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The Fathers and the Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Gillian Clark
Gillian Clark*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

A Theban once came to abba Sisoes, wanting to become a monk. The old man asked him whether he had anyone in the world. He said, ‘I have a son.’ The old man said to him, ‘Go, throw him into the river, and then you shall be a monk.’ When he went off to throw him in, the old man sent a brother to stop him. The brother said, ‘Stop: what are you doing?’ He said, ‘The abba told me to throw him in.’ So the brother said, ‘But now he has told you not to.’ He left him and went to the old man, and he became a proven monk because of his obedience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 Sisoes, 10, PC 65, col. 393; see further Gould, Graham, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford, 1993), p. 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The story of Maria, niece of Abraham, is included in Brock, Sebastian and Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar. The monk who brought back his son: cited by Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London, 1989), p. 230 Google Scholar. Simeon the Mountaineer: Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 96–7 Google Scholar.

3 Jerome, Letter 127.5, CSEL, 56, pp. 149-50; but he dates the influence too early: see Clark, Elizabeth A., The Life of Melania the Younger (New York and Toronto, 1984), p. 93 Google Scholar.

4 For problems in the tradition about Publicola, see Clark, Life of Melania, pp. 86-90. Paulinus. Letter 29.9 and 45.3, CSEL, 29, pp. 251 and 381-2.

5 Life of Melania 2, 6 (Clark, Life of Melania, p. 30). For ‘post-marital celibacy’ and the lively debate on marriage and celibacy in late fourth-century Italy, see Hunter, David G., ‘Resistance to the virginal ideal in late fourth century Rome: the case of Jovinian’, Theological Studies, 48 (1987), pp. 45–64 Google Scholar.

6 Jerome, Letter 108.6.3, CSEL, 55, p. 311.

7 See further Hall, Stuart G., ‘Women among the Early Martyrs’, in Wood, Diana, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH, 30 (1993), p. 7 Google Scholar.

8 Augustine, Letter 262, CSEL, 57, pp. 621-31.

9 For other perspectives on this question, see Wiedemann, Thomas, Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Currie, Sarah, ‘Childhood and Christianity from Paul to the Council of Chalcedon’ (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1993)Google Scholar.

10 Justinian, Novella 14.1 (in Corpus iuris civilis, ed. T. Mommsen and P. Knieger, 16th cdn (Berlin, 1954) [hereafter Corpus iuris civilis]; Augustine, Letter 24*, CSEL, 88, pp. 126-7.

11 On the legal position, see further Clark, Gillian, Women in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar.

12 Jerome, Letter 108.6, CSEL, 55, p. 312.

13 Evidence on family structures in the late Roman republic and early Empire is collected by Bradley, Keith, Discovering the Roman Family (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar and Dixon, Suzanne, The Roman Mother (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

14 Cited from Hopkins, Keith, ‘Everyday Life for the Roman Schoolboy’, History Today, 43 (October 1993), p. 26 Google Scholar. See also Dionisotti, Carlotta, ‘From Ausonius’ schooldays? A schoolbook and its relatives’, Journal of Roman Studies, 72 (1982), pp. 83–125 Google Scholar.

15 Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Eng. trans., Oxford, 1988), made dramatic use of medical and legal material. The impart can be seen in Brown, Body and Society. Garnsey, Peter, ‘Child-rearing in ancient Italy’, in Kertzer, D. I. and Sailer, R. P., eds, The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven and London, 1991), pp. 48–65 Google Scholar, helpfully surveys the range of modem study, and moves the discussion away from psychohistory and the irrecoverable emotions of parent and child.

16 Plutarch, Moralia 609 (LCL, Plutarch 7, pp. 586-8).

17 Brent Shaw, ‘The cultural meaning of death’, in D. I. Kertzer and R. P. Sailer, eds, The Family in Italy, pp. 66-90.

18 There is much debate on whether contraceptive medicines had any effect: for a recent optimistic view, see Riddle, John. M., Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar. But respectable women were not supposed to use such things: see further Clark, Women, pp. 84-8.

19 See further Hunter, ‘Resistance’.

20 Brent Shaw, ‘The age of Roman girls at marriage: some reconsiderations’. Journal of Roman Studies, 77 (1987). pp. 30-46.

21 Soranus, Cynecology 1.8.33 (Eng. tr. by Owsei Temkin, Baltimore, 1956); see further Clark, Women, p. 80.

22 For the debate on maternal and perinatal mortality rates, see Parkin, Tim G., Demography and Roman Society (Baltimore, 1992), pp. 93–4, 103–5 Google Scholar.

23 See further Boswell, John, The Kindness of Strangers: the Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Harmondsworth, 1988)Google Scholar; Clark, Women, pp. 48-50; Parkin, Demography, pp. 95-8.

24 Rousselle. Ponteia, p. 46; the reference is to Soranus, Gynecology 2.44. Soranus may in fact have observed, but not understood, the effect of rickets in crowded urban conditions.

25 Ibid., 2.11.18.

26 Ibid., 2.16.30, 2.19.42.

27 On the use of wet-nursing and swaddling, together with the abandonment of newborn babies, as ‘barometers’ of parental feeling, see Garnsey, ‘Child-rearing’, p. 49.

28 Justinian’s Code 6.30.18 pr.; Digest 48.8.12 (in Corpus iuris avilis). Digest 48.to.22 says that a child who has not yet reached puberty (impuber) cannot be held to have engaged in deliberate fraud.

29 Jerome, Letter 128.3, CSEL, 56, pp. 158-9; Augustine. On the nature and origin of the soul 1.10.12, CSEL, 60, p. 312.

30 Justinian, Institutes 1.23 pr.; Leo, Novella 28 (in Corpus iuris civilis). On legal rales about pre-pubertal children, see further Chris Jones, ‘Women, Death and the Law’, in Diana Wood, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH, 30 (1993), p. 25. Further examples of generalizing references to age in T. Carp, ‘Puersenex in Roman and medieval thought’, Latomus, 39 (1980), pp. 736-9.

31 Augustine, Confessions 1.8.13, CChr. SL, 27, p. 7.

32 Kleiner, Diana, ‘Women and family life on Roman funerary altars’, Latomus, 46 (1987), pp. 552–3 Google Scholar. See further Janet Huskinson, Children’s Sarcophagi from Imperial Rome: their Decoration and its Social importance (Oxford Monographs in Classical Archaeology, 1994 forthcoming), to whom I owe the comment that Christian sarcophagi may use the same motifs (biblical scenes, the Good Shepherd, Christ the teacher) for children as for adults; but the evidence is difficult to assess.

33 Prudentius, Peristephanon 10, CChr. SL, 126, pp. 352-7: see further Cynthia Hahn. ‘Speaking without Tongues: the martyr Romanus and Augustine’s theory of language in illustrations of Bern Burgerbibliothek Codex 264’, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, eds, Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca and London. 1991), pp. 161-80.

34 Prudentius, Peristephanon 3, pp. 278-85. I have profited from an exchange of papers on this subject with Elizabeth Castelli.

35 See further Pelling, Christopher, ‘Childhood and Personality in Greek Biography’, in Pelling, Christopher, ed., Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford, 1990), pp. 213–44 Google Scholar: Clark, Gillian, Augustine: The Confessions (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 46–8 Google Scholar.

36 Ambrose: Paulinus, Life of Ambrose 2.4, PL 14, col. 30. Athanasius: Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History 1.14, PL 21, col. 487. Caesarius: Life of Caesarius 3, tr. W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Aries: Life Testament, Letters (Liverpool, 1994).

37 See further Brown, Peter, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Wisconsin, 1992), pp. 35–61 Google Scholar.

38 Passio of Maxima, Secunda and Donatilla, AnBoll, 9 (1890), pp. 112-13. I am indebted to Dr Maureen Tilley for introducing me to these texts. On teenagers and Roman categories, see further M. Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth: the Ambiguity of Youth and the Absence of Adolescence in Greco-Roman Society (Amsterdam, 1991); E. Eyben, Restless Youth in Ancient Rome (London, 1993).

39 Jerome, Letter 117.7, CSEL, 55, p. 430; see further Clark, Women, p. 116.

40 Jerome, Letter 24.2, CSEL, 54, p. 215: ‘still wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of infancy, and having scarcely completed her tenth year.’ Life of Saint Eupraxia, cited from Brown, Body and Society, pp. 275-6.

41 Basil, Rule 7.1-4, in the translation by Ruflnus, CSEL, 86, pp. 38-9; Canonical Letter 199.18, PC 32, col. 720.

42 Ambrose, On Virgins 1. 65-6, PL 16, col. 218; Augustine cited by Meer, F. van der, Augustine the Bishop (London and New York, 1961), pp. 214–15 Google Scholar.

43 Theodoret, Religious History, PG 82, col. 1380d.

44 John Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Colossians, PG 62, col. 329. I owe the reference to this illuminating homily to Pauline Allen and Wendy Mayer, ‘Computer and homily: accessing the everyday life of early Christians’, Vigiliae Christianae, 47 (1993), pp. 260-80: a sample of material from a database which should provide much more information on children.

45 Basil, Advice to Young Men: Homily 22, PG 31, cols 564-89.

46 Basil, Letter 223, PG 32, col. 825.

47 Augustine, Confessions, 2.3.5–8, pp. 19–21.

48 This is the assumption Augustine makes in On Catechizing the Uninstructed (De catechizandis rudibus: CChr.SL, 46, pp. 115-78), advice addressed to a deacon at Carthage: the problem for the catechist is different educational levels, not different ages.

49 Rousselle, Pomeia, pp. 134-5, notes the fourth-century evidence that boys in monasteries might be at risk of sexual abuse.

50 John Chrysostom, On Vainglory and the right way for parents to bring up their children, tr. in M. L. W. Laistner, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the later Roman Empire (Ithaca, 1951).

51 Jerome, Letter 107, CSEL 55, pp. 290-305: for a more sympathetic account of this letter, see Joan Petersen, ‘The Education of Girls in Fourth-century Rome’, pp. 29-37, below, and Graham Gould, ‘Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought’, pp. 39-32, below.

52 The Christ-child in art: see further Currie, ‘Childhood’, pp. 206-22. The apocryphal gospels: E. Hennecke, W. Schneemelcher, and R. McL. Wilson, eds. New Testament Apocrypha, 2 vols (London, 1963), 1, pp. 392-401.

53 Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs (Donatist version), PL 8, col. 699.

54 John Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Colossians, PC 62, col. 329. On passions in children, see further Gould, ‘Childhood’.

55 Ausonius, Letter 22, ed. S. Prete (Leipzig, 1978); Prudentius, Preface 7-9, CChr. SL, 126, p. 1.

56 Augustine, Confessions 1.9.14-15, 1.7.11, pp. 8-9, 6.

57 John Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 62.4, PC 58, cols 600-1. ‘He said this before’ presumably refers to Matt. 18.1-5.

58 Augustine, Confessions 1.6.8, 1.7.11, pp. 4, 6.

59 Augustine, Literal Interpretation of Genesis 10.13.23, CSEL, 54, p. 557.

60 Augustine, Confessions 1.19.30, p. 17.

61 Hennecke, Schneemelcher, and Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha, 1, pp. 392–401.

62 Nepotianus: Jerome, Letter 60.8.2, CSEL, 54, p. 557; see further Scourfield, J. H., Consoling Hettodorus (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar, on this passage. Arsenius: 6, PC 65, col. 89. On Christians as infants, see further Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.5-6, PC 8, cols 261-312.

63 Paulinus. Letter 3.4, CSEL, 29, p. 16. The appropriation of childbearing goes back to Plato; on the appropriation of nursing imagery, see Corrington, Gail, ‘The milk of salvation: redemption by the mother in late antiquity and early Christianity’, Harvard Theological Review, 82 (1989), pp. 406–13 Google Scholar.

64 Venantius Fortunatus, Life of Radegund 2: conveniently translated in JoAnn McNamara, ed., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, North Carolina, 1992), p. 71.