prede-ceased his father, and in 1377 Richard, at the age of ten, succeeded to thethrone.

The most obvious way in which both the Pearl-child,10 a two-year-oldinfant, and Richard, a ten-year-old boy, acquire authority is through beingattached to another ‘body’ which has its own innate authority. In Richard’scase, it is the sacred body of the king. In this context, it is suggestive that atRichard’s coronation the order of the ceremony was changed, so that the arch-bishop asked the people if they gave consent only after Richard had taken thecoronation oath, rather than before.11 This meant that the people wereconsenting to be ruled by one who had already acquired the status of king,rather than by one who was still a child. In the case of the Pearl-child, the bodythat she is attached to is a sacred body in another sense; it is the resurrectedbody of a heavenly queen, ‘a mayden of menske, ful debonere’ (‘a courteousmaiden, of noble manner’) (line 162).12

However, neither Richard nor the Pearl-child is totally transformed orsubsumed into these sacred bodies; in both cases, the natural child remains,like a palimpsest.13 For example, the Anonimalle Chronicle account of Richard’s

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10 In this paper I distinguish between the Pearl-child, where the natural child is to the fore,and the Pearl-maiden, who is a queen in Heaven.

11 D. Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World (New York, 1987), p. 222; Anonimalle,p. 110.

12 The form which a body would take when resurrected was a matter for intense andcomplex theological debate and speculation throughout the Middle Ages; it was a matterwhich was, not surprisingly, never satisfactorily resolved. The best critical work on thetopic is probably C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity,200–1336 (New York, 1995), although it stops just short of the period with which my essaydeals.

13 Paul Strohm describes how a number of crucial issues in England at this time manifestanxiety over ‘seeming and being’, as he puts it. These issues range from debates over thedoctrine of transubstantiation, to Lollard trials, to the efficacy of coronation for theusurping king Henry IV (England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitima-tion, 1399–1422 (New Haven, 1998), esp. pp. 32–62). He cites Roger Dymmock, articu-

coronation reports his tiredness after the ceremony; his being carried by histutor, Sir Simon Burley; the fact that he lost part of the coronation regalia, oneof the slippers, because it was too big for him;14 and that at dinner the crownwas too heavy for him to wear and had to be held over his head. ‘. . . le countde la Marche tenist sa corone a manger del part dextre sur soun test a cause qilfuist si pessaunt et ponderaunt qil mesmes ne purroit porter pur sa iuvence’(‘. . . the earl of March held his dining crown slightly above his head, because itwas so heavy and weighed so much that the king could not support it himselfbecause of his youth’).15 This may be an anointed king, but, readers arereminded, he is also a tired little boy. Similarly, the dreamer in Pearl has nodifficulty in immediately recognizing the Pearl-maiden as his dead daughter.It is, in fact, the child whom he sees first; then he sees the maiden she hasbecome.

I se� by�onde þat myry mereA crystal clyffe ful relausant;Mony ryal ray con fro hit rere.At þe fote þerof þer sete a faunt,A mayden of menske, ful debonere;Blysnande whyt wat� hyr bleaunt.I knew hyr wel, I hade sen hyr ere. (lines 158–64)

Just as the little boy is still present in the king’s body, so in Pearl is the childpresent in the form of the maiden. In addition, at times during their discussionthe dreamer’s obtuseness provokes reactions from the maiden which aremuch more exasperated child than queen of heaven.

Wy borde �e, men? So madde �e be!Þre worde� hat� þou spoken at ene:Vnavysed, for soþe, wern alle þre.Þou ne woste in worlde quat on dot� mene;Þy worde byfore þy wytte con fle. (lines 290–4)

The perception in both cases that the child remains attached to the sacredbody creates a state of tension between the authority implicit in the sacred

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lating the orthodox position on the eucharist, as stating ‘. . . what sensible change do yousee in a boy newly baptized, in a man who has confessed, in a boy or a man who has beenconfirmed, in consecrated bread, in a man ordained into the priesthood, in marriageablepersons betrothed or joined? All receive a new virtue, except the bread, which simplyceases to exist without any kind of sensible change, and is transubstantiated into the bodyof Christ. In what way also is the body of a king changed, when he is newly crowned, or anyonesimilarly advanced’ (p. 61; my emphasis).

14 It is of interest that the Monk of Westminster blames the loss of the slipper on SimonBurley’s thoughtlessness in taking the king, dressed in full regalia, out of the Abbey(Westminster Chronicle, p. 417). Both explanations of the loss, though, emphasize theking’s tender years.

15 Anonimalle, p. 114. My translation.

body and the lack of it, according to traditional hierarchical structures, in thenatural body of the child. This tension can be resolved only by creating analternative form of order in which the traditional hierarchy is suspended, orshifted, in favour of an order determined by what are commonly believed tobe defining qualities of children: innocence and purity. This is not to arguethat the crowning of Richard II did, in fact, usher in a new world order of inno-cence and purity and proto-democracy. It is rather to acknowledge the prob-lems Richard’s youth presented – problems of deference, legitimacy,command – and to observe how, nevertheless, in these chronicle narratives, heis symbolically invested with authority.

A monarch’s coronation is probably the most symbol-rich event of an entirereign. Accounts of Richard’s coronation, and of the festivities surrounding it,therefore offer an invaluable insight into how symbols were invoked andemployed to address the issue of his youth. The description from theAnonimalle Chronicle of the procession from the Tower of London to the Abbeyis particularly illuminating in this regard. On 16 July 1377, a day of celebrationand thanksgiving, when the houses were hung with cloth of silver and gold,Richard left the Tower of London, riding a white horse, all dressed in whitetrimmed with gold. He was surrounded by all the nobles and knights of theland, by barons and bishops and squires, by the mayor and aldermen ofLondon.

Et au darrein le dit prince veint de la toure en vesture blaunk drape bien ethonurablement arraye come affert a tiel seignur et toutz ses chivalers enmesme al suyt et chivacherount devers Loundres. Et a comensement de lourchivache, chivacherent les communes de Loundres en vesture de blaunk etpuis les esquiers des seignours et chivalers et puys chivalers et apres eux lesaldermen et apres eux le meir et les deux viscountz toutes en vesture blaunket apres, le duk de Loncastre et les countz de Caumbrigge et de Herforth etadonques le prince par luy mesmes par graunde espace et apres le prince lescountz et barones et autre seignurs . . .

(And then the prince came from the Tower all in white robes, well and hand-somely arrayed as were his lords and all his knights who followed as theywent in procession toward London. At the beginning of the procession wentthe commoners of London in white robes, then the squires of the lords andknights, then the knights and after them the aldermen and after them themayor and the two viscounts, all in white robes and afterwards the duke ofLancaster and the earls of Cambridge and Hereford and then the prince byhimself surrounded by a great space, and after the prince the counts andbarons and other knights . . .)16

All are dressed in white. Here is that symbolic shift, that suspension of thetraditional hierarchy. The usual robes and regalia which signify rank andposition have been replaced by white robes which do not carry any of those

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16 Anonimalle, pp. 107–8. My translation.

customary connotations. The lords and governors of the nation have insteadadopted a symbol of the essential, undeniable quality of the king – his youth –as a signifier of a different order. As all are dressed alike, this in turn repre-sents a kind of levelling out. Although it is still apparent who is who, never-theless there is an impression of commonality. The prince’s superior status isindicated only by his isolation – ‘par luy mesmes par graunde espace’ – whilethe remainder are presented as a relatively undifferentiated mass.17

There are striking similarities between the description of the procession im-mediately before Richard’s coronation, and that of the procession of the144,000 virgins into the Heavenly Jerusalem in Pearl. The procession in Pearlfunctions as a manifestation of the central doctrine of the poem: that there isno hierarchy in heaven, and that all dwell there together in egalitarian bliss.The dreamer describes the 144,000 virgins, all dressed alike in brilliant whiterobes trimmed with pearls, thronging the golden streets of the New Jeru-salem, surrounding the Lamb, who is similarly dressed in white and pearls.

So sodaynly in wonder wyseI wat� war of a prosessyoun.Þis noble cité of riche enpresseWat� sodanly full, withouten summoun,Or such vergyne� in þe same gyseÞat wat�my blysful an-vnder croun.And coronde wern alle of þe same fasoun.Depaynt in perle� and wede� qwte;In ychone� breste wat� bounden bounÞe blysful perle with gret delyt.

With gret delyt þay glod in fereOn golden gate� þat glent as glasse;Hundreth þowsande� I wot þer were,And all in sute her liuré� wasse.Tor to knaw þe gladdest chere.Þe Lombe byfore con proudly passeWyth horne� seuen of red golde cler;As praysed perle� his wede� wasse.Towarde þe throne þay trone a tras.Þa� þay wern fele, no pres in plyt,

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17 Further evidence of an apparent levelling of the hierarchy is found in the sermonpreached on the day following the coronation by Thomas Brinton, bishop of Rochester.Brinton took as his text ‘simul et unum dives et pauper’ (‘both rich and poor together’)(Ps. 48:3) and argued that, ‘God from the beginning did not create one man of gold fromwhom sprang the rich and also the noble, and another of clay from whom are descendedthe poor and the ragged . . .’ (Sr M. A. Devlin, OP, The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop ofRochester (1373–1389), Camden Third Series 85 (London, 1954), xxvii–xxviii (emphasismine); 194–200 (p. 194)). Devlin tentatively suggests that John Ball’s famous sermon onBlackheath may have been inspired in part by Brinton’s sermon (p. 195 n. 3).

Bot mylde as maydene� seme at mas,So dro� þay forth wyth gret delyt. (lines 1095–116)

The parallels between accounts of the two processions are beguiling: theserried ranks of white-clad followers;18 the sense in both accounts of celebra-tion and joy; the music of the heavenly hosts or of the royal trumpeters;legions of angels scattering incense before the Lamb, beautiful maidens scat-tering gold coins before Richard. And at the centre of both processions is thesovereign who subverts the traditional concept of kings – Christ by hishumility, Richard by his youth.

But, of course, the essential difference between Pearl and the chronicles ofRichard II is that although heaven may be a realm of bliss, late fourteenth-century England most definitely wasn’t. The symbolic variants in the trap-pings of Richard’s coronation were a response to the specific problem of theyouth of the king, not indicative of a real shift in hierarchical authority.However, at the same time there were forces at work in the country agitatingfor just such a real shift, agitation which culminated in the Peasants’ Uprisingof 1381. I intend now to consider the representation and role of Richard as achild in some of the chronicle narratives of events during the Uprising, and todo so in the light of some of the teachings of Pearl in which the child functionsas exemplum as well as exegeticist.19

In Pearl, the dreamer assumes that the traditional earthly hierarchy reignsin Heaven. His ‘interpretative scheme’, the way in which he makes sense ofthings, requires that reward should be on the basis of hours worked, that rankin heaven should reflect age and status.

Þyself in heuen ouer hy� þou heue,To make þe quen þat wat� so �onge.What more honour mo�te he acheueÞat hade endured in worlde strong,And lyued in penaunce hys lyue� longeWyth bodyly bale hym blysse to byye?

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18 I am grateful to Rosamund Allen for pointing out that white clothing connotes baptism.This is particularly important in the case of the Pearl-child, since her white clothing estab-lishes her superior status as one who has been baptized and who is therefore entitled to aplace in the kingdom of heaven (as opposed to unbaptized children, who go to limbo). Asfar as Richard is concerned, although he had technically passed the age of innocence(which ends at age seven, even in modern theology), the wearing of baptismal white for acoronation would have linked the two sacraments in a highly effective manner.

19 The chronicle accounts, of course, reflect the entrenched bias and vested interests of theircompilers rather than the motives, actions, or experiences of the rebels. However, I amintrigued by the way in which the different chronicle accounts simultaneously decry therebels as rustic beasts, howling in packs, while imagining – and giving textual form to – akind of early socialist ideology as a motivating factor for the Uprising. A number of recentworks have explored various aspects of this ambiguity, most notably perhaps Justice,Writing and Rebellion; see especially pp. 9–10; 59–66, and Strohm, ‘A Revelle’.

What more worschyp mo�t he fongeþen corounde be kyng by cortayse. (lines 473–80)

Even when the Pearl-maiden embarks on the Parable of the Vineyard thedreamer counters with a quotation from the Psalms to the effect that Godrewards each according to his deserts (Psalms 61. 11–12). Eventually though,the dreamer is persuaded of the truth of the version of heaven which themaiden lays before him, and which he is later to see manifested in theprocession. This heaven is ordered according to the grace of God: all thereare of equal and aristocratic standing and all share alike in the blessings of theLamb.

Þe Lombe vus glade�, oure care is kest;He myrþez vus alle at vch a mes.Vchone� blysse is breme and beste,And neuer one� honour �et neuer þe les. (lines 861–4)

The Pearl-child herself exemplifies this new order, since she who was a merebabe, and untaught, is now a queen in Heaven. Indeed, it is her status as achild which simultaneously makes the situation so difficult for the dreamer tounderstand and makes him challenge her authority. But it is precisely herstatus as a child which provides the most compelling evidence of the doctrine.The tension between the interpretative scheme whereby the dreamer previ-ously understood the structure of authority, and the new understanding themaiden offers him is only ultimately resolved by visual evidence. He glimpseshis child, his ‘little queen’, surrounded by her fellow brides of the Lamb (line1147). Only then can he fully accept her teaching, and find some consolation.The Pearl-maiden, because she is simultaneously a child and a queen inheaven, is finally able to persuade the dreamer of God’s grace and a heaven ofhappy equality.

Richard II’s dual status as king and child is also apparent in accounts ofsome events in the Peasants’ Uprising. As Paul Strohm has pointed out, thechronicles of the Uprising invest it with elements of the carnivalesque: inver-sion, insubordination, transgression of boundaries. He writes:

The rebel ‘body’ – both collective and individual – is . . . a grotesque body,Bakhtin’s body of carnivalesque licence, behaving with rudeness, effronteryand an unwillingness to accommodate itself to established forms and prece-dents, and hence threatening the divinely ordained social hierarchy of tradi-tion.20

One of the common features of carnival was the election of a boy king to rulefor the period. It may well be that Richard’s youth appeared to offer the rebels

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20 Strohm, ‘A Revelle’, p. 48.

a point at which their desires might intersect with and ultimately subvert thereigning hierarchy. For a movement which sought the complete inversion ofthe traditional, being ruled by a boy king might seem a logical part of thatscheme. The chronicles all recount that it was only Richard with whom theleaders of the Uprising were prepared to meet, and that the rebels’ loyalty tothe king was never an issue.

The preacher John Ball, in his well-known sermon as reported by Froissart,said:

We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve; wherebycan they say or shew that they be greater Lords than we be, saving by thatthey cause us to win and labour for that they dispend . . . and we have nosovereign to whom we may complain, nor that will hear us nor do us right.Let us go to the king, he is young, and shew him what servage we be in . . .21

It is the king’s youth which both supplies the justificatory argument forapproaching him, and offers hope of understanding. The assumption wouldseem to have been that relations between the rebels and the king could bedirect and egalitarian rather than formal and hierarchical, because the king, byvirtue of his youth, was marginal to that hierarchy.

The reformed society to which the rebels aspired appears remarkablysimilar to the heaven the Pearl-maiden inhabits. They hope for that which issuggested by the symbolism of Richard’s coronation procession – a flatteningout, a levelling, of the traditional hierarchy resulting in a community of equalsgrouped around their leader. Their egalitarian aspirations are simultaneouslyenshrined and vilified in chronicle accounts of Wat Tyler’s encounter with theking at Smithfield. It was variously reported that Tyler rode up to the kingwith his head covered, that he shook the king by the hand and addressed theking as brother.22 When the king asked him what his demands were, Tylerreplied that there should be no lord in England but Richard, no bishop saveone, and that all men be free and of one condition.

As Thomas Walsingham described it, they had risen ‘for liberty, planning tobecome the equals of their lords, and no longer to be bound by servitude toany master’.23 They looked to the king to bring this about. And, in a waywhich brought the illogical carnival state full circle, Richard did indeed causethis to happen. For a fleeting moment the boy king ruled over a realm whereall men were free and equal and subject to none but him. For, the day before he

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21 The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson, 2nd edn (London, 1983), p. 371. Myemphasis. Some of the chronicles report that John Ball delivered this sermon to the rebelswhile they were camped at Blackheath, on 12 June 1381, the eve of Tyler’s meeting withthe king (H. F. Hutchison, The Hollow Crown: a Life of Richard II (London, 1961), p. 62).

22 See Anonimalle, pp. 147–8; Westminster, pp. 10–11; Historia, I, 464–5. For other contempo-rary accounts see The Peasants’ Revolt, ed. Dobson, pp. 181–211.

23 The Peasants’ Revolt, ed. Dobson, p. 132.

met with Tyler, Richard, at Mile End, had agreed to virtually all the rebels’demands: that villeinage be abolished, that all feudal dues and servicesshould be commuted for a rent of four pence an acre and that a general pardonand amnesty be declared. A small army of clerks was on hand to draw up allthe necessary documents, and a number of the rebels started to make theirway happily home to their fourpenny plots in paradise. Unhappily for them,all of this was a plan designed to draw the besieging rebel forces away fromthe Tower of London and to allow Archbishop Sudbury, the Chancellor, andthe Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, to escape. It was never intended that thesepromises be honoured.24

Nevertheless, the next day, at the Smithfield meeting with the king whichTyler had demanded, this enactment of an egalitarian realm was seeminglyrealized. After Tyler’s initial exchange with Richard, there was a brief fracaswhich resulted in Tyler being seriously wounded.25 The rebel forces drewtheir bows, but Richard rode towards them, calling them his men and cryingthat he would be their captain, their king and their leader. As Walsinghamreported it, in language reminiscent of a fairy tale, the king also promisedthem all that they might wish for.

What is this, my men? . . . Do not attack me, and do not regret the death ofthat traitor and ruffian. For I will be your king, your captain and your leader.Follow me into that field where you can have all the things you would like toask for (omnia quaecunque nos petere delectabit).26

The king then rode at the head of the rebel army and led them away from thecity to Clerkenwell Fields, before bidding them go to their homes.

Here was the rebels’ dream come true – here was the youthful monarchwho, as virtually his first independent and spontaneous act of kingship,27

abolished the traditional hierarchy, and appointed himself their leader, a firstamong equals. Here the symbolic implications of Richard’s coronation proces-sion took on reality. But that reality was brief and illusory, grounded in deceit.

At the end of Pearl the dreamer is sent home, but at least he has the Grace ofGod and the Kingdom of Heaven to look forward to. The rebels, some ofwhom may have thought – briefly – that they had created heaven on earth,were quickly stripped of their dreams as Richard’s acts of reprisal speedilyreasserted the traditional hierarchical structure of authority. Walsinghamreported him saying:

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24 Froissart’s account of this deception is probably the most vivid: The Peasants’ Revolt, ed.Dobson, pp. 190–3.

25 For the various chronicle descriptions of the incident, see n. 22 above.26 The Peasants’ Revolt, ed. Dobson, p. 179; Historia Anglicana, I, 465.27 Up until this point Richard’s actions and decisions had been controlled by what was

effectively a council of Regency.

Rustics you were, and rustics you will remain; you will remain in bondage,not as until now, but in a state even more vile.28

In the next world, a child may indeed become a queen in heaven. In thisworld, the child king had grown up.

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28 Historia, II, 18; cited in Strohm, ‘A Revelle’, p. 56.

A Safe-Haven for Children?

A Safe-Haven for Children?The Early Humiliati and Provision for Children

Frances Andrews

Some time in the early 1190s a knight, identified only as ‘B’, who had beencured of a severe illness, decided to enter the religious life in the monasteryfrom which he held his land. He also required his under-age son to take thehabit as a monk. Unfortunately, the boy did not adapt to the monastic life and,having reached the age of ‘discretion’, after only ten weeks he absconded.With the support of other relatives he then claimed his father’s goods backfrom the abbot. The relatives swore that the boy had been under age andunwilling when he took the habit and, on encountering resistance from theabbot, took the case to the papal curia. In 1195 Pope Celestine III (1191–98)ruled that if it were true that the boy had not been willing to be professed andhad left the monastery when he had attained the age of discretion, he was tobe considered free and was not to be compelled to return to the monastery. Hewas also free to demand the goods of his father which belonged to him bysuccession. Celestine’s decision was of such significance that it was includedin the Decretal collection drawn up for Gregory IX (1227–41) and establishedas a precedent for later disputes.1

This case raises interesting questions about the relationship betweenparental responsibility and religious vocation. In this episode there were otherrelatives who could help the boy and seem to have done so with some vigour,pursuing his cause all the way to the pope. But the dispute also reveals thedilemma for the parent who wished to do something for the good of their souland yet had responsibility for children. The knight wished to take the habitand resolved the problem of his son as he saw fit. Presumably, as eventuallyhappened in this case, relatives might quite often take on the children of suchindividuals. But what if there were no relatives? Oblation, in spite of a slightwaning in popularity from the twelfth century, remained a common way ofproviding for children.2 But what happened if the child did not wish to beseparated from their family, or for that matter, if the parent did not wish to beseparated from their child? Was there any other way to combine family and

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1 X 3.31.14 c.573. The case was discussed by J. Doran, ‘Oblation or Obligation? A canonicalambiguity’, Studies in Church History 31 (1994), 136, and briefly by J. Boswell, The Kindnessof Strangers (London and New York, 1988), p. 313.

2 See Doran, ‘Oblation or Obligation’.

full participation in the religious life? This essay will argue that in one regionand one period at least, there was: that the way of life adopted by the order ofthe Humiliati in northern Italy in the early thirteenth century, and imitated byother groups adopting the name, may have offered an alternative for someparents and their children.

The Humiliati first appeared in the area of Milan in northern Italy in the1170s. The first explicit reference is to men and women living a life of religiousdevotion in a house in Milan in 1178: the document describes a man namedSuzo Bagutanus representing a group of men and women who had humbledthemselves for God ‘qui et que sunt humiliati per deum’. This is the first mentionof the community of the Brera which, perhaps by virtue of its early foundationand position in central Milan, was to enjoy authority in the wider order of theHumiliati as it developed in the thirteenth century. In the same decade agroup of religious were building a church at Viboldone a few miles from thegates of Milan and, although they did not yet use the name, they establishedanother house which was to become prominent in the later Humiliati order.3

The earliest account of the life pursued by the lay members of these andother groups of Humiliati in northern Italy is given by an anonymous chron-icler from Laon in north eastern France, who described them as:

inhabitants (cives) of Lombard towns who lived at home with their families,chose a distinctive form of religious life, refrained from lies, oaths and lawsuits, were content with plain clothing and argued for the catholic faith.

They went on to request papal permission for their way of life, which the pope(Alexander III 1159–81) granted them, ‘provided they did all things humblyand decently; but he expressly forbade them to hold private meetings or topresume to preach in public’.4 It was their insistence on preaching in spite ofthis ban which was to lead to the condemnation of the Humiliati by popeLucius III (1181–85) in the bull Ad abolendam of 1184.

The practical impact of the ban seems to have been very limited and theirbrief venture into heresy was to be short-lived. After they approached thepope, an enquiry into their activities was initially entrusted to prelates fromnorthern Italy charged with finding a way of bringing them back into unity.Finally, in June 1201 pope Innocent III (1198–1216) gave papal approval totheir way of life, paving the way for the ordo humiliatorum to become asubstantial presence in the ecclesiastical life of the north Italian towns.

The organization of the new order was based on three distinct elementscatering for a variety of religious types: a First order using the ordo canonicus,apparently mostly male, but including some women in their communities; aSecond order of men and women living in regular communities; and a Third

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3 For further background on the Humiliati, see F. E. Andrews, The Early Humiliati(Cambridge, 1999).

4 Anonymous Chronicler of Laon, ‘Chronicon Universale (excerpts)’, ed. G. Waitz, MGHSS, XXVI (Hanover, 1882), pp. 442–57, pp. 449–50.

order of lay men and women (Tertiaries) living in their own homes butpursuing a life of religious devotion as described by the Laon chronicler. Boththe First and Second orders followed a specially written rule, known by itsopening phrase, Omnis boni principium. The three-part structure is described inInnocent III’s letters of approval of 1201, but was almost certainly developedbefore that date and may have been a solution dreamt up by the Humiliatithemselves to allow for the different sorts of recruits within the order. Thedistinctions between the three types of religious life seem to have worked inpractice, as documentary references to houses of the First and Second ordersprove. However, these are in general relatively late in appearing and in manycases the task of tracing which group a particular house or individualbelonged to is problematic, particularly before 1288, when an attempt wasmade to separate the first and second orders.5 Nor is it yet clear to historiansexactly what the distinctions meant, particularly as the First and Secondorders used the same rule and all types of house appear to have included indi-viduals committed to different vows.

Fitting children into this picture is equally complex. In 1911 a generalhistory of the Humiliati, written by Luigi Zanoni, included in an appendixpartial transcripts of a series of five separate contracts stipulating the condi-tions for the entry of six adults and seventeen children into what appear to beHumiliati communities (see table 1).6 In the first four cases, one or two adultschose the religious life, giving themselves and all their property to thecommunity and bringing their under-age children with them, just as theknight B had done. In the fifth a grandfather made provision for twounder-age granddaughters, but apparently did not himself enter the religiouslife.

There are problems with these documents. Zanoni published them asunquestioned sources for the Humiliati, but on closer examination this asser-tion proves unreliable. The house of the Brera mentioned in document threewas, as we have seen, an early and important Humiliati house and is identi-fied with the monastic second order. The canonica or domus of Viboldone indocument four is similarly easy to identify, and is described as a First orderhouse in several records, including the late thirteenth-century catalogues ofthe order. However the status of the other houses mentioned here as what Iwould term ‘networked’ Humiliati communities, associated with the officialorder as approved in 1201, is less clear.

The domus Humiliatarum albarum mentioned in the contract of 1233 (docu-ment one) was next to the church of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan which had beengiven to the Dominicans in 1220. As Zanoni himself pointed out, use of theHumiliati name for this house of women continued until the fifteenth century,

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5 According to the fifteenth-century chronicler of the order; see G. Tiraboschi ed., VeteraHumiliatorum Monumenta, 3 vols. (Milan, 1766–8), III, p. 265.

6 L. Zanoni, Gli Umiliati nei loro rapporti con l’eresia, l’industria della lana ed i comuni nei secolixii e xiii (Milan, 1911).

although by this date the women were certainly under the care of the Domini-cans. There is no evidence for an administrative link with the Dominicans in1233, but nor is there any evidence to suggest a link with the ‘official’ Humili-ati. Similar uncertainty surrounds the status of the domus de Sollario in Senago,mentioned in the second and fifth documents summarized here. In 1255Marchisius Burri and Leo Borrinus (presumably relatives) entered the housewith the three small daughters of Leo: Isabellina, Varenza and Petra. At thisdate the community was clearly identified as a domus humiliatorum, but in1277, when Dolzebellina and Zanebellina were placed there by their grandfa-ther, the house is described as de ordine Sancti Augustini. It is certainly the samehouse since in the second document it is identified by the name of one of themen who had entered in 1255: domus quondam fratris leonis burri, and thisadoption of the name of a senior member to identify a community is typical ofHumiliati houses. The use of the ordo canonicus by the First order of the Humil-iati may even have inspired the use of Augustinian terminology, but, unlessfurther documentation emerges, we cannot be certain that this was still (if itever had been) a ‘networked’ Humiliati house.

The links with the Humiliati in some of these records are thus tenuous.What they reflect is a shared culture, Umiliatismo, communities inspired bysimilar ideals of poverty, simplicity and evangelism, rather than official,papally-endorsed ‘Humiliati’ congregations. Yet, in a period and place wherewe are lucky to find even the most fleeting references to children, these docu-ments give details of the names, ages and the provisions made for seventeenof them. Given the general invisibility at this date of documentable children(rather than theoretical ones), this information is invaluable.

The original editor of these documents, Luigi Zanoni, used them to illus-trate his model of the Humiliati as fulfilling what he termed an ‘eminentlysocial role’ or what Boswell might have called ‘social utility’.7 He describedthe contracts as primarily the stipulation of vitalizi, or corrodies for the adults,with the extra advantage of providing a safe haven (un asilo sicuro) for the chil-dren of older parents. Elsewhere he suggested that the children were taught acraft, understood to be wool-working, a documented activity of the order inthe thirteenth century.

Zanoni saw the establishment of the Humiliati as part of the class struggle.Getting together under the umbrella of a religious organization was the onlyway for the humblest salaried workers of the wool trade to unite against theslavery imposed by the exploitation of the capitalist mercatores. The idea ofchildren being provided with a skill, along the lines of an apprenticeship, toenable them better to cope with the world once adults, fitted well with thispicture.

This model of the Humiliati has been largely dismantled in the decadessince Zanoni wrote, though few historians have come near to his in-depth

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7 Zanoni, Gli Umiliati nei loro rapporti con l’eresia, pp. 192–4; Boswell, Kindness of Strangers.

knowledge of the local records. His analysis was founded on the twin beliefsthat the recruits to the new communities were from the ‘proletariat’ and, as wehave seen, that their main purpose was not religious but social utility, andcentred on wool-working. His ‘proletariat’ view was first challenged byHerbert Grundmann in the 1930s, but only recently has renewed investigationof local archive material revealed that, where identifiable, the recruits werefrom the families of tailors, butchers, notaries, small landowners and the oddnoble.8 In Zanoni’s terms these were themselves, if anything, the exploiters,and were certainly not lacking in funds. At the same time, studies of the papalmaterial have highlighted the religious importance of the movement,swinging the pendulum away from Zanoni’s ‘eminently social role’ to under-line the religious motivation behind the actions of the Humiliati.9

How then do we explain why the Humiliati or these Humiliati-stylecommunities took on children? The adults undoubtedly were thinking ofthese Humiliati or quasi-Humiliati communities partly as safe-havens fortheir children. This seems quite likely to be the principal motive in the contractof 1277 (document five) in which a grandfather made provision for hisunder-age granddaughters, but did not himself enter the community.However, the case for seeing such contracts as apprenticeships is less strong:they provide remarkably little information about what was expected of, or for,the children during their stay with the Humiliati. Of the five documents, threesay nothing whatever and in the remaining two, no mention is made oflearning a craft. Stada and Madia, aged ten and five respectively, who enteredthe domus Humiliatarum albarum with their mother in 1233 (document one)were to be brought up by the house, supported by the fructus on the donationmade on their behalf. At the age of fourteen they might choose to leave tomarry. Similarly, the seven Polvale boys who entered Viboldone in 1276 wereto be fed and clothed by the community. They were to live under obedience tothe superior and might not ask for any further expenses or fructus, but there isno reference to any specific training or apprenticeship to prepare them foradult life. Rather, as in all the contracts, a child choosing to leave was simplyto receive their ‘legitimate portion’, their rightful inheritance, or a fixed sum.

This is not straightforward child-oblation. In two cases related to documentfour we know the children did choose to remain in the house: after elevenyears, in 1287, Ambrosinus Polvale donated all the property he had inheritedin the areas of Torrevecchia, Landriano and S. Ambrogio in Zibido to thecanonica of Viboldone, in return for maintenance, and stated that he planned tostay there for the rest of his life with his mother, domina Belfiore (who had notpreviously been mentioned in the records). His cousin Paxinus Polvale alsostayed at Viboldone, apparently as a lay professed brother which is how he

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8 H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Darmstadt, 1961), pp. 160–1;Andrews, The Early Humiliati, pp. 31–2.

9 Ibid., pp. 29–30.

was described over forty years later, in documents from the 1320s.10 However,these children had not been irrevocably committed by their parents. In allcases the contracts allowed some freedom of choice permitting the children toleave either at a specified age or, less precisely, before making their profession.The age at which they might withdraw is not given in all the documents, butfourteen is given as the minimum in one and sixteen or eighteen are used aslimits in two of them. Thus Stada and Madia were free to marry from the ageof fourteen, but had to decide before the end of their eighteenth year. Simi-larly, the seven Polvale boys entering Viboldone had to make the decision tostay or go before the age of sixteen. The achievement of majority and theresponsibility which goes with it would thus appear to lie between fourteenand eighteen, a remarkably wide band of time in the case of the two girls. Itdoes, conveniently, fit the ‘southern European’ pattern identified by historiansof early marriage for women, but does not seem to fit canonical expectationsconcerning the age of majority (normally twelve for girls and fourteen forboys) which might be associated with ages for profession of vows.11

So why did the Humiliati accept children? The Humiliati acquired thedonations of property which came with them and which were occasionallysubstantial. In 1266 frater Tomardus de Tomardis gave approximately 138perches of land, including extensive vineyards, three sedimina and a housewith other buildings in the city of Milan, which was to revert to the Humiliatiafter the death of his daughter Tutabella and her son. Even if the children whoentered the Brera with him eventually chose to leave, the community wouldretain something.

Such evidence might allow us to explain Humiliati acquiescence in purelyfinancial terms. However, a passage from the rule Omnis boni principiumpoints to another possible way of viewing such contracts, perhaps reflectingcontemporary concerns akin to those about abandonment of infants identifiedby Boswell.12 Omnis boni principium specified that adult postulants with small,frail or sick children to whom they were entirely indispensable were not to beaccepted until the children had been provided for: ‘si tamen filios habet parvulos,debiles et infirmos, quibus omnino necessarius sit donec illis provideat non videturrecipiendus’. In other words, such children were not to be abandoned. The rulethus protected the children, but it would also mean that individuals with suchresponsibility would be unable to lead a full religious life unless provisioncould be made for the children. By accepting the children, even temporarily,the Humiliati would enable the adults to join their order and to fulfil theirreligious vocation, surely an important consideration. The children were not

78

Frances Andrews

10 M. Tagliabue, ‘Gli umiliati a Viboldone’, in L’abbazia di Viboldone (Milan, 1990), pp. 20–1.11 See R. M. Smith, ‘Geographical diversity in the resort to marriage in late medieval

Europe: work, reputation and unmarried females in the household formation systems ofnorthern and southern Europe’, in Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Societyc. 1200–1500, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (Stroud, 1992), pp. 16–59.

12 Boswell, Kindness of Strangers, pp. 322–63.

irrevocably committed, but nor were the adults prevented from pursuing theirown spiritual well-being. The only record (document three) in this groupwhich sets down a reason for choosing to enter the order gives a religious anda family one. Frater Tomardus de Tomardis records that he entered the Brerawith his children Guardianus and Filipina and his granddaughter Martinelabecause he wished to do penance together with his children: ‘quia vult agerepenitentiam simul cum Guardiano et cum Filipina . . .’. The language used todescribe his commitment is formulaic of course, but cannot simply be ignored.It is worth noting that Tomardus is already described as a brother. He hadperhaps already spent time as a novice with the community in order toacquire this title. Or he may have been a tertiary who was now making acommitment to the regular, enclosed life of a Second order community. Eitherway, just as they made financial provision for the adults and their offspring,these contracts also enabled parents actively to pursue a full religious lifewhile keeping their children with them. Allowing for adults to fulfil a reli-gious vocation without having to abandon their children, entrust them to rela-tives (if this were possible) or wait for them to be old enough, may perhapshave contributed to the popularity of the Humiliati at all levels.

It is tempting to allow the pendulum to continue to swing and to empha-size the religious aspect of these contracts at the expense of Zanoni’s ‘socialrole’. But this once more tells only half the story. These contracts reflect acombination of more or less conscious purposes: they undoubtedly madefinancial provision for the adults and their offspring, but they also enabledthem to pursue a full religious life while keeping their children with them andthis last point is worthy of reiteration. Frater Tomardus de Tomardis said thathe wanted to do penance with his children: the removal of the need to choosebetween a religious vocation and the responsibility for his child faced by theknight with whom I began surely helps to explain the success of the Humiliatiand similar groups. They provided an alternative to coercion, foisting childrenon relatives or literal abandonment. It is a solution which may have appealedboth to reluctant parents who welcomed the opportunity to escape or sharethe responsibility for child care and for those at the other end of the spectrumwho did not wish to have to choose between religion and family, by enablingthe family to stay together as long as they wished.

This optimistic picture should not be overstated and the case of a parvapuella shows that this willingness to take on children or young people withoutthe certainty of irrevocable oblation and with or without their parents, did notobviate disputes and raises the question of whether the Humiliati were wiseto take on children. Two of the contracts given in the table (documents oneand four) provided the Humiliati with insurance against finding themselvessupporting un-professed individuals ad infinitum, but this was not the onlypotential risk, as the case of domina Marca Spaçamensa illustrates.

In August 1236, witnesses from the house of Ognissanti in BorghettoLodigiano (south of Milan, near Lodi) were called to answer questions in adispute over the exemption of their community from the jurisdiction of the

79


bishop.13 In pursuit of the question of autonomy, two test-cases were raised bythe investigators concerning individuals who had complained to the bishopabout the former superior of the house, the provost dominus Ugo. The casewhich concerns us here is that of Martha or Marca Spaçamensa who, it wassuggested, had been a sister in the house and had complained to the bishop. Ifthis were true, it would assist the bishop in proving that he had enjoyed juris-diction over the community. Five witnesses made depositions concerningMarca: Ugo, the ex-provost himself, the brothers Vitalis, Johannes of Veronaand Iacobus of Milan and sister Flora de Castello, described as magistra. Ugowas questioned first and was unsurprisingly evasive: asked whether Marcahad complained about him to the bishop (surely a memorable event if it weretrue) Ugo replied that he did not recall and anyway Marca was not and neverhad been a sister of the house. Next came brother Vitalis, who had been in thehouse for over thirty-three years and a founding member of the community,but seems less sure of his ground. Asked whether Marca had been a sister ofthe house and again whether she had made her profession and lived as a sisterin the house, he replied that she had made a donation of her belongings to thechurch when she was a parva puella, a young girl, presumably a minor, but thatshe had stayed only a short time and that he was not present at the donation orat the drawing up of the carta donacionis vel professionis, but that the donationhad been recorded with a witnessed charter (cartam atestati). Marca had laterchanged her mind and returned to live at her home in Lodi. She wanted to getmarried, but it was certain that she had continued to be supported at theexpense of the house of Ognissanti while at home with her mother. He freelyadmitted that he did not know whether she had complained to the bishopbecause he did not remember. Nonetheless he had heard it said that Marcahad advertised in Milan for a husband: dicit tamen quod dici audivit quod feceratpreconizari per civitatem Mediolani quicumque vellet eam accipere in uxorem quod senubere volebat. Vitalis admitted that he did not know this for certain (tamennescit illud pro certo) and ended his account of Marca by saying that he knewnothing more, except that she had given the provost Ugo ‘multam brigam’,which may be politely translated as ‘a good deal of business’, an understand-able sentiment if Marca really had been a sister of the house, but probably onewhich had been shared by Marca herself. If true, it also incidentally under-mines the version of the provost Ugo himself which would have had to bebased on quite extraordinary absent-mindedness to allow him to forget such atrouble-maker.

The next witness was Iohannes of Verona who had been a brother in

80

Frances Andrews

13 Archivio della mensa vescovile, Lodi, Armario VIII, Fondo pergamene antiche, docu-ment 186. Partially transcribed by G. Tiraboschi, Vetera Humiliatorum Monumenta, 3 vols.(Milan, 1766–68), II, pp. 183–91. Now in E. Mercatili Indelicato, ‘Per una storia degliUmiliati nella diocesi di Lodi. Le case di S. Cristoforo e di Ognissanti nel XIII secolo’, Sulletracce degli Umiliati, ed. M. P. Alberzoni, A. Ambrosioni and A. Lucioni (Milan, 1997),pp. 343–492, appendix iv.

Ognissanti for twenty-four years. Asked whether Marca had complainedabout Ugo, he replied that she had indeed had a case before the bishop andthat the bishop had resolved it (expedivit et determinavit) but that he was notpresent at this affair (ad ea negocia). Asked whether Ugo had obeyed thebishop’s instructions (unspecified) he replied that the bishop had praisedUgo’s actions and that he did obey but he added that this did not prejudice thestatus of the church. Next came Iacobus of Milan, who had been a brother inthe community for approximately fifteen years. Iacobus started by declaringthat he knew nothing about the case of domina Marca but was then very infor-mative. As far as he knew she had never had the religious habit in the houseand she stayed in Lodi. He then added, however, that when she died she wasbrought to the church and buried there and that her mother had come there:‘portata fuit ad dictam ecclesiam et sepulta apud ipsam ecclesiam et mater eius ad hucvenit ibi’. This crucial piece of information had not been mentioned by theearlier witnesses, probably because it was already familiar to all concerned. SoMarca was no longer available to give her version of events. Asked whethershe had made a donation to the church of her property, he replied that he hadheard it said but knew no more. Finally, sister Flora the magistra, a member ofthe community for thirty-three years, and one of the founding sisters, reportedonly that Marca had lodged a case against the provost before the lord bishop.

Marca’s status was and is uncertain. Two witnesses (Johannes and Flora)confirm that she had made a complaint against Ugo (who was either amnesiacor keen to forget the episode). Ugo says she was never a sister. Iacobus saysthat she didn’t take the habit in the community (not quite the same thingperhaps). Vitalis tells us that she had made a donation when a young girl, andthen refers to a carta donacionis vel professionis, a written record of the donationor profession, as if he simply did not know which it had been, or that hethought the two were interchangeable or automatically linked. None of thebrethren call her a sister, and perhaps as a parva puella she was too young tohave made profession legitimately. Certainly, according to Vitalis she hadbeen supported by the community even when she left for home, suggestingthat they accepted that she had not been professed. Whether or not there was acomplaint before the bishop, the dispute was surely resolved before she died –or else the community simply saw her burial in their church as a way to avoidfurther bad feeling and perhaps to retain some if not all of her original dona-tion.

The main concern of the witnesses in 1236 was the relationship betweenbishop and community. Marca’s case was incidental to this and its resolutionmust be left to conjecture. It may indeed have been pre-empted by her death,but the facts as they stand indicate the uncertainties and misunderstandingswhich taking on young people might call forth. Marca may have initiallyintended to make a full commitment, but she then changed her mind (penituitse). Her complaint to the bishop may have concerned the rights to her prop-erty and expenses. Her mother’s role is not clear: did she approve of herdaughter’s departure for the community of Ognissanti? Did she indeed send

81


TAB

LE

1.T

HE

EA

RLY

‘HU

MIL

IAT

I’A

ND

PRO

VIS

ION

FOR

CH

ILD

RE

N:

TH

ED

OC

UM

EN

TS

Dat

eH

ouse

Ad

ults

Chi

ldre

n (a

ges)

Don

atio

nC

ond

itio

ns fo

r ch

ildre

n

1. 1

233

Dom

us .

. .H

umili

atar

umal

baru

m .

. . a

pud

eccl

esia

m b

eati

Eus

torg

ii(M

ilan)

Dom

ina

Ad

elax

iad

augh

ter

of th

e la

teU

bert

us P

eren

zoni

and

wif

e of

Gui

dot

us s

on o

fth

e la

te A

rgui

nus

deO

sena

go(M

ilan)

The

ir d

augh

ters

:St

ada

(10)

and

Mad

ia (5

)

Se c

um o

mni

bus

iuri

bus

boni

s et

reb

us(e

sp. 5

0 lir

ete

rzol

i fro

m h

er d

owry

and

ase

dim

en s

ive

cass

ina

wit

h bu

ildin

gs)

To s

tay

till

14, s

uppo

rted

by

fruc

tus

on th

e d

onat

ion.

May

leav

e to

mar

rybe

twee

n 14

and

18

wit

h a

shar

e of

the

don

atio

n bu

tno

t the

fruc

tus.

Aft

er 1

8m

ust s

tay.

2. 1

255

Dom

usH

umili

ator

um d

eSo

llari

o in

Sen

ago

Mar

chis

ius

Bur

ri a

ndL

eonu

s B

orri

nus

deSe

nago

Dau

ghte

rs o

f Leo

nus:

Isab

ellin

a, V

aren

za a

ndPe

tra

(min

oris

eta

tis)

Se e

t sua

. . .

om

nibu

s su

isbo

nis

May

leav

e w

hen

reac

h‘le

giti

mat

e ag

e’ ta

king

up

to 3

6 lir

e ea

ch (f

rom

prop

erty

giv

en b

y L

eonu

s)

3. 1

266

Bre

ra (M

ilan)

(dom

usH

umili

ator

um d

eB

raid

a G

uert

ii)

frat

er T

omar

dus

de

Tom

ard

isH

is c

hild

ren:

Gua

rdia

nus,

Filip

ina

and

his

gran

d-d

augh

ter,

Mar

tine

la

Om

nibu

s su

is b

onis

(inc

lud

ing

very

ext

ensi

vepr

oper

ties

)

May

leav

ean

te te

mpu

spr

ofes

sion

ista

king

200

lire

terz

oli o

r eq

uiva

lent

prop

erty

(Gua

rdia

nus)

or

50 li

re te

rzol

i (th

e tw

o gi

rls)

4. 1

276

Vib

old

one

(ecc

lesi

a se

uca

noni

ca s

eudo

mus

)

Am

brox

ius

Polv

alis

and

his

wif

eC

onti

sia

The

ir s

ons:

Pax

inus

,Pe

trin

us, M

iran

etus

and

thei

r ne

phew

s, M

arti

nus,

Alb

erti

nus,

Zan

inus

and

Am

bros

inus

(all

und

er 1

6)

Om

nibu

s . .

. bo

nis

. . .

et in

univ

erso

orb

e ni

chil

in s

epe

nito

res

erva

to(e

xten

sive

prop

erti

es)

May

leav

e be

fore

16

taki

ngth

eir

‘legi

tim

ate

port

ion’

;af

ter

that

age

, com

mun

ity

not b

ound

to c

onti

nue

supp

orti

ng th

em u

nles

sth

ey m

ake

prof

essi

on

5. 1

277

Dom

us fr

atru

m d

eor

dine

San

cti

Aug

usti

ni .

. .in

feri

oris

Sen

ago

. . .

dom

usqu

onda

m F

ratr

isLe

onis

Bur

ri

(Ott

obon

usde

Laz

zate

)D

olze

belli

na a

ndZ

aneb

ellin

a,gr

and

dau

ghte

rs o

fd

onor

(min

oris

eta

tis)

Om

nia

bona

May

leav

equ

ando

ad

etat

empe

rven

erin

t, ta

king

36

lire

each

Doc

umen

tsfi

rstp

ublis

hed

inL

.Zan

oni,

Gli

Um

iliat

inei

loro

rapp

orti

con

l’ere

sia,

l’ind

ustr

iade

llala

naed

icom

unin

eise

coli

xiie

xiii

(Mila

n,19

11)p

p.31

1–18

.Now

re-e

dit

edin

Gli

atti

delc

omun

edi

Mila

no,e

d.M

.F.B

aron

iand

R.P

erel

liC

ippo

(Mila

n/A

less

and

ria,

1976

–97)

,I,3

03(1

233)

,II/

1,13

2(1

255)

,II/

2,45

7(1

266)

,73

8 (1

276)

, III

/1,

3 (1

277)

.

her herself? She does not seem to have objected to Marca’s return home toLodi and later attended her daughter’s funeral or burial at the Humiliatichurch (since their own church was still being built this was perhaps SanGiorgio, a chapel given to the community by bishop Arderic in 1208). Vitalis’story that Marca advertised for a spouse in Milan is hard to believe (why notLodi?) – or does it suggest that she could take a very autonomous view of herlife because she had property?

Marca’s fate is not clarified in the surviving records and left too much opento speculation (both then and now), but whether we conclude that the housesof the Humiliati and others like them took on such children and young peoplefor social, financial or religious motives, what matters here is the effect. Bydoing so, at some risk to themselves, if only in terms of reputation, theyopened the full religious life not just to the unmarried and widows, but tomothers and fathers too. For once there might be no need to choose betweenparenthood and a full vocation in the religious life. At the same time, childrenmight have the opportunity to sample the religious life, not just as oblates orschool children, but as temporary participants, free to choose whether to stayor go, a choice which the son of knight B, with whom I began, would no doubthave been pleased to exercise.

84

Frances Andrews

Migration, Youth and Gender in Later Medieval England

Migration, Youth and Genderin Later Medieval England

P. J. P. Goldberg

In 1301 a series of ordinances was issued for York which was designed to regu-late trade in response to the difficulties caused by the residence of the royalcourt within the city. One of the more remarkable of these was that baldly en-titled ‘pigs and prostitutes’. The juxtaposition is a very telling one.1 Not onlywere pigs symbolic of lust, but they created problems by wandering thestreets. So did prostitutes, whose feet, like the archetypal harlot of the book ofProverbs, ‘will not abide within the house’. Thus when the mother in The GoodWyfe Wold a Pylgremage warned her daughter, ‘rene thou not fro hous to houselyke an Antyny gryce’ [piglet], she was intimating that such behaviourimplied a lack of chastity.2 Clearly within clerical, didactic and civic govern-mental sources women’s mobility was frowned upon. Here we may note thatonly two of Chaucer’s pilgrims were female, the Prioress and, more signifi-cantly, that singular creation of anti-feminist discourse, the Wife of Bath. Themovement of women may have been regarded as in some way particularlysubversive, but the labour legislation of the later fourteenth century warns usthat all migration was seen in some quarters to be subversive. The Commons’petition against vagrants of 1376, for example, saw in the mobility of labourers‘the great impoverishment, destruction and ruin of the commons’ and hinteddarkly that such migrants often became ‘staff strikers’ (clearly the medievalequivalent of New Age travellers) who ‘lead an idle life, commonly robbingpoor people in simple villages’.3 But neither the petition against vagrants norChaucer’s fictional pilgrims are simple mirrors of society.4 Any perusal of

85

1 M. Prestwich, York Civic Ordinances, 1301, Borthwick Papers 49 (York, 1976), pp. 16–17. Ihave developed this point at greater length in P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Pigs and Prostitutes:Streetwalking in Comparative Perspective’, in Young Medieval Women, ed. K. J. Lewis,N. J. Menuge and K. M. Phillips (Stroud, 1999), pp. 172–93 (pp. 172–4).

2 The Good Wife Taught her Daughter, ed. T. F. Mustanoja (Helsinki, 1948), p. 173 (line 8).3 Quoted from The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson, 2nd edn (London, 1983),

pp. 73–4.4 There is every reason to believe that places of pilgrimage would have attracted pilgrims

of both sexes. Concerns about married women travelling on their own (cf. MargeryKempe) would have applied neither to married couples nor to younger, unmarriedwomen. For evidence of just such a mixed group see Women in England c. 1275–1525, ed.P. J. P. Goldberg (Manchester, 1995), pp. 283–4.

conventional historical sources reveals that medieval men and women wereboth highly mobile and that such mobility played an essential part of the func-tioning of a complex society. The purpose of this paper is to try to reconcilethese two perspectives.

There is a wealth of evidence to indicate that medieval society was highlymobile and that significant numbers of people would have moved from theirnatal homes during the course of their lives. This is implicit from the evidenceof locative bynames such as have been analysed by Ekwall in his pioneeringstudies of migration into medieval London, by Carus-Wilson for the smallborough of Stratford-upon-Avon or by McClure in his analysis of urbanmigration fields.5 It is evident from the concern shown by customary andborough courts, particularly before the Black Death, in the lodging ofstrangers, and it shows up in Poos’s analysis of population turnover from thetithing records of a number of early fourteenth-century Essex vills.6 After theBlack Death it is apparent from the relative ease with which lords filled vacantholdings, landlords found tenants, and towns attracted labour. Indeed wemay debate whether English society was more mobile before or after the BlackDeath.7 What is much harder to determine is who exactly migrated, over whatdistances, and when in their life course. This is especially true of femalemigrants. That this is purely a product of inherent biases in the kinds ofsources that record migration and not a consequence of women being substan-tially less mobile than men is easy to demonstrate. The skewed sex ratios that Ihave elsewhere described as characteristic of English towns of the later four-teenth century is indicative of higher levels of women than men migratingfrom the countryside at this date.8 Dale’s work on female apprentices toLondon silkwomen, for example, shows that young women were drawn tolearn the trade from at least as far as Yorkshire. Within peasant society theevidence of merchet payments likewise suggests that women commonlymarried without their natal manors.9

Perhaps the best source available for the study of such phenomena as

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P. J. P. Goldberg

5 E. Ekwall, Studies on the Population of Medieval London (Stockholm, 1956); E. M.Carus-Wilson, ‘The First Half Century of the Borough of Stratford’, EcHR 2nd s. 18 (1965),46–53; P. McClure, ‘Patterns of Migration in the late Middle Ages: the Evidence of EnglishPlace-Name Surnames’, EcHR 2nd s. 32 (1979), 167–82.

6 J. A. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Mediaeval English Village(Toronto, 1964), p. 136; L. R. Poos, ‘Population Turnover in Medieval Essex’, in The WorldWe Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure, ed. L. Bonfield, R. M. Smithand K. Wrightson (Oxford, 1996), pp. 1–22.

7 L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex, 1350-1525 (Cambridge, 1991),pp. 158–79.

8 P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in Medieval Economy: Women in York and York-shire c. 1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 342–3, 356, 359.

9 M. K. Dale, ‘The London Silkwomen of the Fifteenth Century’, EcHR 4 (1933), 324–35;J. M. Bennett, ‘Medieval Peasant Marriages: An Examination of Marriage License Fines inthe Liber Gersumarum’, in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. A. Raftis (Toronto, 1981),pp. 193–246.

propensity to migrate, mean distance moved, and age at migration are deposi-tions from the ecclesiastical courts. Early modern historians, notably Clark,Souden, and Earle, have made excellent use of this evidence and henceprovide a comparative basis against which the medieval data may be set.10

Unfortunately biographical information about individual deponents appearsnot to have been recorded with any consistency even where such depositionevidence survives for the period before 1500. This is certainly true of the Yorkconsistory, by far and away the most complete archive spanning the whole ofthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Though migrational information seemsto have been recorded more commonly by the end of the fifteenth century,social and legal prejudices ensure that female deponents will be seriouslyunderrepresented. My own analysis of migrational data from the York consis-tory suggests that women migrated at a mean age of 19.6 years (N=11, whereN is the number of movements) and men at 18.3 years (N=19).11 Poos, usingEssex depositions from the London consistory in the last decades of thefifteenth century (1467–97), found a mean age ‘at arrival’ of 28.3 years (N=104)for an almost exclusively male population. The difference between his figureand mine may be explained in part by my use of evidence for all movementsby deponents and the relative youth of many of the deponents in my sample,whereas Poos is concerned only with the point at which persons appear tohave settled and is derived from a rather older sample population. It followsthat my evidence points to the modal age at which people were actively in theprocess of migrating, whereas Poos is concerned with the point at which thisprocess ended.12 Nevertheless, another sample of male deponents taken fromthe records of litigation concerning parochial rights in the parish of Waghenand Sutton-on-Hull (and much more akin to Poos’s sample) still suggests amean age at settlement around twenty years.13 Clark, using some 7,000 depo-sitions from the period 1660–1730, found that most migrants were agedbetween eleven and thirty years, but he observed differing patterns betweengenders and between town and country, female and rural male migrantstending to move later than urban males.14 Souden has similarly noted atendency for young people to migrate during ‘their late teens and early twen-ties’ using like evidence for the period 1661–1707.15

87


10 Migration and Society in Early Modern England, ed. P. Clark and D. Souden (London, 1987);P. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market in London in the late Seventeenth and earlyEighteenth Centuries’, EcHR 2nd s. (1989), 328–53 (p. 333 and tab. 3, p. 334).

11 Calculated from Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, tab. 6.1, pp. 284–7.12 Poos, A Rural Society, pp. 173–6.13 York Minster Library (hereafter YML), deposition book, M2(3)c. The depositions are

dated variously 1402 and 1429–30. The mean age of removal/settlement where known is21.2 years (N=19), but if three atypical cases (age 7, 53+, and ?40 years respectively) areexcluded, the mean falls to 18.9 years (N=16, standard deviation = 6.6 years).

14 P. Clark, ‘Migration in England during the late Seventeenth and early EighteenthCenturies’, in Migration and Society, ed. Clark and Souden, pp. 213–52 (pp. 226–7).

15 This is derived from a sample of 453 deponents for whom actual ‘age at arrival’ is known:

The distances travelled by migrants can also be calculated from the Yorkevidence. The mean distance travelled by the women deponents within thesample is 30.8 miles (N=30, where N is the number of movements), that formen only 21.7 miles (N=22).16 These statistics, however, disguise two essen-tially different patterns of migration; on the one hand there was sometimeslong-distance migration primarily into major towns and on the other localmigration, often associated with the movement of servants. Thus ChristianaGlover of Leconfield (E. Yorks.), observed in a cause of 1494, travelled some165 miles to London after her parish chaplain had excommunicated her forrefusing to accept the ruling of the Church court meeting at Beverley that shewas lawfully married to one John Eshton. On the other hand Alice Daltonmade various journeys in the early years of the century between her nativePoppleton and different employers in York, a distance of about four miles,whilst she was still single and a servant.17 If movements over fifty miles areexcluded, the mean distances travelled by women falls to 14.4 miles (N=23) asagainst 15.1 miles for men (N=21). This is not so far out of line with Poos’ssuggestion, based on customary and royal court evidence, that most migra-tion took place within a radius of about twelve miles.18 Patten, writing aboutearly modern East Anglia, likewise found that most migrant apprentices intothree of the major towns of the region moved from within a radius of betweeneight and twenty miles of those towns, and Clark found that some half of allmigrants journeyed fewer than ten miles, but only about ten per cent morethan forty miles.19

It would appear thus far that most migrants were relatively youthful,comprising primarily teenagers and young adults, and that, a significantminority of long-distance migrants excepted, most movements were overcomparatively short distances. More problematical is an assessment of thepropensity of people to migrate. The York consistory data will not allow thisto be measured, but Poos’s Essex data provide some clues. Poos found that amaximal figure 24.1 per cent of his almost exclusively male sample (N=137)had remained within their natal communities right up until they made theirdepositions. The equivalent figure from Waghen and Sutton-on-Hull ratherearlier in the fifteenth century is 53.1 per cent (N=49), but this case, concernedas it is with testimony about ancient custom, only highlights the bias implicitin Poos’s data. Deponents who had many years’ residence within a commu-

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D. Souden, ‘Migrants and the Population Structure of later Seventeenth Century Provin-cial Cities and Market Towns’, in The Transformation of English Provincial Towns, 1600–1800,ed. P. Clark (London, 1984), pp. 133–68 (p. 142).

16 Calculated from Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, tab. 6.1, pp. 284–7.17 York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research (hereafter BI), cause papers, CP. F. 210,

284.18 Poos, A Rural Society, pp. 162–4.19 J. Patten, ‘Patterns of Migration and Movement of Labour to three Pre-Industrial East

Anglian Towns’, in Migration and Society, ed. Clark and Souden, pp. 77–106 (p. 87); Clark,‘Migration in England’, p. 223.

nity, who indeed enjoyed a high degree of stability, might be preferred asdeponents over newcomers and the comparatively mobile.20 Such scantyevidence thus suggests that the majority of people did move at some stage intheir life course, an observation supported by early sixteenth-century deposi-tion evidence analysed by Poos. Intriguingly this research suggests bothmarked regional variation in propensity to migrate, but also that women weremore likely to have moved from their natal communities within their lifecourse than men.21

Poos has attempted to take his Essex evidence one stage further andexplore status-specific patterns of migration, although once again hisevidence is limited to males. On the basis of very small samples he hassuggested that craftsmen / retailers, a group that for convenience I shallsubsequently refer to as artisans, were both less likely to migrate than othergroups and tended to settle from an earlier age, whereas labourers werehighly mobile. He goes on to argue that whereas labourers might continue tobe mobile throughout their careers, husbandmen might take longer to estab-lish themselves, but tended not to move having once done so.22 Poos ties theseobservations to a tentative model of marriage formation in late-medievalEssex derived from the nominative poll tax returns for the county in 1381.These last indicate that husbandmen and, to a lesser extent, artisans weremarried in greater proportions than were labourers. Despite the patentlydefective nature of these returns, Poos argues that the different proportionsobserved are at least statistically significant.23 Such findings probably saysomething about mean age at marriage, the likelihood being that husbandmentended to marry somewhat earlier than artisans or more especially labourers,a conclusion given support by my own analysis of Yorkshire depositionevidence, but it may be even more suggestive of different patterns of propen-sity to marry.24 The lower proportion of Essex labourers than husbandmen orartisans currently married in 1381 suggests that significant numbers oflabourers abstained from marriage, whereas marriage was much more normalfor husbandmen or artisans.

It is possible to test Poos’s hypothesis using much more convincing dataderived from the Howdenshire (E. Yorks.) nominative poll tax returns for1379.25 Because the tax that year was levied at differential rates following apredetermined schedule, it is possible to distinguish different status groupsaccording to the level of assessment. The remarkable strength of theHowdenshire returns is that not only are artisans, merchants, franklins,

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20 YML, M2(3)c; Poos, A Rural Society, tab. 8.3, p. 170 and discussion p. 167.21 L. R. Poos, paper given at the Department of English Local History, University of

Leicester, 23 June 1995.22 Poos, A Rural Society, tabs. 8.4, 8.6, pp. 171, 177, and discussion pp. 176–8.23 Ibid., pp. 154–8.24 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp. 243–66.25 ‘Assessment Roll of the Poll-Tax for Howdenshire . . . 1379’, Yorkshire Archaeological

Journal 9 (1886), 129–62.

farmers of manors, and gentry assessed at different rates and so designated,but even minimum-rate taxpayers are given specific designations, as servant,labourer, or husbandman, so as to justify their assessment at the minimumrate. It follows that much more reliable indicators of proportions married ofservants, labourers, artisans, and husbandmen may be calculated. It should benoted, however, that small numbers of minimum-rate taxpayers, includingnumbers of widows, were not designated as servants, labourers, orhusbandmen, and that I have chosen to exclude from my calculations servantswho were apparently dependents of householders other than where thesewere also the sons and daughters of householders. As a consequence, myproportions married are the pertinent proportions of all those designatedhusbandman, artisan etc., their spouses if married, and their children if notthemselves specifically designated under another category. On this basis I findthat 86.5 per cent of husbandmen (including franklins and farmers of manors),79.6 per cent of artisans (including merchants and chapmen), 61.6 per cent oflabourers, and only 30.1 per cent of servants were married.26 If we placeservants on one side for the moment, it will be apparent that these figuressignificantly enhance Poos’s hypothesis. Relatively few husbandmen andonly slightly more artisans seem not to have been married, a simple reflectionof the importance of the conjugal unit in ensuring the effective management ofa family holding or workshop. In contrast, numbers of labourers may neverhave married despite achieving adulthood. Given that women are at least asnumerous as men among Howdenshire’s population of single labourers, itmay also be that some labourers were widows who had turned to labouring asa means of support following their husbands’ decease. For example, in thevillage of Walkington we find a household that included one Isabella, themother of John son of Adam, the householder, who was assessed as alabourer.27

The presence of large numbers of servants who do not appear to be house-hold dependents, but some of whom were married, raises questions of ter-minology. The returns for the Hinckford Hundred of Essex do in factsometimes include groups of famuli and also of famuli et laborarii together.Some of these famuli, as at Panfield, were married and Poos has presumablyincluded them indiscriminately within his population of labourers.28 Butfamuli were the permanent workforce of the manor, contracted by the year, butunlike life-cycle servants resident in their own accommodation and certainlynot in the manor house. By extension, the generic term ‘servant’ as used in theHowdenshire returns may mean workers contracted by the year, but notnecessarily household dependents of their employers. This is suggested in afew instances by occupational bynames. Thus one Roger Schepherde wasdescribed as a servant when presented for trespass under the Statute of

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26 Ibid. These figures are based on a sample of about half the possible observations.27 ‘Howdenshire’, p. 143.28 The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381, ed. C. C. Fenwick, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1998–), I, 206–22.

Labourers, and in the Howdenshire returns we find one Clement Swynhirdlisted as a married servant in Melton.29 The strikingly low proportion ofmarried persons within this category of servants may thus be a singularlytelling observation. Unlike day labourers, who frequently held small parcelsof land and might supplement their livelihoods by combining periodiclabouring with smallholding and even small-scale craft activity, servants werealmost entirely dependent upon their employment. Few would consequentlyhave had either the means or the incentive to marry. Strikingly inHowdenshire, a region noted for pastoralism associated with wool produc-tion, women are very conspicuous among this group, outnumbering singlemen by a ratio of about 3:2.30

To sum up thus far, it would seem that the young of both sexes were asingularly mobile group, indeed that mobility may be perceived as a facet ofyouth. Adolescents of both sexes might leave their natal homes to work for aperiod of years as servants (in the life-cycle sense), though others may havefound more autonomous, but still dependent positions as servants (in thesense of famuli) or as labourers, and, given the evidence that in rural areasduring the later fourteenth century at least male life-cycle servants outnum-bered female, even women who remained within the natal vill and the natalhome until marriage might have married outside the vill. Almost certainlythey would have moved from their home. On the other hand, not everybodywould have settled and married on reaching adulthood. Numbers of men andwomen who had no expectation of gaining entry to even small parcels of landor who lacked both the means and the access to skills necessary to engage intrade or craft production may have gone through life unmarried. Equallysome servants and labourers may have had to wait rather longer than thenorm before the land they aspired to came within their possession and hencemarriage became a possibility, and some widows may have rejoined the ranksof unmarried servants (again in the sense of famuli) or labourers after theirmarriages had been cut short. We may thus detect a contrasting patternbetween the ubiquitous mobility of youth and the continued mobility of anessentially rootless subclass of landless labour. Here we may cite two exam-ples: John, son of William Smyth of Holywell, was at Colne in 1403 and 1405,at Soham in 1409 and 1413, at Ely in 1420 and 1423, at Ramsey in 1427, 1428,and 1432, and was back in Ely in 1437, all places within a ten mile radius; Joan,daughter of John Beronger of Warboys, had found her way to London by 1440,was in Kent during the 1450s, but is finally observed at Harrow-on-the-Hill in1462.31 I want now to explore the mobility of labourers in greater depth.

It is apparent that we must distinguish between the sort of migration asso-

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29 S. A. C. Penn and C. Dyer, ‘Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence fromthe Enforcement of the Labour Laws’, EcHR 2nd s. 43 (1990), 356–76 (tab. 1, p. 364);‘Howdenshire’, pp. 136–7.

30 Calculated from ‘Howdenshire’, 129–62.31 Raftis, Tenure and Mobility, pp. 173, 180.

ciated with a transfer of residence suggested by Poos’s deposition evidenceand the daily movement of labourers to their places of work. This last issuggested by the observation that the distances moved by day labourers totake employment were invariably very small. Presentments under the Statuteof Labourers for the later fourteenth century regularly record persons leavingthe vill to seek employment, but rarely specify the actual destinations. In a fewinstances, however, these are recorded and there is little reason to believe thatthey are unrepresentative of the broader pattern. Penn and Dyer, using thissource, thus present evidence for the actual movements of only twelve womenand twenty-five men, but the picture that emerges is relatively uniform.32 Thewomen moved a mean of 4.4 miles against 6.4 miles for the men. If three atyp-ical cases of movement over distances of 20, 20, and 24 miles respectively areexcluded then these means fall to 3.1 and 5 miles respectively. These arecomparatively short walking distances and it is reasonable to conclude thatsuch labourers travelled to work on a daily basis, returning to their homeseach evening. Indeed the only reason why some enter the record is becausethese short journeys technically took them without the boundaries of the villand hence the provisions of the Statute of 1351, although in other instances thepresentment was made in respect of ‘excessive’ wages.

That there is a modest difference in the mean distance travelled by malewage-earners as against female is probably not a reflection of the presence of anumber of building workers within the male sample. The longest distancerecorded, the twenty-four miles travelled by one William Session of LittleBarningham to take employment in Forncett (Norfolk), was indeed in pursuitof his craft of thatcher, but the mean distance travelled by men not engaged inbuilding crafts was actually much the same as for the entire sample.33 It maybe, therefore, that men tended to journey to work over slightly greaterdistances than women. Most of the other men and certainly all but perhapsone of the women were presented in relation to harvest employment when, ofcourse, labour was most in demand and hence wages were at their most vola-tile. The relative conspicuousness of women amongst those so presented hasled Penn elsewhere to speculate that jurors may have been particularlyinclined to present women in an attempt to enforce wage differentials.34

In fact there is no need to argue this line, though this is not to deny the like-lihood that the Peace sessions were mindful of the presence of numbers of

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32 Penn and Dyer, ‘Wages and Earnings’, tab. 1, pp. 364–5.33 The mean for all male, non-building workers is 6.4 miles. If the atypical movement of 20

miles is excluded, the mean falls to 5.5 miles, slightly above the mean for all males lessmovements of 20 and 24 miles. The female sample is, however, influenced by the pres-ence of a group of six women who travelled only two miles. It would thus be unwise toconclude that women tended to travel to work over shorter distances than men on thebasis of so small a sample. On the other hand the evidence suggests that male buildingworkers were as likely to walk to work on a daily basis as harvest workers.

34 S. A. C. Penn, ‘Female Wage-earners in late Fourteenth-century England’, AgriculturalHistory Review 35 (1987), 1–14 (p. 5).

women among those presented under the Statute. Most labour within themedieval countryside would have been conducted without wages by familymembers. Even lords of manors, who during the course of the later MiddleAges were increasingly reliant on hired labour over customary labour,engaged a regular staff of employees, otherwise famuli, and depended on daylabour only at particularly busy seasons or for specialized tasks not coveredby the regular staff. Numbers of small rural employers, both artisans andhusbandmen, likewise relied to varying degrees upon live-in servants. Thiswould have been especially true of pastoral and mixed farming regions whichwere characterized by a less seasonal labour demand, but which also requiredworkers to care for livestock outside the ordinary working hours of a daylabourer. An expansion of this sector of the agrarian economy in the decadesfollowing the Black Death coincided, moreover, with acute wage inflation,but, from the 1370s at least, a downward movement in the price of grain.Live-in servants, who were employed primarily for bed and board, thusenjoyed a growing competitive advantage over wage labour from the time ofthe advent of plague until at least the earlier decades of the fifteenth century.

It thus follows that a significant part of the labour force called upon to meetthe exigencies of the harvest were persons not normally engaged in paidemployment, hence the numbers of women harvest workers, both marriedand single. Thus among the Penn and Dyer sample noted earlier are bothMargaret, the wife of John le Bere and Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry deScreffington.35 The harvest thus drew upon numbers of women who wereotherwise household dependents and not independent wage earners.36 Nodoubt the attraction of high wages for a few weeks in autumn would havebeen valued as a significant boost to the familial economy. That this could beearned without having to stay away from the family home outside theworking day would have been an additional benefit and would have ensuredthat this seasonal work would have only been marginally disruptive to theroutine of the peasant household.

Although many women probably found harvest employment no more thana few miles from their homes, some women do appear to have travelled overslightly greater distances. Margaret, the wife of John le Bere just noted, waspresented in 1362–3 for going from her home in Wantisden to find work as areaper in Ilketshall (Suffolk) some twenty miles distant. It is unthinkable thatshe would have walked back each evening since her work would not haveended until darkness was falling and she would have been already exhaustedby a long day in the fields. We can only speculate that the high wages availablein the immediate aftermath of the second pestilence or Grey Death of 1361–2reconciled her and her husband to the necessity of living away from homeduring the harvest period. Margery Spuret, a servant in the employ of a York

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35 Penn and Dyer, ‘Wages and Earnings’, tab. 1, p. 364. Most of the women presented cannotin fact be identified by marital status.

36 Cf. Poos, A Rural Society, p. 217.

saddler, likewise arranged to be absent from her employer for a month duringthe harvest of 1393, an arrangement that may have been quite common, but ishere observed only by chance since this was used by one Thomas de Hornbyto argue that he could not have married her in York at that time.37 A tellingindication that such arrangements need not always be amicable is revealed byanother matrimonial cause from the York consistory. One Lucy allegedly lefther husband William de Fentrice of Tollesby in the ‘autumn’, the invariablecontemporary term for the harvest, of 1356 ‘without the permission of her saidhusband’ and just when he had most need of her assistance. When shereturned she found he was living with another woman whom witnesses hadseen ‘doing William’s work’ as might his wife. William subsequently claimeda pre-contract with this other woman, despite seven years of marriage to Lucy,a claim that was upheld by the York consistory.38

Our analysis of the mobility of labourers thus far has shown that labourersand even building craftsmen would often find employment within easywalking distance of their place of residence. As Poos has convincingly arguedin respect of the farmer’s accounts of Porter’s Hall at Stebbing in the period1483–4, where the bulk of the labour needs were met by a staff of eleven famuli,additional day labourers were employed only episodically. Thus 52 labourerswere employed for periods totalling between one day and thirty days. Giventhat the farmer of Porter’s Hall constituted the main local employer, it ishighly unlikely that many if any of the labourers so recorded could havesurvived from labouring alone.39 Labourers must therefore have depended onhaving small holdings and / or access to craft and retail activities in order toensure their livelihoods. It follows that it would not normally have been in theinterests of such persons to move permanently. It was solely those without tiesof land who may have continued to be mobile through adulthood. As I shallargue shortly, it was the mobility of this group, and not of life-cycle servants oroccasional day labourers that caused particular friction within medievalsociety.

The periodic movement of servants from one household to another,perhaps within a few miles’ radius of a particular hiring fair, had its owninternal logic. It permitted young people to gain access to a range of skills thatthey might not be able to acquire within their natal homes.40 It allowed them

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37 BI, cause paper, CP. E. 159.38 ‘. . . sine licencia dicti mariti . . .’; ‘. . . facientem opus ipsius Willelmi. . . .’: BI, cause paper, CP. E.

77. One deponent, John Schephyrd, claimed that William often beat Lucy, who had beenmarried before, and it was this that had prompted her to leave in the autumn. Presum-ably the harvest season was her only (brief) opportunity to get away from her husbandsince waged work would not normally have been available to her.

39 Poos, A Rural Society, pp. 212–16.40 This is a strategy that has been described by Esther Goody in anthropological terms as

characteristic of complex societies: E. Goody, ‘Sharing and Transferring Components ofParenthood: The West African Case’, in Adoption et Fosterage, ed. M. Corbier Del’Archéologie à l’Histoire (Paris, 1999), pp. 369–88.

to extend their pool of contacts and friends as they moved from one employerto another and, for older servants at least, it increased the range of possiblepartners with whom they might initiate courtship relations and in due courseeven marry. It also allowed employers to match servants by age, experience,and gender to their own particular labour needs. The system of life-cycleservice further allowed employers access to labour throughout their lifecourse as parents, since servants could be employed when children were tooyoung to assist within the household economy and after children had lefthome. Indeed the system depended upon at least some parents permittingchildren to leave home at precisely the ages that they might have been mostuseful to them.

The movement of such young people between households did not gowithout comment. As Poos has observed, the spiritual needs of young peoplewho were only temporarily resident within a parish could all too easily beoverlooked, hence Myrc’s insistence in his Instructions that parish priests hearthe confessions even of those whose ‘howsehold be elles where’.41 It was themovement of young women, however, that generated the most comment ifthe circulation of the didactic text How the Good Wijf Tau�te Hir Dau�tir is to beregarded as evidence.42 This last was, however, not specifically addressed atwomen servants and was not concerned with mobility between households asmuch as conduct within households. It could just as well have been used byparents whose children did not leave home to go into service. Considerablenumbers of peasant adolescents and young adults did indeed remain withtheir natal families until they married. The Howdenshire poll tax evidencesuggests for example that numbers of husbandmen and, to a lesser extent,artisans retained adolescent or young adult children within the household,although these groups were also conspicuous employers of servants.43

Children resident within the natal home and life-cycle servants were alikedependents of the heads of their households. They were alike manupasti ormainpasts for whose actions the householder might be held legally respon-sible. They were alike subject to the government of a father or a master. Theirsocial position thus owed rather more to age than to status or gender. A verydifferent perspective emerges in relation to older people. Most men withaccess to land, training, or capital probably aspired to marriage and tobecoming a householder. I have already remarked the value to men of theirwives in managing a peasant holding or running a workshop. It might thus bethat marriage for husbandmen, artisans, and indeed such labourers who had

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41 Poos, A Rural Society, p. 197.42 See argument in F. Riddy, ‘Mother Knows Best: Reading Social Change in a Courtesy

Text’, Speculum 71 (1996), 66–86.43 Labourers appear to have retained sons preferentially, artisans daughters. Widows seem

sometimes to have retained preferentially daughters in their households. This last issupported by like evidence from the 1379 poll tax returns for the West Riding (Yorks.)wapentakes of Osgoldcross and Strafforth: C. Dahy, ‘Etude des Registres de la poll tax de1379’ (unpublished maîtrise, University of Tours, 1992), tab. 13.

sufficient resources to be able to afford to marry constituted a coming of age, aform of social adulthood. For the women who chose to marry husbandmen,artisans etc., marriage was from a legal perspective little more than an exten-sion of their earlier dependent status. They remained mainpasts, the legaldependents of their husbands and subject to the government of theirhusbands. In social practice, however, wives were very much seen as partners;it follows that for women too, marriage constituted a social coming of age.44

It is to those who achieved adulthood, but yet did not marry that I wantnow to turn my attention. What this paper has shown, following on from thework of Poos, is that significant numbers of labourers and more especiallypersons described as servants, but not in the life-cycle sense, must have optedout of marriage. As such they neither became householders nor achievedsocial adulthood. But since they did not reside with their employers, theywere not legal dependents either. Herein lies the essence of the problem.Within the hierarchical structure of medieval society, the landless, the rootless,the unmarried, those not invested with the responsibilities of householding inthe conventional sense, and those not subject to the authority of a lord, ahusband, or a master were a potentially destabilising and subversive influ-ence. That such persons were drawn disproportionately from the lowestechelons of society would only have reinforced this essentially élitist andmagisterial perspective.

It follows that migrant labour on the one side and seigneurial, clerical, andaldermanic authority on the other were frequently in a state of tension, butthis was enhanced at particular moments. With the advantage of hindsight wecan see that the movement of labour was an inevitable and necessary conse-quence of a changing economy. The years of land hunger and population pres-sure at the end of the thirteenth into the early years of the fourteenth century,culminating in the Agrarian Crisis, saw numbers of smallholders forced tosurrender their holdings and an associated growth in landless labour. Thislabour necessarily travelled in search of work and in some instances found itsway into towns. This is reflected on the one hand, for example, by thenumbers of peasants described as vacabundus or vacabunda in the Spalding serflists of the 1260s and on the other hand by the problems created by the level ofimmigration into the small town of Halesowen between the 1270s and theBlack Death.45 It is further reflected in the concern on the part of local govern-ment to ensure that incomers were properly vouched for and, in the case of

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44 This social dimension is beyond the scope of this paper, which is primarily concernedwith magisterial and legal perspectives. A discussion of marriage as a partnership, partic-ularly in terms of managing the household economy, is to be found in my ‘Householdand the Organisation of Labour in Late Medieval Towns: Some English Evidence’, in TheHousehold in Late Medieval Cities: Italy and Northwestern Europe Compared, ed. M. Carlierand T. Soens (Leuven and Apeldoorn, 2001), pp. 59–70, but implications of maternity andchildrearing for the social standing of women deserves further exploration.

45 BL, Add. MS 35296; R. H. Hilton, ‘Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters’, Past and Present 97(1982), 3–15.

males, entered into tithings. Following the Black Death we may observe arestructuring of both the agrarian and urban economies and consequent shiftsin the pattern of demand for labour. To no small extent this resulted in a move-ment of labour, but within the broader context of labour scarcity the problemwas less with incomers than with those who left the community, and sodeprived the community of a stable and hence cheap labour supply, and withthose in transit. Thus we may discern a movement of labour away from theold intensively arable regions of Midland England, but at the same time aninflux of labour, particularly female labour, into towns during the course ofthe later fourteenth century. This of course is the context of the enforcement ofthe Ordinance and later the Statute of Labourers and its subsequent revisions.

Just as the circumstances leading to the movement of labour and likewisethe responses to the perceived problems caused by labour mobility variedover time, so it seems likely that the part played by gender in these percep-tions changed. Hilton has suggested that some three-quarters of migrants intopre-plague Halesowen were female, but what his evidence may in fact show isthat female migrants were disproportionately conspicuous within theborough court since their marginal economic position would regularly haveforced them the wrong side of the law.46 In the eyes of borough magistrates,therefore, female migrants would have been regarded as troublemakers. Inrural society at the same time the evidence of coroners’ rolls shows thatwomen were conspicuous among the poor begging alms from door to door.How far such persons were indeed supported by the charity of their neigh-bours is difficult to assess, but it is likely that such mendicants engendered atleast a degree of resentment.47 Suspicion of female migrants and of the‘ungoverned’ woman cannot be said to have gone away in the decadesfollowing the Black Death. It is implicit in the circulation of How the Good WijfTau�te hir Dau�tir and maybe even in the presentments of women under theStatute of Labourers, but it was the ungoverned single male that aroused mostconcern in this period of labour scarcity.48 The Commons’ 1376 petition hasalready been noted, but much the same tone is to be found in a London injunc-tion directed against the ‘yeomen’ (journeymen) tailors in 1415. The concernvoiced by their employers was that the journeymen were living together invarious houses and associating collectively ‘like unruly and insolent menwithout head or governance’; responding to this petition, the city governors

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46 Hilton, ‘Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters’; Goldberg, ‘The Public and the Private: Womenin the Pre-Plague Economy’, in Thirteenth-Century England III, ed. P. R. Coss and S. Lloyd(Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 75–89.

47 For some examples of hostility to mendicants see BI, CP. E. 28 (‘pauperes sunt qui deus odit’:deposition of Richard Hughet; CP. E. 82 (deposition of Robert de Harwod, also translatedin Women in England, ed. Goldberg, p. 159); CP. E. 92 (deposition of Thomas son ofYdonson).

48 Riddy, ‘Mother Knows Best’; Penn, ‘Female Wage-Earners’.

characterized the ‘yeomen’ tailors as ‘like a race at once youthful andunstable’.49

Patriarchal anxiety respecting the single woman once more became mani-fest by the later years of the fifteenth century. As I have elsewhere described,in a period of economic contraction women became increasingly marginalizedwithin the labour force and hence increasingly dependent upon marriage as ameans to a livelihood.50 Single women were again ghettoized into an economycharacterized by petty trading, the retailing of ale, prostitution, and pettycrime and hence reinforced magisterial notions of the ungoverned woman asdeceitful, sexually promiscuous, and a threat to the social order. Nowhere isthis better demonstrated than in the Coventry city ordinances of 1492 thatequated barmaids with prostitutes and required all single women under fiftyyears of age ‘to go to service till they be maried’.51 By the early years of thesixteenth century, however, male unemployment was sufficiently acute toprovoke a new concern on the part of government, both centrally and locally,with the problem of vagrancy.52

The central issue seems not then to have been migration per se, but house-hold status. The householder, he (for it usually was a he) who had responsi-bility over household dependents, was, from a governmental perspective, thebackbone of the medieval social fabric. Through his government, the house-holder supposedly provided stability to the household, a quality highlyvalued in an essentially conservative society. We may remember that this wasa society in which lords, the leaders of society, were so much associated withplace. Thus England as a concept was inseparable from the person of the king.Similarly the de la Poles, who as Hull merchants had rubbed shoulders withthe Rottenherrings, became in the fullness of time the Suffolks. Even lords ofmanors commonly shared their name with the place over which theyexercized seigneurial authority. Householding, having jurisdiction overdependents, and stability were qualities that went hand in hand. They werealso qualities gained with age.

Mobility, in contrast, was a characteristic of youth, but young people occu-pied a clearly defined position as the legal dependents of their parents, theirlords, and their masters. Many young men would have aspired to marriageand indeed would have become householders in their own right uponcompleting their training, upon inheriting land, or upon otherwise gaining

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49 Memorials of London and London Life . . . being a series of Extracts . . . from the early Archives ofthe City of London, A.D. 1276–1419, ed. T. H. Riley (London, 1868), pp. 609–12. Translationby Riley of original entry in Letter-Book ‘I’ in Latin. The emphasis is mine.

50 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp. 261–2, 271–2, 339–40.51 The Coventry Leet Book, ed. M. D. Harris, EETS OS 134–5, 138, 146 (1907–13), p. 544. P. J. P.

Goldberg, ‘Coventry’s “Lollard” Programme of 1492 and the Making of Utopia’, in Prag-matic Utopians: Ideals and Communities, 1200–1630, ed. R. Horrox and S. Rees Jones(Cambridge, 2001), pp. 97–116.

52 For a general introduction to Tudor concerns with the problem of vagrancy see P. Slack,Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), chs 5 and 6.

land through purchase or even marriage; marriage, householding, and settle-ment went hand in hand and constituted a form of social adulthood. Eventhose who had access to comparatively modest holdings and who wereobliged to supplement their livelihoods by their own and indeed their wives’labour would often have remained essentially settled, only travelling to theirplace of work on a daily basis. There is indeed some evidence to suggest thatlabourers frequently worked alongside their wives: husbands and wives regu-larly worked as teams reaping and binding during harvest and thatchers werecommonly assisted by their wives, hence the authority of the householderneed not have been undermined by his wife’s working.53

Women upon marriage would likewise have become settled. They becamepartners in the enterprise of the household economy, and frequently theybecame mothers with responsibility for the socialization of the next genera-tion. They would also have become dependents of their husbands and wouldonly have enjoyed a degree of legal autonomy as householders upon theirhusbands’ decease. Some men and some women, however, failed to gainaccess to land or to workshops, never married, and remained rootless andhence potentially mobile. Of these, it was the masterless man who was gener-ally more conspicuous and more feared. This last is especially true, forexample, in the decades following the Black Death as seen variously in thecontemporary labour legislation, the Commons’ petition against vagrants, orthe injunction against the London yeomen tailors.54 Women would, however,have been particularly conspicuous amongst these in the context of economicdepression and scarcity of employment as during the later thirteenth andearlier fourteenth centuries and again from the later fifteenth century as isapparent, for example, from the 1492 Coventry ordinances. The women somarginalized at these periods were regularly forced the wrong side of the lawin order to survive. Numbers indeed turned to prostitution. Our analysis thuscomes full circle, for just as migrant women, generically branded ‘Scot’, wereprominent among York’s prostitutes, so were women generically named as‘Frowe’ among the sex workers of the Southwark stews. The prostitute wasthe outsider, the migrant, ungoverned woman par excellence. And she was theantitype of the respectable woman who, like the Goodwife’s daughter, waswell advised to ‘wone at home’.55

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53 For an example of a thatcher apparently assisted by his wife, see BI, CP. E. 70.54 For a discussion of the later labour legislation see C. Given-Wilson, ‘Service, Serfdom and

English Labour Legislation, 1350–1500’, in Concepts and Patterns of Service in the LaterMiddle Ages, ed. A. Curry and E. Matthews (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 21–37.

55 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, p. 152; M. Carlin, Medieval Southwark (London,1996), pp. 211–12; The Good Wife, ed. Mustanoja, p. 199 (line 73).

Good Advice on Leaving Home in the Romances


Helen Cooper

The topic of ‘youth’ suggests a natural connection with good advice: the oldergeneration seem to find it irresistible to advise the young. In romances, thegiving of advice often takes a very specific form. The young person – mostoften male, and usually the hero too – has just reached the point where he isabout to leave his own family, the familiar society in which he has beenbrought up. At the very moment at which he reaches the threshold, he isstopped and given what sometimes amounts to several pages of good adviceon how to conduct himself in the outside world. The precision of the conven-tion can be seen with particular clarity in a late but thoroughly familiarexample: Polonius’s advice to the departing Laertes in Hamlet. The way inwhich the giving of advice disrupts the schedule for departure is here madeexplicit to the point of parody:

Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard, for shame,The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,And you are stayed for. I.iii.55–7

But despite this hurry, Polonius still insists on giving his son ‘these fewprecepts in thy memory’, which indeed make up one of the longer speeches ofthe play. As advice goes, Polonius’s is not at all bad: it amounts to a fairlycomprehensive economic, social and moral survival kit for a young gentle-man: don’t borrow or lend money; instructions on dress codes; ‘to thine ownself be true’. As such, it constitutes a nice mix of the pragmatic and the ideal.Just the same kind of pattern is found extensively in romances, and especiallyin late romances.

The Hamlet example is also a reminder, however, that the giving of advice isnot as straightforward a topos as it might appear at first sight. It is very rare, infact, for there not to be something odd about it. In this instance, the wholeepisode invites the basic question of why the passage exists at all. Why, so faras Polonius is concerned, should he hold up the ship? Why, even more press-ingly, should Shakespeare hold up the action, for a passage that appearscompletely irrelevant to the play? If it is done for the sake of characterization,it is extraordinarily clumsy: Shakespeare has ways of drawing character thatdo not require the action to be halted for so many lines. In romances too, thedeployment of the topos often raises more questions than it solves, and

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appears at odds with what the author seems to be doing in the rest of thework.

Advice to the young is not, indeed, an easy topos to fit into a romance. Amotif far more commonly connected with the infant hero is that he should be afoundling: cast away or lost at birth, to be fostered by a bear or a herdsman ora Lady of the Lake. It is almost one of the anthropological definitions of thehero that he should be reared outside his own family, in peculiarly special orunpromising circumstances.1 There are so many such heroes that exemplifica-tion becomes redundant: one might mention Arthur and Horn from the earlyMiddle Ages, William of Palerne from the middle, Valentine and Orson fromthe end, and beyond those characters as varied as Spenser’s Redcross Knight,Shakespeare’s Pastorella and Dickens’ Oliver Twist. This has the result thatthe two motifs that can be associated with infant romance heroes, of beinggiven advice or being reared as foundlings, are largely exclusive or comple-mentary – that is, the heroes in question constitute two different groups: theyare either abandoned, or advised, but very rarely both. One simple narrativereason for this is that good advice is almost always given by parents, as it is inthe case of Laertes. Even if it is given by a guardian, that still presupposessome kind of care: a domestic environment, some moral or educational back-ground, such as the foundling hero will not necessarily enjoy. Just occasionallythe good advice will be given by hermits, and these do sometimes advisefoundlings or those away from parental or familial care. But essentially,foundlings are out in the world on their own from the start, whereas youthswho receive advice are about to set out from their homes into the world: thegiving of advice marks a moment of transition, almost part of a rite of passagefor the youngster passing from boyhood to manhood.2 His parents will typi-cally equip him for the journey that lies ahead of him with money, horses andinstructions, three essential requirements for making good in the larger world.

In both groups, however, the abandoned and the advised, heroism isalmost always innate: it shows from birth. Romance heroes may not go in forsuch extreme exploits as Hercules’ serpent-killing in his cradle, but they aremarked out as special even before they have done anything significant toprove it. It is the beauty of the infant Horn that stops the Saracen invadersfrom killing him.3 Tor, supposedly the son of a cowherd, refuses to do

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1 See W. Butler, The Myth of the Hero (London, 1979), pp. 28–30.2 There was no fixed age for such a transition: see K. Thomas, ‘Age and Authority in Early

Modern England’, Proceedings of the British Academy 62 (1976), 205–48, for an indication ofthe range of possible ages. Michael Mitterauer fixes the moment of transition at whateverpoint the young man leaves home (A History of Youth, trans. G. Dunphy (Oxford, 1992),p. 59). Cf. R. Wall, ‘Leaving Home and the Process of Household Formation in Pre-Industrial England’, Continuity and Change 2 (1987), 77–101.

3 King Horn lines 81–8, in Of Love and Chivalry: An Anthology of Middle English Romance, ed.J. Fellows (London, 1993). The Anglo-Norman version makes Horn’s beauty the keymotif of its opening two laisses: The Romance of Horn by Thomas, ed. M. K. Pope,

anything but play with javelins and watch knights in combat.4 Perceval,raised by his aristocratic mother but in complete social isolation from thecourt and from any model of chivalry, intuitively senses his own destiny assoon as he first lays eyes on a knight.5 Malory’s Gareth, who does at leastknow who he is even though nobody else does, is already supreme by the timehe embarks on his first adventure: after an initial encounter with Sir Kay, thefirst significant fight of his career is against Sir Lancelot, in a combat which toGareth is a little healthy exercise against a useful sparring partner – ‘hit dothme good to fele youre myght’ – but makes Lancelot ‘dred hymself to beshamed’.6 In that respect the life of the hero is analogous to the life of a saint:for both, the outlines of their biographies are fixed, and all an author need dois to fill in individualizing details for his particular protagonist. For saints like-wise typically show their sanctity from birth, for instance by refusing to suckleon Fridays; the boy at the centre of the Prioress’s Tale has the fullest devotionto the Virgin by the time he is seven years old. Virgin martyrs are typicallyaround fourteen years of age, and their stories often communicate a sense ofgrowing up similar to the romances, even though where the young hero issetting out from his home into the world, the saint is departing from thisworld to the next. There is no pretence in the case of the saints, however, thatthey need advice. The saint, indeed, is often defined by his or her refusal tolisten to just the kind of prudential, pragmatic common sense that a parentwould give. Yet romance heroes are just as clearly destined for heroism frombirth, and therefore giving them advice is equally redundant so far as the plotis concerned. A hero who needed the advice of his parents would be thatmuch less of a hero.

One obvious way around this problem of narrative redundancy would beto argue that the advice is not really aimed at the hero at all: romances serveprimarily as an education for their readers, and so the instruction has a clearfunction so far as the audience of the work is concerned, even if not for thecharacters within it. The teleology of the narrative has less to do with theending of the story than with its wider use as a courtesy book or a mirror forprinces. Such a belief receives generous support from the prefaces and dedica-tory material of the romances themselves, especially from the end of theMiddle Ages. The idea that the genre offers a palatable form of instruction inmanners, morals and conduct to young people is implicit in the presentationof advice within the texts, and explicit in the insistence that the whole work

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Anglo-Norman Text Society 9–10, 12–13 (Oxford, 1955, 1964), lines 8–39; translated byJ. Weiss in The Birth of Romance: An Anthology (London, 1992).

4 The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. E. Vinaver, 3 vols. (3rd edn revised by P. J. C. Field,Oxford, 1990), p. 100 (III.3 in Caxton’s numbering).

5 Les romans de Chretien de Troyes V: Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), ed. F. Lecoy, Classiquesfrançais du moyen age (Paris, 1975) lines 125–493; trans. W. W. Kibler, Chretien de Troyes:Arthurian Romances (Harmondsworth, 1991), pp. 382–7.

6 Malory, ed. Vinaver, p. 299 (VII.4 in Caxton’s numbering).

may be similarly educational.7 Caxton frequently encourages the new class ofbuyers of the printed book with such advertisements: in the prologue toBlanchardin and Eglantine, for instance, he declares that

The storye of hit [is] honeste and joyfull to all vertuouse yong noblegentylmen and wymmen for to rede therin, as for their passe-tyme. For,under correction, in my jugement it is as requesyte otherwhyle to rede inauncyent hystoryes of noble fayttes and valyaunt actes of armes and warre,whiche have ben achyeved in olde tyme of many noble prynces, lordes andknyghtes . . . and in lyke wyse for gentyl yonge ladyes and damoysellys forto lerne to be stedfaste and constaunt in their parte to theym that they oneshave promysed and agreed to . . . as it is to occupye theym and studyeovermoche in bokes of contemplacion.8

It is widely assumed that despite – or because of – Caxton’s stress on ‘noblegentlemen and women’ in his prefaces to the romances he publishes, it wasactually the emerging middle strata (formerly known as the rising middleclasses) who had the strongest interest in using them as courtesy books, totrain themselves in the culture and manners of the aristocracy: the reading ofromances thus becomes an expression of social aspiration. A Caxton romancewould thus form a kind of secular companion volume to his pious Book of GoodManners, a compendium of advice to the clergy, ‘the state of lordes temporelland of all chyualrye’, the commons, young people, women and children, inwhich ‘there is nothyng sayd therin but for the moost parte it is aledged byscrypture of the Byble or ellis by sayeng of holy sayntes, doctours,philosophres, and poetes’ to make ‘the comyn people’ less like ‘beestis brute’,and to bring everyone to ‘good and vertuous maners’.9 The French original ofthis work was brought to Caxton by a mercer of London named William Pratt,and there was certainly an eager audience for moral and practical advice ofthis kind: works such as How the good Wife taught her Daughter, How the goodMan taught his Son, the less declaratorily named Ratis raving, and a largenumber of similar works from the sixteenth century, all testify to the appetitefor such instructional works.10 Romances are commonly thought to offer amore courtly version of such good advice: instruction in good manners in thesense of sophisticated social behaviour and conversation, even instruction ingood rule, and not just in piety, household management, financial prudenceand so on. The overt giving of good advice would seem to offer a generousopportunity to fulfil such an aim. This present study might therefore be

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7 On romances as literature for children, see for instance B. A. Brockman, ‘MedievalChildren and the Poetics of Romance’, in The Portrayal of Life Stages in English Literature1500–1800, ed. J. Watson (Lewiston and Lampeter, 1989), pp. 93–107, and N. Orme,‘Children and Literature in Medieval England’, Medium Aevum 68 (1999), 218–46.

8 Caxton’s Own Prose, ed. N. F. Blake (London, 1973), pp. 57–8.9 Ibid., p. 60; chapter headings from de Worde’s 1507 edition.10 Cf. F. Riddy, ‘Mother Knows Best: Reading Social Change in a Courtesy Text’, Speculum 71

(1996), 68–86.

expected to demonstrate just such a courtesy-book function, and the kind ofsociological negotiation that such reading practices suggest. In fact, however,the texts resist such an interpretation: they are both less stereotyped and moreinteresting than would be compatible with class interests or pedagogy alone.

There is a handful of romances that do follow a model of that kind, butthere are very few that do so unproblematically. If that were the principalfunction of the advice they contain, indeed, one would expect the advice to beinterchangeable between texts, and therefore also to be largely superfluous tothe individual plot. In practice, advice that is not in some way closely integralto the particular story that contains it is rare: it is much more likely to be acoherent and integrated element of each individual romance. Furthermore,the advice may well seem very odd indeed if it is thought of as being directedat the reader or listener rather than at a character within the narrative.

This division between character and listener, the diegetic and extradiegeticrecipients of advice, shows very clearly if one goes back to one of the earliestand most famous examples of a hero who is given advice on leaving home:Perceval, in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. He has been brought up knowing noone but his mother and the farmhands, and kept in deliberate ignorance ofchivalry. As soon as he has laid eyes on a knight, however, he insists on goingto be knighted himself, and when his mother can restrain him no longer shelets him go on his way with a final speech of advice on how he is to conducthimself in the chivalric world:

Biaus filz, un san vos vuel aprandreou il vos fet mout bon antandre. 525–6

Fair son, I want to give you some advice that you would do verywell to heed. (trans. Kibler, p. 387)

In particular, he is to help maidens in distress; he is to avoid displeasing thelady he asks for love, from whom he may accept a ring; he is to ask the name ofcompanions he finds himself with; and he should pray to Our Lord in chapeland church. This is all perfectly reasonable advice, and might appear to be asunproblematic, and as obvious, as Polonius’s. But it is precisely there that theproblems arise; for while any audience may safely be presumed to know suchprinciples without being told them all over again, Perceval knows altogethertoo little about the world for the instructions to be of any use to him. His firstquestion shows with particular clarity this disparity between himself and thehistorical audience of this passage of advice: he wants to know what a churchis,

– Mere, fet il, que est iglise? 571

And given this background of utter ignorance, the results of the instruction hehas been given are appalling: it is indeed advice he would have been muchbetter without. He believes a rich tent to be a chapel, and insists on kissing thelady he finds sleeping there and taking her ring; this results in the extended

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maltreatment of the lady by her suspicious lover until a wiser and more expe-rienced Perceval restores her to his favour. His mother’s instructions on theexercise of piety remain useless until they are activated later by further advicefrom a hermit. Anything conceptual is beyond him: in the free English adapta-tion of the story, Sir Percyvell of Gales, his mother’s advice includes a recom-mendation to be ‘of mesure’; when he comes to a hall containing a boardspread with food, he accordingly divides the meat and bread carefully in half– ‘How myghte he more of mesure be?’11 Such incidents could perhaps beseen as confirming the courtly knowledge possessed by the audience, but theycannot be taken as constituting any kind of advice to the reader: they areindeed based on the premise that the audience knows better, that Perceval’sgaucheness will be a source of amusement, not a source of edification.

Perceval goes through a series of such instructional episodes in the courseof his career. His mother is the first of his instructors; the second one of majorsignificance is the knight Gornemant; and the third is a hermit. As instructorfigures within romances, these are typical – a parent, a chivalric mentor, a manof religion. Usually, however, they would be found in separate romances: it israre to have three in a single work. In Perceval’s case, however, he needs themall. His mother’s advice leads to trouble; it has been argued that this isprecisely because she is his mother, that he needs rather to break away fromthe maternal to the chivalric sphere.12 It could certainly be argued thatPerceval would have been better off as the foundling variety of hero, but itdoes not follow from this that his mother’s advice is bad, either in itself orbecause she is the one to give it. What she says is in many respects identicalwith the principles of chivalry as embodied, for instance, in the oath sworn byMalory’s knights of the Round Table. If she has failed, it is at an earlier stagealtogether, in keeping Perceval in such ignorance that he cannot make use ofthe advice when she gives it; but that is a given of the story, and is not raised asan issue in itself. She is the transmitter of chivalric values, as a number of otherwomen are in later romances, however inadequate the pupil may on this occa-sion be.13 It does look at first as if Gornemant will do better as an instructor,not least because he tells Perceval not to keep citing his mother as authorityfor all his actions. Instead, he gives him a training in the knightly skills ofmanaging a spear and a sword, and tries to make up for the many short-comings that his pupil still displays. Foremost among the instructions here isnot to talk too much; and that, of course, is even more disastrous advice thanany his mother gave him, since it leads directly to his failure at the Grail castle.

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11 Lines 398, 462, in Ywain and Gawain, Sir Percyvell of Galles, The Anturs of Arthur, ed.M. Mills (London, 1992).

12 See D. D. Berkvam, Enfance et maternité dans la littérature française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles(Paris, 1981), p. 74.

13 To this extent the mother can assume a symbolic role of the kind more often associatedwith the father: see S. Kay, ‘Motherhood. The Case of the Epic Family Romance’, in Shiftsand Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr Elspeth Kennedy, ed. K. Pratt(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 23–36.

Le Conte du Graal is a distinctive example of the instruction of the hero, notjust because it comes so early in the tradition, but because it was so widelyknown and therefore influential on later romance authors. The model it offersis not one of giving advice to the audience obliquely through the hero as inter-mediary, but rather of a way of setting up a story: the advice has far moreeffect in generating the plot than in improving anyone inside or outside thenarrative. Later heroes who, like Perceval, lack all knowledge of society arealso likely to get advice that cannot possibly tell the audience anything. This isstrikingly exemplified by the Chevelere Assigne, which is essentially more of afoundling story. A queen bears septuplets, who are abducted, abandoned inthe forest and raised by a hermit; through the nefarious plotting of a wickedmother-in-law, six of them are turned into swans. Twelve years later, theirmother is accused of bestiality and threatened with burning. An angel appearsto the hermit to inform him of this, and he, on the angel’s instructions, tells theone remaining uncygnified son that he must fight to defend his mother’sinnocence. The child’s ignorance of the larger world is greater even thanPerceval’s: his first response on being told what he has to do is to ask ‘whatwas a moder’.14 His instruction clearly has to start from even more basic firstprinciples than Perceval’s.

‘�e, kanste þou, fader, enforme me . how þat I shalle fy�te?’‘Vpon a hors,’ seyde þe heremyte, . ‘as I haue herde seye.’‘What beste is þat?’ quod þe chylde . ‘lyonys wylde?Or elles wode? or watur?’ . quod þe chylde þanne.‘I sey�e neuur none,’ quod þe hermyte . ‘but by þe mater of bokes:They seyn he hath a feyre hedde . & foure lymes hye.’ 212–17

As guidance goes, this is a serious case of the blind leading the blind. It nonethe less amounts to an essential informational survival kit for the child; andhis questions – what is a mother? what is a horse? – are important for locatinghim, first in his family, then in his chivalric status: circumstances that are thedefining ones for romance. Equipped with this minimal information, the boygoes to town and intervenes to save his mother from the fire, offering to fightin her defence. He asks the king to provide him with a horse and armour, and,when he sees what they look like, he further requests a word with one of theking’s best and most trusted men: a chivalric mentor, in fact, on the model ofGornemant. The knight takes the boy aside, and the child asks him what allthe equipment is for. There follows basic instruction in the techniques of chiv-alric combat: he is to attack first with the spear, then change to the sword andkeep on hitting his opponent with the edge until he has overcome him, where-upon he should cut off head. In his case, unlike Perceval’s, the advice from hisguardian and his mentor is enough: he does indeed win the combat and savehis mother, with the corollary that the identity of the children is discovered

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14 The Romance of the Cheuelere Assigne, ed. H. H. Gibbs, EETS ES 6 (1868), 210.

and five of the other six are converted back into human form (in English, thesixth has to wait for his own transformation for over a century, until the exten-sion of the story in a prose version).15 Like all good heroes, Enyas, as he ischristened in the course of the story (Elyas or Helyas in other versions),possesses innate knightly virtue, but it has to be triggered by enabling instruc-tion and good advice: it may be proof of his royal birth that he succeeds, but hestill cannot act from nothing.

In both the Conte du Graal and the Chevelere Assigne, the basic motif of thestory is that of the innocent abroad, and the advice is accordingly veryelementary indeed: so much so as to render deeply improbable the suggestionby one critic that the ‘elementary instruction given Enyas in arms permits thespeculation that the poem may have been prepared as instruction for boys ofabout Enyas’ age’.16 The nature of the advice given varies, not with the natureof the audience, but with the requirements of the particular story. TheChevelere Assigne is the simplest, the instruction being the minimum necessaryfor the release of Enyas’s good qualities. The case of Perceval is more complex.The instruction is important for the plot – it is his misunderstandings thatgenerate the key events of the narrative – but it is not a plot device alone: amajor point of the work is the inadequacy of advice as such. What Perceval istold is perfectly reasonable; but he has to learn, not just to understand or obeywhat he is told, but how to go beyond advice altogether. The crucial lesson hehas to learn is to follow his instincts, not his instructions: to ask the question inthe Grail castle when his heart tells him to, whatever his mentor’s warningsagainst talking too much. The Conte du Graal is a romance about how instruc-tion is not enough. One might contrast a knight who gets it right: in Sir Gawainand the Green Knight, the young Gawain, about to set out on what seems to beone of the earliest adventures of the Arthurian court, receives a chorus ofadvice from his more sensible fellows that he should not go; setting out againfrom Bertilak’s castle, he is advised to go off in a different direction while hestill can. He insists instead on following the chivalric imperative – ‘What maymon do bot fonde?’17 – and in due course, for all his failure, is adjudged as apearl beside white peas compared with other knights.

In these and other romances where instructional episodes appear, themanner in which the advice is given or acted on serves to some degree todefine what the particular romance is doing. The presentation of ideal knight-hood may be a part of this. The young hero of the Prose Lancelot, for instance,preparing to leave the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake for Arthur’s court, is

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15 A French prose version was printed in 1504; an English translation appeared in 1512 asHelyas, the Knight of the Swanne (the 1550 edition is reprinted in Early English ProseRomances, ed. W. J. Thoms (revd and enlarged edn, London, 1907), pp. 691–784).

16 R. M. Lumiansky, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1350, ed. J. B. Severs,I: Romances (New Haven, 1967), p. 103.

17 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd edn revdN. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 565.

instructed by her on the symbolic nature of the knight’s arms as protection ofthe Holy Church. The passage is clearly intended to confirm Lancelot’s innateexcellence, to mark him out as an exponent of veraie chevalerie; and perhapseven to recuperate the idea of the woman as transmitter of chivalric values inthe wake of the Conte du Graal.18 There seems to be no element of incipientirony over his future religious failure.

If excellence is not innate, then advice will not help: where there is no chiv-alric intuition to be brought into consciousness, then nothing a parent says canmake any difference. This is the principle that drives the strange Middle HighGerman tale of Helmbrecht, written in the late thirteenth century by Wernherder Gartenære.19 This concerns a young man of high ambition, whose socialaspiration is given the emblematic form of a beautiful cloak embroidered allover with the stories of romance heroes. He is, however, merely a farmer’sson; and when he determines to leave home to make his way at court, he doesso against all his father’s anxious advice to stay in his own station as aploughman. He is not, however, a Perceval or a Tor, and the consequences forHelmbrecht are disastrous: he joins a band of brigands, is captured andblinded, rejected by his father, and finally hanged. The final lines of the talestress the importance for youth to listen to good advice, not least that ofparents. The lines are addressed out to the wider world: Helmbrecht is not aromance, whatever delusions to that effect its hero may have, but a cautionarytale, perhaps for those who have been reading Wolfram von Eschenbach’sParzival (which replicates the advice passage from Chrétien)20 and imaginethat they can pursue a similar career from the fields to romance glory.

Other works set up to look like romances also have as their primary aim theinstruction of the reader rather than the hero, but without containing such animplied attack on the fantasy element of the genre on which they draw. Thethirteenth-century polymath and missionary Ramon Llull wrote two suchworks in Catalan, both of which were translated for wider consumption. Thebest known was the Book of the Order of Chivalry, in which an aged knightretires from the world to become a hermit; a squire on his way to seek knight-hood passes by the hermitage, and the knight-hermit gives him a bookcontaining instructions on chivalry – in other words, this same book that thereader is holding or hearing: the advice becomes explicitly extradiegetic,aimed outside the narrative rather than to a character within it. The manytranslations of the work included one into Scots by Sir Gilbert Hay, and one by

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18 Lancelot do Lac: The Non-cyclic Old French Prose Romance, ed. E. Kennedy, 2 vols. (Oxford,1980), I.141–7 (quotation from p. 145), II.131.

19 Wernher der Gartenære: Helmbrecht, ed. F. Panzer, Altdeutsche Textbiblothek (Tübingen,1974). There is a translation by B. Murdoch in The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature: TheGrin of the Gargoyle (Sawtry, 1995), pp. 86–138.

20 Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival, ed. K. Lachmann, 7th edn revd E. Hartl (Berlin, 1952),III.127 (trans. H. M. Mustard and C. E. Passage (New York, 1961)).

Caxton into English; but Caxton, whether ingenuously or not, emphasises itssocial exclusiveness:

Whiche book is not requysyte to every comyn man to have, but to noblegentylmen that by their vertu entende to come and entre into the noble ordreof chyvalry.21

Caxton, indeed, regards the reading of romance as an essential element inchivalric self-modelling –

Rede the noble volumes of Saynt Graal, of Lancelot, of Galaad, of Trystram,of Perse Forest, of Percyval, of Gawayn and many mo

– but it is a chivalric modelling aimed specifically at the young, just as withinthe work it is a squire who is given the book. Caxton ends his epilogue with anappeal to the king (Richard III) to

commaunde this book to be had and redde unto other yong lordes, knyghtesand gentylmen within this royaume that the noble ordre of chyvalrye beherafter better used and honoured than hit hath ben in late dayes passed.

(p. 127)

The second example of Llull’s quasi-romances comes closer to romanceproper in that, rather than just inventing a single episode to provide a narra-tive context for the giving of advice to the squire, it gives a full biography ofjust such a young gentleman, who is named Blanquerna.22 The work starts inthe manner of many romances with the enfance of the protagonist, which hereincludes guidelines for the proper upbringing of such a child, the appropriatediet, education and so on. But at the moment when the romance model wouldinvite the hero to leave home to prove himself in the chivalric world outside,Blanquerna instead rejects that world and his inheritance for a life of religion.Llull here turns the traditional pattern upside down: the advice Blanquerna’sparents give him at this point, which consists of a strenuous attempt todissuade him from such a decision, is simply wrong. Instead, he teaches hisparents about the true nature of his religious vocation; and he also inspires theyoung woman who had been intended as his bride, named Natana, to followhis example. The actual moment of his parting from his parents is given overto prayers rather than to secular instruction. Natana herself becomes a nunand in due course an abbess; Blanquerna becomes first a monk, then succes-sively an abbot, the pope, and a hermit. Each stage of advancement is

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21 From the epilogue; ed. Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, p. 126. There is an edition of the wholework by A. T. P. Byles, The Book of the Ordre of Chivalry, translated by William Caxton, EETSOS 168 (1926).

22 R. Lull, Blanquerna, trans. E. A. Peers (London, 1926). A Castilian version of the originalwas printed in 1521 (ed. M. Menéndez Pelayo, Biblioteca de filósofos españoles (Madrid,1929)).

accompanied by – or rather, is the excuse for – extensive teaching on Llull’spart: the work doubles as a handbook on all kinds of useful topics, includingChristian doctrine, ecclesiastical administration, and the first recordedaccount of an electoral system by transferable vote that is proof againstvote-rigging.23

There is no doubt that one of Llull’s aims was to incite young people tofollow the model of Blanquerna and his lady; but he manages to combine thiswith a sufficient element of subversion to stop the work dying in its tracks. Itis not at all clear, for instance, that the book would be reading recommendedby parents. Both Blanquerna and Natana act against their parents’ wishes,indeed against their orders. Blanquerna himself takes on the role of adviser,both of his parents, and of Natana. His parents are initially devastated by hisrefusal of the social role they had planned for him; Natana’s relatives go evenfurther, attempting to smash up the nunnery to which she has retreated. As amodel of how parents should counsel their children, or how children shouldobey their parents, the work is strongly counter-exemplary. The romance-styleopening of the work is indeed misleading, for Llull is hardly supportingmiddle-class or feudal or chivalric values; it may well be for that reason thatthe work was never as popular as The Book of the Order of Chivalry.24

The advice it contains is the very point of Blanquerna: it closes with thehermit-protagonist giving this same book to a penitent jester to take throughthe world to read aloud for the increase of devotion. Its fifth section consists oftwo self-contained works, an Art of Contemplation and the ‘Book of the Loverand the Beloved’, which frequently circulated independently.25 Such anenclosure of one work of advice within another was a practice adopted byother writers on occasion. The slightly earlier French writer Robert de Bloisuses his Arthurian romance Beaudous as an excuse to reissue most of his exten-sive output of didactic works through the mouth of the hero’s mother, as she,like Perceval’s mother, sends her son out from his secluded early life to thechivalric world.26 The advice takes up considerably more space than all therest of the romance put together, and includes advice to princes and two

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23 See I. S. McLean and J. London, ‘Ramon Lull and the Theory of Voting’, Studia Lulliana32.1 (1992), 21–37.

24 There is no Middle English version, but it was translated into French within twenty yearsof its original composition (1283–6, translated before 1306: see B. Woledge, Bibliographiedes romans et nouvelles en prose français antérieures à 1500 and its Supplement (Geneva, 1954,1975), no. 27, Blaquerna.

25 See the bibliography of manuscripts in Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1232–1316), ed. andtrans. A. Bonner (Princeton, 1985), II.1253–5.

26 Robert von Blois: Sämmtliche Werke, ed. J. Ulrich, 3 vols. (1889–95, repr. Geneva, 1978), 1.iv(extracted from after line 502 of the main text). The frame narrative of Beaudous is given invol. 1, with an account of the inserted material on pp. ix–xv; full texts are given in vols. 2and 3. I am most grateful to Jane Gilbert for calling my attention to the work and forallowing me to see a copy of her paper written for the Leeds Medieval Conference, July1995.

complete treatises on conduct addressed to women: Beaudous, in fact, cannever really be regarded as a plausible recipient for it even within the narra-tive. The object here is unquestionably to instruct the reader or listener, as theauthor admits at the start through the mother’s mouth:

Je nel dis pas sanz plus por toi,Mais por touz autres; car je doiVoloir a chascun ke cis sensPuist profitier a toutes gens.

I do not say all this for yourself alone, but for all others, as I wouldwish that this instruction might be of value to everybody.

Beaudous’ own primary function is as the ideal reader-surrogate, who listensto the advice and acts on it; he is accordingly perfect, and, it is universallyagreed, utterly devoid of interest. The work does show, however, how deeplyincompatible the functions of instruction to the hero and instruction to thereader actually are. Advice successfully given and taken kills the story.

The advice to women in Beaudous is addressed through a male listenerwithin the narrative. Although women appear so frequently as advisers, it isunusual for a young woman to be the recipient of such advice within aromance, though there are some notable examples: Natana herself, or, inrather different fashion, the Lavine of the Roman d’Eneas. Lavine’s motherexpounds to her the nature and symptoms of love; and although Lavineinsists that she will never allow herself to undergo such misery, she none theless finds the symptoms exactly replicated in herself after she lays eyes onEneas.27 If Lavine was wrong to think she could be proof against love,however, that translation of theory into experience also shows the adviser tobe wrong, for her mother is very insistent that the man for whom Lavineshould feel such pangs is Turnus, not Eneas. Lavine can only fulfil her ownand Eneas’s destiny, and the vector of the romance itself, by disobeying theparent who instructs her. Lavine and Natana must both recognize a personalimperative and an overriding authority – of the gods or of God – that requiresas its corollary a rebellion against those parents who cannot comprehend thenew role to which their daughter is called.

There are occasional examples of advice to women offered under circum-stances parallel to those of the male heroes, and which is both good in itselfand acceptable both to its recipient within the romance and to its womenreaders. There is a distinctive English example in William of Palerne, afourteenth-century alliterative romance modelled on a French original. This isessentially a foundling story, and therefore one where the structure militatesagainst the giving of advice: William must make his own way in the world

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27 Eneas, roman du XIIe siècle, ed. J. J. Salverda de Grave, Classiques français du moyen age44, 62 (Paris, 1925, 1929), 7857–8334; trans. J. A. Yunck, Eneas: A Twelfth-Century FrenchRomance (New York and London, 1974), pp. 209–20.

without the support and advice of parents. He is raised by a cowherd, thenfostered by the emperor, and falls in love with his daughter Melior; he andMelior then elope disguised as white bears, which they find less than fullysuccessful as camouflage. William eventually finds his true family (a royalone, of course) and is reconciled to the emperor, who is invited to theirwedding. It is as the emperor is leaving after the wedding and saying farewellto his daughter that he offers her advice. In this case it is he who is literallysetting out and leaving her; but the moment none the less corresponds to thetime when young women with less exciting life histories leave their ownhomes for a new life in their husbands’ households, and it is that rite ofpassage that he addresses. She has left home once illicitly; now, she is goingwith her father’s blessing, and the advice is given as a sign that father anddaughter are reconciled, that this new departure from him is authorized, andthat she is now entering on her proper adult social role. The advice given hereis accordingly valid beyond the text itself:

Now, dere dou�ter, I þe preie, do bi mi rede.Lok þou bere þe buxumli, and be god and hende,konnyng and kurtes, to komwne and to grete.Be meke and mercyabul to men þat þe serve,and be lel to þi lord, and þis ladi afterþat is his menskful moder, and moche þow hire love,and alle þe lordes of þis londe love wel after.And loke, dou�ter, bi þi lif, as þow me lovest dere,þat never þe pore porayle be piled for þi sake,ne taxed to taliage; but tentyfli þow helpþat al þis lond be lad in lawe as it ou�t . . .Stifli loke þow strive for state of holi cherche,to meyntene it manli on alle maner wise.Gif gretli of þi god for Goddes love of heven . . .28

As good advice, this is appropriate both to the recipient within the narrativeand to any comparable reader; but it is an interesting question as to how manyof its readers would be sufficiently comparable. This is a female counterpart toregiminal advice, a mirror for princesses. One does not have to be royal tomitigate heavy taxes (there were plenty of local impositions over which a ladymight be able to intervene), but much of the instruction is aimed over theheads of the likely immediate audience to those who wield political power: itis not the kind of thing that any father could say to any daughter. The trans-lation of the romance from the original French was commissioned byHumphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, so political advice is not completely

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28 William of Palerne, ed. G. H. V. Bunt (Groningen, 1985), 5115–25, 5128–9; for the original(c. 1200?), which is less developed at this point than the English, see Guillaume de Palerne,ed. H. Michelaut, SATF (Paris, 1876), 9019–36. On the different presentations of male andfemale education in medieval French literature, see Berkvam, Enfance, pp. 77–80.

out of place; but even here, its narrative function is more important than itspedagogical use. It matters within the romance, not in the Conte du Graal senseof initiating many of the plot complications, but as something that drawsthose complications back into simplicity for the close. The father’s goodadvice here functions as a kind of anti-foundling topos: Melior may haveeloped with her unknown lover, but at this stage of the story parental bondsare rediscovered and reasserted. Good advice is a part of good parenting, andis one of the most valuable gifts a child can be given. William of Palerne is aremarkably warm romance: everybody is good, even the werewolf, or atworst converted back from misguided ways. The emperor’s education of hisdaughter is a part of that, as he commits her into her husband’s keeping withthe instruction that will make her a good wife and a good queen. This isclearly a patriarchal act as well as a paternal one; but it also has to do with agenealogical and political context, the passing down of rule that is both legiti-mate and responsible from one generation to the next.

The opposition of the motifs of foundlings and advised heroes becomesvery clear in William of Palerne. William, as a foundling, has to find his ownspark of nobility within himself that will bring him pre-eminence in the chiv-alric sphere. Melior, the daughter who is known, is given advice when her riftwith her family is healed. The same division of motifs into the foundling andthe dynastic is found in the prose Helyas, the Knight of the Swan, which extendsthe story of the Chevelere Assigne into the following generations. The young-sters instructed here are the grandsons of the Knight of the Swan, key amongthem being Godfrey of Bouillon, who as a historical figure was to be a leaderof the First Crusade and first king of Jerusalem; and they are given the samekind of good advice by their mother as is given to Melior by her father. Theinstruction here extends into a whole programme of education, though thenarrative structure concludes that programme with the fifteen-year-oldGodfrey’s leaving home. With this new generation of protagonists, theoriginary legend for the house of Bouillon crosses the border into somethingresembling history; and a comparable shift takes place in the nature of theadvice given, from the elementary instruction given by the hermit and theknight to instruction such as can be profitably related to the reader’s ownsocial environment. For much of this, too, is good advice that extends itsvalidity beyond the text, instruction that reinforces social and ideologicalnorms: love and honour God and the Church; do not oppress your subjects;support widows and orphans. It is backed up, however, with injunctions tovirtue that come from the other side of the romance: the children are toremember their miraculous ancestry and the intervention of an angel intotheir grandfather’s life. The mother’s advice functions as a nexus in whichpiety, legend, virtue and history combine to offer a multiple legitimation of adynasty.

Advice has a somewhat similar role to play in Melusine, the dynasticromance of the founding of the house of Lusignan, though with the piouselements downplayed. The good ruler is still to honour God and defend the

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Church, but in this story the element of miracle is replaced by an element offairy, since Melusine has a fairy mother and is herself under the curse ofturning into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. The legend wasput into the form of a prose romance in French in the late fourteenth centuryby Jean d’Arras, and translated into English a century later.29 Melusine givesbirth to eight sons, and as they go off into the world she instructs them in howto act, in a thoroughly Polonius-like way.30 When Melusine’s eldest and thirdsons, Urian and Guyon, reach their teens and ask permission to leave home tofight the Turks, she provides an abundance of men, arms, ships and provi-sions for them. They load up and are all ready to leave; ‘And Raymondin andMelusyne conueyed theire children vnto the see.’ They do not weigh anchor,however, until four pages later, the interim being filled with Melusine’s goodadvice. She starts by giving them each a ring to protect them against enchant-ment (this being something that many good romance mothers do, for instanceFloris’s in Floris and Blanchefleur; it is not necessarily linked with her fairyconnections). She then gives them a series of precepts in their memory such aswill turn them into good knights and good rulers. They are to attend Mass,honour God and defend the Church; to aid widows, orphans, and ladies andmaidens generally; to be courteous to everyone, and generous where therecipient is worthy; and to fulfil promises without delay, ‘for long tarryingquencheth much the virtue of the gift’. They should not take counsel from flat-terers or biased sources, and should avoid borrowing (‘Neither a borrower nora lender be’, as Polonius put it) and repay any loan fast. All this is followed upwith political instruction in good government: they should keep an eye ontheir people, especially if they are inclined towards rebelliousness; avoidheavy taxation; take good advice; and administer justice rightfully. Finallycomes some military advice: be wary of enemies; be courageous, and split anybooty with their followers; and, interestingly, avoid treaties that have toomuch small print.

This is certainly a comprehensive programme for conducting one’s life, but

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29 Jean d’Arras: Melusine, ed. L. Stouff (1932; repr. Geneva, 1974); Melusine, ed. A. K. Donald,EETS ES 68 (1895). The passages of advice are on pp. 110–14 and 190–1 of Donald’sedition; quotations from pp. 110, 191. See also Stouff’s edition pp. 84–8, 152–4; the secondpassage is more than doubled in length in two manuscripts.

30 So like Polonius, indeed, that one wonders if there might be a direct connection. Earlysixteenth-century moralists complained about the excessive popularity of Melusine (seeJ. L. Vives, De institutione foeminae Christianae (Antwerp, 1524), sig. Ciii, and R. Hyrd’senhanced translation, A very frvteful and pleasant boke callyd the Instrvction of a Christenwoman, cap. 5; there were numerous editions in the sixteenth century). The Englishversion of Melusine was printed in 1510; the fact that this survives only in fragments of asingle copy invites the speculation that other unrecorded editions were read to destruc-tion. It would indeed be unusual among English prose romances if it had not beenreprinted. It is thus by no means impossible that Shakespeare could have read it in thecourse of a misspent youth – a youth which, I suspect, was rather more devoted to thereading of black-letter medieval romances, the Elizabethan equivalent of pulp fiction,than is generally allowed.

one wonders again how useful it would be to what proportion of its readers.Jean d’Arras indicates that his version was commissioned by Marie duchess ofBar, Jean duke of Berry and the earl of Shrewsbury, and if that is the immediatereadership he has in mind then the regiminal advice would indeed be appro-priate. Most of Melusine’s instruction, however, consists of general principlesevery bit as platitudinous as such advice usually is (Polonius’s included). Jeandoes not, however, ignore the narrative context of these passages. When itcomes to the turn of her younger sons to leave for the outer world, her advicehas less to do with rule. They are to love God, be courteous, not be credulous,and treat their followers well; and finally, they are, like Laertes, to be true tothemselves – ‘I ne wot nat what I shuld more saye to you, but that ye kepe euertrouthe in all your dedes and affayres.’ The quantity of advice is certainlygenerous, to the point where it distracts from the smooth running of the plot;and indeed it is cut out of the rhymed versions, both French and English, pre-sumably because it was not what readers were expected to be most interestedin.

As to the question of whether all this advice works, whether the sons actu-ally profit from it – one can at least say that Melusine does a great deal betterfor her children than Perceval’s mother. These four sons all do well, though itnever becomes an issue whether their success has anything to do with theadvice they are given or not; it does not become part of the plot, as it does inthe Conte du Graal. The sixth son, however, Geoffrey, is not given any suchteaching before he embarks on his own career, and that turns out to containsome appalling episodes. He is a man of great fierceness, which may be appro-priate for his enemies, but it also leads him to fire the monastery in which hisyounger brother, the seventh son, has become a monk. If there is any moral tothe effect that he should have been advised as his brothers were, it is neverstated.

The elaboration of the advice given in Melusine is typical of the develop-ment of romance in the fifteenth century, the period when Llull’s Book of theOrder of Chivalry enjoyed its greatest popularity. Even the most seeminglydetachable and sound advice, however, continues to be problematic; and twofinal examples will illustrate how such problems emerge.

These examples move away from the more exotic settings of romancetowards chivalric biography. Most romances have an element of knightlybiography about them, in that they tell part or all of the life of the hero; butthese fifteenth-century works are both loosely based on the lives of realpeople. The more historical of them is the Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing,which was composed around 1470, some twenty years after Jacques deLalaing himself had died. Jacques led the life of a knight errant, travellingaround Europe challenging anyone who would take him on; he was widelyregarded as a living exemplar of chivalry (though not universally: the Church,with its opposition to tournaments, did not approve). The Livre des faits is oneof a number of fifteenth-century Burgundian works designed to fashion theyoung in chivalry, among the others being an historical example of advice

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from father to son.31 According to the Livre, Jacques’ virtues showed early, asthey do for every hero of romance, and he was chosen by the duke ofBurgundy as a companion to his son. Jacques prepares to leave home early inthe morning for the Burgundian court; before he goes, his parents take himaside into a private room, and there follow eleven pages of advice from hisfather, spoken ‘au long et a loisir’ until dinner time is reached.32 The mostimportant thing in life, his father tells him, is to avoid vice, the nature of whichhe therefore proceeds to expound: the instruction here consists solely of ananalysis of the seven deadly sins as they might be committed by a lover. The lover,for instance, must flee pride if he wishes to acquire the grace of his lady, and soon. The advice given in other romances frequently juxtaposes the pious andthe worldly; here, the two are inextricably fused.

If this is puzzling, the puzzlement is compounded by reading the work onwhich this passage draws, to a large extent word for word. Its model wasanother chivalric biography, Jehan de Saintré, written some fifteen years earlierby Antoine de la Sale, who at a previous stage of his career had been tutor tothe son of René of Anjou.33 Jean de Saintré too was a real person, who hadlived around a century earlier (c. 1320–68); he was celebrated by Froissart asbeing accounted the best and most valiant knight in France. Antoine de laSale, however, was not particularly concerned with retelling his actual biog-raphy; Jacques de Lalaing had only recently died at the time he was writing,and Antoine borrows a good many of Jacques’ exploits to attach to his ownhero. Arguably, however, it is a work that finishes up as an anti-romance.

Jehan’s potential for being a hero emerges when he is thirteen, and a pagein the household of the French king. He is talent-spotted by a young widowedlady who is determined to train him up in prowess; she takes him under herwing, and proceeds to provide him with a generous mixture of advice andmaterial help. It is not unprecedented for a lady who is not the hero’s motherto take on the role of mentor – Lancelot, for instance, is reared by the Lady ofthe Lake; but the widow assigns herself more the role of Guinevere withregard to Jehan. She announces herself to be his lady-love, and insists thatthey meet by deceit, by means of covert assignations arranged by secret signs.The first session of extensive advice that she gives him is devoted to an exposi-tion of the seven deadly sins of the lover, the passage lifted wholesale by theauthor of the Livre des faits. This is followed up by further instruction of everykind, for instance that one should attend Mass faithfully and keep one’s nails

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31 This is the Enseignements paternels of G. de Lannoy (in Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy, ed.C. Potvin (Louvain, 1878), pp. 447–72). The Burgundian works are discussed by M. Vale,War and Chivalry (London, 1981), pp. 14–32.

32 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. K. de Lettenhove, vol. 8 (Paris, 1866), pp. 14–25. Theattribution to Chastellain is very uncertain: see Woledge, Bibliographie, no. 83.

33 Jean de Saintré, ed. J. Misrahi and C. A. Knudson, Textes littéraires français (Geneva, 1965);there is a modern English translation, Little John of Saintré, trans. I. Gray (London, 1931).

clean. Later, when her pupil-lover is older, she instructs him in how to take onan emprise, a chivalric pas d’armes. Under her direction, Jehan embarks on adazzling chivalric career, which culminates in a crusade in Prussia in thecourse of which he somewhat implausibly kills the Grand Turk.

Jehan de Saintré is a work in which the giving of advice is very extensiveindeed. The process does not happen in a single bout as the hero reaches thethreshold, but goes on for years. The work therefore looks at first like the mostextensive of the fictions that could be deployed as courtesy-books, and it isindeed frequently described as such by commentators: it contains abundantinstruction in prowess and courtesy, in every means of being gracieux. But thefull development of the story suggests that something radically different isgoing on alongside this.

By the time Jehan reaches the age of twenty or so, he is having a full-scaleaffair with the widow; and in such a markedly realistic mode, this leaves anasty flavour, which gets more distasteful as the story progresses. Jehaneventually decides to undertake a further chivalric emprise on his own initia-tive, and the lady is furious – any indication of independence from him is aviolation of her own possessiveness. She retreats to her estates, where shestarts a passionate affair with a local abbot, ignoring all the concerned letterssent her by the queen over her absence from court. When Jehan returns, sherefuses to have anything to do with him. The abbot, realizing that Jehan is arival, forces him to take part in a wrestling match with him, which the abbotwins. Jehan retaliates by tricking the abbot into trying on a suit of armour,then demands a full armed combat, which he, of course, wins. He is about tokill him when all the texts that forbid the killing of clergy pass through hismind, so he settles instead for stabbing the abbot with his long dagger throughhis cheeks and tongue. The lady has been watching all this, wearing a bluegirdle; Jehan removes it from her, since she has no right to wear the colour offaithfulness. Both return, separately, to the court, and Jehan tells the story as akind of exemplary demande d’amour before the queen and her assembledladies, including his own, to ask what the faithless mistress deserves. Every-body except the widow condemns the lady of the story vociferously; only sheherself, still unidentified to the others, remains silent. When Jehan demandsan answer from her, she replies that the knight was discourteous to take thegirdle. Jehan immediately takes it from his sleeve and returns it to her, sayingthat he will not be malgracieux.34

Is Jehan de Saintré a courtesy book? The answer must be yes, in so far as thatanswer applies to Jehan himself within the narrative; but the story as a whole,and its function in relation to the reader, opposes such a reading. The ladyherself is an example of how not to act. She may be very good at givingprecepts, but her own actions amount to a denial of her teaching. She is guilty

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34 Ed. Misrahi and Knudson, p. 307; trans. Gray, p. 320.

of all those seven deadly sins against love: she shows pride in her belief thatshe can control another human being; anger at his independence; avarice inher possessiveness; jealousy of his freedom; sloth in her neglect of duty to thequeen; gluttony, in a satiric scene in which she accepts ‘un peu de collacion’from the abbot, in fact a large feast, even though she is not hungry; andlechery throughout.35 The extensive programme of advice put into her mouthis therefore rendered deeply problematic, and raises questions as to who isbeing addressed over and behind Jehan himself, what the implied audience isand what kind of message they are supposed to receive. If the notional readersare young men, the message of the whole story would seem to be to beware ofwomen; if they are readers of other romances, to beware of Guinevere figures;if they are themselves in a position to give advice, to follow their ownprecepts. But the work does in fact give an explicit moral at the end, and it isnot any of those, nor is it addressed to Jehan-type figures learning courtesy.Instead, Antoine urges ‘toutes dames et damoiselles, bourgeoises et autres’(the feminine genders should be noted) to learn by the example of the lady thedangers of druerie, and to avoid affairs – presumably with abbots, thoughperhaps with young men too: the author does not specify.36

Such diverse uses of the motif of advising the young are not susceptible of anysingle or easy conclusion. Each usage offers its own moral within the partic-ular story within which it occurs, but even such individual morals may bevery hard to untangle, and may not accord with conventional morality whenone has untangled them. In perhaps the most famous instance, in the Conte duGraal, the moral would seem to be ‘Do what I mean, not what I say’; theinstruction offered makes life in the outside world more, not less, difficult, andmoreover it runs counter to Perceval’s own courtly and chivalric intuitions. Itis, unquestionably, advice he would be better off without. It is, moreover,useless as surrogate advice to the audience; and the circumstances of its beinggiven, with Perceval’s disobeying his mother’s wishes in leaving at all,signally fails to convey the message that one might expect parents to wishtheir children to imbibe. The mother is wrong, but none the less the patternoffered, of the young rebelling against their parents, is a very common one.For Perceval the imperatives of chivalry, for Lavine the imperative of love, forBlanquerna the imperative of God, override their duty to their parents. Theseare not stories one would expect to find used by those in authority – parents,tutors – as instruction for young people in their own charge. The frequencywith which the giving of advice is accompanied by rebellion does howeverindicate why Melior is significant: she is allowed to receive parental adviceafter her elopement, as a sign of her father’s acceptance of the rightness of herrebellion, and to send her into her new social role with a blessing that confirmsthe patrilinear succession of good rule. The pressure behind the advice of the

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35 Ed. Misrahi and Knudson, p. 252; trans. Gray, p. 270.36 Ibid.

Chevelere Assigne is that the younger generation can recoup the evils andmisprisions of the older: the minimal instruction received by Eneas is suffi-cient to enable his inherent prowess to emerge and triumph, and therefore forhim to refound the proper relationship of king and queen, husband and wife,misled ruler and innocent accused, and with that the whole line of succession,in an inversion of authority and experience – child over father, the boy raisedin isolation over the practised fighter – as extreme as Pearl or the ceremoniesfor the Feast of the Innocents.

The more extended passages of advice that are not so intricately linked tothe progress of the plot may be less problematic. Melusine’s advice to hersons, for instance, remains good advice despite her connections with fairy andher shape-shifting. The more extended and apparently equally detachableadvice of Jehan de Saintré is potentially much more compromised by thequality of its giver and her counter-example of bad action. The hindsightoffered by the later part of the work does not deprive the advice of all its value(as its reuse in the Livre des faits shows), but it does cleave apart knowledge ofgood (the instruction) from its practice (the instructor): as Chaucer’s Pardonernotes, one can be vicious and yet tell a moral tale. If the advice to Percevalamounts to ‘Do as I mean, not as I say’, that to Jehan amounts to, ‘Do as I say,not as I do.’ But if knowledge of good does not have practice as its conse-quence, then there is little point in giving advice in the first place. What Jehande Saintré shows most clearly is the degree to which the topos of advice hadbecome self-conscious to the point of being potentially self-destructing.

It may be that last point that provides a way into the question asked at thestart of this chapter: why should Shakespeare hold up the progress of Hamletfor Polonius’s admirable but utterly familiar advice? It consists of prescriptsthat the audience will know already, and Polonius is not the man to turntruism back into truth. The adviser himself, counsellor as he is, is moreover byno means exemplary; and the instruction has no obvious effect on its recipient,who goes on to raise a rebellion against the wrong man and get involved in anassassination plot. The advice is likewise useless as a rule for life within thelarger context of the play. ‘To thine own self be true’ may be a long-establishedand unquestioned principle of integrity, but it is increasingly emptied ofmeaning when it is set against the shattering of Hamlet’s own inner world. ‘Inmy heart there was a kind of fighting’: which of Hamlet’s various selves is the‘true’ one, and how should he recognize it? What would being true to it mean,in the circumstances in which he finds himself? Could he, or the audience,recognize if he were to reach any sort of truth to himself? In romance afterromance, the hero has to go beyond the advice offered, to identify and followhis own star in a bewildering world. Polonius’s advice provides the thresholdfrom which Hamlet, and Hamlet, starts. It is not just Laertes who is setting outfor France; the play is setting out on its own journey into previously unchartedterritory. The advice does not so much signpost the way for the protagonistthrough the challenges to come as mark the point left behind.

So where does all that leave the idea of advice being addressed to the audi-

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ence or reader, of romance as courtesy book? As models of manners and be-haviour, romances should come with a warning attached: Use with care; Keepaway from babies and children. For good advice may at best be redundant,and at worst confound the giver and mislead the young recipient inside oroutside the text.

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‘Youth on the Prow’

‘Youth on the Prow’:Three Young Kings in the Late Viking Age

Judith Jesch

Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the Zephyr blows,While proudly riding o’er the azure realmIn gallant trim the gilded Vessel goes;Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind’s sway,That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening-prey.

Gray, ‘The Bard’

Youth is not always an advantage, though the appearance of youth may be.Vikings, as fighting-men, should ideally be young and fit. Kings on the otherhand, should ideally be older and wiser. But the warrior gains authority fromexperience, while youthful vigour makes for a more effective ruler. The lateViking Age is generally seen as the period when the Scandinavian countriesdeveloped a European style of kingship, under the influence of Christianityand continental political theories.1 But the most notable Scandinavian kings ofthe eleventh century began their careers as vikings, as roving fighting-menand as the leaders of such men. Having achieved royal power, they often diedyoung, fulfilling the expectations of the proverbial expression that ‘til frægðarskal konung hafa, en ekki til langlífis’ (‘a king is for glory, not for longevity’).2

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1 P. H. Sawyer, Kings and Vikings: Scandinavia and Europe AD 700–1100 (London, 1982), pp. 6and 147; C. Krag, Vikingtid og rikssamling 800–1130, Aschehougs Norgeshistorie 2 (Oslo,1995), pp. 148 and 177.

2 Traditionally ascribed to King Magnús Barelegs, who replied thus whenever his friendsaccused him of acting rashly. He died on a viking raid in Ulster in 1103, and Snorri notes(Magnúss saga berfœtts, ch. 26) that he had not quite reached thirty: Snorri Sturluson,Heimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 3 vols, Íslenzk fornrit 26–8 (Reykjavík, 1979), III,237.

THE YOUNG HERO

In the medieval Scandinavian laws, the age of majority was normally fifteen.3

Yet in some Icelandic sagas, the hero is said to have embarked on his firstviking voyage or to have otherwise proved his manhood at the age of twelve.This is particularly true of sagas that romanticize their heroes. Thus, in thatquintessential viking saga, Jómsvíkinga saga (ch. 21), Vagn Ákason is given aship and sixty men each by his father and grandfather, and sets out to join theJomsvikings with a troop in which no man is older than twenty or youngerthan eighteen, except Vagn himself who is twelve.4 In the more realisticGunnlaugs saga ormstungu (ch. 4), the twelve-year-old hero, who is describedas precocious and unruly, asks his father to give him a ship so that he might goout and see the world, but his father is less enamoured of the idea and makeshim wait until he is eighteen.5 Elsewhere, the hero is said to have been agedtwelve at some other important event in his life. This motif is used a numberof times in Laxdœla saga, notably when the twelve-year-old Bolli Bollasonavenges the death of his father on his killer Helgi Harðbeinsson (ch. 64).However, the exceptional and therefore heroic quality of those who act asfull-grown men at this age is emphasized when, on the same occasion, Bolliprevents his followers from killing Helgi’s son, also aged twelve, calling it a‘klækisverk’ (‘disgraceful deed’), and by the subordinate role played in therevenge expedition by Bolli’s brother Þorleikr, who is four or five years olderthan him.6

In such romanticizing sagas, the motif is clearly conventional and does nottell us much about the actual age at which boys were thought to be capable ofthe deeds of a grown man. The examples given show that twelve-year-oldheroes were thought to be exceptional and that most normal males would stillhave been considered boys at that age. While it is hard to imagine afully-fledged viking leader aged twelve, war is a young man’s game, and theorigins of this romantic conceit can probably be found in some viking leadersnot much older than that. Turning from literary heroes to more historicalfigures, we find three Scandinavian kings in the early eleventh century whowere celebrated in contemporary sources for having been particularly young

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3 It could vary between fourteen and twenty in certain contexts, see J. U. Jørgensen,‘Myndighedsalder’, in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, 22 vols (Copenhagen,1956–78), XII, 35–7.

4 Jómsvíkinga saga, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson (Reykjavík, 1969), pp. 143–4; see also ch. 22 ofThe Saga of the Jomsvikings, ed. N. F. Blake (London, 1962), p. 22.

5 Borgfirðinga s›gur, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit 3 (Reykjavík,1938), p. 59. In fact, only one of the manuscripts of the saga has Gunnlaugr’s age as twelveat this point, the other has him fifteen. The editors consider (p. lvii) it more likely that theearliest version of the saga had the latter, with the age of twelve an independent changeby the scribe of the main manuscript.

6 Laxdœla saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit 5 (Reykjavík, 1934), pp. 192–3.

on achieving their royal status. Moreover, two of these won that status by theirprowess in what we would characterize as viking activity. These three kingsare Óláfr Haraldsson, later St Óláfr, king of Norway, Knútr Sveinsson, king ofEngland, Denmark and Norway, and Magnús the Good, son of St Óláfr andking of Norway and Denmark. Their exceptional youth was celebrated,recorded and remembered in contemporary praise poems, composed for thesekings, at their courts, by professional poets known as ‘skalds’, who by thisperiod were mainly Icelanders. The poems were performed orally and survivetoday because they were used as evidence and authority for the Icelandichistoriography of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.7

Discussion of the youth or otherwise of these three kings is somewhathampered by the fact that we do not know for certain the date of birth of anyof them. We are on fairly safe ground in asserting that Magnús was born in1024. The other two were probably much of an age and scholarly opinionseems to agree that they might very well have been born in about 995, and Iwill assume this date for their births in the following discussion.8 Whatevertheir date of birth, all three were celebrated and remembered as youthfulachievers and it is this tradition I would like to consider in some detail.

ÓláfrThe literary convention of the twelve-year-old hero on his first viking voyagealso makes its appearance in more obviously historical sagas. Both EiríkrBloodaxe and Óláfr Tryggvason are said by the authors of kings’ sagas to havebeen aged twelve when setting out on their first viking voyage.9 In SnorriSturluson’s prose presentation of the youth of Óláfr Haraldsson (Óláfs sagahelga, ch. 4), we are told that Óláfr ‘var þá tólf vetra gamall, er hann steig áherskip fyrsta sinn’ (‘was twelve years old when he boarded a warship for thefirst time’).10 However, the heroic effect is somewhat diminished by the factthat it is his mother who buys him a ship, gets him an experienced viking,

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7 For a discussion of this topic, with references to earlier work, see J. Jesch, ‘Norse historicaltraditions and the Historia Gruffud vab Kenan: ‘Magnús berfœttr and Haraldr hárfagri’, inGruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography, ed. K. L. Maund (Woodbridge, 1996),pp. 117–47 (pp. 127–33). See also J. Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabu-lary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Woodbridge, 2001), passim.

8 The birth dates of all three kings are deduced from the imprecise and relative chronolo-gies of the kings’ sagas. For Óláfr and Magnús, see Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I,ccxxxvii, and II, cx. However, Krag, Vikingtid, p. 134, is inclined to believe that Óláfr wasborn somewhat before 995. A. R. Rumble, ‘Introduction: Cnut in context’, in The Reign ofCnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (London, 1994), pp. 1–9(p. 3) gives Knútr’s date of birth as ‘c.995’. But, depending on how the sources are inter-preted, he could have been born at almost any time between 990 and 1000, seeM. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Eleventh Century (London, 1993), p. 174.

9 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I, 134; Oddr Snorrason, Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar, ed. FinnurJónsson (Copenhagen, 1932), pp. 28–9.

10 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 4.

Hrani, as a minder and sends him off to Denmark on his first expedition.11

While this prose reference to Óláfr’s precise age may owe a lot to the literaryconvention, Snorri does have contemporary evidence for the fact that he wasyoung at the time. As is his usual practice, Snorri substantiates his proseaccount by quoting a stanza from a skaldic praise poem (Óttarr svarti’s‘H›fuðlausn’, st. 3) which contains the two relevant facts, that Óláfr wasyoung (though his exact age is not given), and that he went to Denmark:

Ungr hratztu á vit vengis,vígrakkr konungr, blakki,þú hefr dýrum þrek, dreyraDanmarkar, þik vanðan.Varð nýtligust norðan,nú est ríkr af hv›t slíkri,frák til þess, es fóruð,f›r þín, konungr, g›rva.

(Battle-bold king, [you were] young [when] you launched the steedof the lifeblood of the plain [lifeblood of the plain = water; steed ofwater = ship] to go to Denmark; you have accustomed yourself toglorious strength. Your voyage from the north, king, was mostsuccessful; you are now powerful from such prowess; I have heardall about when you journeyed.)12

The stanza is from a poem in praise of Óláfr composed much later in hiscareer by the Icelandic poet Óttarr the Black and is fairly typical of its genre.The poet’s point of view is retrospective: he is looking back at the youth of aking who, by the time of the poem, has accustomed himself to deeds ofprowess, and who as a result has become powerful. This current status is indi-cated by the apostrophizing use of ‘konungr’ (‘king’) in each half of thestanza. The poet also underlines the contrast between then and now bymaking it clear that he did not know Óláfr in his youth, and that the account ofthe start of his career is based on hearsay. The king’s current position isdescribed in rather vague terms, ‘vígrakkr’ (‘battle-bold’), ‘dýrum þrek’ (‘glo-rious strength’), ‘ríkr’ (‘powerful’), and ‘hv›t’ (‘prowess’), but their effect iscumulatively impressive. The stanza has to be considered in the context of the

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11 On the literary origins of Hrani, see C. Krag, ‘Rane kongsfostre og Olav Geirstadalv’,Historisk tidsskrift 78 (1999), 21–47.

12 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 5. As here, I normally cite skaldic stanzas from theeditions of the prose texts in which they were preserved, with my own fairly literal trans-lations. These stanzas are most commonly extracts from longer praise poems whichrarely survive as continuous texts, but which have been reconstructed in the corpusedition of skaldic verse, Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 4 vols(Copenhagen, 1912–15). I follow this edition for dates and titles of the poems and stanzanumbers, and all individual stanzas can also be found in this edition. The problems ofand procedures in the reconstruction of skaldic poems, including all those cited here, arediscussed at length in Bjarne Fidjestøl, Det norrøne fyrstediktet (Øvre Ervik, 1982).

longer praise poem from which it is taken: it epitomizes the argument of thispoem, which is that King Óláfr’s youthful prowess made him the powerfulleader that he is today. By modern standards, the king was hardly old at thetime the poem was composed: although we cannot be absolutely certain ofeither his age or the date of the poem, if, as has been suggested, it wascomposed in 1023, then Óláfr was still only in his late twenties. Addressing aking who could still be considered young and praising him for his youthfulachievements throws his current achievement into high relief.13

Out of the twenty stanzas that survive from Óttarr’s ‘H›fuðlausn’, there aretwo others that make reference to his youth. The poem begins with a longsection dealing with Óláfr’s wars in England. In the stanza (12) which movesthe scene of war to the Continent the poet again stresses the king’s youth, as ifto keep the extent of this youthful achievement constantly before the audi-ence:

Nóðuð ungr at eyða,ógnteitr j›furr, Peitu.Reynduð, ræsir, steindar›nd á Túskalandi.

(Battle-cheerful prince, you succeeded when young in destroyingPoitou. Chief, you tested painted shields in Touraine.)14

Again, this stanza emphasizes the contrast between now and then. On the onehand, the two apostrophes to the king, ‘ógnteitr j›furr’ (‘battle-cheerfulprince’) and ‘ræsir’ (‘chief’), demonstrate his current powerful status, whilethe past tense verbs and the adjective ‘ungr’ (‘young’) draw attention to hisyouthful martial activities on the other.

The third and final stage in Óláfr’s career to date is his return to his home-land Norway, to claim its throne from Earl Hákon (st. 15b):

Ungr sóttir þú, Þróttarþings mógrennir, hingat,máttit jarl, þaus óttuðáttl›nd, fyr því standa.

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13 How young is ‘young’? It is impossible to say in absolute terms what age range the skaldsthought was covered by the adjective ‘ungr’. The evidence that Scandinavians knewmedieval theories of the ages of man is limited, see A. Karker, ‘Livsaldre’, Kulturhistoriskleksikon, X, 640–2. Even if they had, ‘anyone who goes to medieval discussions of the agesof man with the intention of ascertaining at what age youth was then thought to end, orold age to begin, will find no easy answers’, J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study inMedieval Writing and Thought (Oxford, 1986), p. 34. Burrow also suggests (p. 124) thatvernacular usage was ‘much less systematic’.

14 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 25.

(Feeder (?) of the gull of Odin’s assembly [Odin’s assembly = battle;gull of battle = carrion bird], you came here [when] young to ances-tral lands you owned; the earl [Hákon] could not prevent that.)15

Again, Óláfr’s achievement is highlighted by the emphasis on his youth. Thisstanza is the high point of Óttarr’s poem, and this is marked metrically by thefull rhyme in all four lines in this half of the stanza (normally the first andthird would only need half-rhyme). The first syllable of the fourth line alsoechoes the rhyming syllables of the previous line, so that the stanza drawsattention to itself by going beyond the already complex metrical requirementsof skaldic verse.

Throughout ‘H›fuðlausn’, Óttarr uses apostrophes to suggest the present,and these contrast with the second-person verb forms in the past tense that heuses for the narrative of Óláfr’s youth. This technique has the effect of linkingthe poet to his patron, and the poem itself to the past deeds it celebrates. Evenin this sycophantic genre, Óttarr waxes more lyrical than most, but he hadgood reason for this, according to an anecdote recorded in the Icelandic tradi-tion to explain this anxiety to please on the part of the poet. Óttarr’s‘H›fuðlausn’ (‘Head-Ransom’) is one of a number of poems described thus,including one with the same name composed by Egill in York.16 The purposeof a ‘head-ransom’ poem was to dispel the king’s anger by praising him andthus to enable the poet, literally, to keep his head, receiving his life in lieu ofthe more usual monetary reward for a praise poem. In this case, the king wasapparently angry with Óttarr because he had composed a poem in praise ofthe Swedish princess Ástríðr, now the Norwegian king’s wife.17 This poem isnot preserved, so we do not know why it was unacceptable, but the king atany rate seems to have thought that it implied an affair between the poet andthe princess. Clearly Óttarr thought that emphasizing the king’s youthfulvigour was one good way of propitiating him.

KnútrÓláfr’s contemporary and great rival was Knútr, king of England, Denmarkand, for a time, Norway. He too was the subject of a praise poem by Óttarr,called the Knútsdrápa (a drápa was considered a particularly fine sort of enco-mium because it had a refrain). This poem has some similarities with Óttarr’spoem on Óláfr, notably in that its first stanza uses the same image of theyoung warrior launching ships and thereby his career:

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15 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 37.16 Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit 2 (Reykjavík, 1933),

pp. 185–92. On the historical context of this poem, see J. Hines, ‘Egill’s H›fuðlausn in timeand place’, Saga-Book 24 (1994–7), 83–104.

17 Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga. Den store saga om Olav den hellige, ed. O. A. Johnsen and JónHelgason (Oslo, 1941), pp. 688–9, 702–6. On Ástríðr and poetry, see J. Jesch, ‘In praise ofÁstríðr Óláfsdóttir’, Saga-Book 24 (1994–7), 1–18.

Hratztu lítt gamall, lýtirl›greiðar, fram skeiðum.Fórat fylkir œri,folksveimaðr, þér heiman.Hilmir, bjóttu ok hættirharðbrynjuð skip kynjum.Reiðr hafðir þú rauðarrandir Knútr, fyr landi.

(Destroyer of the sea-wagon [ship], you launched ships when notvery old. No leader left home younger than you, army-bustler.Chief, you prepared hard-armoured ships and took astoundingrisks. Knútr, in frenzied mood you surrounded the country withred shields.)18

Again, we are not told his exact age, although here there is a comparativeaspect to the king’s youth: it is said that Knútr was younger than anyone elsedoing the same thing. Does this mean that he started his military career at aneven younger age than Óláfr (whatever age that was)? We cannot know, butwe can note that the poem reflects the element of competition that was alwayspresent between these contemporaries and rivals, until Knútr managed todrive Óláfr from Norway and instigated the battle of Stiklestad in which hedied in 1030.

Unlike the ‘Head-Ransom’, where Óttarr’s concern was very much topropitiate King Óláfr in the present, in the Knútsdrápa he can afford to luxu-riate in the king’s achievement in the past. The poem was composed whenKnútr was at the height of his powers, but this status is taken for granted, andthe poet concentrates instead on the king’s youthful wars in England.19 Eventhis first stanza demonstrates how the poetic diction focuses on Knútr’s pastmilitary activity rather than on his present power and glory. Thus, he is apos-trophized as a ‘lýtir l›greiðar’ (‘ship-destroyer’) and as a ‘folksveimaðr’(‘army-bustler’), and two words referring to military leadership and rank,‘fylkir’ (‘leader’) and ‘hilmir’ (‘chief’), are used of him (the latter as an apos-trophe). A picture of the king in the midst of battle is conjured up by the adjec-tive ‘harðbrynjaðr’ (‘hard-armoured’), used of his ships, and by themetaphorical description of his war-making, literally he ‘had red shieldsbefore the land’. The three words for ship in this stanza, ‘l›greið’, ‘skeið’ and‘skip’, stress the basis of the king’s naval power.20

We do not know when Knútr first participated in viking raids on England,although we do know that he took command of the fleet on the death of his

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18 Danakonunga s›gur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, Íslenzk fornrit 35 (Reykjavík, 1982), pp. 101–2.19 On the probable dating of this poem to 1027, see M. Townend, ‘Contextualizing the

Knútsdrápur: skaldic praise-poetry at the court of Cnut’, Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001),145–79 (pp. 159–62).

20 See R. Frank, ‘King Cnut in the verse of his skalds’, in The Reign of Cnut: King of England,Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (London, 1994), pp. 106–24 (pp. 114–15).

father Sveinn in 1014. By then he was probably nineteen years old, so hardlyyoung by the standards of the twelve-year-old Óláfr, at least. However it isquite possible that in the first stanza the poet Óttarr is referring to earliersorties, which may very well have happened before the death of Sveinn. Buteven when Knútr finally conquered England in 1016, he was still only abouttwenty-one, and his youth could be emphasized in a stanza (6) describingsome of the battles of that year:

Ungr fylkir, léztu Englaallnær Tesu falla.Flóði djúpt of dauðradík Norðimbra líkum.Svefn braut sv›rtum hrafnisunnarr hv›tuðr Gunnar.Olli sókn enn snjalliSveins m›gr at Skorsteini.

(Young leader, you caused Englishmen to fall very near the Tees.The deep ditch flowed over the bodies of dead Northumbrians.The promoter of battle deprived the black raven of sleep in thesouth. The brave son of Sveinn instigated battle at Sherston.)21

The chronological reference of ‘ungr fylkir’ (‘young leader’) in this stanza isambiguous. Syntactically it looks like an apostrophe to the king at the time ofthe composition and first performance of the poem (when Knútr was aboutthirty-one years old), as it is followed by a second-person verb in the pasttense, making the transition from apostrophe to narrative. (Note that the restof the verbs in the stanza, and the remaining references to Knútr, are all in thethird person). Nevertheless, it seems more likely that in calling the king‘young’, the poet is thinking of then rather than now, conjuring up hisyouthful self for the king listening to the poem, as in the first stanza.

Both Knútr and Óláfr started their military careers as young men and hadrapid success, giving them both the rule of their respective kingdoms at whatwas a young age by any standards. They are both presented as kings who hadto achieve their kingship by their own military efforts. Knútr, of course, hadsome help from the fact that he was the son of Sveinn Forkbeard (as is madeclear in st. 6, quoted above), whereas Óláfr was the son of a nobody who diedbefore he was born and from whom he could expect no help. Óláfr’s own ruleended ignominiously with exile followed by death in battle in an abortiveattempt to recapture his kingdom, but his real significance came after his

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21 Danakonunga s›gur, p. 109. We also find the emphasis on Knútr’s youth in the EncomiumEmmae, ed. and trans. A. Campbell, introd. S. Keynes, Camden Classic Reprints(Cambridge, 1998), pp. 20–1. This has Þorkell undertaking to fight the battle of Sherstonon Knútr’s behalf ‘utpote iuuenem’ (‘inasmuch as he is a youth’). Lawson, Cnut, p. 174,notes that Knútr ‘almost certainly owed much of his success in the fighting of 1015–16 tothe experienced warlords Earl Eric of Lade and Earl Thorkell’.

death when he provided an important starting-point for a new Norwegianruling dynasty. The new order was already clear when his son eventuallycame to the throne in a very different manner to that of his father.

MagnúsÓláfr had only one son, who was illegitimate, called Magnús. Óláfr’s son isthe first Scandinavian recorded as having borne this name, and he was quiteconsciously named after Charlemagne (i.e. Carolus Magnus, or Karla-Magnúsas he was known in Old Norse).22 This may suggest the kinds of thoughtsabout kingship that were fermenting in Norway at that time, or, if not inNorway, then in the mind of the king’s poet Sigvatr who had the task ofnaming the sickly infant who was not expected to live. As a small boy (agedabout four), Magnús went into exile in Russia with his father in 1028, andstayed there after the king’s return to Norway and death at the battle ofStiklestad in 1030. The sagas tell us that, tired of the Danish rule imposed byKnútr and carried out by his son Sveinn and his mother, the English Ælfgifu,some Norwegian nobles went to Russia to fetch Magnús back to Norway in1034, when he was still only ten years old. Things went smoothly and Magnúswas successfully installed on the throne and accepted by the Norwegians astheir king by the following year. Thus, there is no question of Magnús havinghad to fight to gain his position and, in any case, he was too young to do so.His youth also meant that, according to Snorri at any rate, a decisive point inhis return was when his stepmother Ástríðr argued his case at the Swedishassembly and thereby got him valuable support from the Swedes. We getsome sense of how unusual it was for a Scandinavian king to be helped to thethrone by a woman from the fact that this occasion gave rise to a poem inpraise of Ástríðr, the only surviving skaldic praise poem addressed to awoman.23 But it was Magnús’ extreme youth that made her interventionnecessary.

By this stage, the presentation of a young king as a young warriorlaunching a ship and thereby his career had become so conventional in skaldicpraise poetry that it could be used of Magnús, too, even though it was notentirely appropriate. The first stanza of Arnórr jarlaskáld’s Magnússdrápaillustrates this neatly:

Nú hykk rjóðanda reiðuróg›rs, þvít veitk g›rva,þegi seimbrotar, segjaseggjum hneitis eggja.Vasa ellifu allraormsetrs hati vetra,

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22 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 210.23 See Jesch, ‘In praise of Ástríðr’.

hraustr þás herskip glæstiH›rða vinr ór G›rðum.

(Now I plan to tell men the deeds of the battle-brisk reddener of thesword’s blades, because I know them in detail; the breakers of gold[= generous men] should be silent. The disburser of the dragon’sbed [= gold] was not fully eleven years old when the bold friend ofthe Hordalanders prepared a splendid warship from out ofRussia.)24

Like his father before him, Magnús’ career starts with the launch of a ship, but,though it is called a ‘herskip’ (‘warship’), it is clear that someone who is onlyten years old is not really leading a viking expedition. Instead, the emphasison the splendour of the ship suggests something more like a triumphalvoyage or royal progress. The stanza does not actually assert that Magnúsengaged in any fighting, but limits itself instead to hints concealed in acomplex warrior kenning applied to him (‘battle-brisk reddener of thesword’s blades’). This opening stanza is thus partly conventional, building onthe kind of opening stanzas we have seen Óttarr use, where the hero’s careerbegins when he goes out on his first military expedition. But if we look at theother references to Magnús in the stanza, it is clearly doing more than justinsinuating military deeds which a ten-year-old could hardly have performed.As well as the military kenning, he is called a ‘disburser of gold’ and the‘friend of the Hordalanders’ (Hordaland being a district in Norway). Inskaldic poetry, kings are conventionally associated with both military prowessand generosity, and geographical associations are regularly used to suggestthe extent of their power. Thus, this first stanza paints, in these three kennings,an image of the ideal king of Norway: warlike, generous and powerful. Knútrand Óláfr were the authors of the deeds that were celebrated in the poemspraising them. Magnús was too young to have achieved anything, so that, inArnórr’s Magnússdrápa, it is the poem that creates a role for the king.

We do not have a date for Arnórr’s poem, but it was very likely an erfidrápa,a posthumous memorial poem with a refrain: the poet is addressing the court(whom he calls ‘generous men’ because it is presumably from them that heexpects a payment for his poem), and he is unlikely to have done this unlessthe subject of the poem were already dead.25 This undoubtedly influenced thesomewhat idealized picture he paints of the young king. The political reality ismore accurately reflected in stanza 6 of a poem in praise of Kálfr Árnason, oneof the Norwegian noblemen who travelled to Russia to bring Magnús back toNorway, by Bjarni Gullbrárskáld:

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24 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 3. See also D. Whaley, The Poetry of Arnórr jarlaskáld: AnEdition and Study (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 182–4. Both editors take the ‘herskip’ of line 7 to beplural.

25 Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 29 and 53.

Hafa léztu unga j›fraerfð, sem til réð hverfa.Satt es, at sitja knáttiSveinn at Danm›rk einni.Kennduð, Kálfr, til landakappfúsum Magnúsi,olluð ér því, es stillirj›rð of fekk, ór G›rðum.

(You allowed the young kings to have their inheritance, as wasallotted. It is true, that Sveinn could only preside over Denmark.Kálfr, you showed vigorous Magnús to his country from Russia,you caused the leader to get land.)26

Kálfr is credited not only with putting Magnús back on the throne, but also,somewhat ironically, with putting Knútr’s son Sveinn back in his rightfulplace, which was in Denmark only. Kálfr’s role is stressed by the use of threesecond-person verbs, underlined by the poet’s comment ‘it is true’. Since bythis time Magnús was dead, it was not quite as tactless as it sounds to pointout that the king was made by a kingmaker, especially in a poem in praise ofthat kingmaker.

To return to Arnórr’s poem on Magnús: the introductory stanza is followedby an attractive stanza describing the sea-voyage from Russia to Sweden:

Þing bauð út enn ungieggrjóðandi þjóðum.Fim bar hirð til h›mluhervæðr ara bræðis.Salt skar húfi héltumhraustr þjóðkonungr austan.Bóru brimlogs rýribrún veðr at Sigtúnum.

(The young blade-reddener called his people to battle [or ‘assem-bled his people’]. The athletic troop of the eagle-feeder [= warrior]carried war-gear to the rowing-positions. The bold king of thenation sliced the salt [sea] from the east with a frosted hull. Sharpwinds carried the diminisher of wave’s-fire [wave’s fire = gold;diminisher of gold = generous man] to Sigtuna.)27

This continues the themes of the introductory stanza. References to Magnús’generosity and military prowess are tucked away in the kennings: ‘brimlogsrýrir’ (‘diminisher of wave’s-fire’), ‘enn ungi eggrjóðandi’ (‘the youngblade-reddener’), ‘ara bræðir’ (‘eagle-feeder’); while the active verbs in thestanza create the narrative of the king and his troop getting ready for the

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26 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 12.27 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 4; Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 184–7.

voyage and then sailing to Sweden: ‘bauð’ (‘called’), ‘bar’ (‘carried’), ‘skar’(‘sliced’). This stanza is followed by some that describe how Sveinn, the son ofKnútr and Danish regent of Norway, is driven out of the country, and howMagnús challenges him in Denmark, too. This section of the poem then culmi-nates in a stanza (7) describing Magnús’ achievement in ruling both Denmarkand Norway at a younger age than anyone before him:

Náði siklingr síðansnjallr ok Danm›rk allri,móttr óx drengja dróttins,dýrr Nóregi at stýra.Engr heft annarr þengilláðr svá gnógu láði,bráskat bragnings þroski,barnungr und sik þrungit.

(The brave and glorious prince then achieved the rule of Norwayand all Denmark, the power of the lord of warriors increased. Noother ruler previously has subjugated so much land in childhood[lit. ‘child-young’], the ruler’s flourishing did not fail.)28

The stanza emphasizes both the king’s youth and his ripening into maturity,using a vocabulary of increase and growth: ‘móttr óx’ (power increased’) and‘þroski’ (‘flourishing, maturity’). Moving from the past-tense verbs describingwhat Magnús actually achieved, the poet sums up his achievement bystressing that it is still valid in the present (cf. ‘hefr’), for no one else has cometo rule two countries while still a child. Magnús became king of Denmark in1042, when he was about eighteen years old. Although eighteen is still youngto be king of two countries, calling him a child is really only appropriate forhis accession to Norway. However, the poet had the benefit of hindsight, andthis stanza is particularly poignant if we remember that Magnús died beforethe age of twenty-four.

Towards the end of Arnórr’s poem (st. 18), he returns to the theme of theyoung king who had achieved much before his untimely death:

Enn rauð frón á Fjóni,fold sótti gramr dróttar,ráns galt herr frá hónum,hringserks lituðr merki.Minnisk ›ld, hverr annan,jafnþarfr blóum hrafni,›rt gat hilmir hjarta,herskyldir tøg fylldi.

(Once again the stainer of the mail-shirt reddened bright bannerson Fyn; the prince of the war-band attacked the land; the army had

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28 Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 197–8.

to pay for their theft [of land] from him. Consider whichwar-leader [was] equally helpful to the black raven [i.e. byproviding it with corpses] by the end of his second decade; thechief had a bold heart.)29

By now, the praise of the king as a warrior is not hidden away in the kennings,but is brought out into the open. In a series of active verbs, we are told thatMagnús attacked the land, reddened banners with blood, and exacted what hewanted from the enemy army. In the poem as a whole, Magnús’ achievementis not only to rule two countries at a young age, but also quite literally to growinto the royal role that is sketched out for him at the beginning. The potentialwarrior becomes an actual warrior, and the poet suggests this change byswitching from the nominal to the verbal, by moving from the noun-filledkennings which suggest what Magnús’ role ought to be to the verbal construc-tions which show him actually performing that role.

This playing of an active role not only showed that the king was powerful,in control and able to overcome all opposition, but it also very importantlyprovided the poet with the material for his praise poem. As a genre, theskaldic praise poems did not really have a vocabulary for the celebration ofmore abstract achievements of a political or moral nature. What they did havewas a lot of ways of talking about war and warriors. The poet is thus gratefulif the king being praised has provided him with the right kind of material forhis poem. Arnórr makes his relief plain in another poem in praise of Magnús,known as Hrynhenda from its innovative metre. This poem was composedwhile the king was still alive, and is addressed to him. As usual, Arnórrstresses his patron’s youth when acquiring Norway in a stanza (8) whichfollows on from several which describe his voyage from the east:

Eignask namt þú óðal þegnaallan Norég, gotna spjalli.Manngi ryðr þér mildingr annarrMœra gramr til landa œri.

(Good friend of men, you managed to come into possession of theancestral lands of the aristocracy, all of Norway. No other sovereigncleared his way to countries younger than you, prince of the peopleof Møre.)30

But after this, there is a further sequence of stanzas describing hiswar-making in Denmark and the Baltic, introduced by a stanza (9) whichbegins with the adverb ‘síðan’ (‘afterwards’), emphasizing that this is a newphase in the king’s life. This sequence leads into a stanza (14a) which explainsthe symbiotic relationship between the king and poet:

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29 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 63; Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 215–18.30 Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 158–9.

Hefnir, fenguð yrkisefni,Óleifs. Gervik slíkt at mólum.Hlakkar lætr þú hræl›g drekkahauka. Nú mun kvæði aukask.

(Óláfr’s avenger, you provided the stuff of poetry. I turn it intolanguage. You cause the hawks of Hl›kk [= a valkyrie; her hawks =eagles or ravens] to drink the liquid of corpses [= blood]. Now theode will increase.)31

By his deeds the king provides the ‘yrkisefni’ (‘the stuff of poetry’) for hisskald: the more the king feeds the ravens, the more matter there is for thepoem.

NEW STYLES OF KINGSHIP

It has been suggested that the emphasis on Magnús’ youth in these poems wasprecisely because child kings were unusual, if not unprecedented, in Scandi-navia and it was felt necessary to legitimate this new political phenomenon.32

No doubt this legitimation began at his accession and was done in ways thatwe can no longer reconstruct. However, the posthumous Magnússdrápa showsthat this process of justification which had begun during the reign of Magnústhe Good continued after his death. In this process we can see the changingnature of kingship in Scandinavia, as it moves from a ‘viking’ model in whichkings’ sons fight their way to the top, to a more ‘medieval’ model with agrowing emphasis on dynastic, ecclesiastical and national concerns.33 The cultof St Óláfr was launched and actively promoted during Magnús’ reign, and itis hard to say which benefited more: the church from its association with polit-ical power, or the monarchy from the increasing legitimacy it derived from itsassociation with a saint. It is clear that part of the process of justifying theaccession of the child king, Magnús, involved promoting the cult of his saintlyfather. There is a parallel here to the career of the English king Æthelred II,known as ‘the Unready’. His age at accession is also uncertain, but he wasprobably not less than ten and certainly ‘not more than twelve years old whenhe became king’ in 978.34 Scholars are inclined to absolve him of the blame forthe murder of his half-brother Edward the Martyr precisely because of his

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31 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 64; Whaley, Arnórr, pp. 171–3.32 S. Hellberg, ‘Kring tillkomsten av Glœlognskviða’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 99 (1984), 14–48

(pp. 20–21). In England, on the other hand, tenth-century kings were often very young attheir accession, see C. Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half King” and his family’, Anglo-Saxon England2 (1973), 115–44 (p. 129).

33 The latter model is summarized by S. Bagge, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’sHeimskringla (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 129–35.

34 S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unready’ 978–1016: A Study in their Use asHistorical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), p. 174.

youth at the time. As well as his youth at accession, Æthelred shares withMagnús the role of promoter of his predecessor’s cult. Susan Ridyard hasshown how the ‘first sign of royal interest in Edward’s relics came right at thebeginning of Æthelred’s reign’.35 She emphasizes the political relevance ofEdward’s cult to his successor and follows Keynes in assuming that Æthelredwas not implicated in Edward’s murder, so that he could profit from the cultof ‘a royal saint so closely related to him’.36

It has been noted that Æthelred’s youth presented ‘opportunities for theealdormen and bishops to direct national policy’.37 Indeed, in discussing whathe calls ‘the period of youthful indiscretions’, Keynes seems to want to extendÆthelred’s youth right through to the age of twenty-seven, seeing it as a‘period . . . in which the adolescent King Æthelred was apparently manipu-lated by a group of men in their own interests’.38 We can see a similar unfortu-nate influence of, or even interference by, advisers in the reign of the youngking Magnús. One of the most famous poems by Sigvatr, who had composedprolifically for Óláfr, was the Bers›glisvísur, or ‘Plain-Speaking Verses’, that headdressed to Óláfr’s son Magnús. As Magnús’ godfather, and one who hadknown him from birth, Sigvatr never shrank from criticising his protegé, orfrom making unfavourable comparisons with his saintly father. InBers›glisvísur (st. 6) the criticism is strongly worded, yet indulgent in an avun-cular sort of way, for Magnús was still only about fourteen at the time. Thepoet puts the errors of the king’s ways down in part to his youth and inexperi-ence, and in part to bad advice:

Ungr, vask með þér, þengill,þat haust es komt austan.Einn, stillir, mátt allaj›rð hegna, svá fregnisk.Himin þóttisk þá heiðanhafa, es landa krafðir,lofðungs burr, ok lifðir,landfolk tekit h›ndum.

(Young ruler, I was with you that autumn when you came from theeast. You alone, governor, are able to defend all the land, as isknown. The populace thought they had caught bright heaven intheir hands when you demanded the country, king’s son, andlived.)39

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35 S. J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and EastAnglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988), p. 164.

36 Keynes, Diplomas, p. 171; Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 165.37 Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half King” ’, p. 129.38 Keynes, Diplomas, p. 186. Keynes apparently agrees with Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae

XI.ii.4, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), in defining adolescentia as extending up to theage of twenty-eight.

39 Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, IB, 236.

This stanza shows the poet more in sorrow than in anger. He recalls thepromise of Magnús’ youth and uses an extraordinary image of the people’sjoy at his accession. As his father’s son, Magnús links heaven and earth, Godand Norway. Yet he commits crimes against that people and that land, asSigvatr makes clear in another stanza (11):

Hverr eggjar þik h›ggva,hjaldrgegnir, bú þegna?Ofrausn es þat j›friinnan lands at vinna.Engr hafði svá ungumáðr bragningi ráðit.Rón hykk rekkum þínum,reiðr es herr, konungr, leiðask.

(Who urges you, battle-participant, to destroy the property of thegentry? It is arrogance for a king to do that within his borders. Noone has previously advised a young ruler to do this. I think yourwarriors are tired of robbery, king, the army is angry.)40

Here the poet wonders what causes the king to attack ‘bú þegna’ (the propertyof his own landed gentry) and comes to the conclusion that someone must beurging him on, that the young king is prompted by bad advice.

In this poem, Sigvatr is trying to educate the king in the difference betweenappropriate and inappropriate belligerent behaviour. That which is necessaryto defend his country (as in st. 6, above), is appropriate, but similar behaviouragainst his own subjects is not. To underline his point, the poet threatens totake himself off to the court of H›rða-Knútr, reminding Magnús that he hadworked for both their fathers when he himself was young (st. 17):

Sigvats hugr mun hittaskH›rða-Knútr í garði,mildr nema mj›k vel skaldiMagnús konungr fagni;fórk með feðrum þeira(fekk mér ungum tungagolls), vask enn með ›lluóskeggjaðr þá, beggja.

(Sigvatr’s affection will be found in the court of H›rða-Knútrunless gracious King Magnús is very friendly to the poet; I waswith both their fathers and my tongue got me gold when young, Iwas still quite beardless then.)

But because the purpose of the poem is political, aiming to bend the king’s be-haviour in a particular direction, it can and indeed must end on a positive note

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40 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 29.

despite the criticisms. The poet bows out with a ringing endorsement ofMagnús: ‘with you gracious king, I wish to live and die’. According to Snorri,the poem worked and the king behaved well after this, issuing a law-code,and eventually becoming so popular and beloved by the people that posterityknew him as Magnús the Good.41

VIKINGS AND KINGS

Although a full-blown medieval style of kingship did not emerge in Norwayuntil the thirteenth century, we can see its beginnings in the reign of Magnús,especially if we contrast the poetic treatment of his youth with those of his twoviking predecessors, his father Óláfr and their arch-rival Knútr. Óláfr wasmostly a traditional viking, his conquest of Norway was never very complete,nor his rule there very effective, and his significance was mainly posthumous.Knútr, too, started out as a viking, but he had the advantages of a father whocleared the way for him, and a ready-made kingdom to step into in England.Like his predecessor, Æthelred, Knútr promoted the cult of Edward theMartyr in order to stress the continuity of his regime and to enhance the pres-tige of his kingship. This side of Knútr’s activities is not well reflected in theskaldic poetry which generally has little to tell of his rule in England. But inthe poetry composed about and for Magnús, we can see the developingconcept of kingship in Scandinavia more or less as it happens. Being asuccessful viking was no longer a sufficient, perhaps not even a necessary,qualification for becoming a king, but belonging to the right dynasty andhaving the support of the church and the aristocracy were necessary. With theaid of the Christian church, a saintly father, a vigorous nobility and a wise oldpoet, the Norwegians were able to disprove the lament of the Ecclesiast(10.16): ‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child.’

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41 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, III, 31.

INDEX

Adam 90Adelaxia, domina 82Adrian 53Ælfgifu 131Æthelred II, king 136–37Aetherius 22Agnes, St 52Alcuin of York 15Alexander III, pope 74Allen, Rosamund 68Andrew, St 58Andrews, Frances 9Anicia 14Anjou, René of 117Anonimalle Chronicle 8, 64, 66Anstrudis, St 20Apollonia, St 58 and nAquinas, Thomas 26nAriès, Philippe 1–3, 7, 25Arnórr jarlaskald, Magnússdrápa 131,

133–35Arthur, king 102, 108Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of

Canterbury 4–6Ástríðr, princess 128, 131Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 11Ausonius Decimus Magnus 14Babyngton, Katherine 50Bailey, Peter 48–49Ball, John 67, 70 and nBar, Marie, duchess of 116Barantyne, Mary 55Baret, John 56Barron, Caroline 7nBassett, Anne 54Bassett, Mary 54Bede, Venerable 15, 21, 23Benedict Biscop 15Benedict of Nursia, St 21Bere, John le 93Bere, Margaret le 93Beronger, Joan 91Beronger, John 91Berry, Jean, duke of 116Bertilak 108Bjarni Gullbrárskáld 132Black Prince, the 64

Blanquerna 110–11, 119Bokenham, Osbern, 56, 59; Legendys of

Hooly Wummen 49; ‘Life of MaryMagdalene’ 50, 56; ‘Life of St Agatha’50, 52, 57; ‘Life of St Agnes’ 52, 56 ;‘Life of St Anne’ 50, 56; ‘Life of StCecilia’ 53n; ‘Life of St Christina’ 51,52, 56; ‘Life of St Dorothy’ 50, 52, 53n,56; ‘Life of St Elizabeth’ 50, 56; ‘Life ofSt Faith’ 53n, 56; ‘Life of St Katherine’50, 53, 56 and n; ‘Life of St Lucy’ 52;‘Life of St Margaret’ 50–51, 55–56;‘Life of St Ursula and the 11,000Virgins’ 53n, 56

Bolingbroke, Henry 4Bolli Bollason 124Borrinus, Isabellina 76Borrinus, Leo 76Borrinus, Petra 76Borrinus, Varenza 76Boswell, John 76, 78Bourchier, Isabelle, countess of Eu 50,

55Bours, Madame de 54Brews, Margery 57–58Brews, Sir Thomas 57–58Brinton, Thomas, bishop of

Rochester 67nBrut, Walter 63nBurgundy, duke of (Philip III) 117Burley, Sir Simon 65 and nBurri, Marchisius 76Caesarius of Arles 21Cambridge, Edmund Langley, first earl

of 66Cambridge, Richard of Conisbrough,

second earl of 55Capgrave, John 59; ‘Life of St Katherine

of Alexandria’ 49, 53Carus-Wilson, E. M. 86Cassianus of Imola, St 18Caxton, William 104, 110; Blanchardin

and Eglantine 104; Book of GoodManners, The 104

Cecilia, St 58Celestine III, pope 73Charlemagne 131

141

Chaucer, Geoffrey 85; Pardoner 120;Prioress 85; ‘Prioress’s Tale’ 103;Squire 5; Wife of Bath 85

Chevelere Assigne 107–8, 120Childebert I 23Childebert II 22Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du

Graal 106–9, 114, 116, 119Christina of Markyate 57–58Christina, St 51Clark, P. 87–88Clopton, John 56Cooper, Helen 9Crawford, Sally 7n, 13Cuthbert, St 19Dale, M. K. 86Dalton, Alice 88Dante Alighieri 14de la Pole family 98Delany, Sheila 50Denston, Katherine 50, 56–57Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist 102Dolzebellina 76Dorothy, St 52Duffy, Eamon 46Duns Scotus, John 26nDyer, C. 92–93Earle, P. 87Edmund, St, king 6 and nEdward III, king 64Edward the Confessor, St, king 6 and nEdward the Martyr, king 136, 139Egill 128Eiríkr Bloodaxe 125Ekwall, E. 86Eneas 112, 120Enyas (Elyas, Helyas) 108Eshton, John 88Fabricius 52Felice 51Felix, Life of Guthlac 15, 19Fentrice, Lucy de 94 and nFentrice, William de 94 and nFlegge, Agatha 50, 57Flegge, Joan 57Flegge, Sir John 57Flora de Castello 80–81Floris and Blanchefleur 115Froissart, Jean 70, 117Fructuosus, St, bishop of Braga 15, 21Galen 23Gallus, St, bishop of Clermont 19Gareth 103Gaunt, Simon 48

Gawain 108Geoffrey of Vinsauf 51Geoffrey, son of Melusine 116Ghent, Henry of 63nGiddens, Anthony 63Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, first

duke of 4Glover, Christiana 88Godfrey of Bouillon 114Goldberg, P. J. P. 9Goldin, Simha 7Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage, The 85Goody, Esther 94nGornemant 106–07Gratian (Johannes Gratianus) 26nGravdal, Kathryn 48Gregory IX, pope 73Gregory of Tours 7, 11–12, 15–17 and n,

18–23Gregory the Great 15, 23Grundmann, Herbert 77Guidotus, son of Arguinus de

Osenago 82Guinevere 117, 119Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu 124 and nGuntram 22Guthlac, St 15, 19Guy of Warwick 51Hales, Sir Robert 71Halsall, Guy 7n, 13Havighurst, Robert 13Hay, Sir Gilbert 109Heffernan, Thomas 48Helgu Harðbeinsson 124Helyas, Knight of the Swan 114Henry VIII, king 6Hercules 102Hereford, earl of 66Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, sixth

earl of 113Hereford, John Trefnant, bishop of 63nHilton, Rodney 97Holbein, Hans, the younger 6Holland, John 5H›rða-Knútr 138Horn, king 102Hornby, Thomas de 94How the Good Man Taught His Son 104How the Good Wijf Tau�te Hir Dau�tir 95,

97, 104Howard, Katherine 50, 56Hrani 126Hunt, Isabel 50Hunt, John 50

142

Index

Iacobus of Milan 80–81Innes-Parker, Catherine 48Innocent III, pope 29, 74, 75Isaac Bar-Yehudah, rabbi 40–41Isaac ben Moses, rabbi, Or Zarua 40Isabella 90Isidore of Seville 15, 20James, Edward 7Jean d’Arras, Melusine 114–16Jesch, Judith 9Jesus 23Johannes of Verona 80–81John 90John the Baptist 5Jómsvíkinga saga 124Joseph, husband of the BVM 23Justinian, Digest 16Kaddish, the 41Kálfr Árnason 132–33‘Katherine Group’ 50Katherine, St 53Kay 103Kempe, Margery 85Keynes, Simon 137Knútr Sveinsson, king 9, 125 and n,

128–29, 130 and n, 131–32, 139Lady of the Lake, the 102, 108, 117Laertes 101–2, 116, 120Lancaster, John of Gaunt, first duke

of 5, 66Lancelot 103, 109, 117Langland, William, Piers Plowman 4Lavine 112, 119Laxdœla saga 124Lewis, Katherine J. 48Lisle, Lady 54Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing

116–17Llull, Ramon, The Book of the Order of

Chivalry 109, 110–11, 116Lucius III, pope 74Lydgate, John 59; ‘Legend of St

Margaret’ 49, 50–51, 55Madia 77–78, 82Magi, the 6Magnús Barelegs, king 123nMagnús the Good, king 9, 125, 131–39Malory, Sir Thomas 103, 106March, Edmund Mortimer, third earl

of 65March, Lady (Anne Stafford) 55Margaret, St 50, 58Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) 23Martin of Tours, St 17–18

Martinela, granddaughter of Tomardusde Tomardis 82

Mary, Blessed Virgin 53, 103Matthew of Vendôme 51Maximus of Riez, St 17Maximus, abbot of Chinon 19McClure, P. 86Meir ben Barukch of Rothenburg 29Melior 112, 114, 119Melusine (English version) 115 and nMishna, the 35, 37Mortimer, Anne, countess of

Cambridge 55Mortimer, Anne, lady March 50, 55Mortimer, Edmund, fifth earl of

March 4, 55Mowbray, Thomas, first duke of

Norfolk 4Myrc, John, Instructions for Parish

Priests 95Natana 110–12Nicetius, bishop of Lyons 18, 20–21Óláfr Haraldsson (St Óláfr), king 9,

125–30, 132, 136–37, 139Óláfr Tryggvason 125Olibrius 50Oosterwijk, Sophie 7nÓttarr the Black 126–28; Knútsdrapa 129,

130–31Pactus Legis Salicae 12Pappula, St 22Paschasius 52Paston, John III 57, 58Pastorella 102Patroclus, St 22, 23Patten, J. 88Paul the Deacon 21Paula 16Pearl 8, 61–71Penn, S. A. C. 92–93Perceval 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 116, 119Perenzoni, Ubertus 82Peter, St 52Phillips, Kim 8Plumpton, Dorothy 55Polonius 101, 105, 120Polvale family 77–78, 82Polvale, Ambrosinus 77, 82Polvale, Belfiore 77Polvale, Contisia 82Polvale, Paxinus 77, 82Poos, L. 86–90, 92, 94–96Pratt, William 104Prose Lancelot 108

143

Index

Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens 18Rachel 26Radegund, queen 19Rashi 37–38Ratis Raving 104Richard II (Richard of Bordeaux),

king 4–6, 8, 61–62, 64, 66–71Richard III, king 110Richard the Redeles 5Ridyard, Susan 137Robert de Blois, Beaudous 111–12Roman d’Eneas 112Rottenherring family 98Sale, Antoine de, Petit Jean de

Saintré 117–20Salih, Sarah 48Schaar, John 61Schepherde, Roger 90Schephyrd, John 94nScreffington, Elizabeth de 93Screffington, John de 93Scroll of Esther (the Megillah) 39Sefer Hasidim 32–34Sefer Kolbo 39Sefer Or Zarua 29Session, William 92Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the

Middle Ages 14Shakespeare, William 115n, 120; Hamlet

101, 120Shrewsbury, John Talbot, first earl

of 116Sigvatr 131, 137–38Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 108Sir Percyvell of Gales 106Smith, Richard 7nSmyth, John 91Smyth, William 91Snorri Sturluson 125–26, 131, 139Solomon ben Isaac 29Souden, D. 87Spaçamensa, domina Marca

(Martha) 79, 80–81, 84Spuret, Margery 93Stada 77–78, 82Stonor Elizabeth (Isabel) 55Strohm, Paul 59, 63n, 69

Sudbury, Simon, archbishop ofCanterbury 71

Suffolk, Elizabeth of York, secondduchess of 55

Suzo Bagutanus 74Sveinn Forkbeard, king 130Sveinn Knutsson, king 131, 133–34Swanson, Jenny 7nSwynhird, Clement 91Talmud, the 27, 29–30, 35–38, 40Ta-Shma, I. 27Tasioulas, Jackie 7nÞorkell 130nÞorleikr 124Tomardis, Filipina de 79, 82Tomardis, Guardinus de 79, 82Tomardis, Tomardus de 78–79, 82Tomardis, Tutabella de 78Tor 109Torah, the 34, 40Tosafists, the 37–38, 40Turnus 112Tyler, Wat 70–71Ugo 80–81Urian 115Vagn Ákason 124Venantius Fortunatus 19Vere, John de 56nVere, Lady Elizabeth de 50, 56Vere, Robert de 5Vitalis 80, 84Voaden, Rosalynn 7, 8Walsingham, Thomas 70–71Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp, twelfth

earl of 4Wernher der Gartenære, Helmbrecht 109Westminster, Monk of, Westminster

Chronicle 8, 65nWilliam of Palerne 102, 112–14Winstead, Karen A. 50, 53n, 57Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn 48, 57Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal 109Wyclif, John 62, 63nYacob ben Neir Tam, rabbi 39, 41Zanebellina 76Zanoni, Luigi 75–77, 79

144

Index

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS

God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries, Rosalyn Voaden (1999)Pilgrimage Explored, ed. J. Stopford (1999)Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire 1389–1547,David J. F. Crouch (2000)Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks and A.J. Minnis (2000)Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (2000)Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The DominicanPriory of Dartford, Paul Lee (2000)Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, Lesley A. Coote (2000)The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, P. J. P.Goldberg and W. M. Ormrod (2000)New Directions in later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 HarvardConference, ed. Derek Pearsall (2000)Cistercians, Heresy and Crusades in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vine-yard, Beverly Mayne Kienzle (2001)Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c. 1470–1550, KenFarnhill (2001)The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (2001)Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod (2001)The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300, ed.Martin Carver (2002)Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. Gwilym Dodd andDouglas Biggs (2003)

York Studies in Medieval Theology

I Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (1997)II Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis

(1998)III Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler

(2001)IV Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller

(2002)

York Manuscripts Conference

Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications ofManuscript Study, ed. Derek Pearsall (1983) [Proceedings of the 1981 York Manu-scripts Conference]Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature, ed. DerekPearsall (1987) [Proceedings of the 1985 York Manuscripts Conference]

Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis(1989) [Proceedings of the 1987 York Manuscripts Conference]Regionalism in Late-Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays celebrating the publicationof ‘A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English’, ed. Felicity Riddy (1991) [Proceed-ings of the 1989 York Manuscripts Conference]Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle,ed. A. J. Minnis (1994) [Proceedings of the 1991 York Manuscripts Conference]Prestige, Authority and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. FelicityRiddy (2000) [Proceedings of the 1994 York Manuscripts Conference]Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. J.Minnis (2001) [Proceedings of the 1996 York Manuscripts Conference]

youth in the middle ages (2004)

Documents