Chapter 4 - Familial Education

Summary

This chapter foregrounds children’s involvement in documentary culture as a crucial element of their early political, spiritual and social education within the royal family. The chapter first addresses the documentary celebrations of children’s lives and children’s incorporation within intercessory prayers. Children were not dynamic actors in such cases, but these examples provide valuable evidence for the web of interwoven obligations, influences and expectations around them. As boys advanced through childhood, their active participation, political assent and testimony became important facets of the day-to-day activities of rule. After considering how charters reveal children’s importance as political actors, the chapter finally turns to examine shifts in documentary culture between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries which altered children’s status in royal documents. Young boys still had important roles to play in spiritual intercessions, familial actions and dynastic celebrations but, by c. 1200, royal charters were no longer as prominent a forum for displaying their centrality to rulership, especially not on an individual testimonial basis.