Child Care and Child Abuse in Early Medieval Europe

JEROME KROLL, M.D., AND BERNARD BACHRACH, PH.D.

The concern about widespread abuse of children in modern Western society has led
historians and health care professionals to examine the past for evidence of similar abusive
practices. The expectation has been that the past, especially the Middle Ages, will reveal
even worse attitudes and practices toward children. Our research, based upon an analysis
of care given to sick children in early medieval Europe, suggests that considerable attention,
effort, and expense were devoted to seeking help for sick and crippled children. At the same
time, there is no body of evidence to sustain the notion of widespread child abuse during
these Dark Ages of Western civilization.
Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychhtv, 25,4562368,1986.

The landmark article by Kempe et al. (1962), which
forced into our consciousness the modem epidemic of
child abuse and neglect, moved pediatricians, child
psychiatrists, and child welfare workers to consult the
history books in order to discover how children in
earlier and more primitive societies were treated. The
virtual absence of serious historical studies on children
in general and the problem of child abuse in particular
prior to the 19th century has now been remedied.
Indeed, during the past two decades, the general
thrust of both the scholarly and popular treatment of
childhood in the Middle Ages, with a few exceptions
that have not been given great attention, has been to
emphasize abuse, neglect, abandonment, and infanti-
cide (Bakan, 1971; Heins, 1984; Robin, 1981; Smith,
1975; Solomon, 1973). Two grand designs have served
to inform this enterprise: Aries’ (1962) thesis that the
notion of childhood as a developmental phase distinct
from adulthood was not conceptualized until after the
Middle Ages, and DeMause’s theories, published in
book form in 1974 and echoed frequently in later
articles in the History of Childhood Quarterly which
he founded in 1973, that Western society has under-
gone distinct modes in its concepts of childhood and
its actual child rearing practices, beginning with in-
fanticide (ancient Greeks and Romans), progressing
upward toward abandonment (medieval) and intru-
siveness (17th century), and finally evolving to our
more enlightened helping mode (mid-20th century).
The prominence of Aries’ L ’Enfantet la vie familale
s o u l’ancien regime inspired medievalists to examine
his thesis, “in medieval society the idea of childhood
Received for publication Feb. 15, 1985.
Reprints may be requested from Dr. Kroll, Box 393 Mayo, Uni-
versity of Minnesota Hospitals, Minneapolis, MN 55455.
OOO2-7138/86/2504-0562 $02.00/00 1986 by the American Acad-
emy of Child Psychiatry.
562
did not exist,” in detail. After two decades of scholarly
research (DeMaitre, 1977; Forsythe, 1976; Kroll, 1977;
McLaughlin, 1974), Aries’ grand thesis has been un-
dermined, but it has spun off tangents that offer even
greater distortions of the Middle Ages than did the
original idea. The scholarly rebuttal, based upon re-
search data largely in Latin and often published in
relatively obsure journals that are not generally read
by physicians or even historians of medicine, has not
succeeded in capturing the popular imagination as had
Aries’ more spectacular, although unsound claims.
Starting with Aries’ conclusions that children received
no special recognition or care qua children, and adding
to it the common though largely unjustified perception
of the Middle Ages as a long period of unrelieved
obscurantism and brutality, readers are propelled to-
ward the conclusion that infants and children, being
the most helpless members of medieval society, must
have been, to a greater extent than in our progressive
society, victimized in a most brutal fashion. This case
is secured for the naive reader with a few adroitly
selected anecdotes.
DeMause (1974) enlarged Aries’ grand thesis into
an even grander design, corresponding to a Whiggish
notion that the history of mankind is one of inexorable
progress. This is linked to his psychohistorical thesis
that infants and children of all eras have suffered from
the unconscious hostility of parents directed toward
their offspring. DeMause asserts that these children,
in turn, grow up to have unconscious hostility, based
upon their own experience with their aggressive par-
ents, toward their children, and so this cycle is per-
petuated through the generations of mankind. Accord-
ing to DeMause, the story of civilization is the progress
which societies achieve in controlling, subjugating,
 CHILD CARE AND CHILD ABUSE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
and finally “sublimating”this almost instinctual hos-
tility between generations.
Despite the fundamental difficulty in developing
compelling evidence to sustain these characteriza-
tions, DeMause has found substantial sympathy from
workers in the field of child abuse who, in turn, find
their educational and legislative tasks greatly
strengthened by “discoveries” that all societies have
resisted attempts to protect children from parental
viciousness. These “discoveries” have fit in so per-
fectly with present attempts to reform heinous social
practices toward children that there has been little
incentive to examine the historical evidence upon
which the generalizations are based.
Historical evidence does not support either sweep-
ing claims for brutality and indifference to children in
early medieval Europe or more simplistic notions
which stigmatize the childrearing practices of entire
civilizations. Indeed, it has been seen that the “same”
society may treat children differently as economic
conditions fluctuate (deVries, 1984). As sociobiological
theory would predict, for example, infanticide may
have increased in the Middle Ages during famine years
and decreased during the post-plague years of 1350-
1400 when there was a great shortage of farm laborers
(Dickeman, 1975). In this vein, an account of the
terrible famine in the Loire valley from 1031-1034
describes both the norm of tenderness and concern of
parents in raising children and the devastating effect
of extended starvation upon this relationship. This
famine reduced people to eating such things as mice,
dogs, green twigs and tree roots, and sent large crowds
of starving men, women, and children wandering over
the countryside in a mad search for food. As Andre of
Fleury (Les miracles de Saint Benoit, 1853), an 11th
century contemporary, observes, some parents were
said to have killed and eaten their children:
At the height of such calamity . . . the sweet delicate
children who nursed at the breast ... in the midst of their
meals were slaughtered by the impious hands of their par-
ents, whose disordered minds with menacing eyes and
threatening faces did not fear to stuff themselves with this
superlative feast.
Andre makes it clear that parents who did such
things, even under these dire circumstances, had be-
come deranged by their physical condition and mental
stress. The text leaves no doubt which is the norm
and which the aberration, nor is its obvious sarcasm
sparing in its condemnation of the parents’ actions.
Furthermore, when one looks toward the phenom-
enal growth in population of medieval Europe (Geni-
cot, 1964; Krause, 1957; Russell, 1958, 1965; Titow,
1961)despite a natural infant mortality rate of at least
30-40% (Hollingsworth, 1969; Kelly and Snedden,
1960; WHO, 1973), it seems highly unlikely on the
563
face of it that the surviving children, who carried the
promise of the future, were the specific targets for
society’s aggressions, frustrations, and neurotic con-
flicts. Rather, it may be suggested that such assump-
tions of widespread brutality toward children may well
reflect the well-ingrained prejudice concerning vir-
tually anything Medieval. Indeed DeMause’s grand
design, as medievalists have shown, is but a recent
manifestation of this orientation which tends to sup-
port the needs of many health care professionals and
lobbyists who have looked to “historians with a con-
science” to provide a usable past.
A Hypothesis Reexamined
The general thesis for which confirmatory, sup-
portive, or contradictory evidence must be sought is
as follows:
In the Middle Ages, children were treated poorly. They
were generally given none of the special care, consideration,
and attention which modem society considers essential for
normal child development. Furthermore, children were the
object of widespread neglect, abuse, abandonment, and mur-
der (via infanticide and lethal neglect).
What is the evidence to support this general thesis
which informs the historical comments found in med-
ical textbooks and journals? Many serious scholars,
while accepting the broad outline of the abuse and
infanticide thesis, acknowledge that the picture has
been built upon fragmentary evidence because of the
consensus that children are poorly documented in the
medieval sources. Herlihy (1978) stated that for the
pre-Crusade era we must rely principally on law codes,
penitentials, and theological commentaries which are
presumed to represent norms of some sort. More re-
cently Arnold (1980) has argued that there is insuffi-
cient evidence to prove widespread infanticide, much
less other forms of child abuse. Ende (1983) concurs
with Arnold but nevertheless appears to feel that the
early Middle Ages should not be exempted from the
universal conclusion that infanticide and child abuse
were widespread phenomena throughout all periods of
history.
Despite this general assumption that there is a
scarcity of evidence about medieval childhood, there
remains, in fact, a relative abundance of largely un-
tapped material in various genres of narrative sources
which even permit a rough type of quantitative eval-
uation. In light of a sample of these generally neglected
source materials, it will be suggested here that the
prevailing view of treatment of medieval children, and
more particularly, of those who were at grave risk due
to illness, conforms more closely to our contemporary
view of how such children should be treated than to
the stereotype suggested by Aries, DeMause, and sub-
sequent writers.
564 J. KROLL AND B. BACHRACH
We have chosen to look at sick children as a “worst
case” example; that is, if child abuse were endemic in
medieval Europe, one would expect this phenomenon
to be seen most glaringly in the treatment of sick
children: those suffering from birth defects, the crip-
pled, the blind, and the damaged, all of whom could
be expected to contribute less to the productivity and
security of a family. Since access to medical care was
difficult and the general effectiveness of medical care
was not likely to inspire confidence in those respon-
sible for the welfare of children, the vulnerability of
sick children and the statistical likelihood that they
would perish-a likelihood that the medieval parent
would not be able to quantify but surely understood
on the basis of life’s experiences-might be thought
to militate strongly against parental efforts to secure
treatment for their sick children. We suggest that if
significant efforts were made in a quantitative sense
to seek relief for sick children, then the focus in
understanding the care of children should be placed
toward the positive rather than upon largely undocu-
mented allegations of rampant child abuse, abandon-
ment, and infanticide. We further suggest that an
index of how medieval parents felt toward their chil-
dren can be developed in relation to the efforts they
made and the costs they incurred to protect the weak-
est and most vulnerable among them.
Method
There are three major methodological problems to
consider in investigating the question: how were sick
children treated in medieval Europe? The first is to
designate, and to some extent, delimit, the temporal
and geographical boundaries of the subject matter.
The second is the selection of sources, since there is
no single collection of early medieval material focused
primarily upon infants and children. The third is to
obtain a sufficiently large sample of cases in order to
eliminate or attenuate the potential bias that may be
present in any single source and to avoid the technique
of “proof by anecdote,”which so obviously lacks meth-
odological soundness.
We have chosen to restrict our sources to pre-
Crusade (pre-1100) England and the Frankish king-
doms, encompassing the so-called Dark Ages of the
1000-year medieval period. We have restricted our
inquiry to narrative sources (saint’s lives and chroni-
cles). These sources contain much incidental material
about childhood and child-rearing practices. Our find-
ing that between 15 and 20% of miracle cures concern
children brought for medical care indicates that this
cannot have been a practice that was out of the
ordinary. The purpose of hagiography was to tell a
believable story for the glory of the saint, and if care
for sick children were unusual, the credibility of the
tale would be undermined.
Although the population of sick children who are
described in the biographies of saints is obviously not
a random sample of sick children in pre-Crusade Eu-
rope, there is little reason to believe that we cannot
obtain a reasonably accurate picture of some aspects
of childhood illnesses and care in the early Middle
Ages from such sources. Although many of the ill-
nesses are mentioned primarily to record a very com-
plicated social pattern of religious and secular values
(which we will discuss later), the actual descriptions
of the symptoms and signs of the children’s illnesses
are often naturalistic and accurate. Thus, our hagio-
graphic and chronicle sources are adequate to develop
a reasonably good idea of the range of illnesses de-
scribed in children, the behaviors of those caring for
sick children, the types of treatments or interventions,
and the outcomes of the illnesses.
In a sense, the incidental nature of most of the
references to childhood illnesses seems to provide
some confidence that the medieval authors have not
intentionally or systematically distorted the technical
details of the presentation, progress, or outcome of the
illnesses, even if the choice of what was presented may
on occasion be politically or religiously motivated.
Thus the anonymous author of the 8th century Liber
Historiu Francorurn (1973) may have a religious point
to make in mentioning that one of Clovis’ newborn
sons succumbed to an illness shortly after baptism,
but we can accept the fact of the neonatal death
independently of doctrinal disputes.
Finally, although general categories of illnesses (e.g.,
paralysis, traumatic injuries, dysentery, plague, mad-
ness) can be recognized by their descriptions, these
medieval authors overwhelmingly appear medically
naive insofar as there is no reason to believe that they
are committed to a particular medical doctrine, such
as the humoral theory, which might bias their descrip-
tions of illnesses in a systematic way. On the other
hand, neither is there evidence that they are commit-
ted to doctrines of sin and punishment as the causal
factors of mental or physical diseases (Kroll and Bach-
rach, 1984).
We reviewed 22 saints’ lives, 5 secular biographies,
and 5 chronicles. These were not preselected to sup-
port our viewpoint, but are part of a larger survey of
medical and psychiatric conditions in early medieval
Europe. We extracted for examination all references
to sick children and tabulated these along a number
of parameters. The broad categories are demographic,
medical, and parental behavior (the latter an index of
effort expended in seeking treatment for the sick
child).
Determination of gender and broad social class are
relatively straightforward. Ages of children are rarely
 CHILD CARE AND CHILD ABUSE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 565
given. We used the conventions of language as set TABLE 1
forth in the 7th century by Isidore of Seville (1964), Episodes of Childhood Illnesses in Pre-Crusade Sources“
whose work provided the basic guide on this topic Illnesses in
All Percentage
throughout the Middle Ages: infans, birth to age 7; Source Illnesses Illnesses
Mentioned in Children
puer et puella, ages 7-14; adolescens, ages 14-28. The
medical data are classified much as described in the Arnulf 1 9 11
Berarius 2 5 40
sources. We have not tried to superimpose modern Bertuinus 1 3 33
diagnoses upon the data, except for purposes of broad Jonas: Columbanus 2 9 22
categorizations. For example, a description is provided Adamnan: Columba 1 20 5
in Bede’s History of the English Church and People Anon: Cuthbert 7 15 47
(1974) of a young nun, daughter of the abbess, who Bede: Cuthbert 2 21 10
Walafrid Gall 6 27 22
had recently been bled in the arm. Within a few days RudolE Leoba 1 4 25
the arm was painful and swollen, and the young girl Romaricus 2 3 67
was very ill and likely to die. She is cured by the Walaricus 2 11 18
ministrations of St. John of Beverly. We classified Eddius: Wilfrid 1 10 10
Aldegunda 1 4 25
this illness as an infection, although the text does not Corbinianus 1 6 17
literally refer to it as such (Book V, p. 3). Bede: Historia 10 38 26
The area which required the greatest subjective Flodoard: Annals 2 21 7
judgment was estimating what we termed “index of Gregory: Historia 18 92 20
effort.” By this construct we hope to give some meas- Liber Hist Francorum 4 13 31
ure of the effort expended by caregivers in attempting Totals 64 317b 20
to obtain treatment for the child. We examined such ’References available upon request.
indices as whether a physician was sought, the number * In addition, there were 14 sources which described 54 cases of
of shrines visited, the costs of traveling to the shrines, illnesses in adults, but none in children. If we add these 54 cases to
the 317 cases listed above, we arrive at N = 371. Of this total, 64
and obligations the parents might incur in asking a cases (17%) are of childhood illnesses.
holy man or woman to intervene on behalf of their
child. TABLE 2
Gender, Age, and Social Class of Sample (N= 64)
Results
Sample Male Female Total
Sixty-four episodes of illnesses in children are men- Age
tioned in the source material. Eight of the saints’ lives, Under 2 9 0 10’
five secular biographies, and one chronicle make no 2-14 17 6 23
reference to children’s illnesses and are not further Over 14 8 1 9
Unknown age 10 12 22
discussed in this article. There are a total of 371 Total 44(70%) 19(30%) 63
references to all illnesses (adult and childhood) in the Social class
sources. Thus 17% (64/371) of the reported illnesses Nobility 18 3 21
occur in children. Table 1 presents the number of Clerical 5 5 10
cases described in each source. Other (town, peasant) 15 4 20”
Unknown 6 7 13
Table 2 presents the data on age, gender, and social Total 44 19 64
class. There were 44 boys and 19 girls. The gender of The gender of the single case of infanticide is not given in the
the one case of infanticide is not given in the text. text. The infant was born to a “begger-girl.”
There is some indication of age for 75% of the boys
and slightly less than 50% of the girls. All the illnesses not fatal. Overall, 16 (25%) of the 64 sick children
in babies under age 2 are in reference to boys. Al- died, 14 of the fatalities occurring in boys.
though approximately 50% of the children are from Table 4 presents an index of effort made on behalf
the nobility or clergy (often both), the other 50% are of the sick child. The categories are not mutually
descriptions of illnesses in the children of townspeople exclusive; a child may be represented under several
and peasants. categories. There was no information for many cases,
Table 3 presents the data on diagnoses, gender, and whereas in others the child may have taken sick and
mortality. Thirteen children were mad or possessed, 9 died before help could be sought. In slightly over half
were crippled or paralyzed, 9 had fever or infections, the cases (53%),the parents either brought the sick
6 had dysentery, and 4 had plague. Dysentery was child to a holy man or shrine or the holy man was
fatal in all cases, plague in 3 of 4 cases, and fever or requested to travel to the child. The distance traveled
infection in 22% of cases. Most other conditions were varied from a short walk across town to an arduous
566 J. KROLL AND B. BACHRACH
TABLE 3
Diugnoses and gender
Diagnosis Male Female Total No. of Deaths Percent Mortality
Plague 4 0 4 3 75
Dysentery 6 0 6 6 100
Fever, infection 8 1 9 2 22
Dying, unspecified 10 5 15 4 27
Injury 2 0 2 - -
Blindness 0 3 3 - -
Mutism 2 0 2 - -
Crippled, paralyzed 6 3 9 - -
Mad/Possessed 6 7 13 - -
Infanticide 0 0 1” 1 100
Totals 44 9 64 16 25
a Gender not given in text.

journey, or in a sense, a pilgrimage, of several hundred
kilometers. This will be discussed more fully in the
next section.
Discussion
The purpose of this paper is to examine the question
of how were sick children treated in the Middle Ages.
Phrased as an inquiry of the dominant theory, it would
be: What is the evidence that children were abused,
neglected, and murdered on a large scale in the Middle
Ages, and what is the evidence to the contrary?
We have strongly emphasized that any useful an-
swers to these questions must depend upon the valid-
ity of the methodology employed. The usual method,
which seems to rely upon the selection of a few horrible
examples of child abuse, taken out of context and
interpreted as the norm, is of dubious validity. It is
also our position that no positive conclusions should
be drawn from sources that provide no information.
Some scholars would perhaps suggest that silence is
significant (Kellum, 1974). At this point in our re-
search, we are not persuaded. Thus the goals of this
paper are both to demonstrate that source material for
a study of early medieval childhood is available for at
least quantitative analysis, and to suggest some spe-
cific answers to the questions posed above.
Much of the data are fairly clear: more male than
female children are described; male children have a
higher mortality rate than female; although the chil-
dren of the nobility are represented disproportionately
to their presumed percentage of the population, there
is considerable attention paid to illnesses in the chil-
dren of townspeople and peasants; dysentery and
plague have a high mortality in children. Although
each of these observations could serve as a starting
point for a detailed discussion of some specific aspect
of medieval child care, we will confine our remarks to
the concept of an index of effort as a way of measuring
parental concern for their children.
There are many ways of measuring the efforts which
parents undertake to obtain care for their sick chil-
dren. This method of judging parental concern has the
advantage that it is based upon parental behavior, not
verbal expressions of concern. It is true that parental
solicitude may have been motivated by other than love
for the child, concerns such as dynastic survival, for-
mation of political alliances through marriage, and
shortage of labor. The divining of parental motivation,
however, is problematic in all cultures and is beyond
the scope of this paper. Therefore we are proposing
that an index of effort based upon manifest behavior
can serve as a heuristic tool for an examination of
early medieval child care.
The first thing to note is that there are direct and
indirect costs to be tallied in an index of effort. Direct
costs are theoretically measurable, if sufficient infor-
mation is available. Direct costs could be calculated
in money, goods, land, and labor or loss of labor. A
gift of money (gold or silver) may be promised or given
in return for a cure, or resources may be expended
directly in bringing a child to a shrine. Similarly, a
donation of goods (candle wax, linen, hides, grain,
cattle, iron or other metals) or land may be made in
return for a cure. A more difficult computation would
involve the costs of transporting a sick child to a
distant shrine. Thus even a journey to a shrine 50 or
60 kilometers away (a long trip to strange territory,
TABLE 4
Index of Effort to Obtain H e b for Sick Child (N= 641”
Action Taken Male Female Total
Parents bring child to saint, shrine, or 18 10 28
church
Nobility requests assistance of saint 4 3 I
Saint or bishop travel to sick child 3 3 6
Saint stays up all night praying 1 - 1
Already in monastery,special care 1 4 5
given
Total
~~~ ~
27 20 47
’Categories are not mutually exclusive.An episode of illness may
appear under more than one category.
 CHILD CARE AND CHILD ABUSE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
by medieval standards) involves a minimum of a
week’s travel for the round trip calculated on a rate of
ox cart travel at best of less than 20 kilometers per
day (Leighton, 1970);to this must be added the cost
of fodder for the oxen and food for the humans, the
cost of labor in removing oxen from the field, the loss
of the human labor of those who accompany the cart
carrying the child, all multiplied by the number of
additional days spent at the shrine or church. There
were also risks of robbery and death while on the
journey, as well as the risks of leaving the home a
little less protected and secure. In addition, anxiety
about travel was always present.
Indirect costs are obviously more difficult to calcu-
late, but infinitely more interesting, since they pri-
marily involve important shifts in a person’s personal,
social, and political relationships. For example, a local
magnate, especially one who has been hostile to local
ecclesiastics and missionaries, would incur obligations
involving matters of status and prestige by obtaining
help for his children from a saint. In Walafrid’s 9th
century Life of St. Gull (1927),Duke Gunzo sided with
his subjects when they resumed their pagan worship
and complained to him that St. Gall had destroyed
their idols and interfered with their hunting. Gunzo
ordered Gall to depart from his territory and did not
punish the villagers when they murdered two of the
missionary’s monks. Then, however, Duke Gunzo’s
only daughter, Fridiburga, became ill and “was pos-
sessed by an evil spirit which tormented her in many
ways, so that she remained almost wholly without
food and would often roll on the ground, foaming at
the mouth and in such a dire frenzy that four men
could scarcely hold her with all their efforts” (Chapter
15). Two bishops arrive to find the girl in a violent
frenzy and her parents, kinfolk and the entire house-
hold weeping over her and weighed down with grief.
The bishops begin their prayers, but Fridiburga breaks
free from the hands holding her, snatches a sword,
and tries to kill the bishops.
Duke Gunzo then sent his men to fetch St. Gall for
help. The holy man, still offended at the shabby
treatment he had previously received from the Duke,
refused to come. Finally after much negotiation, Gall
agreed to help and set out on the journey. On the way,
he receives a message from the Duke, urging him to
come more quickly, for the girl has now been 3 days
without food. When Gall arrived, he found the sick
girl “lying in her mother’s lap, with closed eyes, gaping
mouth and limbs relaxed, like one already dead”
(Chapter 18). The holy man exorcised the demon and
brought the girl back to health.
As a result of this process, Duke Gunzo was publicly
obligated to St. Gall. Personal obligations incurred in
such a manner could not be ignored, but were essential
567
components of the formal social structure of early
medieval Europe, a matter of honor. Duke Gunzo had
to accept Gall and his monks in his territory. He had
to protect Gall and his monks. He had to reverse his
previous policies toward Gall and the monastic settle-
ment. He had to risk alienating his own pagan sub-
jects. All of these concessions by the Duke are to be
considered the price he paid for the cure of his daugh-
ter. This is certainly tangible evidence of Gunzo’s
concern for his child, and a girl child at that, who are
often characterized by scholars as having very limited
value in medieval society (Bullough and Campbell,
1980; Coleman, 1976; Herlihy, 1975). We would of
course undermine our own methodological arguments
were we to claim that this anecdote could provide the
basis for a sweeping generalization about the great
value of little girls, or even little noble girls in early
medieval Europe. However, we offer this episode
merely as an illustration of behavior that is supported
by the quantitative evidence we have developed.
Another form of a combined direct and indirect cost
is the promise by the parents of a sick child to give
the child to the church if the saint will heal the child.
That this promise is not a subterfugeby which parents
unload a sickly child onto the monastery is clearly
seen in those cases in which the parents break their
promise once the child is healed. The parents mani-
festly have other plans for their offspring and quickly
ignore the rash offer they made under the duress of
trying to save their child’s life. From our evidence, it
is clear that families of the “middle class” and petty
nobility are seen to object more frequently than one
might expect to their children entering church or
monastic service. We are informed about cases of
broken promises because the child is reported to re-
lapse, or some other calamity, such as the death of the
father who broke his oath, results (Bernard of Clair-
vaux, 1978).
Conclusions
In the working out of the complex relationships
between secular and religious interests in the early
Middle Ages, assuring the health and well-being of
children was one of the important services that the
church had to offer. There is often evidence that
secular remedies were tried first, and when these were
unsuccessful, as we know they were in the face of
infantile diarrhea, plague, abscesses, wound infec-
tions, neurologic diseases, and other childhood ail-
ments, then the intervention of God was sought, most
often in the person of a local holy man or woman or a
local shrine with putatively potent relics. Brown
(1981)commented on the “medical pluralism” of late
antique-early medieval society and the tight bond of
personal obligation that one incurred in shifting from
a relatively impersonal medical system to seek healing
568 J. KROLL AND B. BACHRACH
from a holy person or shrine. A rough estimate of
parental valuation and concern for a child can be
obtained by examining the persistence with which
parents sought help for the sick child and the costs
which they bore in this endeavor.
Some observations can now be made about the
history of child abuse and infanticide in pre-Crusade
Europe. First, we are not suggesting that child abuse
and infanticide did not occur in the Middle Ages. We
are stating unequivocally, however, that the evidence
for child abuse and infanticide being widespread phe-
nomena, by any reasonable understanding of such
phraseology, is utterly lacking. We further suggest
that the evidence is lacking for such heinous behavior
not because there is no evidence about the care and
concern for children. We have demonstrated that
there is rich source material about children. The ar-
gument that the absence of evidence for child abuse
and infanticide reflects a conspiracy of silence which
only proves child abuse was widespread may be suffi-
cient for conspiracy buffs, but cannot be entertained
by serious historians. Generalizations about the uni-
versality of violence against children unfortunately
assume as fact the very premise that requires demon-
stration, namely, that all societies have, on a large
scale, gravely abused their children.
We have provided evidence which is more than
anecdotal in nature that parents in pre-Crusade Eu-
rope regularly expended substantial efforts and re-
sources to secure the health and well-being even of
sick and damaged children. These putatively less val-
uable members of society, one might conclude, should
have been the primary targets for abuse and destruc-
tion if early medieval society truly was inclined toward
such ends. Whether parents of the early Middle Ages
were more concerned about their children than were
parents of ancient Greece and Rome, the later Middle
Ages, or early modern industrial society remains to be
examined. If the abuse of children in the United States
is as widespread as some would argue (NationalStzdy,
1981),then we must consider entertaining the possi-
bility that Western civilization may indeed have re-
gressed rather than progressed since the Dark Ages.
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