Finding Childhood in Medieval Europe
The Medieval period is big — like really big. Medieval Europe occurred from about 500 to 1500 CE — that’s over 1,000 years. Given the changes to childhood and child-rearing seen in just the twentieth century, to say that childhood was the same from the 6th to 16th centuries is, well…not quite right. Granted, they did not have Facebook and mass publishers telling parents what to do, but cultural traditions were not rigid for a straight 1,000 years.
Even so, there are some things that become evident when looking at the wide variety of evidence we have on Medieval childhoods. So, in general, what was life like for European children during these 1,000 years?
Archaeology and Art
Most of what we know comes from cobbling together a bunch of sources: archaeology, demography, family documents like correspondence, and studying Medieval literature, art, and religion.
Archaeology gives us a more positive view of childhood. Toys are one big category of artifacts found from the Medieval period. For example, this toy knight found along the River Thames in London was made around 1300. It is a cast-pewter figure and one of the earliest examples of mass-produced metal toys. One of several toys found in archaeological excavations in London, it shows there was a thriving mass market for children’s toys in the medieval period. Like toys today, children who played with this likely had their own slang, games, and pretend to go along with it. Toys also show us that children were cared for — adults made them toys, bought them toys, and let them play with toys, much like parents do today.
Art is another source for learning about childhood dress and activities. But art featuring children is fairly scarce. Most images we would consider to be of children are actually religious iconography, like the fat adult-looking Baby Jesuses. Seriously, such fat squishy babies. A bit creepy, too. But looking at the borders of illuminated manuscripts, you might find allusions like this one: children playing war in the streets on stick hobby horses with toy lances.
Portraits were a relatively late development for Medieval Europe, and nearly all of them are of royal or noble children. These royal portraits are commissioned for specific purposes, meaning they are more like propaganda than reality — portraits were used to solidify a future ruler’s power or were used to show potential suitors what a fine match the child was going to be. So, we must take what we see with a grain of salt and remember that most of what is shown in art is from the upper levels of society.
Demographics and Written Sources
But Medieval childhood had a darker side. Demography — the study of births and deaths — is one way of seeing this. In some studies, scholars have found that nearly one-quarter — that’s 25% — of children died before reaching the age of one. Another 12% to 18% died before the age of nine. The chances of reaching adulthood were almost the same as not reaching adulthood.
Coroner’s inquests are one of the most important sources for understanding how perilous the Medieval world was, especially for children. Coroners were required by law to attend deaths and record their circumstances, so their inquests are many and broad — a unique source that gives us an in-depth look at Medieval life across all social classes. In looking at the inquests as a whole, a few patterns emerge. One is the activities that children engaged in — including ones that got them killed. In infancy, up to about age 3, most children died within the home — their activities are listed as following their mothers, being near the cradle, or imitating adults through pretend play. After infancy, children were more active — their deaths come more from “play-acting” within and outside the home, or from actively helping their mothers with daily chores. Deaths included pulling hot pots off trivets, playing with knives, falling into wells or ditches, or having accidents while outside playing. After age 7, though, these accidents are more in line with adult activities — children died while completing chores or working outside with their parents.
But the chances of dying young did not mean parents cared any less. For a long time, scholars thought “Oh, the kids die young…so the parents didn’t invest much in them.” This view distorted studies of childhood — making it seem like ‘childhood’ was a relatively recent ‘invented’ time period of life. In fact, Medieval scholars — and society — recognized distinct phases of childhood: part of the “ages of man,” these included Infancy (birth to age 7) as a time of growth, Childhood (ages 7 to 14) as a time of play, and Adolescence (age 14 to puberty or marriage) as one of intensive development in preparation for adult life.
While what age childhood ends at has varied, the dim view demography gives us does not mean children are loved any less than they are today. In fact, looking at Medieval literature — especially diaries or letters written by parents — reveals how deeply parents loved their children. One example comes from Pearl, a poem by an anonymous English man living in the 14th century. The poem focuses on the loss of his daughter, stating in part,
“My breast swells and burns painfully
Yet there was no song that seemed so sweet
But then my thoughts ran free
To think her color so clad in dirt
O Earth! You have marred her purity
My special pearl without a spot.”
Calling his daughter the “pearl,” this father completely adores his child, his praises making the child’s death more poignant. Later in the poem, the father states that even though he knows to seek comfort in Christ (as per his religion), he cannot get the “wretched sorrow” to go away. Though scholars tend to focus on the poem’s spiritual meaning, for studies of childhood, the pain of parental grief could scarce be clearer.
Other examples come from journals by parents such as Anne Clifford and John Dee, which historian Linda Pollock found included mentions of children’s first words, the need for discipline or guidance, and having to hire baby-sitters when parents needed to travel away from home.
These literary examples become more pronounced as we move into the Late Medieval and Renaissance periods when advice manuals on childrearing began to be published. Many advised parents to be kind to their children, but to avoid being overly indulgent. Sounds like today, right?
Grave Goods
Such love is also seen in grave goods found with children. Though it can be very hard to study early Medieval childhood — from 500 to about 1100 — burials from the time show two key facts: (1) children born with physical deformities could grow up and were cared for (thus disproving a long-held view that deformities equaled infanticide), and (2) children who died were deeply mourned. Graves can also reveal a lot of unexpected facts, including ones that refute centuries of thinking about the Medieval period as the ‘dark ages.’ (It totally was not dark, by the way.)
Take, for example, a double burial found in Frankfurt in 1992. These two children were buried in a single coffin underneath what is now a cathedral. Around 700, this land was inhabited by the Franks, ruled by the Merovingian dynasty from the mid-400s to 751. The Merovingians were the most powerful dynasty in Europe at the time and were converting indigenous populations to Christianity. But in the 700s, they faced repeated invasions from Viking invaders who brought Scandinavian culture to the region and ultimately helped end the Merovingian’s rule.
Did I lose you there? Possibly — but those facts are a bit important.
According to the final reports from archaeologists, the children were both around 4 years old when they died between 700 and 730. Both were girls. One was a girl dressed in a tunic and shawl commonly worn by Merovingian nobility, and she was adored with gold, silver, bronze, and precious stone jewelry. Based on her dress and jewelry, scholars determined she was Christian. The other child was the cremated remains of a 4 year old, held in a bearskin sack along with bear claws and other animal bones, which is in line with Scandinavian Nomadic traditions of the time. The graves were highly honored — so much that over 100 years after their burial, the chapel constructed above the grave also aligned directly with it.
So why were these children so important that an entire cathedral was built to be aligned with their grave?
That’s a question plaguing scholars. But the remains do tell us a unique story: Around the time of burial, somewhere between 700 and 730, these two children died — likely at the same time. Perhaps during a raid? They were buried together — a sign that these two cultures — the Merovingian nobles and the immigrating or invading Scandinavian nomads (possibly Vikings!) were meeting, interacting, and living together in some way. They were also both buried with a fine attention to detail: the grave goods found mean that there were people — probably their families — who cared for these children and wanted to honor the lives they had led. The double burial confirms what we already know, and leaves questions that make us wonder just how important children might have been in during this clash of cultures.
Summarizing Medieval European Childhood
So between archaeology, art, demography, and burials, we’ve seen quite a bit about childhood. Daily life for children was different — but it not necessarily that different from today. Once children got past the initial 40% or so chance of dying as a toddler, they grew up learning cultural traditions. Slowly, children made their way from primarily being in the home and near their cradles to participating in daily household life alongside their parents. Eventually, children would even begin learning skills or a trade in preparation for adulthood. While education and exact tasks varied by gender, class, country, and century, these patterns are roughly like childhood today: we spend much of our infancy at home with parents, our toddler and early childhood years with our parents but gradually exploring the world, and later childhood playing outside with other children, helping with chores, and learning skills for our adult lives.
As all this evidence shows, Medieval childhood was a rich and varied life. We have touched on mostly similarities — and some differences — but truly, this is just scratching the surface. Medieval European childhood is a topic still being explored today, with scholars finally paying more attention to how important the formative childhood years — as defined by the ‘ages of man’ and, later, the Catholic Church — were in Medieval Europe. As Nicholas Orme of the University of Exeter stated in his summation of medieval childhood,
“Most of what we associate with childhood, however, existed for children in the middle ages: upbringing at home, play, special treatment according to age, and training for adult life and work. The concentration of historians on adults in the middle ages does insufficient justice to the fact that about one third of the population was usually under the age of 14.”
Sources
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index — Frankfort Girl
“Childhood in Medieval England” by Nicholas Orme
“Child Death, Grief, and the Community in High and Late Medieval England” by Danielle N. Griego, dissertation in fulfillment of PhD, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2018.
“Child Death and Parental Mourning in the Middle Ages” by Danielle Griego, 2019.
“Mystery of Medieval Child Grave in Frankfort” on Archaeology News Network, 2015.
From Dark to Light: Heroines of the Medieval and Renaissance exhibition by Girl Museum. Notably, read “Girlhood in Depth: Life in Medieval England” on the types of sources that help us understand Medieval girlhood.
Karen Lyon, “How much has parenting actually changed since Shakespeare’s time?” May 5, 2017.
Video, “Girls and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s Renaissance” with Prof. Deanne Williams.
