Medieval – Unbound

by K.P. Kulski

When Constantine became Roman Emperor in 306 AD, it was to a transforming Empire. His official conversion to Christianity was reflective of the strong spread of the religion into Roman culture.

This form of Christianity held a strong Roman identity, the spread having first moved through the aristocratic classes. Remarkably, Constantine legalized the collection of exposed infants for the purpose of enslavement. While the option of slavery is potentially horrific, Constantine’s act of legalizing such activities is a significant shift in social perspectives on babies. He would later outlaw the practice of infant exposure altogether. What has become known as the Christmas story, glorifies the potentiality of the infant Jesus with associations of hope. Constantine’s ruling indicates that infant life is worth preserving, even in conditions of slavery without other options.

The Church would eventually equate infant-hood as the moment humanity was the closest to the divine, being newly emerged into the mortal world, theologically asserting that infants exemplified purity. By 787, we see the establishment of the first orphanages in Christianized regions of Italy. In Milan, the Archbishop had a special revolving cradle installed so women could anonymously leave children.[1] Interestingly, this acknowledges social stigmas surrounding women who either had children out of wedlock or were unable to care for their child. Clearly indicating that at this point, infant exposure was not generally practiced and the involvement of a male head of family in the decision to keep or reject a child, such as the paterfamilias was diminished or nonexistent. Further, the Church had developed authority in the matter and became particularly concerned with preserving new and unborn life. An Anglo-Saxon penitential dating from the late 7^th century states:

Women who commit abortion before [the foetus] has life, shall do penance for one year or for the three forty-day periods or for forty days, according to the nature of the offence; and if later, that is, more than forty days after conception, they shall do penance as murderesses, that is for three years on Wednesdays and Fridays and in the three forty day periods. This according to canons is judged [punishable by] ten years.[2]

What we see here is a significant transformation. The Roman concept of abortion that essentially considered newborns in a late stage of fetal development and acceptance of infanticide changed to the Early Medieval belief that life began during pregnancy. This argument is quite familiar to the modern world, where political pundits frequently argue over the moment when life and therefore personhood occurs.

But it wasn’t just a sense of heightened morality and compassion instituted by religious conversion that created these changes. After the failings of partible inheritance, primogeniture developed, a system of inheritance that depended on first-born children of the sovereign. This system was not only in the interest of the ruling family, but to the fiefdoms of early Medieval Europe who also practiced primogeniture in their own households. In the post-Roman world, hyper-localism reigned in order to maintain pockets of stability. Broken systems of inheritance or uncertain heirs often led to fractured support of the elite classes who contributed to military power. When this happened, the already tenuous balance would shift and ultimately led to grabs for power, conflict and war. The birth of heirs, became overwhelming stressed for the preservation of social and economic order.

Additionally, the Church called for the spread of Christianity. The call came from a religious and spiritual motivation. But it also came from the intent to establish Western Europe as a region that essentially played by the same political rules. While the Roman Empire held the original authority to recognize claims of kingship to Western European kingdoms, in its absence that authority transferred to the Church in Rome. This resulted in the concept of “Christendom,” religiously described as a vision of God’s kingdom on Earth that politically bolstered the claims of kings and lords as well as preserved the Church itself. Church leader, Augustine intentionally promoted higher rates of childbirth in Christian marriages as part of building Christendom.

The value and role of motherhood rose greatly in prominence. Women continued to have limited legal rights, and due to the need to ensure the true stock of any children born to her, women’s access to easy movement became limited. Power for elite women, was derived from her family, husband and particularly her position as mother of male heirs. Mothers were responsible for the basic indoctrination and instruction of their children into Christian values. Oddly enough, mothers became the backbone of the perpetuation of their own suppression, but also the elevation of children as important parts of the social order. Advanced education for boys, occurred after this period by male instructors.

So strong came the drive for the birth of male heirs, other children and mothers suffered. The Church recognized not only this struggle for women, but how the practice could diminish survivability of other children in a world where infant and child death were common place. Further, the Church noted that infants who were nursed by a healthy mother had greater chances for survival. In the late 6^th century, Pope Gregory I insisted that women should not only nurse their own children, but husbands should abstain from intercourse with their wives during that period. This reveals a basic understanding that nursing promotes infant health, but with new pregnancies, milk tends to dry-up.

Further, her husband ought not to cohabit with her till that which is brought forth be weaned. But an evil custom has arisen in the ways of married persons, that women scorn to nurse the children whom they bring forth, and deliver them to other women to be nursed. Which custom appears to have been devised for the sole

Nursing Madonna 6^th Century. From: Corrington, Gail. “The Milk of Salvation: Redemption by the Mother in Late Antiquity and Early Christianity.” The Harvard Theological Review 82, no. 4 (Oct 1989): Plate 5.

cause of incontinency, in that, being unwilling to contain themselves, they think to scorn to suckle their offspring. Those women therefore who, after evil custom, deliver their children to others to be nursed ought not to have intercourse with their husbands unless the time of their purification has passed, seeing that even without the reason of childbirth, they are forbidden to have intercourse with their husbands while held of their accustomed sickness; so much so that the sacred law smites with death any man who shall go into a woman having her sickness.[3]

This statement from Pope Nicholas in the late 9^th century echoes many of the same sentiments.

“A woman’s husband should not approach to lie with her until the infants, to whom she has given birth, have been weaned. But a depraved custom has arisen in the behavior of married people, that women despise nursing the children whom they have born and hand them over to be nursed by other women; and this seems to have happened solely because of incontinence, since those who refuse to restrain themselves, despise nursing those to whom they have given birth.”[4]

Simultaneously, we see a rise of iconography in glorification of Mary, particularly in

Nursing Madonna 2 — Nursing Madonna 6^th Century. From: Corrington, Gail. “The Milk of Salvation: Redemption by the Mother in Late Antiquity and Early Christianity.” *The Harvard Theological Review* 82, no. 4 (Oct 1989): Plate 5.

the role of exalted motherhood. Resulting in the first popularization of the “Nursing Madonna,” which often enmeshing local pagan beliefs. This type of Marian depiction would continue well into the Renaissance. But if we look at its development with what would become secular law, we can see that Mary became not only revered, but an example for motherhood. Additionally, infants were no longer results of disposable fertility and that the relationship between women’s freedoms and the value of infants are interestingly linked, with often unexpected outcomes.

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[1] Donna Schneider et al. “Founding Asylums, Almhouses and Orphanages: Early Roots of Child Protection,” Middle States Geographer 35, (2002). 94. Accessed on April 3, 2014, http://geographyplanning.buffalostate.edu/MSG%202002/11_Schneider_Macey.pdf

[2] “XIV Penance for Special Irregularities in Marriage.” In Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook. Edited by Conor McCarthy. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 49.

[3] Gregory I. “To Augustine, Bishop of the Angli.” Book XI, letter 64. Catholic Encyclopedia: New Advent. Accessed April 4, 2018, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211064.htm

[4] “ The Responses of Pope Nicholas to the Questions of the Bulgars AD 866,” Medieval Sourcebook. Fordham University, Accessed April 4, 2018, http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/866nicholas-bulgar.asp

by E.J. Lawrence

Dear Reader, I ask that you bear with me as this post gets very personal. However, I promise I tie back to the point of this blog, and re-focus on a woman in history.

I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I knew such an occupation existed. I remember in the 2^nd grade, a teacher stayed inside during recess with me one day to teach me about haikus. I decided to write a poem a day, and found an old legal pad in my dad’s office on which I scribbled out some semblance of poetry every day for a good few months. Some were haikus, and some were my own brand of free verse, given my limited seven-year-old vocabulary. (They all rhymed)

EPSON MFP image — The Two Brothers The Two Brothers by Elenore Abbott²

I started a writing group in the 3^rd grade. At recess, two of my friends and I would sit under the tree with our notebooks and write stories together. They were fairy tales, mostly. Princesses and dragons and that sort of thing. Because those were the stories we knew and loved, and the ones we wanted to write.

But I soon learned that sharing your soul on paper is a dangerous activity. We were teased mercilessly about our writing group, and my two friends caved. One day, they simply didn’t want to write anymore, and I was left to go at it alone.

I kept a diary in a 3-ring binder. During a chilly fall day, a girl jerked it from my hands, popped open the rings and threw the whole thing in the air. I chased my loose pages, picking them up from the damp fallen leaves. It was poetic, really, the leaves of paper among the colored tree leaves. But it was the last time I wrote at recess.

I remember in fifth grade being given a writing assignment in class. We were to write a story–any story–but we had to follow the five steps of the writing process, and each of those steps would be graded. When we were given time to work in class, our teacher would circulate the room, making sure we were on task. I hated this. I didn’t want her to see what I was writing. I didn’t want to share. I hovered over my paper so closely so that she couldn’t see what I wrote. Thus I did most of my work at home, but one day carelessly left my notes lying on the coffee table, where my mother found it. She told me how wonderful it was, and asked why I didn’t show it to her sooner.

I threw it in the trash.

It wasn’t good enough. It was never good enough.

What happened to the girl who wrote poetry every day? And fairy tales at recess? Who narrated her own life as if she were a character in a novel?

Somewhere between 1^st grade and 5^th grade, she had discovered that writing made one vulnerable; and she did not wish to be, as they say, “an open book.”

WIN_20161029_20_59_06_Pro — The cover of one of my many, many journals

I did not stop writing. I filled notebooks of story ideas and stories and drawings of maps for my make-believe worlds. And then I took all of these things and shoved them under my mattress (I know, I know — incredibly original hiding spot for a teenage girl).

In college, I tried to write “literary” stories and poems for my creative writing classes, but never showed a soul the fairy tales hiding on my computer. Even if I wasn’t sharing my stories, I still felt impelled to write, to create. But never, never, not ever would I tell someone I wrote “fantasy.” Fairy tales were for children. Unless you were Tolkien. Which I was not.

After undergrad, I decided not to even apply for an MFA program because there was no way I could possibly get in. I would save myself the pain of rejection, and apply to MA English lit programs because those were much safer. I went to George Mason University, where I took a course in 12^th Century literature (because it’s amazing), and one week, we studied the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12^th century German nun, and I came across a passage where Hildegard describes hearing a “voice from Heaven” urging her to write “what you see and hear.” Here was Hildegard’s response to the vision:

“But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and a low opinion of myself and because of what people might say, I refused for a long time the call to write.”¹

I stopped. I read that passage, then read it again. Here was a woman, in the 12^th century, expressing in words what I had long felt, but refused to acknowledge. Even with a vision from Heaven telling her, “Hey, write this,” she refused — not because she doubted the vision. Not even because she doubted the message she was meant to convey. But because she doubted herself.

Hildegard wrote what is commonly known as the oldest morality play, Ordo Virtutum. She was a pioneer of the study of natural sciences. She was a theologian. A scholar. A poet. A healer. A songwriter. My professor even described her as “an early sort of marriage counselor.” She was a Renaissance woman before the Renaissance was cool. And to think what the world would have missed out on, if we didn’t have her writings! If she had continuously refused to offer them.

What would have happened if Hildegard continued in her refusal because of her self-doubt and fear of “what people might say”?

And am I, in refusing to share my own writing, depriving the world?

I don’t think I’ve had any specific visions from Heaven I can point to and say, “ah ha! There’s my calling!” However, I do know that when I am writing, I feel in that moment that there is no other purpose for my being. I do not doubt that purpose. Nor do I doubt the message in the words I type. It is myself I doubt, and the rejection I fear.

Yet fear is a lie, determined to keep us in chains. It deceives us into thinking that it keeps us safe, far from the rejection and pain. But the shackles with which it holds us is darkness conjured by our own minds — shackles made of shadows. Once we test them, once the light of truth is cast upon them, they dissipate. We are freed.

Hildegard says that she overcame her doubt with “the witness of a certain noble girl of high morality and of the man whom I had found[…]” then “I set my hand to writing. When I did so[…]I rose from my sickness with renewed strength.”¹ When she didn’t write, it made her physically ill, and it wasn’t until she sought the council of trusted friends that she realized what she must do — she must cast off her illusory chains, pick up the pen, and write. It was her only source of freedom.

We may none of us be the next Hildegard of Bingen, pioneering sciences, writing plays, and studying theology, all while healing people and offering counseling services (without Netflix, the 12^th century was really productive). However, we do all have something to offer the world. If Hildegard or Jane Austen or Agatha Christie all had said, “oh, but what might people think about me, if I take up the pen? I can’t possibly,” imagine how the worlds of drama, romance, and mystery would be so altered. Imagine what the world might have lost.

I cannot say I am completely over this fear. However, I have resolved myself to write and share my work, even in the face of rejection. I will surround myself with support of people who remind me, “yes, this is your calling. Pursue it.” I will face my fears head on, throwing the leaves in the air myself, to see who might wish to pick them up. And even if no one does, I will keep writing.

Don’t deprive the world of your light simply because someone has shackled you with shadows. Shine, and watch them dissolve.

¹ Hildegard von Bingen. Secrets of God. Selected and translated by Sabina Flanagan, 1996, pp. 11.

² Scanned from Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1920 Charles Scribner’s Sons edition), Public Domain

³ Sean Butcher & Carmen Butcher. Map used in Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader by Carmen Butcher, published by Paraclete Press. Map of Hildegard’s preaching tours.

Pictures of Hildegard, Jane Austen, and Agatha Christie {{PD-1923}}

Tag: Medieval

Exalted Motherhood, Prized Infants: From Pagan Rome to Christianized Europe (Part 2)

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