His father, Hugh Scot, was the one to find him and groaned and sighed in despair at the sight of his son’s body. In the account, the author, William of Canterbury, tells his readers that an eight-year-old boy named Phillip from Cheshire was looking at rocks by a lake, when he was overtaken by the current and drowned. My first encounter with medieval child death came when reading an excerpt from the miracle collection of Thomas Becket, the famous Archbishop of Canterbury who was assassinated in the twelfth century in England. “in some cases, public grief was used to indicate guilt” As a result, in some cases, public grief was used to indicate guilt. In my research, I argue that medieval authors portrayed women as grieving more publicly than men in order to stress the idea that they were responsible for keeping children safe around the domestic sphere. Child death accounts involving grief can give us an insight into not only perceptions of the dying process, but also into the lives of women in the Middle Ages and gendered expectations for parenting and mourning.
#Feudalism in the middle ages for kids manuals
Child death was so prevalent that warnings about hazards to children can be found in medical texts, priests’ manuals for midwives assisting in childbirth, miracle stories (i.e., biographies of holy figures that served as proof for their canonization) and, yes, even medieval lullabies.Īlthough many strides are being taken to understand emotional responses to child death in European medieval texts, studies on the implications that these responses had for gender roles remain sparse. People of the European Middle Ages witnessed a staggering number of child deaths, both in and around the household, as well as in the wider community. This excerpt from the fourteenth-century lullaby has a dark tone and underscores the idea that death lurks around every corner, ready to strike even the youngest members of society. Unlike the lullabies we think of today, medieval lyrics were not always meant to soothe the singer or recipient. With a gust to cast down the kin of Adam as he has done before…Ĭhild…your days are numbered, your travels planned,ĭeath shall happen to you with bitter misery in your breast. You wander in this treacherous world, look ahead!
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