1st Edition

Childhood in History Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Edited By Reidar Aasgaard, Cornelia Horn Copyright 2018
    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    400 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings – each of us – human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.



    1. Introduction


    2. Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru





    3. Roots of character and flowers of virtues: a philosophy of childhood in Plato’s Republic




    4. Malin Grahn-Wilder





    5. Aristotle on children and childhood




    6. Hallvard J. Fossheim





    7. Roman conceptions of childhood: the modes of family commemoration and academic prescription




    8. W. Martin Bloomer





    9. Greco-Roman pediatrics




    10. Patricia Baker





    11. Ancient Jewish traditions: Moses’ infancy and the remaking of biblical Miriam in Antiquity




    12. Hagith Sivan





    13. Slave children in the first-century Jesus movement




    14. Marianne Bjelland Kartzow





    15. Aspects of childhood in second- and third-century Christianity: the case of Clement of Alexandria




    16. Henny Fiskå Hägg





    17. Children and childhood in Neoplatonism




    18. Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson





    19. Childhood in 400 CE: Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine on children and their formation




    20. Reidar Aasgaard





    21. Children in Oriental Christian and Greek hagiography from the early Byzantine world (ca. 400–800 CE)




    22. Cornelia Horn





    23. "Pour out the blood and remove the evil from him": The creation of a ritual of birth (‘aqīqa) in Islam in the eighth century




    24. Mohammed Hocine Benkheira





    25. Conceptions of children and youth in Carolingian capitularies




    26. Valerie L. Garver





    27. Children and youth in monastic life: Western Europe 400–1250




    28. Brian Patrick McGuire





    29. Childhood in middle and late Byzantium: ninth to fifteenth centuries




    30. Alice-Mary Talbot





    31. New Perspectives on parent-

    Biography

    Reidar Aasgaard is professor of intellectual history at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published numerous books and articles on the New Testament, early Christianity, Christian Apocrypha, Augustine, and children and the family in antiquity. He is director of the research project "Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe".



    Cornelia Horn is full professor of Christian Oriental studies at the Martin-Luther-University in Halle, Germany. She has published extensively in the fields of religion, literature, history, and society in the Mediterranean world, focusing in particular on women, children, extracanonical traditions, interreligious relations, and Syriac and Arabic Christianity.



    Oana Maria Cojocaru earned her PhD degree in intellectual history (Byzantine studies) at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her doctoral thesis, which is part of the research project "Tiny Voices from the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe", deals with representations of children and childhood in medieval Byzantine hagiography.