Works of historical synthesis are valued highly by the general reader, who prefers seamless overviews of the past. Free from the debates and quarrels of historians, such works seem to tell people "what happened". Similarly, these kinds of works can be useful to introduce students to some aspect of life in the past or to summarize research findings. Syntheses, however, are also fraught with problems and dangers. The search for generalizations and the process of smoothing contradictions and debates can result in a work wanting in analysis and perhaps even one that is less than faithful to the period. This little volume on children in the Middle Ages falls victim to many of the insufficiencies and pitfalls associated with historical synthesis. Students and general readers will be attracted by the work's brevity (only 138 pages of text) and its clear narrative. Scholars, however, are likely to find this a problematic summary of research on medieval children.
The problems associated with this book begin on the first page of the introduction where the authors frame their discussion against the now badly dated work of Philippe Aries. Certainly, Aries is rightly credited with directing the attention of medievalists to questions about children and childhood, but it scarcely seems necessary, some forty years later, to continue to measure the field against Aries's early and flawed intervention. Surely, the study of medieval children and childhood can now stand on its own. This would be a minor quibble, however, if the subsequent discussion were less eccentric.
The book is divided into two roughly chronological sections. Part One, by Didier Lett, is entitled "The Child in Christendom: Fifth - Thirteenth Centuries". Part Two, "The Child in Society: Twelfth - Early Sixteenth Centuries" is the work of Daniele Alexandre-Bidon. The two sections are separated by eight black and white illustrations taken from the margins of the Bodleian Library's manuscript Bodley 264. Other materials include a brief preface by the distinguished historian Pierre Riche, a Select Bibliography, a Glossary, an Index, and some fifteen pages of endnotes. The notes contain many more, and arguably more useful, sources than appear in the Select Bibliography.
The division of the book into two sections, and the titles of those sections, reflect the perspectives that dominate the volume. The early Middle Ages are cast in a much more religious light than the later period, which is presented as anticipating modern secularism. Thus, in the world prior to 1200, the church and ecclesiastical values are portrayed as pervasive. Then, in the thirteenth century, secular values and the urban market appear to have supplanted the rural and religious values of an earlier time. There is an attempt to examine children in their various contexts and experiences. Education, religious life, and the family frame the discussion of the early period, while work and apprenticeship and urban and castle life tend to dominate the later period.
There are a number of other aspects of this book that render it perplexing. For example, the inclusion of a Glossary suggests a book intended for the non-specialist. Such medieval terms as 'hagiography', 'illumination', and 'wergeld' are explained briefly (although the use of exclusively masculine language could leave the impression that the wergeld pertained only to men), while other, highly specialized terms, such as 'endogenous' and 'exogenous' causes of mortality, are passed over without comment or explanation. Similarly, one must question the use of the term 'equitation' in such a general, introductory work.
Other infelicities are more directly related to the process of translation from French into English. For example, all too frequently a person's name appears in some places in French and in other places it is anglicized, so that Gregoire and Gregory are used interchangeably. Other names are left in their French form, for example Pepin le Bref, which could leave them unrecognized by an exclusively English reader. The Selected Bibliography is even more bewildering. The standard English versions for works are not listed, for example, Aries's Centuries of Childhood is notably absent, as is Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber's Tuscans and Their Families. These works are only listed in their French-language versions. Yet, in this English translation, it is the French translation of John Boswell's Kindness of Strangers which appears in the Bibliography. It is difficult to know where to lay the responsibility for the consistent appearance of "Sienna", whether on the translator or the copy editor. Also problematic is the repeated use throughout Chapter One of the term "high Middle Ages" to refer to the sixth through eighth centuries.
Other difficulties stem more directly from the authors themselves. For example, the inclusion of Benvenuto Cellini and Michel de Montaigne is no doubt justified by the temporal boundaries of the study. However, even if it is defensible to extend the influence of some medieval ideas, values, customs, and characteristics into the sixteenth century -- as frequently happens in discussions of aspects of social history -- it is more problematic to use such epitomes of humanism and Renaissance culture as Cellini and Montaigne, as examples of the endurance of the distinctly medieval.
There are many other issues that undermine the reliability of the work as a whole. For example, Lett argues that the clergy criticized and rejected children generally because they were not parents themselves and did not really know or understand children. This assertion, sufficiently problematic as a generalization, is supported by a quotation from Heloise's famous anti-matrimonial disquisition contained in Abelard's "Letter to a Friend". While it might be possible to use these words of a wife and mother to support the conclusion, this needs to be demonstrated carefully.
Given the numerous problems associated with this book, general readers, students, and scholars would do well to consult other works on medieval children and childhood. Both Shulamith Shahar's Childhood in the Middle Ages and Barbara Hanawalt's Growing Up in Medieval London manage to be both accessible and authoritative.